Students Stone Madrid Police

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31542, 2 December 1967, Page 13

Students Stone Madrid Police

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

MADRID, December 1.

Hundreds of Spanish students yesterday stoned police, chanted anti-Franco slogans and sang Republican marching songs from the Spanish Civil War in a renewed outburst of violence at Madrid University.

At one point, a group of police drew their pistols and brandished them threateningly at students sheltering in the law faculty after a police charge. The trouble began when the students tried to hold an assembly in the science faculty, to protest against the destruction the previous night of student union offices in the building.

The offices were used by the banned Democratic Students' Union to disseminate pamphlets and literature, including socialist books. An entire wall of the offices was torn down, and the students claimed it had been done by order of the dean.

“Franco No”

Hundreds of students coming from other faculties to attend the assembly were faced by police in 15 jeeps and a bus, backed by two armoured water-tankers with powerful jet hoses, and 20 mounted police. Chanting “Franco no,” “Liberty,” and “Down with dictatorship,” the students stoned police in a five-hour confrontation. They also chanted “Down with ‘36’”—a reference to the military uprising in 1936 which sparked off the 1936-39 civil war and brought General Franco to power.

Both sides made sporadic charges, but no direct clashes occurred and no arrests were seen. Between charges the demonstrators pulled up road signs, scrawled anti-Franco slogans, and yelled obscenities at the police. At one point they sang “El Ejercito del Ebro” (The Army of the Ebro) which Republican troops sang as they attacked General Franco’s Nationalist forces in 1938 during

the crucial battle of the River Ebro.

Eventually police charged the students and drove them inside the faculties. The students closed the doors and continued to hurl stones and insults from inside. Later the police withdrew, and students began to leave.