Week of protests over cut backs

Demonstrations would continue, Fabio Gandara, one of the organizers of last Sunday's protests, said yesterday.
About 50 young people meanwhile spent the night at Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square, saying they may stay there until the elections.
An internet movement called ‘Real Democracy Now' mobilised an estimated 20'000 people on Sunday in Madrid, where a small group of protestors engaged in acts of street violence, burning garbage containers and damaging bus shelters.

Five police officers and two other people were injured as demonstrators clashed with riot police. Twenty-four people were detained.
Rallies were also staged in Barcelona, Malaga, Alicante, Valencia, Palma and other cities.
They were backed by about 400 associations representing ecologists, the unemployed, people unable to pay mortgages, opponents of neo-liberalism and globalization, among others.

Unemployment
The movement was launched on Facebook, calling on citizens to show that they were not just “merchandise in the hands of politicians and bankers.” Demonstrators demanded an end to corruption, political systems favouring only large parties and slammed ‘governments in the hands of bankers' which imposed austerity policies undermining social rights. “This is not a crisis, it is embezzlement,” protestors chanted in Madrid in a reference to Spain's economic crisis, which has made unemployment soar to 20 per cent - the eurozone's highest jobless rate. “I have two university degrees and I cannot get a job paying more than 5'000 euros annually,” said Ana Sierra, 26. “We study, we make efforts and now the only possibility is to emigrate. We are condemned to living precariously,” she said.