Carlos Herrera has charged against the perpetrators of the looting in Barcelona and against those who, in his opinion, justify his actions. In an intervention broadcast by COPE, the communicator rejects describing what happened as a student demand and focuses on the merchants affected by the attacks.
His words come after Saturday’s riots in the city center, which left 128 detainees, including 72 minorsaccording to the balance updated on Sunday by the Department of the Interior. The incidents began after a call spread on social networks that brought together hundreds of young people around Plaza de Catalunya.
“These are not law students, nor children from the Escolanía de Montserrat, nor from the Philosophy tuna demonstrating for their educational conditions,” says Herrera. His description of those responsible for the altercations is blunt. “These are an army of looters”.
The journalist continues with a reference to the attacks on establishments. “They were smashing shop windows and stealing what they caught.” He also claims that “the vast majority of them” were Moroccan, although the fragment does not identify the source of that statement.
Damage to businesses
The updated balance sheet includes 23 businesses vandalized or looted and 14 officers injured, four of them seriously. Firefighters carried out 33 interventions for fires on public roads. During the incidents, some establishments lowered their blinds with customers inside and there were people who had to leave through back or emergency doors.
Herrera accuses “sectors of the left” of cheering or justifying those responsible and questions that they are presented as victims while those who suffer the damage are neglected. In his comment he mentions the business owners in the center of Barcelona and the merchants in Puerta del Sol.
The communicator also compares the perpetrators of the riots with participants in the Sol camp and with those involved in the incidents in A Coruña. That comparison is part of its assessment. In the case of Barcelona, The Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, and the mayor, Jaume Collboni, separated the altercations from the camping out for the right to housing installed in the Plaza de Catalunya.
Both condemned the violence. Collboni announced judicial and financial consequences for those responsible, while Parlon defended a zero tolerance response. The protest had not been communicated to the authorities and had been called through social networks.
The reproach to Sánchez for the incidents in A Coruña
Herrera’s intervention also addresses what happened in the Plaza de María Pita in A Coruña. The journalist defends those who attended the Vox event and emphasizes that it was “a legal rally of a legal party”.
In this context he directs his criticism to Pedro Sánchez, from whom he affirms that he has not heard a condemnation of the violence in the Galician city. He also censures the mayor of A Coruña, whom he accuses of presenting as heroes those he holds responsible for promoting the altercations.
The announcer ends with an irony about the explanations that, according to the complaint, serve to excuse these behaviors. “Poor people, they react like this because they are overwhelmed by the right,” he says, before finishing his comment with another reference to the riots. “What are you going to do? Man, of course, burn Barcelona.”