‘Traitors’: Vandals attack Spanish Socialists’ HQ in Brussels

Опубликовано: Friday, 10 November 2023 10:27

Party denounces ‘vile attack,’ which took place shortly after government deal was concluded with Catalan separatists.

The Brussels’ headquarters of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) was vandalized overnight, hours after party leader and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez signed a controversial deal to form a government with support from Catalan separatists.

The building, located at Clos du Parnasse 12, was spray-painted with a profane insult and the word “traitors,” according to photos posted by PSOE.

The party denounced the graffiti as a “vile attack.”

“This act of vandalism … is an attack on democracy and the constitutional values that our party, with more than 140 years of history, represents,” the party said on X.

On Thursday, Sánchez took a step toward forming a government with Catalan separatists of the Junts party, after concluding a deal which includes an amnesty offer for those behind the illegal 2017 Catalan independence referendum.

The deal was blasted by several judicial groups and triggered a wave of protests in Madrid, where 24 people were arrested on Thursday.

In Brussels, the vandalism at PSOE’s headquarters was condemned by Iratxe García, the Spanish leader of the center-left Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, who said “those responsible are those people who are trying to stop the democratic process in Spain to have a government.”

“Some of the people who were in the demonstrations … their problem is not the amnesty, their problem is the democracy,” García said. “Because citizens voted and the majority in Spain say that they don’t want a government between conservatives and far-right.”