Police officers who hit demonstrators in non-violent and legitimate mobilizations —like the massive protest last Sunday in Palma, against overcrowding and touristification— do so under the cover of the anonymity of their helmets and numbers: they are not people with a face and a name, like citizens, but rather there is a conscious effort to give the police officer who represses citizens an aspect as dehumanized as possible. This is well known, studied, and denounced. The other great instrument of concealment for the repressive police officer is corporatism. This is the foundation for the development of police accounts that, to put it mildly, clash or contradict reality. That they lie, to put it bluntly. They know they can do it because corporatism, a kind of misunderstood and perverted camaraderie, makes it impossible for a police officer to ever dare to report the bad practices —and whoever says bad practices, says crimes and misdemeanors— of their less exemplary colleagues.The National Police of Palma has produced a report on the events of Sunday evening in which they do their usual: victimize themselves and claim they had to resort to charges to "defend themselves" from "violent demonstrators" who instilled "fear". It's starting to get a bit tiring, the song of individuals who like to line up as muscular cabinets, armed to the teeth and trained for whatever comes, who claim to feel intimidated and terrified in front of defenseless demonstrators who—in the case of Palma—do such fearsome things as singing La Balenguera. It's tiring, above all, because it's a lie. From the police of 1-O to those of Alsasu, passing through those who have been in charge of repressing pro-Palestine demonstrations with batons, they all turn out to feel deep fears when they have to face the unleashed hordes of violent demonstrators. The reality, repeated time and time again, is that the provocative, aggressive and—if necessary—violent elements in demonstrations and other acts of citizen protest are the police agents themselves. This is what happened in Palma, where there were more than twenty injured, including a photojournalist who had to receive six stitches in his head. The police attacks were unjustified. And, above all, intolerable.False police reports and statements — and, when appropriate, false declarations before courts by agents and high-ranking police officials — are repeated because the political leaders do nothing about it (they are afraid, these ones are). The government delegate in Palma, Alfonso Rodríguez, is being asked to resign. He should present it, also due to the ineptitude of having done the dirty work for the tourism businessmen and for the PP and Vox Government presided over by Marga Prohens. These have achieved the objective of tarnishing a demonstration that was as powerful as it was civic, and on top of that they can pin the blame on a socialist government delegate. They must think they have made a masterstroke, but more or less everyone sees the trick (this does not mean that the delegate should not resign, of course).
