The Federal Police Union (UFP) has accused Vox deputy Javier Ortega-Smith of “coercing” riot police deployed to protect the PSOE headquarters, on Ferraz Street in Madrid, from demonstrations against the amnesty. . The ultra politician participated in the rally this Thursday night that, like the previous 13, ended with riots, police charges and arrests of dozens of extreme rightists. The general secretary of the ultra party and spokesperson for the Madrid City Council went to the protest on Thursday night escorted by several television cameras, before which he addressed the head of the police operation in Ferraz to warn him that he was there so that the police “do not exceed their duties” and prevent “abuse of authority” by the agents of the Police Intervention Unit (UIP, or riot control unit). Ortega Smith insisted that the gatherings are not “a collection of fascists, nor ultras, but Spaniards, good people who love Spain.” Last night 15 people were injured and nine people were arrested. The Unified Police Union (SUP) and the spokesperson for Jupol – the two largest unions in the force – have also criticized the parliamentarian’s behavior. In fact, the ultra councilor has assured that the police infiltrate agents among the protesters to provoke incidents and then make arrests.
#UFP demands that Ortega Smith and Vox stop coercing the UIPs.
Yesterday afternoon-night, the Deputy for Vox, Ortega Smith, addressed the colleagues of the Police Intervention Units and, in a threatening tone and abusing his status as Deputy, tried to direct… pic.twitter.com/NeEVlQgUb3
— UFP (@ufpol) November 17, 2023
The deputy has posted the video of his passage through Ferraz, where he addresses the head of the operation to tell him that he and his camera teams are there as “observers” and that they carry cameras to record if there are excesses on the part of the police or of the protesters. He did so while 4,000 people gathered in the area, many of them masked, giving the fascist salute and displaying Nazi symbols such as the swastika. The ultra deputy shows his accreditation as a deputy to try to show authority to the police officer.
This movement by the far-right politician has attracted the rejection of several unions. The UFP statement emphasizes that “neither Mr. Ortega Smith nor any deputy has the authority to threaten, coerce or attempt to direct any Police work.” The union censures the “threatening tone” of the representative of the party led by Santiago Abascal to “accommodate to his interests” the decision or not of the Police to identify or arrest protesters. UFP has criticized Vox for understanding that “the Police care very little.” “He is only trying to obtain political benefit at our expense,” he added, reproaching him for not going with his Congressional accreditation to the riots in Barcelona after the 1-O ruling. “These police officers are the same ones who defended his boss, Mr. Abascal, when he was stoned at a rally in Vallecas, but then we were the good guys,” he continued.
The SUP has also reproached Vox for its attitude during the protests in Ferraz for the recurring attendance of far-right ultras, among other peaceful protesters, who throw objects at the police cordon while insulting the officers and other authorities such as the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who criticizes his pacts with the independentists and the amnesty law, Europa Press reports. “Its oversight points towards support for violent people and urban terrorists,” indicated the SUP, which also recalls that for years they have been asking for single-person cameras for all colleagues who intervene in public order. “We have nothing to hide, Mr. Ortega,” he said.
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Jupol, for its part, assures that the actions of the ultra-right deputy “are out of place.” This union has recalled that, like others, they have shown their rejection of the amnesty law. But “you lose all reason if violent demonstrations are allowed,” said its spokesperson, Ibón Domínguez. From Jupol they remember that in Ferraz at first the concentrations are peaceful, “but little by little they are taken over by ultras with chants, most of them against the Police, others against the Crown and others against the PP.” “Yesterday we even saw a swastika, it is something intolerable in our rule of law,” they noted.
The national spokesperson for Jupol has stressed through a message on the social network “I will not reproduce what they have conveyed to me from the units about their speech about the alleged ‘abuse of power,’ he writes.
The ultra deputy has responded that not only he went to the protest, but “the different deputies of the Vox Parliamentary Group were also there.” His role there, he said, was to explain this to the police: “We were not going to accept in any way that a minority of violent hotheads is tarnishing the good name of thousands and thousands of Madrid and Spaniards, who have the constitutional right to demonstrate peacefully,” he added.
In his line, he added, that he was there to prevent “some agents, especially undercover agents with balaclavas, posing as protesters, from berating the Police and then appearing 10 minutes later arresting protesters (…) we were not going to accept that some agents, who are the exception, the dishonorable exception of the National Police Corps, were abusing force, beating, for example, a young man because he was carrying a Spanish flag or because he had dared to shout something against Pedro Sánchez.”
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