EUROPE: Huge protest march passes off peacefully By LESLIE CRAWFORD
Hundreds of thousands of people staged a peaceful demonstration against global capitalism in Barcelona on Saturday, underlining that their movement did not die with the September 11 attacks against the US and that their protests need not be marred by violence.
Organisers said the turnout, which they put at more than 500,000, surpassed their expectations. The march was the largest staged in "Red Barcelona", a city that was collectivised by anarchists during the Spanish civil war and which retains strong leftwing sympathies.
The protest would have been much larger were it not for the fact that dozens of buses carrying anti-globalisation protesters were detained at the French border. Spain suspended the Schengen treaty, which guarantees the free movement of European Union citizens, during the duration of the EU summit.
To lessen the potential for conflict, organisers agreed to stage their main demonstration on Saturday evening, after the EU summit was over. The route of the march was also away from the the summit venue. Barcelona's city authorities agreed that riot police would keep a low profile during the march.
"One of our main aims was to remove the stigma of violence that had become attached to our anti-globalisation movement," said Luis Edo, a member of Attac, a group that advocates a worldwide tax on speculative capital movements and the forgiveness of third world debt. "We convinced police that we were capable of keeping the peace."
The march was organised in three blocs, like samba schools in a carnival parade. The first was led by the Movement against a Capitalist Europe, with more than 100 organisations. A middle group was led by European "nations without a state" - Catalans, Basques, Corsicans and Scots who want to be independent nations within Europe. The third group of Socialist party and trade union activists did not even get a chance to parade, such was the human logjam on the streets.
Police later reported isolated clashes with radical youths which ended with some smashed shop fronts and 50 arrests.
Mr Edo believed the Barcelona protest set a milestone for the anti-globalisation movement. "Our challenge now is to convince the public that our proposals are not Utopian," he said.