A call that circulated on TikTok brought about 500 young people, many dressed head to toe in black, to Barcelona’s Plaça de Catalunya on Saturday evening. Nobody had notified the authorities, and within minutes it was clear this was no ordinary protest. By the time the last fire was put out around 10pm, the city centre had seen barricades in flames and shop windows smashed.
Catalonia’s regional police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, published the toll on Sunday. Officers arrested 128 people, and 72 of them are under 18, mostly 16 or 17, with at least one aged 14. Just two of them were already known to police. Fifteen officers were hurt, four of them badly enough to be off work. Firefighters dealt with 33 blazes in bins and street furniture, and 23 shops were vandalised or looted. Police also seized knives, spray cans, balaclavas, fireworks and stones.
Police chief Sílvia Catà described it as “gratuitous violence”. In her account, the crowd did not march first and leave trouble to a fringe at the end, as usually happens; it went for officers almost as soon as it formed. Her investigators believe organised TikTok accounts deliberately recruited participants before the call moved on into closed Telegram and WhatsApp groups. She dismissed claims that the rioters came from France, saying those detained live in Catalonia.
Mayor Jaume Collboni watched events from the city’s emergency control centre and said the council will take legal action over the damage. Regional interior minister Núria Parlon spoke of a copycat effect after similar protests turned to looting in France, Italy and Albania. Restaurant owners, for their part, called the police operation insufficient.
The minors’ cases now go to the juvenile prosecutor, the adults’ to the courts, while detectives try to trace who was behind the accounts that sparked the night.
