Two white police officers with Spain’s national security forces face a federal investigation after video emerged of two unarmed Black men being attacked and brutalized in a neighborhood in central Madrid late last month, sparking outrage across the country, with many citizens denouncing racism.
The viral footage, recorded March 29 in Lavapiés and since widely circulated on the platform X, shows a disturbing street clash sparked by officers who were clearly the aggressors, according to several public officials who reviewed the video.
The video shows one police officer immobilizing a subject on the ground in a chokehold as another officer hits the defenseless man twice with a baton before attacking another man standing nearby who had pleaded with the officers to stop, punching him in the throat without asking any questions.
After seeing the video of the beatdown, several national lawmakers expressed outrage and called on the interior ministry to investigate the officers.
“This police violence is unacceptable,” Isabel Serra, a spokesperson for the Podemos party, wrote on social media. “And unfortunately — or because of the complicity of the institutions — it is all too common. It is racism.”
Íñigo Errejón, a spokesperson for the Sumar left-wing alliance, said he demanded a written explanation from Spain’s National Police Corps. “Do not normalize this, do not look the other way, ask for explanations,” he wrote on X.
Video shows, as the two scuffles escalated, the man on the ground did not resist arrest, and at one point loosely extended his arms as two additional cops hurried by, chasing the other subject, who managed to get away briefly from the backup officer.
The man in the chokehold, meanwhile, appeared to be giving up as the officer squeezed his neck tighter, and that’s where the video ends.
Some voices on social media noted that the officer maintained a firm grip for some time throughout the video, but at no time did he attempt to handcuff the man or say why he was being detained.
During a parliamentary session last week, Errejón pointed out that the video seemed to show two police officers being aggressive toward the men, one of whom appeared unable to move and the other man, who was not fighting back but trying to protect himself from being pummeled.
“The way they’re behaving seems cruel and doesn’t seem to follow the rules for how police should act,” Errejón said as he urged the interior ministry to explain if an investigation had started into the officers’ actions.
“What will be done about complaints from people in Lavapiés about police violence against migrants?” he asked immediately after the attack, according to the Guardian.
After the video emerged, hundreds of demonstrators flooded Lavapiés square to protest police brutality and institutional racism.
“This is something we experience every day,” said Serigne Mbayé, a former regional politician and now the anti-racism secretary for Podemos, in a video from the protest that was posted online. “Thanks to a neighbor who recorded this, the police brutality that regularly happens in this neighborhood is now seen.”
In further remarks, Mbayé demanded the government to do more to fight racism and to make the state policing agency to be more transparent in cases of misconduct.
“We’re telling the government to take action, this cannot go on,” he said. “We’re in Spain, we’re in the 21st century. Everyone has rights.”
The next day, on April 1, the ministry said that its national office for human rights, which was set up in 2022 to make sure that state forces respect basic human rights, was investigating the incident.
There are different versions of video from varying angles, shot by witnesses who posted the footage on social media, although most of the snippets run for less than a minute and do not show the events that led up to the violent episode.
Later, a police source who spoke to Europa Press news agency said the two Black men were placed under arrest for disrespecting authority, while characterizing their actions as “hostile” toward the officers, one of whom was injured during the brutal and seemingly unprovoked confrontation.
The police source also claimed that one of the arrested men was purportedly carrying drugs at the time, but no details were provided and the charges could not be immediately confirmed.
The video triggered outrage across Spain, with SOS Racismo, an anti-racism organization, calling the footage “another example of how state security forces act in Lavapiés.”
In a social media post, the group stated, “Those of us who live in this neighborhood know that these actions are common, and nobody takes action against it.”
The two victims of the attack by police have not been publicly identified, and there was no indication of the injuries they might have sustained during the violent encounter.
The incident took place less than a week after Brazilian winger Vinicius Junior broke down in tears during a news conference as he revealed a pattern of racist abuse he continues to face in Spain, even as he was one of Real Madrid’s most preeminent Black soccer players.
He said racist encounters have become part of his daily life in Spain and that he had come to expect being confronted by bigotry throughout the country.
“When will it be enough?” he wrote in a recent social media post. “Racism is a crime. Not to punish is to be an accomplice.”
For many Black Americans, Spain is seen as a dream vacation spot, but beneath its charming exterior lies a troubling history of racism that often goes unnoticed by tourists.
