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…
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