The leadership of the Balearic branch of the Socialist party, PSIB, decided to close its headquarters on Tuesday in view of the possibility of altercations such as those that took place on Monday and Tuesday nights in Madrid.
Over 500 people gathered outside the doors of the socialist offices in Palma, which were protected by members of the National Police.
The PSIB has called for responsibility and calm following the demonstrations.
PSIB leaders say that the most prudent thing to do is to close the headquarters “given the scenario of inflammation and protest”.
Police clashed for a second night on Tuesday with protesters who oppose negotiations between Spain’s acting government and Catalan separatist parties over a possible amnesty for thousands involved in Catalonia’s independence movement.
Several protestors in Madrid waved Spanish flags and shouted insults against the acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and some of them self-identified as “nazis” in chants. The protesters pushed against barriers set by police in riot gear, who responded with rubber bullets and by hitting the protestors with batons.
The government said that Tuesday’s gathering at the gates of the national headquarters in Madrid of the ruling Socialist Party was attended by around 7,000, roughly double the number of protestors that took part the day before. There were other similar protests in other Spanish cities.
Three people were arrested Monday, the central authorities’ representative in the Spanish capital said, including two men for violent behavior against police and one woman for disobedience.
A spokeswoman of the far-right Vox party, which holds the third-most seats in the national Parliament, said Tuesday that the party did not back the violence seen at the gatherings, but that it supported the anti-government protest. Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, attended Monday’s event in Madrid.
Sánchez, the Socialists’ leader, blasted the protests, saying they were being led by “reactionaries.”
“(I extend) all my warmth and support for the Socialist Party members who are suffering harassment by reactionaries at their local headquarters,” Sánchez wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“To attack the headquarters of Spain’s Socialist Party is to attack democracy.”
Sánchez is negotiating with the Catalan separatist parties to receive their backing in his bid to form a new government and keep his center-left coalition in power following an inconclusive national election in July. But the two separatist parties have demanded a sweeping amnesty that would include their leaders who fled Spain following their failed 2017 secession attempt, in exchange for their votes in Parliament, among other concessions.