Who will guard the guardians?

last updated 8 January 2015

Spain

Martin Dahms

Spain has a serious problem with police brutality, said Martin Dahms in Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau. The latest victim was a farmer who rushed into a police station in the resort town of Roquetas de Mar and asked for help. Juan Martínez Galdeano, 39, said he’d just been in a car accident and the men in the other car were chasing him. Instead of taking his statement, the cops tried to give him a Breathalyzer test, and an agitated Martínez began flailing. That’s when the beating started. Even after Martínez lay motionless on the station floor, “the officers kicked him like a dog.” They were “drunk with power, drunk with violence.” It was just another day at work for Spanish police—only this time, the victim died. Interior Minister José Antonio Alonso called the episode “a tragic exception” to the normally professional routine. If only that were true. Official statistics show that over the last four years, there’s been at least one complaint about excessive violence by Spanish police almost every day. “If such a culture does not change, there will soon be another death to regret.”