THE president of Spain’s public broadcaster has slammed a group of anti-government protesters as ‘fascists’ after dozens angrily harassed a reporter on live television.
Laura Pavia, a journalist with RTVE, was dispatched to Calle Ferraz – the street housing the national headquarters of Spain’s ruling socialist PSOE – in Madrid on Sunday to report on a protest called by La Revuelta, a youth organisation with links to far-right Vox.
After starting her piece to camera, Pavia was quickly surrounded by demonstrators who flicked middle fingers, waved Spanish flags, knocked the camera operator and screamed expletives, including ‘Pedro Sanchez, hijo de puta’, ‘Fuera!’ and ‘The television we all pay for!’
The chaotic scenes were criticised by Jose Pablo Lopez, the president of RTVE, who posted on X: “This just happened to our colleague Laura Pavia while she was trying to report on the rally called at the gates of the PSOE this morning.
“Fascists doing fascist things in a climate created against public television and its professionals in which anything goes.”
Xabier Fortes, a fellow journalist at RTVE, said: “The dignity of our colleague in the face of ultra-thuggery.
“Congratulations Laura Pavia for your professionalism, serenity and courage in the face of the miserable and cowardly who harass you in a pack.”
The unsavoury scenes came on the same day as tens of thousands of anti-government protesters descended on the capital to urge prime minister Pedro Sanchez to call a snap election amid a series of corruption allegations involving his family, party and government.
The demonstration was called by the conservative Partido Popular (PP) opposition under the banner, ‘This is it: mafia or democracy?’
The PP said up to 80,000 people joined the rally at the Temple of Debod in the heart of Spain’s capital.
The protest came just three days after one of Sanchez’s closest allies, former transport minister Jose Luis Abalos, was remanded in custody as part of an investigation into an alleged kickbacks-for-contracts scheme.
Speaking at the event, combative Madrid mayor Isabel Diaz Ayuso accused Sanchez of forging deals with the now-defunct Basque terrorist group ETA, which killed over 800 people during a decades-long violent campaign.
“ETA is preparing its assault on the Basque Country and Navarra while it props up Pedro Sanchez,” she said, referring to the government’s reliance on the votes of separatist parties including EH Bildu, a Basque nationalist party initially banned by Spain’s Supreme Court in the early 2010s for its links to Batasuna, the political wing of ETA.
“Tell me that’s not true,” she added. “There’s no bigger moral corruption and no greater betrayal of Spain than that.”
Ayuso’s boyfriend, Alberto Gonzalez Amador, is set to go on trial accused of tax fraud and falsifying documents.
Last week, Sanchez’s attorney general Alvaro Garcia Ortiz resigned after being found guilty of leaking confidential information about the case against Ayuso’s partner.
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