Madrid, Jul 14: Hundreds of protesters marched through the streets into the early hours of Saturday morning in Madrid as anger grew over sweeping new austerity measures that include wage cuts and tax increases for a country struggling under a recession and an unemployment rate of near 25 percent.
The protesters, who began their march through the streets of the capital on Friday, demonstrated outside the People's Party of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy before clashing with riot police outside the PSOE (opposition Socialist's Workers Party) headquarters.
The protesters then decided to take the streets of the city centre, walking down the middle of Gran Via towards the parliament.
There were still hundreds on the streets as midnight passed. They decided to march to Puerta del Sol in order to bring together more people and then returned to the parliament, confronting a massive presence of riot police.
One protester alleged that he saw one demonstrator receiving a "horrifying beating" from a member of the riot police.
Spain is under pressure to get its public finances on track amid concerns in the markets over the state of the country's banks and the wider economy.
The conservative government has come under mounting criticism that the austerity measures are hitting the middle and working classes the hardest.
The aim of the latest package of measures is to cut 65 billion euro (79 billion US dollars) off the budget deficit through 2015, the biggest deficit-reduction plan in recent Spanish history.
Though the increase in sales taxes, which risks slowing consumption and worsening Spain's recession, will take effect September 1, other reforms will be left for later in the year, including a plan to speed up the gradual raising of the retirement age from to 65 to 67.
The latest bout of austerity is prompting widespread opposition, not least from civil servants.
The civil servants, whose wages were cut 5 percent on average in 2010 in the first round of austerity cuts, are usually paid 14 times a year.
The government is now axing an extra payment made just before Christmas.
The prime minister, his cabinet and lawmakers will also suffer the cut.
The latest austerity package has come after Spain won approval from the other 16 countries that use the euro for the first 30 billion euro (36 billion US dollars) tranche of a bailout of up to 100 billion euro (122 billion US dollars) for its troubled banking sector.
Spain also managed to secure an extra year to meet a European deficit reduction target of 3 percent of GDP (gross domestic product).
