Kuwait city: Spain has experienced waves of violence, rioting acts, and protests due to misleading video footage exploited by far-right parties against migration and foreigners to serve their electoral agendas. Supporters of the "Vox" Party posted on their social media a misleading video showing an elderly man, aged 68 from Murcia, southeast Spain, who was attacked by unknown people who claimed that they are migrants. Thus, a violent wave of protests erupted over some days, and security forces were deployed to deter extremist groups.
According to Kuwait News Agency, the far-right parties exploited this incident to post widely a misleading video and incite racial hate against foreigners, thus protests in Torre Pacheco were staged, causing chaos and rioting acts across the city. However, the true video was taken two months ago in Almeria, in Andalusia, 200 kilometers away from Torre Pacheco, showing an old man who was violently beaten by some Spanish people, not migrants.
Some false video footages, of former incidents in Spain and beyond, have been swiftly posted, pushing large numbers of extremists to gather in Torre Pacheco, calling for the expulsion of migrants amid panic and chaos of the city's residents. Therefore, the Spanish government took action by dispatching huge security reinforcements of police and civil guard, arresting 14 people, including extremist groups' members and those running the pages fueling hate and violence.
The interior ministry also deployed hundreds of additional security forces, anti-riot units, and drones to deter any suspicious movement and extremists. This serious incident created a clear split in political speech, and high security and social tensions that caused true fears of hate transfer of incidents that took place in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin into other Spanish areas containing large numbers of migrants.
The incident happened a few days after the Vox Party, the third-largest parliamentary force, had called for the expulsion of eight million migrants out of Spain. Torre Pacheco, one of the Spanish cities, has a population of 39,910 of varied nationalities, 11,649 of them are foreigners, making up 29.2 percent. This presents significant challenges related to cultural and social integration, and the provision of main services mainly in poor areas.
Spain's government categorically condemned violence, stating what happened in the city is an attack on "peaceful coexistence," stressing zero tolerance towards hate speech. Moroccan associations and civil society bodies in Murcia affirmed that the incident in Torre Pacheco was caused by a long-term negligence policy regarding integration, saying that hundreds of migrants suffer marginalization and the lack of good education for their children who were born in Spain and speak Spanish.
Funded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bosco Global, and development and youth societies prepared a report saying that Spain registered 600 warnings on misleading videos in the last six months about issues of migration and racism. The report warned that such misinformation directly affects the psychological health of migrants and social coherence, noting this may lead to tangible violent acts like what has been seen in the recent unrest in Torre Pacheco.