Police arrest about 100 people after riots erupt in central Barcelona

Police arrested roughly 100 people in central Barcelona after hundreds of young people gathered for an unannounced protest that descended into vandalism and looting, Catalan authorities said. More than 220 officers from the Catalan regional police and the city's local force were deployed to bring the situation under control.

Spanish newspaper reports and the Catalan broadcaster Betevé said the unrest began around 6 p.m. and continued into the night. Groups of demonstrators damaged street furniture, bicycles and motorcycles, broke into shops and set fire to rubbish containers in the heart of the Catalan capital.

Officials said about a quarter of those detained were minors. The exact purpose of the gathering remained unclear. According to reports, the crowd had assembled after a call circulated on social media for an unannounced demonstration in the city centre, though no specific cause or organiser was identified.

Catalonia's regional president, Salvador Illa, condemned the violence. "Violence has no place in Catalonia. Never. Protesting is a democratic right. Attacks, intimidation and property damage are not," he said, according to Spanish media.

Barcelona's mayor, Jaume Collboni, addressed reporters at a late-night press conference and said the city would not let the episode go unpunished. "We will not allow what happened to go unpunished," he said, adding that there would be consequences both for adults involved in the violent acts and for those responsible for the minors who took part. "We will not allow the city to be devastated," Collboni said, describing the unrest as "baseless violence and vandalism."

Authorities have not said how long it took to disperse the crowds or whether the overnight disturbances had fully ended by early morning. No official estimate of the financial damage to shops and public property was immediately available.

Separately, police in Lisbon moved early in the morning to clear a protest encampment set up in the Portuguese capital's centre by demonstrators campaigning against the country's housing crisis. The operation, reported by the news agency Reuters, involved officers using force against protesters and resulted in several arrests.

Reuters reported that some demonstrators suffered minor injuries during the clearance, though exact figures were not immediately available. The Lisbon camp had been organised to draw attention to rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing in the city, an issue that has fuelled repeated protests in Portugal in recent years.

Spanish authorities have not confirmed any direct link between the unrest in Barcelona and the housing protest in Lisbon, and the two events were reported as unconnected incidents occurring in different countries on the same night.

In Barcelona, local officials said investigations were under way to identify further suspects involved in the looting and property damage. Police have not released additional details on the identities or backgrounds of those arrested, beyond confirming that about one in four detainees was under the age of 18.

City officials said the response from law enforcement would continue in the coming days as authorities review security camera footage and witness accounts to determine the scale of the damage and identify additional participants. Shops in the affected area were assessing losses from break-ins and looting, though no official tally of the number of businesses affected was released by police or the city government.

Collboni's administration has faced previous outbreaks of street disorder in the city centre, though officials did not immediately draw comparisons between Monday's unrest and earlier incidents. The mayor reiterated that the municipality would pursue legal consequences against those found responsible for the vandalism, regardless of age, while stressing that the right to peaceful protest in the city remained protected.

Illa's office said the regional government was coordinating with Barcelona's city hall and police forces to assess the aftermath of the unrest and determine what further security measures, if any, would be needed to prevent a repeat of the disorder.