The Brussels’ headquarters of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) was vandalized overnight, hours after party leader and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez signed a controversial deal to form a government with support from Catalan separatists.
The building, located at Clos du Parnasse 12, was spray-painted with a profane insult and the word “traitors,” according to photos posted by PSOE.
The party denounced the graffiti as a “vile attack.”
“This act of vandalism … is an attack on democracy and the constitutional values that our party, with more than 140 years of history, represents,” the party said on X.
On Thursday, Sánchez took a step toward forming a government with Catalan separatists of the Junts party, after concluding a deal which includes an amnesty offer for those behind the illegal 2017 Catalan independence referendum.
The deal was blasted by several judicial groups and triggered a wave of protests in Madrid, where 24 people were arrested on Thursday.
In Brussels, the vandalism at PSOE’s headquarters was condemned by Iratxe García, the Spanish leader of the center-left Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, who said “those responsible are those people who are trying to stop the democratic process in Spain to have a government.”
“Some of the people who were in the demonstrations … their problem is not the amnesty, their problem is the democracy,” García said. “Because citizens voted and the majority in Spain say that they don’t want a government between conservatives and far-right.”
