EL MUNDO and El Español are considering taking legal action for illegal detention and false accusations against the National Police after two of their journalists were arrested while working to cover the Ferraz protests. After a series of attacks occurred on Marqués de Urquijo Street, the Journalists from EL MUNDO and El Español traveled accompanied by two other colleagues to cover the riots after the launching of firecrackers and police charges. Once the protests moved to the neighboring Juan Álvarez de Mendizábal street, the informants found themselves in between two police charges that occurred after some people threw garbage cans on the ground, trying to build barricades. The two detained reporters were recording at that moment how the radicals were burning several containers in front of them. They also witnessed how some neighbors threw water at them from their windows to avoid it, and the insults that the ultras directed at them from the street.

A scene at the edge of 11:00 p.m. that three reporters from El Español and one from EL MUNDO witnessed and that was the last that the journalist from this newspaper was able to record since, moments later, accompanied by one of his colleagues from El Español, he He took refuge in a portal invited by one of the residents of the property. At the same time, he notified his colleagues through the Whatsapp group of the EL MUNDO editorial staff that he had taken refuge there to avoid being affected by the charges. The journalists observed, in the company of the man who had allowed them to enter the portal together to a citizen with Asian features and a protester who was also arrested, how the charges and arrests took place in the middle of the street. Minutes later, an individual with his face covered by a panty began to bang hard on the door and demand that its residents open. Then, the resident who had invited the journalists to take shelter asked the person outside who he was and, after stalling for a while, claimed to be a police officer without showing any type of identification. The resident of the building chose not to open it and went to his house.

The journalists waited on the landing next to the elevators for the riots to end. However, while the journalists were waiting, the man who had knocked on the door, accompanied by other people, accessed the common areas of the building, identifying themselves as police officers. An entry that was answered by the journalists with their press cards and their IDs in the hand, informing the agents that they were reporters and that they were in the exercise of their profession. However, the police, specifically the one they had seen knocking on the door outside, in a violent and not calm manner shouted at them that they were detained and that “they already knew what they had done.” In addition to showing their documentation and ID cards, press, the journalists explained to the agents (without success) that they had personal protective equipment in their backpacks, which also identified them as press, and with stickers accrediting the investiture session in the Congress of Deputies. After being handcuffed, They were transferred to the police station on Leganitos Street and, later, to the Information Brigade in Moratalaz. There they were informed that they were being investigated for committing a crime of public disorder for, allegedly, having “thrown what appeared to be a bottle.” A fact that is recorded as observed by the agents who carried out his arrest. After spending the night at the Moratalaz Police Station, both journalists were released at 6 in the morning.

EL MUNDO and El Español consider the denunciation and arrest of their reporters as an attack and a full-fledged violation of press freedom.