Madrid: About 800,000 people took part in street protests across Spain during a general strike held Thursday against labour market reforms and government spending cuts, the interior ministry said.
The largest demontrations were held in Galicia where 140,000 people turned out, in Madrid with 85,000 demonstrators, Andalusia with 80,000, the Basque Country with 85,000 and Catalonia with 68,000, according to ministry figures.
Spain's two main unions, the CCOO and the UGT, which organized the general strike and evening protests in over 100 cities and towns across the country said participation in the demonstrations was much higher.
They said nearly one million people turned out to the protest in Madrid alone and 800,000 hit the streets of Barcelona, Spain's second-largest city.
The demonstrations, overwhelmingly peaceful in most of the country, erupted in violence in a central portion of the northeastern city of Barcelona where youths set fire to a two-storey Starbucks.
Police shot smoke cannisters and fired rubber bullets into the ground so they would ricochet into people's legs in the Catalan capital, television pictures showed, as a rubbish container burned in a city street.
Across the country 116 people were injured during the strike and protests — 70 police officers and 46 protesters — according to the interior ministry.
