Teenagers unleash fury on Salt after boy seriously injured in police chase

There was an atmosphere of tense calm in Salt on Sunday night. Citizens went about their business as normal, but with one important difference: there were more police cars on patrol. A wave of vandalism swept through the Catalan municipality, in Girona province, at the weekend, reducing 12 vehicles and nine trash containers to charred remains.

Iolanda Pineda, from the Catalan Socialist party, is mayor of Salt, a town where immigrants make up 43 percent of the local population. She called for calm - and the police reinforcements.

Last March, locals and immigrants clashed in the area, which has 31,000 inhabitants and one of the highest immigrant populations in Spain. The concern now among local authorities is that the trigger for this latest outbreak of vandalism bears a similarity to the explosion of violence in Parisian suburbs that led to riots in 2005. On that occasion, the deaths of two teenagers - electrocuted in an electricity substation while hiding from police - sparked the unrest.

"We are mindful of what happened in Paris," the mayor said, adding that the authorities will fight to stop the same thing from happening in Salt.

The trouble at the weekend began with a protest over Mohamed Reda Lyanmani, a 16-year-old boy who has spent the last week in a critical condition in intensive care, having sustained spinal injuries after falling from a fifth-floor apartment. When the accident happened he was fleeing police officers, who had stopped him while he was driving a stolen motorbike.

At 5pm on Friday a group of 40 to 50 minors, aged between nine and 14 and nearly all immigrants, began a spontaneous protest outside the local police station. When officers tried to disperse the group, they set fire to seven containers. By the early hours of the morning, two more had gone up in flames, while four mopeds were also damaged.

The police arrested three people during the night's disturbances for public-order offenses: two 16-year-old minors of Moroccan and South American origin, and 23-year-old Ibrahim O., also Moroccan.

By Sunday morning the situation had deteriorated further. Seven motorbikes and five cars were set on fire during the night, the vandals having smashed the windscreens, throwing in burning objects.

No arrests have been made since the second wave of criminal damage.

"These are very serious events, and they stir up anger, indignation and frustration," Mayor Iolana Pineda said on Sunday. "We cannot allow these acts of vandalism to go unpunished."

Salt has a history of race-relation flashpoints. Following the disturbances in March 2010, the council approved a controversial motion to deny residency to immigrants with a record of "uncivic behavior."