TikTok campaign urges Madrid youth to repeat Barcelona unrest on Halloween

A loosely organised social media campaign calling itself Blocus is urging young people in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia to gather on 31 October, days after rioting and looting broke out in Barcelona at a similarly promoted protest, Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported.

Anonymous accounts using the Blocus name have called for supporters to meet in Madrid's Plaza de España, though posts disagree on the exact time, with some citing 6pm and others suggesting an hour later or naming Puerta del Sol as the meeting point instead, El Mundo reported. A separate call for Barcelona on the same date aims to repeat last Saturday's unrest, while Valencia has also seen calls to protest.

The campaign spreads through TikTok, WhatsApp and Telegram using links and QR codes, and no one has publicly claimed responsibility for organising it or published a manifesto, according to El Mundo. Some posts urge participants to dress in black with their faces covered, an aesthetic associated with the "black bloc" street tactic, and messages combine calls to protest over public education funding with images of barricades, fires and vandalised shops.

The Blocus label originated in France, where student protests against school funding and staffing shortages that began in September spread from the Paris area to other cities, including Marseille, and led in some places to violence, arson and looting, El Mundo reported. Catalonia's regional police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, are trying to trace the origin of the Spanish call-outs, the paper said.

Separately, Spanish fact-checking service Maldita.es found that a video shared widely online as footage of looting in Paris was in fact filmed on Madrid's Gran Vía and has circulated since at least 12 October, 20minutos reported; the clip has been shared in at least 16 languages.