MADRID — Dozens of migrants rioted in a detention center in Madrid, police said on Wednesday, climbing onto the roof of the building where they spent the night and unfurled a banner reading “freedom.”
By mid-morning on Wednesday they had voluntarily come down from the top of the center, police said.
The “mutiny” kicked off late Tuesday at the center in Madrid’s southern district of Aluche and continued through the night, a police spokesman said.
Some 40 people unfurled the banner and shouted “freedom” from the roof in protest at their detention conditions, a photographer said.
“Following negotiations, they accepted to come down, there was no need for force,” the police spokesman said.
Police said the protesters had broken furniture to make their way to the roof, while Spanish daily El Pais reported that some had obstructed security cameras inside the building.
A spokeswoman for city hall said no one had been injured in the riot.
Charities and academics have often denounced prison-like conditions in Spain’s seven immigration detention centers — some of which have overcrowded rooms, dirty toilets and few amenities or translation services.
The centers are meant for people who have come to Spain without a residence permit and are in the process of being deported.
Madrid councilor Javier Barbero, who is in charge of health and safety, described the centers as an “institutional failure.”
This is not the first time that immigration detention centers have suffered such incidents.
Earlier this month, 67 migrants without residence permits managed to flee a detention center where they were being held near the southeastern city of Murcia.
One of the migrants first pretended to be ill, before the others fled as an ambulance arrived.
