Basauri, the town south of Bilbao where I work, had more marches, protests and conflict than most barrios in Basque Country during the tumultuous transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 70's.
Police presence was constant, political activism the usual motivation for their harrassment, as the Basques were mobilizing and demanding political autonomy over Euskadi. One of my colleagues told me it was nothing strange to have the police raid the high school where she studied.
One day, they arrested a kid from her school, and held him in the police station overnight, for political reasons. The following day the whole school, students, teachers, and staff, marched to the police station, demanding to know what was going on. The police came out, told them to go away, or they'd open fire on the group.
My co-worker got trampled in the crush of students running away as the police threatened to shoot. "In the end I got hurt just as bad as if the police had come out and beat us up," she told me.
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