Portugal and Spain at loggerheads as police beat up MPs

Strained relations between Spain and Portugal have deteriorated sharply after two Portuguese MPs heading for an anti-globalisation demonstration in Seville said they were beaten and manhandled by Spanish police who refused them entry into the country.

The president of the Portuguese parliament, Mota Amaral, cancelled a planned visit to the neighbouring country because of what he called "a lamentable incident".

Spain said it "regretted any inconvenience caused". But opposition socialists prodded Portugal's conservative Prime Minister, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, to demand a full explanation and apology for police violence at the border town of Vila Verde de Ficalho in the Alentejo region.

Saturday's television images of the left-wing MP Francisco Louca, and his fellow Left Block leader, Miguel Portas, being beaten with truncheons and grabbed round the throat by Spanish civil guardsmen have prompted outrage and incredulity in Portugal.

Lisbon's Publico newspaper condemned what it called an "unacceptable episode" that "revived old ghosts between the two peoples that should long have been laid to rest".

The reference was to Spanish kings' cruel and insensitive rule of Portugal between 1581 and 1640, a disastrous period that ruined its trading economy.

The two politicians were among 10 busloads of demonstrators heading to Seville. Civil guardsmen ordered everyone off the buses at rifle point, saying they had orders from Madrid not to allow them across the border, Mr Louca told the Portuguese press.

Once the paramilitaries realised Mr Louca was an MP they said he and Mr Portas – the brother of Portugal's right-wing Defence Minister, Paolo Portas – could pass. "I don't want preferential treatment, I want your name and rank," Mr Louca replied, at which point the police "completely lost their heads". He said 12 of them rained punches and baton blows upon the two until they climbed back on the bus.

Angelo Alves, a Portuguese Communist Party leader, had film ripped from his camera and was frogmarched back on the bus after he asked Spanish police for a document giving reasons for the unprecedented border closure.

In preparation for last weekend's EU summit in Seville, Spain activated an article of the Schengen Agreement on a frontier-free Europe, allowing it to reimpose border controls temporarily to prevent the entry of anyone suspected of provoking disruption. Similar measures were taken before the Barcelona summit in March when protesters sought to cross the French border.

But southern Portuguese frontier posts have seen nothing like this since the days of the dictators Franco and Salazar a generation ago.

Publico said: "This approaches the violation of rights and liberties: with the argument of maintaining public order, they can exchange information about people and groups, their political affiliations and means of transport, and monitor their movements and whereabouts." The newspaper also referred to the sinister operations of the hated Pide secret police before Portugal's 1974 Carnation Revolution.