BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - Riot police swinging clubs and firing rubber bullets subdued a group of violent protesters who rioted Saturday following a peaceful rally by tens of thousands of demonstrators hours after European leaders wrapped up a summit on economic reforms.
Witnesses said some 200 protesters began smashing windows and throwing gasoline bombs and rocks at riot police near a statue of Christopher Columbus on a pedestrian promenade where the anti-globalization rally had ended had 30 minutes earlier.
Police said that seven officers were injured and that they had arrested 38 people by 10 p.m. Reporters saw more arrests being made an hour an a half later.
City officials estimated 250,000 people participated in the march, while organizers said there were twice that many - far more than the 10,000 to 50,000 they said they had been hoping for.
One of the protest organizing committee's own crowd controllers, Jordi Oriola, said the turnout made it difficult for organizers to control demonstrators. ``There were so many people the security groups could not manage,'' he said.
Shattered glass and crumbled bricks littered the streets surrounding the Columbus statue. Windows were broken in business and store windows and telephone booths.
The Spanish news agency Efe said two of its journalists were clubbed by police, and Associated Press photographer Alvaro Barrientos was slightly injured by a blow to the face from a police rifle butt.
At Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium, a soccer match between Spain's most popular teams was halted for seven minutes when two protesters with anti-capitalist, anti-European slogans on their T-shirts ran onto the field handcuffed themselves to the goalposts.
Protesters belonged to diverse organizations, some created at the spur of the moment, but they aimed their wrath at globalization and the European Union's plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
Speakers at the rally said European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
The demonstration began four hours after the EU summit ended.
Banging drums, blowing whistles and carrying banners with slogans such as ``Terror USA'' and ``Against A Capitalist Europe,'' the crowd made its way through the city as police helicopters hovered overhead and riot units manned vans at intersections to keep demonstrators on the protest route.
Protest leaders said authorities had busloads of would-be demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain from entering Barcelona, and Efe reported that more than 1,000 people had been barred from crossing the border from France.