Pamplona turned into a pressure cooker on Thursday evening as right-wing online commentator Vito Quiles rolled into town for a rally, with hundreds of protesters waiting to meet him. Officials had already forced the event out of the Plaza del Castillo and into the Plaza Yamaguchi after police warned of fresh trouble, remembering the chaos that followed his visit a year earlier. Quiles showed up about 45 minutes late, spoke for under ten minutes to somewhere between 50 and 100 supporters behind a heavy police cordon, and declared that Navarra is “more Spanish than ever.” The whole thing landed just weeks after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called snap general elections for November 29, which is why every rally and every shout is being watched so closely.

Outside the cordon, hundreds of leftist and Basque nationalist demonstrators marched against the event, and things got ugly fast, with stones and bottles flying toward officers and rubbish containers being tipped over and set on fire. Riot police answered with charges and foam projectiles, and local media reported at least one protester was hit in the head. Three people were arrested, including a 16-year-old held on suspicion of public disorder, and four National Police officers suffered light injuries. Quiles calls himself a journalist, but much of Spain’s mainstream press labels him an agitator, and his supporters insist he is simply defending free speech. With the campaign only just starting, the big question now is whether this is a one-night flare-up or a preview of how heated the road to November 29 could get.