I would hope any problems last year were a special case – there was after all the terrorist bombing in Madrid around the same time the dragon festival happened.
It is perhaps understandable cops would become more jittery about any large movement of people after such an event – anyway EU policing guidelines have classed “pop festivals” as potential security risks since the early 1990s, long before 9/11, iraq war or any other recent incidents.
This was initiated by Britain’s former Home Secretary (Interior Minister) Michael Howard (now leader of an opposition party), and backed up by his successor Jack Straw despite a change of Government, ,and appears to be shaping policy across all 25 EU nations even today!
Ironically, when a licensed festival happens in Britain some police forces actually invoke a form of the same “major incident protocol” you would get if there was a terrorist attack or contamination! (worse still, they pass the costs of this extra policing to the organisers which is why festival tickets are so expensive)
Of course I do not agree with this level of paranoia – all that is needed is a basic deployment of appropriate emergency service resources for health and safety reasons – but it is however a sad truth of modern European society that there are a fair number of sociopaths and groups of extreme people about who become very angry when they see people from a very diverse collection of races, genders and backgrounds getting together and having fun.
There certainly have been occasions where people (mostly from extreme right-wing groups) have attempted to disrupt festivals in various manners – In Britain we have even had a rogue unit of the regular Army attempting to cause problems at a large festival in my city – allegedly as a reprisal attack because they suspected the organisers of having links to the Irish separatist groups.
Thankfully these incidents are usually just low-level crime, violence and criminal damage at the events rather than major attacks (although a few years ago in Russia some bombs were exploded on the outskirts of a festival).
It is something that those who organise events are (or should be) aware of, and has been going on for 30+ years now – yet organisers have dealt with this problem themselves.
Organisers, of both licensed and free festivals also nowadays do everything possible both to prevent conflict with locals and to ensure that those attending events do not fight amongst themselves.
Unfortunately, human nature dictates that in any large group you will always find two or more people who do not agree with one another, and there is always the chance they may use violence to settle their differences – but those who organise large group events such as festivals are usually vigilant. Sometimes incidents happen; but they are usually stopped, and people (hopefully) learn from their mistakes.
In other words, we can and do look after ourselves and have been doing so for many years now!
If the EU authorities use “fear of violence/terrorism” to stop festivals and peoples right to assembly, then they have actually given in to terrorists or supported the use of violence, rather than making people safer!
