Vuelta director vows to finish race in Madrid, labels protests illegal

After pro-Palestinian protesters forced a premature end to yet another stage of the Vuelta a Espana on Tuesday, race director Javier Guillen said the intention is to finish the race in Madrid on Sunday as planned and called the disruptions illegal.

Stage 16 ended 8km before the finish after a large protest blocked the road 3km from the scheduled stage end, similar to stage 11 when riders had to finish 3km from the line due to protesters causing disruption at the finish in Bilbao.

"I'm here before you because, from La Vuelta, we want to clearly express our strongest rejection of what we experienced today," Guillen told reporters.

"Fortunately, the stage was completed in terms of timing and the stage winner but, obviously, the stage did not end where we had planned.

"The main message I want to share with you today is that we are going to continue with La Vuelta, and tomorrow we will start the next stage."

The focus of the protests has been the presence of the Israel-Premier Tech team at the Vuelta.

The first disruption came during stage five's team time trial when the Israel-Premier Tech team were stopped on the road by protesters holding Palestinian flags.

Since then, riders have crashed because of protesters' actions and, while Israel-Premier Tech removed their name from the riders' jerseys on Saturday, Tuesday's events show that this has had no effect on the protesters.

"You cannot cut stages short, you cannot block the cyclists' path," Guillen said.

"It's illegal because it's defined as such both in the Penal Code and in the Sports Law. We are a sport and sport is meant to unite, anything that doesn't serve that purpose isn't linked to sport.

"We want to defend our sport, we want to defend our race, and that's why we want to