Even in the age of trolling and vicious Twitter wit , a physical blow strikes hardest. Ask Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was punched in the face last week while on the campaign trail.
The politician was talking earnestly to voters in the town of Pontevedra when a young man standing next to him suddenly landed a left-hook on his nose, knocking off his glasses. Although left red-faced, quite literally, Rajoy, was not injured, excerpt perhaps in his ego.
The assailant was arrested, The Guardian reported. He now joins the legions of politicians publicly assaulted by angry citizens.
Ever since the infamous shoe hurled at former US President George W Bush, throwing shoes at politicians has become a relatively popular form of protest. In India there was a spate of shoe-throwing incidents in 2009. Media reports from the time detail how popular it had become.
Politicians around the world have also been subjected to slaps and having inflated condoms thrown at them. Obviously, it all started with America.
In 2008, Bush dodged two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi, whostood up during George W Bush's press conference in Iraq and shouted, "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," to protest the war against Iraq. Bush dodged the well aimed projectiles and appeared quite pleased with himself.
In 2009 Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, widely acknowledged as steadily edging towards scandal, was hit in the face. Berlusconi was signing autographs and shaking hands with people when he was knocked to the ground. The Italian leader's bloodied face made news bulletins everywhere. This wasn't the first time Berlusconi was physically attacked – in 2004, a camera was hurled at him at a rally in Rome on New Year's Eve.
Indeed, 2009 was a bad year to be in politics. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was greeted by flying shoe thrown him while addressing an audience at Cambridge University in the UK. The person behind the poorly-targeted projectile, 27-year-old German national Martin Jahnke, shouted, "How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator here? How can you listen to these lies he's telling?"
In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was punched in the stomach. In New Zealand John Key was shoved and grabbed by two protesters. And many shoes went flying in India.
Dainik Jagran journalist Jarnail Singh, angered by P Chidambaram's response to a question on the 1984 Sikh riots, threw his shoe at PC, who was then the Home Minister. The shoe missed its target and landed Singh in jail. The shoe goes flying at about the one-minute mark in the video below.
In April of 2009, shoes were also thrown at Manmohan Singh – then the Prime Minister – and BJP leader LK Advani, besides a host of other politicians, including Rahul Gandhi, BS Yeddyurappa, Nitin Gadkari and Omar Abdullah.
Slapping politicians is another popular trend, especially slapping Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Kejriwal was attacked several times while campaigning in 2014,. He was slapped by an auto rickshaw driver so hard that it reportedly gave him a swollen eye. This wasn't the first time. Four days earlier, he had been punched while shaking hands with supporters. Before that he was hit on the neck by a man claiming to be Anna Hazare's supporter.
A Mint report from 2014 states, "While moving in an open vehicle in Varanasi, he suffered the indignity of ink and mobil oil being splashed on him by unidentified people. Then eggs were hurled at him near the temple town’s Kashi Vishwanath temple. Before that, ink was thrown at him by a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker at a press conference in Delhi. And then, of course, everyone would remember Kejriwal’s controversial tour of Gujarat last month during which his car was attacked and its windscreen smashed, leading to a series of clashes between AAP and BJP workers in other parts of the country."
In 2011 there was video evidence of Sharad Pawar, then the Agriculture Minister, being slapped
The most unfortunate fate faced by a political leader at the hands of angry protestors was when Ukranian MP Vitaly Zhuravsky was thrown into a garbage bin and held in there, as punches, tyres and even water rained on him.
Earlier in 2015 in Bihar, Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi was attacked by a shoe. Hillary Clinton too dodged one while addressing a rally in April this year.
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