How do people in liberal democracies respond to the restriction of protest rights? It is a well-established view that protest rights are crucial for liberal democracies. However, governments regularly attempt to restrict these rights. In 2015, the Spanish government adopted a new law to limit protest activities due to a surge in anti-government protests following the Great Recession. To examine the impact of this law, I apply synthetic control methods to analyze protest event data from 30 European democracies. My results show that, contrary to its intended purpose, the number of protest participants skyrockets after the enactment of the Law on Citizen Security. External validity checks show that these results can also travel to other attempts to limit civil liberties.