Despatch from Madrid – An Account of the S25 demonstration PART TWO

DISCLAIMER: This is a personal account that makes no claims to be objective, the conclusions I have drawn are not necessarily correct. Furthermore, the events I am recording were chaotic and there has yet to be a single factual history that everybody agrees one. Here you will only find my side of the story. 

I distinctly remember the conversation that I was having when the police began their assault. I was talking to two other people, a dreadlocked young guy and a girl who had to break off the conversation every other minute to justify wearing a face mask to rabid pacifists jabbering about “bad press”. We were speculating about how many people in the crowd would camp in the plaza, and how many would demonstrate the next day. Already, small numbers of people who had chanted and marched enough for one day were drifting away, fatigued after 8 hours on their feet. “We need a demonstration every Friday, like in Egypt” said the dreadlocked man. “That will bring the government down.” I opened my mouth to agree with him but my voice was drowned out by a rising collective scream of alarm. 

Trawling through the videos later, I figured that the catalyst for the police charge was a militant bloc pushing forward into the police lines with flagpoles. The jury still isn’t out yet as to whether they were plainclothes, acting to give the police a casus belli to wade in. I don’t know, but it seems certain that there were some plainclothes at work amongst the crowds. The police immediately responded with massive and overwhelming violence, beating everybody in sight to clear out the plaza. After the crowd began to scream and shout, like a shoal of minnows they surged away from the cops, who then exploited this to keep up the pressure. Moving in such a large crowd is highly dangerous, with the risk of people trampling each other and getting pulled under. People began to call out “!suave!” (smoothly) and for people not to run, and within a few moments the panicked rout became an orderly withdrawal. Still it was very hard to move, as I could barely pick my feet up for the press of bodies and sometimes by body was being carried without actually taking steps. I twisted around to look behind me and I could see the cops getting closer, an image of Robocop visors and falling truncheons. Finally the crowd made it out of the plaza into the relative safety of the green space that divided the two traffic lanes of the Paseo Del Prado. Here the tree trunks, park benches and low fences gave us some respite from the assault and the police checked their advance. 

Assessing the situation, I saw that the police had driven everybody out of the plaza into the surrounding green spaces. The mood had obviously shifted completely. People were hurling abuse at the police officers. Lots more people were masking up, and beginning to throw missiles. Mostly empty bottles, but some rocks were also coming in, as well as the occasional firework. Until now they were being used recreationally, now they were being employed as weapons. This is also the first time I saw and heard the police fire rubber bullets. The Spanish National Police issue an attachment that goes into the barrel of a standard shotgun, which looked to similar to a Mossberg 500 and they fire rubber bullets through these, rather than using a dedicated rubber bullet gun. I suppose this makes a certain tactical sense, since if they want to they can unscrew the rubber bullet launchers and start firing live ammunition. When these things fire they boom like a thunderclap and a lot of sparks emit from the launcher barrel.However despite the police violence the people were undaunted. The chanting continued, albeit with different, more militant chants.  

“asesinos” – “murderers”

“hijos de puta” – “sons of bitches”

 “que no, que no, que no tenemos miedo” – “we are not afraid”

“ahorras son azules, antes eran grises” – “now you are blue, before you were grey”

The last chant was a reference to the grey uniforms that the police wore during Franco’s dictatorship, implying that the police are still a fascist force in society today. I threw in a few renditions of “No Justice, No Peace, Fuck the Police!” for old times’ sake, but it was received with bafflement. Militant tactics were now being used more. Whereas before the pacifists had dominated the mood and execution of the demonstration, they now found themselves in the minority.

 After a brief respite, the police advanced again, firing salvo after salvo of rubber bullets, driving people in all directions. As I ran towards the Prada museum, I heard a sickening wet slapping sound and a guy next to me went down like a sack of potatoes. It took me a while to realise what had happened, and in a short space of time he was surrounded by a hoard of camera toting journalists. Eventually protesters fought their way through the journalists and dragged the casualty to safety. This took us up the side steps of the Prada Museum, where a middle aged woman was used to work as a nurse took over until the ambulance could arrive. The casualty had taken a round to the stomach, not life threatening but highly painful. 

The police advanced again, and at this point both the crowd and the police lost all coherence, shooting off in all directions. After a very stressful run down the Paseo del Prado with a spiked high wall – utterly devoid of escape routes - on one side of me and vans of riot police on the other, I arrived at the large roundabout of Atocha, where a couple of hundred demonstrators had mobbed up after running from the police. In spontaneous move, groups began flooding off the pavements and into the main road, blocking traffic and chanting “vamos piqueteros!”  (Picketers). The piqueteros tactic – blocking the arteries of capitalism for progressive social change – originated in Argentina during their struggles against IMF imposed neo-liberalism. The tactic was first employed in Spain en masse in 2011 with autonomous groups supporting strikers by blocking roads. Now it is commonly employed and has been used by Austrian miners and Madrilenian public sector workers to name a few. Some drivers honked their horns in exasperation, some slouched into their seats, resigned to waiting. A handful wound down their windows and raised their fists to wild applause. Some motorcyclists tried to creep forward and we had to physically block them from passing, although we also had to restrain some of the more enthusiastic piqueteros from getting in fights with angry drivers. We held this position for some time, dragging dustbins into the road, until the police returned to dislodge us. 

The police tactics were puzzling. They advanced everywhere in small squads of about 10 agents, with riot shields to the front and rubber bullet firing marksmen behind. When they got close to demonstrators they would break out of their tight formation in order to easily beat people, but they quickly formed up again. When they needed to shift position they would call up the riot vans for hops across town. These small units would fan out across the city chasing demonstrators, beating and shooting people indiscriminately. Thus a situation that was confined to a reasonably small part of the urban fabric became generalised throughout central Madrid. If the London Met had been policing that protest, they would have kettled the largest possible amount of people for 8 hours, denied them food, toilets or water, squeezing them into a smaller and smaller space, strangling the protest, whilst dispersing the rest. The Spanish National Police swapped one big protest outside Congress for hours of running battles in multiple locations. 

By this point I was losing the ability to run well, as I had been no-stop on my feet from 14:00HRS of the 25th until 01:00HRS of the 26^th. I lost track of the running battles, and headed for the Atocha metro station. This was also surrounded by police vans, and when I went inside I saw people running away from riot squads, who were being assisted by the truncheon wielding private security guards of the metro. I finally made it back to my hostel early in the morning, my feet in agony and my trousers in pieces, and feel asleep straight away.

Since the S25 demonstration there have been more and more clashes over the preceding days, although on a smaller scale. Rumours are flying like wildfire, as they tend to do, that large numbers of riot cops are calling in sick and that live rounds were fired into the air on the 27^th. On the 29^th another demonstration has been called, with marches gathering across all the cities of Spain to besiege their centres of government, rather than a single convergence in Madrid. I plan on attending the one in Bilbao. Lisbon and Paris are also answering the call out, I don’t know about Athens, but knowing the Greeks I suspect they too will be one the streets. I will try and post an update after the S29 demonstration as soon as possible.

Despatch from Madrid – An Account of the S25 demonstration PART ONE

DISCLAIMER: This is a personal account that makes no claims to be objective, the conclusions I have drawn are not necessarily correct. 

I arrived in the Plaza de España at approximately 14:00HRS, after following some indignados activists whom I met in the Lavapies district. In the plaza de España were hundreds of people sitting around in circles, eating, drinking, smoking and discussing the day ahead. I understand that the Plaza de Espana was one of multiple convergence points from which the demo started. Almost everybody I spoke to said they believed that they would be attacked by the police. I shared lunch with two teenage boys who had travelled into Madrid from Castilla y Leon to participate in the demonstration. They told me that they had lied to their parents about where they were going, and one of them shyly admitted that his father was a Guardia Civil police officer. When I asked them if they considered themselves anti-capitalists they replied without hesitation. “Yes man, until death.”

There were a plethora of different groups present. Primarily los Indignados, the Spanish occupy movement. There were also regional autonomists, especially of Andalusia and Castilla, as well as anarchists, republicans, Communists, various anti-capitalist left parties and Constitutionalists who were handing out petitions for Spanish citizens to hand in at the Parliament. Most of the constitutionalists seemed to be old; in general the young have no faith in the constitution or representative democracy. There were many Icelandic flags present – not because there were any Icelandic people, but because the demonstrators hoped to repeat the feat of the Icelandic people, who besieged their parliament – the Althing – from October 2008 until January 2009 to bring down their neo-liberal government and rewrite their constitution. At 16:00 HRS the assemblea, or general assembly, began, firstly discussing the practicalities of demonstration before finding consensus on them, then becoming a forum for passionate speakers to rally the crowd. The consensus part of the assemblea only attracted the die-hard indignados, most people around the edges continued to drink, eat and prepare for the day ahead. I spent this time checking my kit and lamenting not bringing some armour, or at least a helmet. The police had killed a boy in Bilbao some months ago with a rubber bullet; I didn’t want to be the next martyr!

 People were also distributing maps and information sheets. These documents showed a high level of organisation, laying out the day’s timetable, intentions and means of communication. The communication section was especially good, recommending good apps for communicating as well as which twitter hash tags to follow. There was also useful advice on not panicking, mastering collective fear, walking not running during police charges etc. The only part that was lacking in my opinion was the section on kettling – “en caso de kettling” the organisers had recommended either sitting down, holding up empty hands or linking arms then taking a powerful photo. This emphasis on passive resistance relied on the belief that if there were many people who remained calm, then it would be impossible for the police to move us on. 

The crowd swelled and the chants rose. By approximately 16:30 HRS the march had begun. The police blocked off two thirds of Calle Gran Via for the march, leaving a small area open for one way traffic. The march was enormous. The Gran Via is a slight slope, and as we rope and I looked back, the grand procession stretched beyond my visual horizon. Numerical estimates have been bandied about so much as to lose all value, but from a trusted source I would say that 50,000 is a conservative estimate. I have not seen such a big crowd since the 26th of March 2011. This was a national demonstration; people had come from across the country to express their rage. A transit van mounting a hefty sound system thumped out Keny Arkana, and the chants of the people bounced off the high buildings around us, becoming one single roar. The demographic of the protestors is very mixed. The majority were young, but there were people of all ages including old people, who regularly remonstrated with the police, begging them not to act like the fascist police of old.

The Spanish chants are very strong. Maybe this just appears so to me as a linguist and Spanish student, but I believe that you can feel the memory recent poverty and dictatorship in the voices. I will translate some chants here, although I feel that a lot is lost in translation.

“Esta crisis no la pagamos” - “We will not pay for this crisis”

“Eso Eso Eso, nos vamos a congreso” - “This This This, we go to Congress”

“Ole Ole Ole, les llaman democracia y no lo es” - “Ole Ole Ole, they call it democracy but it’s not”

“Ole Ole Ole, se llama dictadura y eso es” – “Ole Ole Ole, this is a dictatorship for sure”

“Menos policía y mas educación” – “Less pólice and more education”

“Vive la clase obrera” – “Long live the working class”

“Del norte al sur, del este al oeste, la lucha sigue, cueste lo que cueste” – “From north to south, from east to west, the struggle continues, cost what it may”

“Por este gobierno, nos vamos de culo” – “For this government, we march showing them our arses” (chanted whilst walking backwards)

“No nos mires, unite” – “Don’t watch us, join us”

“Una solucion, revolucion” - “ One solution revolution”

“Cuando tu nos mires, la gente estan robado” – “Whilst you watch us, the people are being robbed.”

“El pueblo, unido, jamas sera vencido” – “The people, united will never be defeated”

“Que no que no que no nos representan” “They don’t, they don’t, they do not represent us”

The level of class consciousness and anger that I witnessed is massive. When we passed the headquarters of the PSOE – the Spanish labour party that is currently in opposition, people chanted “Conservative and Labour, it’s the same shit.” And also “don’t just watch us, jump” to the PSOE apparatchiks watching from the high windows. Soon the march was leaving the large main street and approaching the Plaza del Sol. The demonstration spread across several small streets as people raced each other to be the first in the Plaza del Sol. After taking a minute to form up in Sol the march again moved off towards congress. Passing banks and government buildings, people pointed and chanted “Estos son los culpables” “They are the guilty ones.”

We arrived at the Plaza de Neptuno, outside congress, at roughly 19:00HRS. To say that the atmosphere was electric is a gigantic understatement. The noise was a constant roar. People had to shout in each other’s ears to be heard. The crowd was making collective movements such as hand clapping, mass cheering and jumping up and down, truly incredible to see. I climbed up a high window guard for a better view, and I could see people in every direction, to the limit of my visual horizon down straight streets. After some time I moved closer into the middle of the Plaza de Neptuno for a better view. By now the press of people was very dense, you had to move people around you and have them move you, but this was done with smiles and friendship. About 30 meters away from the from police barriers that closed of Congress, I climbed to the top of a bus shelter for a better view. During this shaky climb I ripped my trousers open from crotch to knee, but what I saw was well worth it. 

A sea of people chanting in unison. Friends and strangers embracing. People dancing, people raising their fists, laughing, love and rage and solidarity and resistance as deeds rather than empty words on a facebook page. By some prearranged signal around 100 people all began throwing multi-coloured Frisbees across the plaza, creating a further level of spectacle. I tried to balance on the bus shelter and film as Frisbees zipped past my face. An elderly man with a grin like a Cheshire cat called out to me and passed me a republican flag. After about 15 minutes of enthusiastic flag waving and crowd filming I slowly climbed down to let someone else take my place.   

  

This peaceful plaza occupation continued until approximately 21:00 HRS. I had just bought a drink from a street vendor when the police began their assault. This marked the end of the peaceful demo and the beginning of the running battle. 

END OF PART 1