DISCLAIMER:
This is a personal account that makes no claims to be objective, ect ect as before.
Sometimes living in Spain is like being in an abusive
relationship that you enjoy despite yourself. Like when it’s three in the morning
and you want to go home and everyone else is just getting started, mixed in
with 6am starts that everyone else seems to think is acceptable, to be shrugged
off with a caffeine/nicotine dose that makes me shudder to contemplate. Or navigating
through mad complex public transport systems at the end of the day, massively self-conscious
of how much more you are sweating than everyone else. Or when somebody in your
group tells the punch line of a long joke and everybody screams with laughter
and you smile politely as you didn’t understand the premise of the joke in the
first place, never mind the ending. But
then somebody pronounces an interesting word just so, or somebody makes a
particular gesture and I have to grin to myself as I walk by thinking “damn, that’s
so Spanish.”
Politically speaking it’s quietened down since S25. Everyone
knows what’s bubbling beneath the surface, but it’s not just the politicians
who would prefer to ignore the glaring reality, the whole families going
through bins and the beggars with the heart-breaking placards. It’s going to kick off and it will not be
pretty – my money is on the European general strike in November. However so far
I’ve only been to two demos in Bilbao, #S29 and #Global Noise and endured a
local election.
#S29, 29/09/0212
I arrived in Bilbao on a rainy Saturday at 19:00HRS, looking
for a demo for which I didn’t know the starting location that had begun an hour
earlier. I had caught the wrong bus in Eibar and rather than the speedy
motorway one I had caught the snail-paced, visit-every-village one. So as I
headed into the town centre I was counting on the demonstration’s innate
obviousness – noisy, vibrant and huge, preferably with a monstrous blue light police
escort and a collection of helicopters –
to find it. In this case I almost passed them by without noticing. Walking down
Calle Colon de Larreategui I spotted more people than usual walking in the same
direction amongst the tourist masses. Detailed scrutiny revealed a hasty
placard or two. I supposed it was the protest, but it was advancing at a
snail’s pace, entirely on the pavement. Only as I crossed the street did the
demonstration emit a chant.
“Que no, que no, que no nos representan”, which has
been a staple since May of 2011. Think “cut back, fight back” for the British
equivalent. I asked somebody on the march if this was indeed the S29
demonstration, and he confirmed that it was. As I asked, the group chanted. “Un
solucion, los banqueros en la prision” I’m not a native speaker but this grated
on my ears, 5 syllables for the first chant then about 9 for the second part.
It was an obvious change form “un solución, revolución” taking a radical chant
and changing it into a reformist one. I finally spotted the only megaphone, a
“baby megaphone” – such a quiet piece of kit that I prefer to use the vocal
chords alone for a better projection.
The march moved through the main tourist drag of Bilbao,
drawing non-pulsed looks from shoppers, tourists and migrant salesmen alike.
One migrant cheekily clapped along with us, I hoped that they knew what was
going on and why, and I tried to explain in broken Arabic with no discernible
result. Moving out of the shopping area across the river Nervión, we approached
the town hall, which was guarded by a handful of coppers. When mutterings began
of moving towards the town hall, it was met by many with a stentorian
disapproval. When cries of “!a la ayuntamiento!” Went up, half the crowd broke away, crossing
the street and refusing to take part in any action around the town hall.
Astonishing. The remainder sat down on the hall steps and clapped for 5 minutes
“No hay pan para tanto chorizo” (there isn’t enough bread for this much sausage
/ theft) before moving on towards the old town. As I engaged with more
demonstrators, I saw I wasn’t the only person who was feeling massively
underwhelmed. As we wound down the closely packed streets somebody at the back
started chanted “esto no es mani, nos vamos de compras” “this isn’t a demo,
were going shopping”. That got a few laughs. The group only really viscerally
went for one call – “violencia es no llegar a fin de mes” “violence is not
having any money left over at the end of the month”
Finally we made it the demo end point, a plaza on the outskirts
of Casco Viejo, where the indignados automatically formed a circle to finish off
the action. First, a round of applause that nobody seemed to want to stop. Then
some thankyous, a few updates about S29 in the rest of Spain – where it was
announced that the fire-fighters had walked out spontaneously in the south with
the indignados – and finally an announcement that this demonstration would be
repeated the next Saturday. After this the circle broke up into smaller
circles. I wandered over to one to eavesdrop. “Next time we do a demo we need
to remember the fucking megaphone.” I smiled at this; good to know that our
Spanish brethren can be equally forgetful.
Overall this demonstration came across as agonizingly
passive and pacifist. The choice by many to not even sit on the steps of the
town hall, pacifist modifications to the chants, the ironic self-criticism
towards the end that showed others wanted to escalate the tempo somewhat. This
was the first demonstration in Spain when I didn’t sense palpable anger coming
from the demonstrators. The reaction from the majority of the public was
lukewarm, resigned to having demonstrators marching up and down their streets.
It was more like a guided walking tour than a demo.
On the other hand, the turnout of approximately 200 people
at short notice (S29 was called after the police brutality of S25) was very
promising, and if this kind of demonstration could be pulled off every Saturday
with similar turnout, it would have an impact. Again the age range and
diversity of those attending was extremely varied; this movement cannot be
written off as a sectional interest group – it’s definitely ticking the “people
from all walks of life” box. This is of course helped by Spain having a
massively militant generation of senior citizens who, having lived through a
dictatorship, know what they have to loose.
I finish the day at a radical bar, with a TV set to live
feeds of demonstrations instead of football, with a group of indignados. Over
pintxos and wine we discuss the respective situations in Spain and Britain. I
learn dismayed, but not really surprised to hear that Fracking is being
introduced in the Basque country. They are all gobsmacked when I lay down the
numbers of the tuition fee hike. Before I stagger off to bed I scrawl down an
email address and type in somebodies mobile number; the indignados have many
more actions coming up in the near future.
#Global Noise, 13/10/2012
The march started at 18:00 in Plaza Moyua, the geographic centre
of the new town. There were only about 50 people, dwarfed by the large space they
were in, the Norman Foster Metro entrances and the group of two riots vans and
two police riders that watched them from different exits of the roundabout. I
waited until they left the roundabout before I joined them, setting off on the
same route as last time to Casco Viejo. Again the diversity of people is awesome. The
march had its complement of raging grannies and granddads - one of whom
apologetically explained to me, as we symbolically closed a road for a few
minutes, that he was too reliant on his Zimmer frame to sit down, otherwise he
would do so. Militant mums with kids in prams we also in strong attendance. As
the 20 something student, I felt in the minority. A middle aged professional in
trekking shoes and a plaid shirt calmly blew a diaphragm shaking Basque horn as
he marched. A beggar who was knelling prostrate on the ground holding up a
begging bowl slowly looked up, watched us and then bowed his head again.
The same people who had led the demo and the baby megaphone
last time were doing the same again (tut tut) although at least they had brought
a decent sized meg this time. We stopped to sit down and block junctions twice,
while the chap up front denounced the illegal debt and the exploitation of
southern Europe by the northern powers. (My German friends are too scared to
park their Deutsh number plated cars in city centres) The municipal police
re-directed traffic around us, led by a sour faced major who turned up at both
demos. The local cops wear their Basque hats on duty – like berets but totally
flat, like black head pancakes. The major wears a bright red one which makes
him impossible to take seriously, but I know that with one word on his radio, those
two wagons full of riot officers will turn up and be downright unsociable.
Fortunately the demo passed peacefully, with an end
assemblea in the same place as last time, followed by the demonstrators
organically moving from a big circle assemblea to clusters of friends moving
off to their favourite bars.
Local Election
Right now I don’t know who has won and frankly I’m not
bothered what colour of neo-liberalism they are imposing here. However if I
appear to be worried about the sometimes lacklustre indignados, bear in mind
that the levels of apathy towards the government are staggering. Most of the
election promotion consists of cars with monster sound systems driving round
town terrorising people with Basque “ethnic music” mixed with booming election
promises. I saw PSOE set up their mobile election hustings in Eibar, where they
were ignored while giant speakers squirted and belched horrible electronic
feedback until they gave up, packed up and drove off. The reaction of the
people is like watching a donkey look at a sepia picture of an empty bus
shelter. The vacantness of the campaign phrases could not be greater of they
set out with such an intent. The PSOE (labour) have gone for:
“estamos a lo que hay
estar ” - “We are what there is
to be”
How existential.
However, the PP (Tories) have outdone them in their fiendish complexity with:
“Si tu no votas, ellos ganan” - “If you don’t vote, they win.”
So, extra points for guess of who “they” are. Two identikit
white middle aged men, with identikit grey-brushed hair and identikit steel rimmed
glasses gaze down at you, the only difference being that the labour chap has
rolled up the sleeves of his razor creased shirt (working class or what eh?) Their faces are plastered across the over
ground trams and the Bilbao graffiti community appear to have competed with
each other to see who could deface the most Tory images, usually with “fascista”
hastily scrawled across the giant face. Trams are moving targets, after all.
