Commentary
I’ve been to the big protests, camped out in the main square, participated in some meetings and kept my friends abroad updated on what’s going. It has been an encouraging and exciting process in the midst of an otherwise bleak outlook in Madrid.
I’m not really a writer, and certainly not a blogger, but there is a time for everything, and this is the time to offer my humble perspective on the massive protests and energy in the centre of Madrid’s normally laidback central square ‘Sol’ or ‘Sun’. So, it’s 3:19 a.m., it took me one hour to cross from one side of the square to the other and I got home fine, let’s see what comes out.
Sol is at the centre of Spain, all roads literally lead to 0 km, which starts in Sol and makes a spider web out to the rest of the country. I’m biased because I live in the centre but the massive protests seem to be making the same spider web of discontent across the country.
They haven’t decided exactly what they want yet, but they want an improvement on the system they have at the moment, which fails in so many ways to respond to a hunger for a real democracy as promised when the dictator Franco died 35 years ago.
So what do the protesters want? Who knows? The press is calling them the ‘indignados’, but what are they indignant about? Well, actually I don’t really care so much, the point is that a nation of normally moaning, whining and unconstructive wafflers has turned into a motivated group of people full of ‘propuestas’– proposals, ideas, demands. They haven’t decided exactly what they want yet, but they want an improvement on the system they have at the moment, which fails in so many ways to respond to a hunger for a real democracy as promised when the dictator Franco died 35 years ago.
And why should they know what they want immediately? Surely, it would be a first sign of some organised interest being behind the whole thing if 50,000 people could magically decide within five days what they want to change. It took a few days even for the Middle East protests to get to their strong and resounding demands, didn’t it? At first they were simply asking for a little improvement. So no, it isn’t all defined yet, but it is organised.
The demands and conversations finished off with consistent mentions of the environment, women, immigrants and an end to offshore finance.
With the slogan ‘toma la plaza’ – ‘take the square’ – like in the case of the UK climate camps, the first objective is to establish yourself, with tents, food, legal aid, etc. Then the work starts in horizontally organised assemblies to define the goals and demands of the movement. Corruption is a big issue, electoral reform is another (surely not helped by the failure of the Alternative Vote system in the UK recently, but anyway) and then come the basics akin to the Middle East – a lack of jobs and affordable housing and poor wages. The demands and conversations finished off with consistent mentions of the environment, women, immigrants and an end to offshore finance.
So, for me there is sun in Sol this week. We don’t know for how long, but it is powerful, it jumps up and down, it is silent, it takes its keys out of its pockets to create a magical instrumental chorus from one end of the country to another. And against the background of a non-representative voting system, you don’t even have your own MP, you just vote for an unaccountable state list of unknowns; embedded corruption, as Spain doesn’t even have a Freedom of Information law; a 40-percent youth unemployment rate; and a massive disaffection between people and parliament, something positive must come out of this.
Not least to say for beyond Spain, too. This is not a protest for Spain and in Spain only, this is a protest that reaches out to the rest of Europe and the world with banners in English covering massive commercial adverts on the side of buildings: ‘Europe, Rise Up, this is your revolution’ and ‘Solidarity with the PIGS countries, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain’. What more can I say, as your loving and lazy reporter from Madrid? I’d say it is protest for people and by people and it belongs to no-one but all of us.
Signing off at 4.04am: I won’t lie, I’m not going to be there for the hot chocolate tomorrow at 9am.
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Commentary
‘If the sun fails us we’ll go to the moon’
Commentary
I’ve been to the big protests, camped out in the main square, participated in some meetings and kept my friends abroad updated on what’s going. It has been an encouraging and exciting process in the midst of an otherwise bleak outlook in Madrid.
I’m not really a writer, and certainly not a blogger, but there is a time for everything, and this is the time to offer my humble perspective on the massive protests and energy in the centre of Madrid’s normally laidback central square ‘Sol’ or ‘Sun’. So, it’s 3:19 a.m., it took me one hour to cross from one side of the square to the other and I got home fine, let’s see what comes out.
Sol is at the centre of Spain, all roads literally lead to 0 km, which starts in Sol and makes a spider web out to the rest of the country. I’m biased because I live in the centre but the massive protests seem to be making the same spider web of discontent across the country.
They haven’t decided exactly what they want yet, but they want an improvement on the system they have at the moment, which fails in so many ways to respond to a hunger for a real democracy as promised when the dictator Franco died 35 years ago.
So what do the protesters want? Who knows? The press is calling them the ‘indignados’, but what are they indignant about? Well, actually I don’t really care so much, the point is that a nation of normally moaning, whining and unconstructive wafflers has turned into a motivated group of people full of ‘propuestas’– proposals, ideas, demands. They haven’t decided exactly what they want yet, but they want an improvement on the system they have at the moment, which fails in so many ways to respond to a hunger for a real democracy as promised when the dictator Franco died 35 years ago.
And why should they know what they want immediately? Surely, it would be a first sign of some organised interest being behind the whole thing if 50,000 people could magically decide within five days what they want to change. It took a few days even for the Middle East protests to get to their strong and resounding demands, didn’t it? At first they were simply asking for a little improvement. So no, it isn’t all defined yet, but it is organised.
The demands and conversations finished off with consistent mentions of the environment, women, immigrants and an end to offshore finance.
With the slogan ‘toma la plaza’ – ‘take the square’ – like in the case of the UK climate camps, the first objective is to establish yourself, with tents, food, legal aid, etc. Then the work starts in horizontally organised assemblies to define the goals and demands of the movement. Corruption is a big issue, electoral reform is another (surely not helped by the failure of the Alternative Vote system in the UK recently, but anyway) and then come the basics akin to the Middle East – a lack of jobs and affordable housing and poor wages. The demands and conversations finished off with consistent mentions of the environment, women, immigrants and an end to offshore finance.
So, for me there is sun in Sol this week. We don’t know for how long, but it is powerful, it jumps up and down, it is silent, it takes its keys out of its pockets to create a magical instrumental chorus from one end of the country to another. And against the background of a non-representative voting system, you don’t even have your own MP, you just vote for an unaccountable state list of unknowns; embedded corruption, as Spain doesn’t even have a Freedom of Information law; a 40-percent youth unemployment rate; and a massive disaffection between people and parliament, something positive must come out of this.
Not least to say for beyond Spain, too. This is not a protest for Spain and in Spain only, this is a protest that reaches out to the rest of Europe and the world with banners in English covering massive commercial adverts on the side of buildings: ‘Europe, Rise Up, this is your revolution’ and ‘Solidarity with the PIGS countries, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain’. What more can I say, as your loving and lazy reporter from Madrid? I’d say it is protest for people and by people and it belongs to no-one but all of us.
Signing off at 4.04am: I won’t lie, I’m not going to be there for the hot chocolate tomorrow at 9am.
Tags: Commentary