There is little doubt that what we are seeing in the Spanish state is the birth of a new movement that has the potential to play a key role in shaking up the political scene and possibly helping to stimulate a fight-back against the relentless tide of attacks on the majority of the population's living standards and quality of life that has so far encountered too little resistance.
The background is 5 million or more than 20% unemployed (over 40% among young people, 20% under the poverty threshold; raising of the retirement age; heightened job insecurity; easier and cheaper sacking of workers; wage cuts for public sector workers; swathing cuts in health and education; and a huge rise in home repossessions that do not even cancel the debt. Even worse, some of these measures were acquiesced to by the main trade unions (CC00 and UGT) after a relatively successful general strike in September which was unfortunately never followed up. New negotiations are now being held that will undermine collective bargaining rights, with the bosses' organisation encouraged to tighten the screw in the light of the Popular Party's electoral gains.
Suddenly, nearly eight months after the false dawn of the general strike, the 15-M (or 15th May) movement made its spectacular entrance onto the political stage in the middle of the local and regional election campaign with demonstrations calling for Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now), followed by the "taking" of squares in city after city, town after town, and neighbourhood after neighbourhood. However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that this stands in stark contrast to the election results, which, with the important exception of the Basque Country, saw the right wing practically sweep the board.
Nowhere is this contrast between the square (and the street) and the polling booths more perplexing on the face of it than in Catalonia. In the rest of the Spanish state it is fairly easy to see why large numbers of people stopped voting for the PSOE, the party in central government responsible for bailing out the banks and trying to force ordinary people to pay for a crisis not of their making, while the PP, the principal alternative in a mainly two-party system, slightly improved on its extraordinarily faithful bloc of voters.
But in Catalonia, CiU, the right-wing nationalist coalition that won the elections to the autonomous parliament in November last year, won a fairly resounding victory in the municipal elections, even ousting the Socialist Party-dominated coalition that had ruled Barcelona City Council (quite disastrously in the recent period) for the past 32 years, in spite of having charged straight in with even bigger cuts than central government that were met with numerous, well-supported protest rallies and demonstrations. The political mosaic of Plaça Catalunya The numbers and organisation of those who occupied Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona a just over a fortnight ago grew extremely quickly. The symbolic value of the square, right in the heart of the city (and with buildings at opposite ends that in the Civil War housed the PSUC central committee and the CNT), was immediately apparent as it joined Plaza del Sol in Madrid as a rallying point, attracting tens of thousands of people, many of whom stayed to take part in the debates and activities.
In such a broad-based and loosely-structured movement, practically all political currents are present, but none is hegemonic. One of the main lines of tension traversing the camp in Plaça Catalunya is that between, on the one hand, the internally heterogeneous sector who want to address the wider society with a unified call for a number of minimum demands around which to organise actual campaigns and struggles, and hopefully achieve some partial victories that might help to counter the demoralisation and scepticism about the viability of resistance engendered by so many defeats, and, on the other, the equally heterogeneous group who are against any attempt to speak with a unified voice, are against placing any demands on government, refuse all centralisation, insist on the autonomy of every committee and subcommittee (of which there are already legion), and seek to undermine the legitimacy and authority of the mass meetings (patiently attended every evening by thousands of people sitting cross-legged on the ground for hours) by dubbing them antidemocratic and a centralisation of power.
Another line of tension is that running between those who, broadly speaking, tend to see the camp as an end in and of itself, an enriching experience in its own right, a liberated space that should be held onto indefinitely (some people have even planted a kitchen garden) and those who
27 * International want to use the camp as an operational base to reach out beyond the limited, though extremely important, circles already involved to all those in struggle or who might be drawn into struggle, and to create some structured resistance that will
And a third line of tension, this one cutting across those who are in favour of some central manifesto or demands, has to do with the radicalism of such a call (though not necessarily posed in terms of hard line revolutionaries versus convinced reformists). The square has drawn in thousands of people, particularly young people, many of whom are completely new to any form of political action. In many cases, their main concerns, at least to begin with, are such things as the corruption and dishonesty of professional politicians, the remoteness of the political institutions and traditional parties, and the way elections are run. They want changes to the present system, but do not see the need for a completely new one.
An interesting feature of the camp is the extremely low profile this general atmosphere has forced all political organisations to adopt. Eager political discussions everywhere, yet not a single paper-seller in Key events over the past few days All the camps got a big boost early on when the ministry of the interior of the central government realised it would be counterproductive to try to enforce the electoral commission's ruling that they were illegal (the law forbids any political activity on the day preceding polling day as well as on the day itself.
In Barcelona, the camp's authority, legitimacy and presence were greatly reinforced by the outcome of two events linked with Barça's appearance in the Champions' League final at Wembley.
With the feeble excuse that the square had to be cleaned and cleared of items that might be employed as weapons in preparation for the enormous crowds that pour into the city centre every time Barça win a major honour, Felip Puig, the Catalan interior minister, sent in a brigade of the municipal cleansing department together with hundreds of police in full riot gear to dismantle the infrastructure that had been laboriously assembled and, at the same time, to try to stir up friction between football followers and campers.
Alerted via SMSs and emails sent by
page 28 of the scan
28 'Yes we camp' in Barcelona those who had slept at the camp overnight, hundreds of "indignant" supporters were soon sitting at the entrances to the square preventing the loaded lorries from leaving. Caught unawares, the police then launched an over-the-top attack on the peaceful demonstrators that resulted in 121 people being injured, some seriously. A municipal policeman, frustrated at not being able to join in, described the episode later in Facebook as the "Mossos (Catalan police) lashing out to their heart's content for six hours".
However this heavy-handed approach boomeranged on Puig (who in taking over the ministry announced that he would "stretch the law as far as is allowed... and a little further") by generating a stream of free publicity, spreading sympathy for the "indignats i indignades" and causing more people to become indignant. That evening the square was chock-a-block and morale
Being "against the system" isn't incompatible in these parts with wholeheartedly supporting a team which, however much it might be "more than a club", is still a multinational enterprise fully integrated into the global football business that raked in 398.1 million euros last year. In other words, few doubted that Barça would win, so arrangements had to be made to guard against three possible dangers - that the square would be overrun simply as a result of the pressure of the crowds: that the police would take advantage of such a situation or any possible scuffles to re-occupy the square; or that the organised group of extreme right-wing supporters, the Boixos Nois (Mad Boys), would deliberately attack the
In the event, none of these materialised. The large groups blocking the entrances to the square, many holding signs proclaiming non-violence, had little difficulty in preventing fans from entering the square, mostly by encouraging them politely to keep on their way. This non-confrontational attitude, requesting respect and showing it in return, made it clear that the campers were in no way the enemy of the fans and enhanced their standing among the public even more, especially when compared with yet another example of the Catalan police
Mounting guard all night meant that we were again eye-witnesses (though this time not on the receiving end) of a session of gratuitous police brutality - charges by riot police and their vans, plainclothes police suddenly whipping out and wielding telescopic truncheons against fans, and worst of all, repeated salvos of plastic bullets - once more resulting in over a hundred injured.
Calls for Puig to resign no longer come from just the usual suspects. What next? At the time of writing the big question being discussed is whether or not to set a date for moving out of Plaça Catalunya, stepping up local organisation in neighbourhoods and towns, and perhaps returning later on as a way of ensuring the movement stays strong and united.
Also on the agenda is the preparation of a mass demonstration planned for 19 June under the slogans "The street is ours. We won't pay for their crisis. No to the cuts. Felip Puig resign", which it is hoped will pull in much wider forces and will be an indicator of the new movement's influence and ability to affect the situation. • For more information (mostly in Catalan, but some also in English) and photos go to: hhtp://acampadabcn.wordpress.com/ Brian in Barcelona, 31 May 2011 (Member of Revolta Global-Esquerra Anticapitalista