On Thursday I posted live updates on events that occurred in Barcelona during the 29M general strike as I encountered them throughout the day. It was a unique experience, attempting to capture what was happening as the day went by. Eventually posting live became more difficult, as technology and the quickening pace of the action conspired against me.
This is the rest of the story.
Just after 6pm I crossed Plaça de Catalunya and headed to nearby Cafe Zurich, where a few friends who had come to attend the demonstration were waiting. Out front of the cafe, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) anarcho-sydicalist union were preparing for the march. Unlike the larger Spanish labour unions, the CNT have no hierarchical structure. There is no one Union leader taking a large annual salary, and no elected representatives. Union decisions are made by committee using the tenets of direct democracy. The union and its supporters gathered here were a diverse collection of faces -- old and young, male and female, and more than a few young children getting their first taste of a labour uprising.
The CNT -- and its more modern incarnation the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) -- started to move just before 6:30 in the evening. But rather than head for the massive crowd buzzing about Passeig de Gràcia, they struck out in the opposite direction, moving up along Carrer de Pelai. The members walked slowly behind a white truck that had been outfitted with large speakers lying on the flat bed. The speakers played an old Spanish song for the workers; full of sombre guitar chords and haunting vocals. The workers marching behind the truck waved the flag of their anarchist union -- two triangles, one black, one a deep red. We were confused by the CNT/CGT decision to apparently launch their own demonstration, but we were familiar enough with the union to know they have a unique way of doing things. It occurred to me that they might be moving toward Carrer de Balmes to circle back, and merge with the larger group via the upper lanes of the Plaça.
We opted to rejoin the group in Plaça de Catalunya. Crossing the street, we moved toward a collection of protesters at the lower end of the square, across from the Olivia Plaza hotel and the Hard Rock Cafe. The tension in the group gathered at this end was palpable; they were all staring out toward Avinguda del Portal de l'Angel, straining on the tips of their toes for a better look at whatever was happening, or about to happen. Some had hopped up onto the stone railings that line the square, determined to get a better view.
This is when we heard the first gun shots.
We could not see the weapons, but we didn't need to -- the sound was unmistakable. Rapid bursts of gun fire aimed at the people on the street a few metres away from us. Those straining for a better look on the steps of the square suddenly turned and ran toward us in a panic, frightened by the sight of rubber bullets being sprayed into the crowd, and looking to get out of harm's way. When the brief outbreak of panic subsided, we moved down the steps and onto the street for a closer look. The Mossos had blocked off the street on the other side of Passeig de Gràcia with a few of their armoured vans. One friend mentioned that the squad seemed to be there to defend El Corte Inglés; the up market, overpriced department store that looms over the public square. The protesters on the street, particularly those closest to the armed police, were standing their ground; holding their arms up in the air, hands open and palms turned out toward the Mossos, trying to signal that they were not a threat. It didn't matter. Another round of rubber bullets would ring out, and people would retreat back quickly. The police also used larger bean bag rifles. During brief glimpses I saw them working in two man teams. The shooter would dart out from behind a partner holding up a full body plexi-glass shield, fire the cylindrical bean bag rifle, and move back behind the cover of his partner. It was an efficient plan of attack.
We didn't fancy taking a stray rubber bullet -- or a rogue bean bag, for that matter -- in the face, so we decided to move back up into the confines of the main square. We walked quickly across to the northern end of the Plaça. Moving up toward the group offered a chance to take in all the different flags raised in the air above the bandanas, mullets, and Guy Fawkes masks. Some were familiar; the flags of the various trade unions were scattered across the crowd. The Catalan National flag was flying everywhere, joined by that of Greece in a show of solidarity with their embattled comrades in austerity. Someone had brought out the defunct Soviet standard, crimson red with the iconic gold hammer and sickle. The flag of the second Spanish Republic, with its bottom stripe of purple rather than the red of the traditional Spanish flag, was also on hand. You could also see the variant used by the International Brigades that fought with the Republicans in the civil war, with a red, three pointed star replacing the coat of arms. Flags for Catalan independence were more than abundant, including a version I was told belonged to Terra Lliure (Free Land), a once militarised Catalan separatist group, similar to the ETA of the Basque country.
We waded into the centre of the crowd at the top of Plaça de Catalunya. Moving through the masses on the streets took patience and determination, and a willingness to take a few blows in the chest or the back. Collisions were impossible to avoid, but in typical Barcelona fashion, no one took it personally when struck by an errant shoulder, or the sting of a sharp elbow. A simple "perdona" or the wave of your hand sufficed. The people had not come to fight, at least not with each other. Once in the middle of the street, we had a chance to see how far the crowd stretched. As far up as you could see on the horizon, no grey concrete of the street was visible. The sea of people stretched straight up along the Passeig, filling the side walks on either side, obscuring the entrances to the endless number of shops that the street is famous for. Here we were reunited with the CNT contingent, who had indeed circled back, looking to eventually join with the main group on the Passeig.
They wouldn't get their chance to blend into the march, though. Trouble was brewing on the other side of the of the road.
A platoon of Mossos vans had come to barricade Ronda de Sant Pere to the right of Passeig de Gràcia. Without warning, the crowd was charged, either by shielded foot soldiers in heavy riot gear, or by the vans themselves -- it was impossible to see from where I stood. Once again the people screamed and turned toward us, dashing off for safety. We moved back with them, closer to the CNT idling behind us. These charges from the police repeated a few times, but there were no rubber bullets or bean bags being fired this time around, which I suppose could be seen as an improvement in the situation. The protesters at this end of the Plaça didn't see the brightside of not being shot at, though. Once we had been forced back far enough from the main group, I could see a thick pillar of black smoke rising up from the street; moments later I caught sight of orange flames flickering up in the distance, just beyond the heads of those standing in the middle of Passeig de Gràcia. Protesters had started a fire in one of the large garbage bins that can be found on many street corners across the city.
I had encountered one of these garbage fires earlier, on Carrer de Rosselló, just after the Mossos had descended on the first gathering of the day, where the Passeig intersects with Diagonal. Garbage had been collected in a pile in the middle of the street, and set ablaze. Walking back toward the obelisk in the middle of the intersection, I noted the smashed windows of some of the shops on Rambla de Catalunya; but it was the Deutsche Bank building at the top of Passeig de Gràcia, to the Northwest of an obelisk set in the middle of the intersection, that had taken the brunt of the outrage. The glass on the main doors had been smashed, and various colours of paint had been splattered across the bank's façade. I couldn't tell what had come first, the fire and the destruction, or the Mossos driving their vans into the crowd gathered in the street. I know that before the police arrived on the scene, people seemed quite happy just to be on the street with their pots and pans. I did not see any violence until the Mossos turned up, dressed in heavy armour and flailing their truncheons at whoever was unlucky enough to be in range.
The fire burning now, at the top of Plaça de Catalunya, had a greater fury to it. Sandra, one of the friends I had met with earlier, described it as a symbol. The elites -- the government, the corporate oligarchs, and controlling EU in Brussels -- see the masses as trash, but in reality the people are the fire, burning over what is being forced on them by those in control. Sandra disagreed with the act, feeling that the burning of the garbage -- full of cheap plastics sending toxins into the air -- was mindless, and counter productive. But she understood perfectly what the fire represented.
Behind us the CNT/CGT collective had turned their truck around and were beginning to move away from the main group again. They announced over a loud speaker their plans to head for Plaça Universitat. Realizing that the march was -- between the Mossos charges and the sheer number of people clogging the street -- stalled for the time being, we decided to stay with the CNT contingent, and walked with them toward Universitat. Reaching Carrer de Balmes we found another large trash fire on the street; this time the bags had been pulled out of the large containers, piled up, and ignited. The bins had been toppled over and pushed into the middle of the road in an attempt to block traffic. The fire produced a strong heat that you could feel even from fifteen or twenty feet away. In front of the bins a little boy, no more than 8 or 9, stood in the street, waving a CNT flag in one hand with the other raised above his head, two fingers arched to make a "V". The boy drew applause and attention as people passed by, stopping to snap photos of the little revolutionary. Walking past the boy I glanced up the street behind him; a block or two away another squad of police -- with their riot gear and armoured trucks -- waited patiently.
Shortly after arriving at Plaça Universitat we lost site of the CNT strikers -- they seemed to disappear, having only minutes earlier collected in the centre of the Plaça. Looking back the main column on the Passeig seemed to be dispersing outright. We wondered if the march might be breaking up. A friend of Sandra's had called her a few minutes earlier, and was on his way to meet with us. He had told her that the protest stretched up past Diagonal, heading into Gràcia toward the mountains. He joined us a short while after; by that point it seemed the march really might be over. People were walking away from the main gathering in increasing numbers. We turned onto Gran Via and were greeted by more bodies moving away from the protest.
Making our way back to Passeig de Gràcia, though, made it quite clear that the protest was nowhere near ending.
The street was still jammed. People had collected on the thin circle of grass that surrounds the central fountain where Gran Via and the Passeig intersect. Others had climbed up onto the benches and light poles that dot either side of the street going north and south, hoping to get a better view of the stand off between the police and the protesters at the top of Plaça de Catalunya. We made our way into the middle of the street, straining to get a better view ourselves, which proved futile. The street was completely swollen with crews of union members, Indignados, anarchists and "flautas" young and old, that the only way to judge that something in front of us was happening was when the crowds quickly ran back each time the police pushed forward. The crackling sound of rubber bullets firing, followed by screams and cries as people fled the danger. We found ourselves stuck in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by the masses on either side; there was nowhere to move to. The protest was being packed tightly onto Passeig de Gràcia, and we couldn't see what people were running from.
Then we caught our first glimpse of white smoke rising up through those in front of us -- tear gas.
We didn't see the first cannisters that had clearly been lobbed into the group ahead of us, but we caught a glimpse of the next volley. Three silver cannisters rose up a dozen or so feet in the air before spiralling back down into the crowd, a thin trail of white smoke following behind as they fell. Upon landing the area became choked with gas, forcing people to cover their mouths and turn up toward our position above the fountain. While this offensive played out in front, to the right of us more people were running into the column from Gran Via. The Mossos had opened a second front on the protest, pushing in from Balmes. These were most likely the squads I'd noticed earlier, a few blocks behind the boy displaying his CNT colours. We were being kettled.
The scenario repeated a few more times. Tear gas cans would launch, people rushed for cover and the Mossos gained some ground, or at least held the line. The larger column was being cut off from the more militant group in front of El Corte Inglés, where the large trash fire had been set an hour before. But as swift as the incursions against the crowd had been, they ceased just as quickly. This was the tactic I had witnessed earlier in the day; whirlwind, disorienting shows of force before falling back for extended periods. The return of a bit of calm allowed the different groups around us to come back into focus. There were small drum circles with people dancing in the middle. An older couple played crude music by blowing on horns; the man with something that looked to be carved from the bones of a large animal, or an elephants' tusk, and the woman on a large conch from the sea. The mood up here remained festive and kinetic, despite the threat of tear gas and rubber bullets. There were news vans on either side of the road, their satellite dishes aimed upward, their cameras constantly filming. It seemed their presence kept the Mossos -- not eager to be filmed firing their non lethal weapons at the protesters -- from pushing further up through the march.
Eventually, exhaustion set in. My legs ached from the day's walking and I was parched from so much time out in the hot sun. I decided to head home, while the rest of my group opted to go for a drink. It was clear the stand off would continue well into the night. None of us would have been surprised to find the streets full of the outraged, and the Mossos, had we decided to return at one or two in the morning. I walked up Passeig de Gràcia, and turned right on the first street that wasn't stuffed with Mossos vans. The smouldering remnants of smaller garbage fires met me as I wandered through those first few blocks away from the demonstration. Further along I ran into the occasional police blockade, but by the time I had reached Passeig de Sant Joan, where it meets Diagonal, there were few traces of the strike at all. Children were playing in the little parkettes that line the pedestrian thoroughfare in the middle of Sant Joan while their parents looked on. Dogs chased after each other on the grass under the trees.
The only reminder that Barcelona had taken on the feel of a war zone today was the sound of the helicopters, still buzzing overhead.
