"Te quiero, Barcelona..."

On the ground at 15-O Barcelona

Photos by Wendy Taylor

When my wife and I first decided to cross the Atlantic and start living a new sort of life, Barcelona was the only real choice. In our small apartment on Toronto's Queen Street West we would dream of sitting at street side cafes, sipping con leches and Americanos, smoking cigarettes, listening to Spanish guitar, and most importantly, working to live as opposed to living to work. Six months on, we have that new life we'd hoped for. What was unexpected, was to land in our new home just as a revolution was being born here in Spain, one that has now spread to the new world we left, and effortlessly destroyed the cynicism that had grown in me over the first 12 or so years of my adult life.

Just a month into our new lives here, it all boiled over. Citizens across Spain began taking to the streets, occupying the vast squares and public spaces in their city centres. They came to give manifestation to their outrage over what was being forced upon them by the controllers of global finance, by the money men who own the politicians that are elected to represent the people, but have long since lost interest in doing so. In Barcelona I watched as the Catalan Els Indignats joined with the Castellan Los Indignados across Spain, setting up camp in Barcelona’s Plaça de Catalunya, the grand square in the Catalonian capital city that connects the old barrios of Raval and Gotic with the 19^th century modern expansion known as Eixample. Here, amongst the constant flow of tourists and the bold as brass pigeons, they joined their countrymen in Madrid’s Puerta Del Sol, and countless other Indignados in cities all over Spain, to be the bright star, the big bang of what we are now calling the “Occupy” movement. 




Before AdBusters and Anonymous successfully forced the eyes of the world to turn to Wall Street, the world’s symbolic heart of elite finance and the capitalist dream, the Indignant ones here in Spain were drawing up the blueprint for them. Here in these little DIY barrios they crafted the unique ideas behind this growing shift in perspective. In Plaça Catalunya they built ramshackle kitchens, dormitories, a library, and a media centre to keep the world aware of what was happening. International media giants weren’t interested, but the people were. They followed the movement on Facebook, on Twitter, on Youtube. They voiced their support for Spain’s outraged, and only a few months later, took the cause to a stage that could not be ignored.

   

On October 15th hundreds of thousands of people, in a thousand cities across the world came out into their streets to occupy their cities, to support those in New York who took over Zucotti Park in mid September, and to take the next step in a global push for change that is not going away, despite the best efforts of our corporate media giants to ignore and mock them. Here in Barcelona, we went back to where it all began: Plaça Catalunya. 

Just before 5pm we arrived at the edge of the square, crossing the famous Passeig de Gracia, and wandering into the gathering crowd. Already a few thousand had arrived, so we decided to stroll through and take a look at the different faces coming together.

Mixed in among the “Perro Flautas”, youth who live with their dogs on the street and play music for a few euros here and there, that the authorities often blame for these uprisings, were old Senors and Senoras who had lived through the dark days of Franco. There were young families crippled by the crisis with their children in tow, and of course, many a Guy Fawkes mask grinning out at us. This is not some collection of disaffected youth that can be easily brushed aside as a rabble of lazy unemployed misfits, more intent on drinking Estrella’s and asking for handouts than doing an honest day's work. Standing alongside the young and the outraged are their grandmothers and grandfathers, their older brothers and sisters, new mothers and fathers struggling to feed their children. A friend who had joined us shortly after we arrived pointed out a sign, held up by an older woman which read “No tengo un perro, no tengo una flauta!” I have no dog, I have no flute! 

Right on time at 5pm, several massive columns of people converged on the square from three or four different directions. Within moments, what was a group of a few thousand swelled out of the square and onto the roads surrounding the Plaça . People began to move through the central square to join with the larger groups on the streets. Men and women carried long banners overhead, young girls with pierced lips and shaved heads walked side by side with white haired grandfathers. Tattooed, mohawked, and sometimes mulleted tough looking punks walked side by side with old matrons in their weekend best and mothers with little kids in their arms and on their shoulders. These were people of different generations, and of different walks of life, coming together in a fight to take their democracy back.

We watched as the crowd swelled all around us and soon, looking out in any direction, we saw only the indignant. The collection of faces, with cheers and raised hands, moved out onto Passeig de Gracia to begin their march, and then the music started. 

Dotted throughout the crowd were small groups of musicians wielding an assortment of drums and various other percussion instruments. As they began to play, people cheered, and took to dancing all around them. My wife and one of our friends joined in the dancing from our spot on the raised grass hill in front of one of the square’s two large fountains. This crowd was the very picture of peace and joy, with no interest in destruction or violence. They didn't need that. They were here together, and they were happy.

We all moved up along Passeig de Gracia, a great collection of faces and voices moving through our city. Songs of unity from the old days of dictatorship rang out in time with new slogans of indignation. It became clear once we had taken to walking that the drummers and dancers were there not only to entertain the crowd, they were there to keep things open and calm. The drum bands would stop and perform brilliant and elaborate pieces of music for the crowd around them, allowing the marchers to flow easily along the street. Two or three women would come out of the throng of protestors and dance frantically to the beat of the drums; One curious little blonde haired boy with an edgy looking mullet joined in as well, quickly becoming the star of the little show. Behind him his young mother, with an edgy looking mullet of her own, flashed a beautiful smile as she watched her son upstage the musicians for a moment.

As the last light of the evening sun faded behind Sagrat Cor church in the mountains, we passed under the watchful eye of Gaudi, Catalunya’s visionary architect, as we walked by his scaly roofed “Casa Battlo” and turned right onto Carrer d’Aragó. Here, on this one way street, the indignant descended upon the institutions that had failed them. There was no violence, but the banks and corporate strongholds that can be found on every corner of Aragó were plastered with anti-corporate posters, and the walls covered with clever slogans in Catalan and Castellano alike. It was here that I read a short slogan that gave perfect voice to the perspective shared by those across this country:

 "If you have a gun you can rob a bank, but if you have a bank, you can rob everyone..."

The message is concise, and it is clear. We are the victims of a grand theft, but these bankers, investors, speculators and corporate elites have stolen much more than just our money, they have stolen our democracy. They have hijacked our representation to make disgusting levels of profit. They have crafted a sick joke to play on all of us, and for far too long, we let them. They got so good at telling the joke that they believed it impossible for us to ever get the punch line. They do not want to believe that we can ever be anything other than blind.


Now, our eyes are opening. We are beginning to understand the joke that’s been played on us, by those that we are told to admire, revere, and fear. The rich, the powerful, the politicians with lined pockets. We are all starting to learn though, that they should be afraid of us, not us of them. 


As the happy revolutionaries turned off Aragó and on to Passeig de Sant Joan to make their way to the Arc de Triomphe, my friends and I left the march to have a drink and to talk. Underneath a clear, star filled black sky we sat and discussed what we had been a part of, and what this movement was turning into. As we did, one thing became clear to me: While New York and Occupy Wall Street has become the important face of this movement, Spain and Los Indignados remain it’s strong heart, pumping fresh blood through the veins of this new revolution, growing all across the world. 




To see more of Wendy's work, visit: http://wendytaylorphotography.blogspot.com/