Musings on a Cold, Blue Morning in Catalonia...

On Transformation Into a Local

I'm not one to complain about the weather... much. 

As a Canadian transplant here in Barcelona, where snow is so completely rare that a freak flurry will shut down the entire city, I've wandered about through this winter with a sort of smug toughness when met with complaints about the cold. I've mocked other expat friends from the UK when they shiver over coffee and bikinis, moaning loudly about the chill in their bones while we still lounge on street side terraces. In such instances I laud my thick Canadian blood and urge them to "man up." I believe the term "Nancy" has been thrown about a few times, as well.  

Sadly though, I can feel that Canadian weather resistance abandoning me. It's four degrees here today -- and lovely, sunny blue sky notwithstanding -- it feels bloody brutal. My feet are like ice blocks, I shiver on the terrace, and I'm moaning about the "cold" at an alarmingly increased rate.  

I'm becoming the damned Nancy.  



On Irony and Tardy Prophecies

In the old city, exploring the Gótic barrio's intricate labyrinth of narrow, ancient streets will eventually lead you to Plaça de George Orwell.  This little square with a fairly lofty name acts as a central hub in and around which drunken revellers -- locals, expats, and tourists alike -- swarm like locusts through the barrio's vast network of bars and nightclubs. It is named for the legendary author not so much due to his herculean literary stature, as for his escapades during the Spanish Civil War.  

Orwell fought for the Republicans during the war against Franco's nationalists as a member of the International Brigades, which also included nearly two thousand Canadians breaking their own nation's laws in doing so; something not taught in schools back home, sadly. The author chronicled his time, and his perspective on the anarcho-syndicalist's brief liberation of Barcelona in the memoir Homage to Catalonia. 

Named for him in 1996, the square is a great spot to meet and mingle; to people watch over a few mediana's before either abandoning the barrio to the hordes descending upon it to drink, dance, and hopefully find a warm body for the night, or joining them yourself in search of similar amusements. 

Like much of the old city, the square has seen its share of seedier elements over the years. This is part of the neighbourhood's charm, but for a tourist lacking in common sense, or suffering from a high blood alcohol content, this can sometimes lead to a stolen wallet or mobile phone. Pickpockets are an issue here in Barcelona, primarily if you make yourself an easy mark for them.  

With this in mind, in 2002 the Ajuntament de Barcelona leapt into the annuls of achievements in obvious irony when they made the area a "zona vigilada" and installed a security camera that now keeps watch over a square named after the author of 1984, in which we are given a chilling glimpse into a world where everyone is monitored as a possible dissenter; where each citizen is considered a suspect. You almost have to admire the twisted sense of humour of the Ajuntament employee that suggested the square as a prime spot for constant surveillance, though I may be giving them too much credit. The sad reality is that the choice most likely went straight over their heads. 

When I saw the above photo, it reminded me that, while he was a bit off on the date, in writing 1984, Orwell has become more prophet than doom-saying novelist. Our cities are so rife with video surveillance, watching and recording everything we do outside of our own homes, that we no longer give the constant monitoring a second thought, even as the likes of Google, Facebook, and smartphone providers make the prospect of our private lives being documented increasingly likely. We have bought into the ludicrous notion that if we aren't doing anything wrong, we have nothing to fear from such invasions of privacy.  

This strange trust that surveillance of the public will only be used in the service of catching criminals allows acts like the 2012 NDAA to come into law with only a half hearted resistance. We don't seem to realise these measures make us all suspects. We are all possible terrorists, potential dissidents, and likely criminals.

The camera in Orwell's square is an ugly little reminder that, to those in control, we are the enemy. 


Photo Via Poumista

Mossoflautas!

When the police can't afford to beat you, they join you 

This past Friday some 50 members of the Catalan “Mossos d’Esquadra” regional police force marched into Barcelona’s largest police station at Plaça de Espanya to stage a sit in. Over the last eighteen months the Mossos have felt the pinch of a 5 percent cut in their wages, as the Generalitat de Catalunya marches along the austerity path in lock step with the rest of Spain. They entered with placards, and blew tiny plastic “flautas” in unison. One Mosso was quoted warning that “If they won’t negotiate, we’ll fight”. Still, by all reports it was a generally peaceful affair.

The problem is, the last time I saw 50 Mossos in the same place, they were beating peaceful 15M protestors bloody with truncheons:

That was 27^th May 2011, when under the guise of cleaning the grounds before the weekend's Champions League celebrations, the Mossos escorted city cleaning crews into the 15M encampment at Plaça de Catalunya, Barcelona’s central square. While they told the 200 or so Indignats camping there that they would be allowed back in, the cleaning crews began tearing down and removing the tents and other makeshift areas the protestors had constructed. Thousands of supporters descended on the square in a show of solidarity. It wasn’t long before the skull cracking began. 

Plainly speaking, when it comes to stifling dissent, the Mossos don’t fuck about.  

On 15^th June 2011, the Mossos fired rubber bullets on crowds seeking to block politicians from entering the Catalan Parliament situated in Barcelona’s Parc de la Ciutadella. Reports surfaced after the event that the Mossos employed the use of "Agent Provocateurs" during the march; a theatrical, subversive tactic used by police across the globe to turn peaceful protests into chaotic riots, effectively contaminating the public's view of a movement in an effort to turn the dissenter into a common enemy -- a shady villain to be feared and loathed rather than listened to.  

The Mossos cast an imposing shadow at these protests. Clad from head to toe in black riot fatigues, thick kevlar covering their torsos, their faces obscured not only by the visors on their helmets, but by police issue balaclavas. This is the strange paradox of the riot police and the protestor; only one side ever comes prepared for a fight, and the public is made to believe those in heavy armour are the brave ones. You start to wonder who needs protecting from who? 

On 19th June 2011, when the Indignats had once again converged on the Catalan Parliament buildings, I took a place along the barricade that separated the Mossos from the Indignats, standing across from one officer for about 30 minutes; his mouth and nose hidden under the black cloth of his Mossos mask. I could only see his eyes, permanently fixed on me. He stood completely at the ready, waiting for me to jump over the barricade. I half wondered if he was hoping I would.

Yet now, after months spent introducing their truncheons to the skulls of those calling out unfettered greed, and the strangle of austerity measures forced on the many to pay for damage wrought by the few, the opressors have become the protestors.

There is a rich irony in the Mossos being made victims of the same measures imposed by the elites they are made to serve, often toward violent and repressive ends, and embracing the spirit of dissent as a result. Feeling the sting of these same sharp cuts to their livelihoods that the Indignats have laboured under for years should be a lesson to them, and moreover, to police officers everywhere.

While the uniform, the badge, and the billy club may provide the illusion of power, ultimately the police remain members of the same under-classes they are frequently ordered to pummel into submission. To the elites they are a private army to be used for their protection, but ultimately, like the rest of us, they are expected to foot the bill for their folly. There is no justification for meeting peaceful protest with violent thuggery. “Just following orders” does not cut it.

For these 50 or so Mossos, and inevitably for police in every city where the people are rising up against the austerity disease, the question is simple. The next time you are ordered to crack the skull of a Perroflauta refusing to forfeit their right to be outraged, or to pepper spray a row of kneeling students at a university, will you remember that these same people whose orders you are “just following” can, and probably will, turn on you at any time?

2012: The Beginning of the End?

Another year, another doomsday prophecy. They pop up so often now we might as well print them alongside  holidays in the calendar. However, as fun and terror inducing as they can be, apocalyptic prophecies tend to vary wildly in severity and believability. Harold Camping banged his end of days gong more than once throughout 2011, managing to bilk a few sad, faithful dopes out of their life savings in the process, convinced that the rapture was upon us and eager to buy their spot in the blessed afterlife. The majority of us saw Camping's doomsday prophecy for what it was: a source of amusing Facebook status updates for most, and a con job for a faithful and utterly stupid few. 2012, though, sees the arrival of a doomsday prophecy we can sink our teeth into. There hasn't been one like this since Y2K, when we all partied like it was 1999, waiting to see if a niggling technical glitch would render life as we know it an irradiated memory, leaving us in a wasteland of spontaneously downed jet-liners cluttering up the scorched earth and sentient, rage-filled toasters hungry for our flesh. This time around, the annual prediction of doom isn't fucking about.

Welcome to 2012. According to the Mayan long count calendar, or at least according to a group of dubious "experts" on the Mayan long count calendar, the jig is up; the show is over, it's lights out for the earth. We've all got just shy of twelve months to get out there and live life to the fullest. Take all the drugs you've previously been afraid of. Have copious amounts of increasingly bizarre and unapologetically unprotected sex because all bets are off! Come 21st December, you are a dead human walking. A nebulous, opaque, poorly defined yet unstoppable threat is barrelling toward us from the cosmos. Do you really want to meet your ultimate demise never knowing the joys of a Caligulaesque orgy while tripping on a ridiculous cocktail of hallucinogens and heroin?

Of course, most of these predictions of imminent doom swirling around the Mayan long count calendar come from the sort of websites whose owners seem to think the progress of web design stopped sometime in 1997. In all reality the long count calendar was, much like our own yearly method of time keeping, intended to reset at the end of it's 5000 or so year lifespan -- a tracking of an entire age, rather than a single year. The only great cosmic event coming our way this year, in all likelihood, is the sun's alignment with the centre of the Milky Way, a galactic event that occurs every 26,000 years. So maybe bring a full box of condoms to all those super orgies you plan on attending, and leave the crystal meth at home.

Chances are we will wake up on 22nd December as we do every single day -- still existing. No rogue asteroid from the depths of space will have side swiped the planet. No blast of cosmic gamma rays will wash over us, turning us into withered mutants or super evolved telepaths, depending on whose take on the prophecy you're inclined to believe. Chances are we will wake up to the same sun in the sky with the same lives we led the day before, and we'll continue on.

Unless the powers that be right here on earth have something to say about it.

It didn't take long for the world's power brokers and manipulators to harsh our collective new year's eve buzz. While we were out drinking and cavorting, Barack Obama was in Hawaii pissing all over the Bill of Rights. In these first few days of  2012, Iran and the west have continued their game of metaphorical chicken, with the Mid East oil exporter threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, making veiled threats at US naval vessels in the area, all while the US, the UK, and the EU continue to make overtures of military action over Iran's nuclear weapons programmes, which western leaders assure us are very real, leaving me with an annoying sense of deja vu.

I feel like I've seen this movie before.

This latest round of international dick swinging by the likes of  Barack Obama, David Cameron, Mahmoud Ahmedinajad and Angela Merkel has caught the attention of China and Russia, two nations with a vested interest in Iran and the free flow of its oil, and two nations with more than enough might to stand up to any military aggression coming from the west toward their supplier. With each raised voice, each veiled threat, each rattled sabre, the possibility of World War Three breaking out becomes less and less unthinkable, and more a matter of predicting when it starts, rather than if. We can hope that our world leaders are sane enough not to let things get to the point of no return, but a quick glance back at the past year or so quickly tells us they can, have, and more than likely will again. These are strange days. Once again it seems we live in a time of monsters. The best we can hope for is that none of them just want to watch the world burn.

On second thought, maybe instantaneous and unavoidable death from space is the better option.