Today I almost got run over by a car.

I’m in a morning information picket at a suburb campus of the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona. The day started rather early at 0540, but it sounds like I got more sleep than most of the other picketers. Things start off a bit late, and there is some confusion about how we’re running the picket at first but we quickly settle into a routine and start choking off the two lanes into the university down to one (and there are other pickets at the other entrances). At first I hand out propaganda with everyone else, but figure I’m better at getting in the way of cars. One of the other guys comes back with biscuits and coffee and because I can’t object effectively in Catalan I’m quickly saddled with the biscuits and a large tub of sugar. Thus begins my signature pose, standing in front of cars clutching at a box of biscuits and sugar in one arm and eating them in the other. Traffic starts to back up pretty bad and the one-lane system doesn’t work further into the roundabout so a friend of my hosts asks me if I can direct traffic (a step up from my current position as Potential Body Bag in Service to the Struggle). I say I’ll do it even though I’ve never done it. I mean how hard can it be right? Turns out sign language isn’t universal and people don’t follow them anyways.
But I quickly get the hang of it, physically imposing myself onto one lane of vehicles to keep the alternating lanes going. Pedro comes and helps me out and despite our language barrier figure shit out. He’ll say “Cual?” to figure out who to let thru and I’ll wave at a car and he’ll block the car behind it so I can let the car I’m current stopping go in behind the car we just let pass. Very simple stuff, but a bit nerve wracking. Pedro has no problems. He just stands there with his sunglasses nursing his cigarette.

Eventually we get one lady who is very adamant that she should go next and not the nice lady beside her who is next in the alternating lane order. She almost causes an accident by cutting in front of the second lady but now she’s made me angry. This entire operation is predicated on the drivers understanding that we’re fairly letting people into the line and she not only undermines that trust, but has challenged my (admittedly only-in-my-head) authority to enforce that relationship. So I slip between her and the car ahead of her so that I don’t get crushed between two cars, but I ensure I am physically touching the front of her car. Hoo, but that wasn’t enough for her. She aggressively accelerates forcing me back unless I want to go under the car (might have been a good move to be honest), eventually forcing me to the side of her car where she runs over the tips of my shoes. People are worried but I try to shake it off, but after about ten more minutes of traffic direction I take a quick break to grab my sunglasses and go back to the simpler job of stalling traffic at the picket itself.
At about 1100 or everyone starts winding things up, its time for the big demo in Barcelona itself. By now Marc and Sonia have drifted off to other places and people realize I have no idea what the plan is when I ask quietly where Sonia is. I watch somewhat bemusedly as a flurry of various cellphone calls, car swaps, passenger swaps and finally affirmative sounds get made. We have a quick (for Spain) lunch where Sonia meets us and then its off to Barcelona.

The march is huge. And there are multiple threads of it. There are songs and chants and firecrackers and one terrible banner drop. I see the police union in the march and wrinkle my nose. We move up and down the CCOO and UGT march (for whatever reason) before we head towards the CGT march which fills up the plaza in front of the Palau de Generalitat (the Palace of the Generalitat, the autonomous government of Catalonia). There were a lot of red and black flags (with CGT emblazoned on them, which I think takes away from their coolness, but it was their march). Lines of cops block access to the palace and the building across from it (another government building I think). Many of the exits are partially blocked by large police vans, and these cops wear fancy berets. But nothing happens, and at the end they play “A Las Barricadas” which was awesome.

This plaza has, I think, an interesting history. I recall an anecdote from one of the first books I read on the Revolution. One day long ago this plaza was filled with people again. Their demands were something of a different nature, what they wanted was guns. Guns to fight the fascists. Guns to resist the inevitable with. But the government wouldn’t arm the workers, oh how dangerous that would be! In the end, the story goes, after hours and hours of inaction a cop starts handing out his extra pistols. Soon, all the cops join in and the workers who want to resist now have the initiative and the government soon collapses in the face of it. That story still sticks with me today, though I can’t quite place where I read it. I’m soaking it all in and then its time to go get our mid-day drinks. By the time we get back the plaza is empty, tourists are already trickling back in, and it looks like nothing ever happened here. In general the tourist district continues functioning as before. This leads me to thinking dark thoughts about the effectiveness of strikes in large populations. If the threat of a strike is “We will fuck your shit up so bad if you don’t do what we want” then I wonder if our teeth haven’t already been pulled by an ever-growing population.
But no time for that! I’m headed to the squat because there is a protest happening in solidarity with prisoners on hunger strike. I get an unexpected companera, another student from Sonia’s campus. Between our conflicting route-finding strategies we get lost and end up completely missing the protest, so we just sit for awhile until its time for the evening CGT march.

On the way I try out a ‘Dracula.’ At our dinner in Tamariu over the weekend I got hassled by Jordi for selecting a generic chocolate covered ice cream popsicle over a Dracula which he claimed (and I believe him) is unique to Spain. To be honest, the description just didn’t sound like it worked but his admonishments did have an effect so I try one. The idea is you got a core that is half strawberry and half vanilla icecream, all of this in a cola shell. I think it would work better with just vanilla and cola.

Anyways, the CGT march is pretty straightforward. We occupy a fairly major road in the core (Passeig de Gracia). I see a dude with a cap styled after the Revolutionary militias. I kind of want to ask him where to get one but I only take a picture instead. I think he thought I was a cop because I’m pretty sure he (very subtly) took at least two pictures that would have included me later in the march.

Along the way I meet Guillermo and Nadine who just got to Barcelona from the States! They’re good folk (Guillermo is a porkchopper for a public-sector union in Albany, NY) who saw the march and just joined in, but they don’t really know whats going on. So I fill them in with what I know, which I supposed makes this a good time to fill you in as well.
If I haven’t mentioned it before ‘crisis’ is a daily lexicon word in Europe now. I’ve always thought that news coverage of the economy back home was mostly bullshit since the word ‘recovery’ was featured a lot but it didn’t seem that evident, but here the opposite is the case. Everyone seems keenly aware that the economy is in crisis, and a lot of people recognize that its going to be used to fuck over anyone who doesn’t have enough clout to protect their little pile. The latest target is public sector workers who are taking a pension cut, pay cut, and clawbacks to job security. A big concern is that the loss of job security is going to be turned immediately into layoffs, but unemployment is already at 20% in Spain so dumping a pile of public sector workers into an already vicious job market isn’t going to improve the situation. Like back home, increasingly the focus is on how the government bails out the banks, but not the people. Guillermo is surprised and is worried that if you can dismantle social-democracy then it doesn’t bode well for the world. In my particular shit-disturbing way I point out that FDR managed to bring elements of social democracy to the States and that they’ve spent the last 60 years dismantling that. So I enjoy the discussion with periodic jabs and we talk a bit about back home as he knows some Wobblies from Albany. Turns out he’s involved in Labour Notes to which he offers me a subscription. I’m torn between attending the anarcho-syndicalist conference or the next Labour Notes conference. We swap emails, and I head off with the university crew, eventually end up a chinese non-stop buffet (oh MAN I missed these) at my urging. I am roundly applauded for my good ideas. I proceed to misrepresent the IWW in my broken Spanish. I’m busy trying to point out that while there are anarcho-syndicalists in the union, we are more interested in providing a framework and the skills for workers to organize themselves but somehow get off track and they might think we’re heavily influenced by Murray Bookchin now. My bad.
We say our goodbyes and I head to the bus stop to go back to Granollers.
But the night isn’t done yet! Convinced I’ve missed my bus, exhausted and uninterested in waiting for a bus to stop and pick up passengers anyways, I give up and get a cab. There is an amusing exchange where the driver tells me it will be 40 euros and I think he says 14 euros. Briefly I think “What is even the point of having the busses, the taxis are cheaper!” but the ridiculousness of that demands I verify and yeah he definitely said “quarenta” and not “quatorze.” I don’t really care at this point, I just need him to know I’ll need a bank machine then. So on the way to Granollers we have a gleeful time talking about the day, it turns out he’s a CGT affiliate. He also likes mountain biking so we talk a bit about cycling, I recommend Moab, he recommends a place in Spain I already forget, but also the province Brittany in France. He complains about having to use TomTom (a GPS drivers map), saying he prefers maps but that customers want information right away so he has to use it. About half of what we talk about is probably us misunderstanding, or not understanding eachother, but I still have a good time. Finally, I get to bed, a full 24 hour day under my belt.
