MEE – The Michael Edwards Experience

So I got a bit of a random message from someone asking what the ‘big deal’ about Dune was because they didn’t find it particularly captivating. Having had to recently defend why Ender’s Game as an important science fiction work (I know, I know, blasphemy), I was in the mood to write something quick up on it. So here is what is going on with Dune, and Frank Herbert’s writing in general. You should find your own relationship with these works, but this is where I’ve gone with them and it won’t be where I end up. I’ve had Frank Herbert sitting somewhere in the back of my mind muttering pithy shit like “Fear is the mind-killer” for over a decade and a lot of this is retrospective realization of what it meant for me.

Being forced to think about what is important in Dune I realized that the surface story line is not the primary draw. It is really easy to think that it is the convoluted political and personal machinations that are really important (I did when I was young). What is important is the between-the-lines discussion of sociological issues, in particular the distribution, usage, and ultimately the consequences of power. The surface story line is more about seeing people as simple marionettes who’s actions are not the result of their will but a greater social context.

Herbert obviously deviates from this is with the Atreides, and in particular the myth of the Kwisatz Haderach. Having reviewed some stuff by Nietzsche recently I find it amazing to see how much of the personal anguish/triumph within the books are rooted in the ideas of the Übermensch and in particular Nietzsche’s assertion that it is a devastatingly lonely position to be in that carries with it great risk. Geeks in particular lap anything vaguely Übermensch-y up (see the otherwise unaccountable popularity of Atlas Shrugged): the stoic self-sacrifice, the creation of a space for your own greatness. However, Herbert is better than Rand in that he makes sure you’re fully aware of the consequences. Where Rand is all “Do your own thing, its best and you lose nothing!” Herbert is more “In achieving great things and having great independent influence on the course of events you will be in some way superhuman, but therefore you will have ceased to be human” which is much more cognizant of the self-sacrifice that occurs. You can see the exploration of ‘super’ humanity and the shedding of ‘human’ limits as a consistent theme in his works, the Dosadi Experiment being a particularly good stand-alone example.

The entire exploration of what is humanity tends to occur concurrently with the question of what is The State. So while characters in his novels can often act with a great deal of independence, they almost immediately come up against opposition from not just the entrenched powers-that-be, but from cultural expectations about societal structures. This is something I gelled with a lot more when I first read Herbert, and as a youth they were the first hints that the government (aka The State) was not simply at the service of the people but had acquired a rudimentary form of sentience. Having become some kind of analog for a living organism, The State no longer justifies or acts out its existence in terms of its use to to the people but in terms of simple self-preservation. It’s fairly trivial to find comparable examples in the real world that match up with this analysis and it is a stunning revelation that affected me for a long time.

Between his examinations of the The State and the superhuman I think Frank Herbert is a good stepping stone towards a pathology of power. While there are analyses and critiques with greater explanatory power and more relevance to our world, I think there is something that both strikes to the gut of the matter while simultaneously having an eye towards something far beyond the issues at hand. In being both visceral and visionary I find that I owe a lot of to his writing and encourage you to give it a shot.

If you’re in any way a well read anarchist you’ll know that Spain is a big deal. For those who aren’t up-to-date you should know: Spain is a big deal.

It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward. It is this, without doubt, which explains why so many men throughout the world regard the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.

Albert Camus

Anarchists in Spain were a significant social force. In 1919 they played a role in the creation of the first legalized 8-hour day and by the 30s things were really intense with political assassinations going back and forth, an insurrection in Asturias in ’34, and eventually the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War was for some (Madrid for example) resistance to a military coup d’etat, but in Catalonia it was a full on Revolution with the military fascists the primary threat. The Revolution was eventually crushed by fascist coordination (Germany and Italy aided the Spanish fascists while the ostensibly ‘socialist’ nations failed to contribute anything and the Soviet Union provided supplies of poor quality that came with many strings attached) but not before proving the possibility of a libertarian socialist uprising and society. Despite a large body of criticism from contemporary anarchists, the Spanish anarchists are treated as a beacon to revolutionary potential. Even knowing how Spanish Civil War ends one finds it seductive to fantasize about fighting with one of the people’s militias. It is thrilling to even contemplate living in a moment where you could taste the fulfilment of the revolutionary drive and a kind of emancipation unheard of before.

For the serious anarchist, you do not simply visit Spain: you are embarking on a revolutionary Hajj.

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Lets break this down by city. We’re going to save the best for last so scroll on down if you want to see Barcelona.

Gernika

Better known as Guernica and prominently featured in Picasso’s Bombing of Guernica mural. Basically the Euskadi (Basque) were resisting, it annoyed the fascists, and the German’s wanted to try indiscriminate carpet bombing out. The result was not pretty.

Gernika itself is situated in a sea of picturesque wooded valleys and initially you don’t see anything that says “HEY LOOK, WE GOT THE SHIT BOMBED OUT OF US BY FASCIST ASSHOLES.” Fortunately the tourist info office has excellent maps and guides that include the Park of the Peoples of Europe which is a very nice little park that people take their kids to after school. On the grounds are two sculptures dedicated to the victims of the bombing. There is also the Gernika Peace Museum which has a fairly nice exhibit on the bombing even if it is kind of sappy in its “Give Peace a Chance” attitudes. Finally you can find a reproduction of the Picasso’s Gernika mural very near to these other sites.

Gernika is historically the seat of Euskadi assembly going back to (and beyond?) the really early establishments of the major royalties. There’s some really interesting sites related to the history of the regional government that I didn’t have time to see but it is the other major characterizing feature of Gernika. Euskadi’s historical autonomy is a core issue and ultimately why they sided against the fascists who were very hardcore centralists. I’ve been told there is a museum based out of an old police station where you can see the basement area where Euskadi dissidents were tortured or executed. You may have heard of the paramilitary group ETA (Euskadi Homeland and Freedom) which grows out of the strong distaste for Spanish rule that these experiences have imbued the Euskadi people with. On a more positive note you can just head to a multitude of different sites in the surrounding hills and valleys that are kind of touristy but off the beaten path.

Getting to Gernika is really easy once you get to Bilbao. From Bilbao it is a short and inexpensive train ride. Getting to Bilbao by train should be straightforward, or you can come across the English Channel with ferries crossing from Dover and Portsmouth to Santander and Bilbao. Staying in Gernika is definitely a possibility with a decent and affordable hotel or the more affordable (and with internet!) pension next door. Be aware that the siesta is not a quaint sometimes-observed custom up here. When you show up in the afternoon you should expect NOTHING TO BE OPEN. Plan accordingly.

Madrid

Madrid is kind of fucked. While not primarily a revolutionary centre (the anarchists were a significant bloc here but not the dominant one), it was a centre of fascist resistance. One of the major battle of the conflict, The Siege of Madrid, turned the western portion of the city into a war zone. This isn’t anything out of the norm for a European city. What is weird is the thoroughly papered over history. If you want a museum dedicated to the Spanish Civil War you go to this guy. He pushes a cart around that acts as a mobile museum. Probably because no one will ever give him space for a proper exhibit. The Germans dedicate almost two whole exhibits to the conflict between the Weimar Republic and the Spartacists, but the madrilenos have only a hobo with a cart.

No one said this would be easy, so lets do a bit of research. There are accounts that indicate you can find the remnants of the trenches in the Casa de Campo. Having extensively ridden through this enormous park I can report that all I found were the historically appropriate prostitutes. All is not lost however, as there are bunkers from the Siege in Parque del Oeste. The park is not as big as Casa de Campo, but it is big enough to require more detailed directions than “It’s in the park.” You are going to want to hit the northern portion (marked Parque de la Bombilla on Google Maps) that lies between Paseo de Ruperto Chapi and Avenida de Seneca. At the bottom of Avenida de Seneca you will also find the south-west corner of Colegio Mayor which featured as a major military objective of the fascists during the initial push into Madrid. I can’t find the references but there are accounts that indicate you can still see bullet holes in the older buildings, but I had been riding with insufficient water and was unable to verify this.

While there isn’t a good history museum on the war, Reina Sofia does have an exhibit built around the Picasso’s original Guernica mural. The exhibit includes propaganda posters from both sides and some other related pieces. The mural itself has an interesting history. Picasso was a staunch supporter of the Republican side of the conflict (aka not-the-fascists) and during the Expo was tasked with creating the central art piece. Because the piece was displayed at the Expo it never really made its way back to Spain, and when it became clear the fascists had won Picasso made sure it never did. He sent the piece to the New York Museum of Modern Art and when the fascist dictator Franco expressed interest in having the piece returned to Spain Picasso basically shit all over the idea by stipulating a return to democracy before it would ever return.

Oh man, double checking my research… Picasso was seriously bad ass:

During World War II Picasso suffered some harassment from the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Paris. An inquisitive German officer, coming into his apartment, noticed a photograph of Guernica lying on a table. “Did you do that?” he asked Picasso.

“No, you did,” said Picasso.

Finally there are apparently some planes at an aviation museum in Madrid that are from the Civil War, but it was relatively far from the city centre so I never visited it.

Getting to Madrid is pretty easy. I bussed there but there are trains, if you want to stop off on the way from Bilbao you can take regional trains relatively inexpensively. I took the bus as I didn’t know any better yet and the terrain between Bilbao and Madrid is very very pretty so I recommend taking it easy and checking it out. Accommodation-wise I stayed in Cat’s Hostel which was really great and easy to make friends at. There is a really really awesome donair joint just a few blocks down Calle Atocha and a couple of blocks off Calle Atocha is a nice Peruvian restaurant. There is also a Burger King and McDonald’s if you’re really desperate for the familiar. Admittedly staying in the hostel was probably the single-biggest contributor to not connecting with the anarchist scene in the city. My madrileno buddy was in North Africa and I was unable to connect with him, to my great dismay.

Zaragoza

Zaragoza is clean. Not the kind of sudsy, soft skin clean you get from a bath, instead it is like you’ve been sandblasted and only the core remains. If you like cycling in Moab, UT you’ll love Zaragoza. In the summer anyways.

Winter time Zaragoza is like being sandblasted but its minus 20 the entire time. A writer named Eric Blair found this out the hard way during the Spanish Civil. Coming over through references in the Indepedent Labour Party. The somewhat flim-flam socialist volunteered to fight fascism and fought on the Aragon Front just outside of Zaragoza with a POUM militia. Eric Blair liked to write under the pseudonym George Orwell.

Zaragoza itself was a bit of a cluster fuck. The anarchists had a strong presence but according to Lessons of the Spanish Revolution a CNT militant pointed out how they were sidetracked by interviews and promises from the governor that stymied them and allowed the initiative to shift to the fascists who seized the city.The result was that when the militias arrived they had to fight an unknown entrenched force and the military advisors said ‘stay put.’ So they sat up in the mountains within viewing distance of Zaragoza freezing their asses off. George Orwell talks about this a lot in Homage to Catalonia.

Based on Orwell’s accounts it is possible to roughly determine where the trenches might be and where he was stationed. Then, like me you could strike out in a roughly north east direction and hope you run into the front lines. However, if you were smart, you would do some decent research before you cycle 70 km in bone dry conditions and consult Iberian Nature. Not only are the trenches still there, but they’ve been restored.

These trenches are important because they weren’t held by the standing army of Spain. After all, much of the army joined with the fascist coup d’etat. Orwell notes that these militias were spontaneously formed after the coup was defeated in Barcelona and the revolution initiated. They were (especially when units were first formed) decidedly suboptimal. Discipline as we know it in the military was non-existent, but reinforcing the necessity of group roles created its own discipline. I don’t want to get too detailed, but the militias point to an anarchist model for self-defence that can and did function. The principle values of self-organization and autonomy did not clash with the need for coordination and cooperation, and allowed many other militias to participate, such as Orwell’s POUM (anti-Stalinist Communists).

Also near Zaragoza is Belchite, a city that got the shit kicked out of during many battles. Within Zaragoza itself there are some nice bike paths and a Moorish palace amongst other sites. I stayed at Albergue (Hostel) Zaragoza which, despite its somewhat amateur website, was an excellent facility. It seemed like there was way less interaction between guests compared to Cat’s Hostel but I still found some walking/dinner companions. There are some direct trains as it is a stop on the Madrid-Barcelona line not to mention the cheaper regional train lines. Getting to Alcubierre (George Orwell trenches) and Belchite (totally destroyed town) are day trips possible by bicycle or regional bus.

Barcelona

When we talk about the Spanish Revolution instead of the Spanish Civil War the centrepiece is Barcelona. Before the war, this city was a hotbed, already politically unstable with a strong autonomist/separatist movement the local anarchists were constantly in the mix of things. George Orwell also spent quite some time in Barcelona (not all of it pleasant) and the revolutionary atmosphere set a fire under him that propelled him to the front, but I’d like to introduce the revolutionary ferment which preceded Orwell.

When the fascists first tried to deploy in Barcelona, it was the anarchists who opposed them. Lacking arms, they seized them. Tactically disadvantaged, they overcame through force of will. When their implacable foe wished to progress, they threw them back and defeated them. With the fascist defeat, anarchists securing the city and surrounding communities, and girding for the revolution, the President of Catalonia Lluis Companys spoke to a delegated contingent of anarchists. They were Garcia Oliver, Aurelio Fernandenz, and Buenaventura Durruti. On on side of the room was the sumptuous environs of the head of state, and on the other, working men, their overalls ripped and covered in dirt from combat, lugging machine-guns that they killed fascists to seize and were then turned upon fascists. The revolutions sharp end of the spear was in the same room as the last major symbol of the status quo and he said:

“[T]he truth is that, harshly oppressed until two days ago, you have defeated the fascist soldiers. Knowing what and who you are, I can only employ the most sincere language. You’ve won. Everything is in your power. If you do not want or need me as President of Catalonia, tell me now, so that I can become another soldier in the battle against fascism.” (emphasis mine)

Can you imagine being in that room? With the weight of responsibility (even simply as a delegate) and the knowledge that this moment has historical gravity beyond anything you have ever experienced? Now, for the non-anarchists who’ve come this far, can you imagine fucking it up?

The anarchists had their shot, they could have dismantled the government and run the revolution as the committees that were already running the city saw fit. They didn’t. They walked a conciliatory path that led to years later in the war a sneering comment from a politician that the anarchists would put up with any indignity. You will have to forgive us if today we are less prepared to compromise and more dismissive of government. There is some historical context we choose to take into account.

The end was not pretty. The anarchists were constantly stymied by the government in Madrid, had to deal with the uncooperative remnants of the Generalitat of Catalonia, and in the end being were jailed in secret prisons by a now-surging Stalinist presence (thanks primarily to the fact that the USSR was the only ones providing guns). After sweet victory, defeat must have tasted that much more bitter. No one was exempt from this betrayal by erstwhile allies. George Orwell spent several nights on the street hiding from the police, Orwell’s friend, fellow volunteer from Britain, and son of a well-respected socialist died in prison due to neglect, and the fate of his Belgian commander is unknown as is the final resting place of many of his comrades.

What remains in Barcelona of anarchist history is primarily places that mark the fall and sitting in a lively tourist cafe that used to be populated by revolutionaries just highlights that. Again, you could spend a lot of time poring over George Orwell’s account in Homage to Catalonia (and it would not be time wasted), but Iberian Nature proves its worth again with their Spanish Civil War Tour. I am hugely disappointed that I was unable to take this tour. The guide is clearly dedicated to highlighting a history that is easy to miss in between the Gaudi and the gaudy of Barcelona. My schedule didn’t match up to take on the tour but here again he provides a modern history map that can at least get you started.

Some of the stuff on the map is simply gone. Things like the Lenin Barracks (where Orwell trained) are now apartments. Everything else, much like Madrid, is unmarked. An exception is made for George Orwell who has his own plaza. I cannot recommend having the guide enough: he will not only save you time finding historical sites but you will actually learn something when you stand in front of a random block of apartments.

The easiest place to start is Plaza Catalunya. This was an important space throughout Barcelona’s history and when the revolution occurred all the major factions had a presence. The communists occupied the Hotel Colon and the anarchists ran the telephone exchange (now a mobile phone brand store). These two locations feature prominently in the Barcelona May Days in which the anarchists resisted a seizure of the exchange and in the ensuing streetfighting the communists placed a machine gun overseeing the Plaza and marked out clearly the central division, both geographically and ideologically, of the anti-fascist side.

Heading south along La Rambla you’ll come to Cafe Moka. A lot of the POUM militants liked to hang out here and it was occupied during May Days by some rather skittish police. Just next door were the POUM offices themselves and George Orwell gives an account of what the building-to-building fighting was like.

Off in the windy passages to your left you’ll be able to find the only remaining street sign from the anti-fascist era. The fascists went to great trouble to wipe the cities of their oh-so-brief revolutionary fervour and the only reason this Plaza of the Unnamed Soldier sign survived is because it was on the side of a church and got covered up just prior to the fall of the Republican side. It was not uncovered until very recently as the church was undergoing renovations. Finding it isn’t too hard, just keep in mind it is very low-key and watch the sides of the church closely. It’s easy to miss as I did about three times.

More distant from the city centre is the remains of a significant AA emplacement protecting the city from fascist aircraft. I think the map is a bit off on this one, you’ll find it west of Parc del Guinardo at the end of Carrer Maria Lavernia. The entire facility is covered in graffiti and affords a great view of the city.

Your final stop should be Cemetario Montjuic. It is probably easiest to take a cab although you should plan your walk back as it is pretty far from anywhere where you’ll be able to get another one. You can also cross the width of Parc Montjuic but I’d recommend taking a bicycle. And a lot of water. Maybe lunch.

Anyways, Cemetario Montjuic is a necropolis providing above-ground burial to a huge cross-section of Barcelona’s history. You’re going to need a map because Google Maps is not good enough. Fortunately they have maps on-site that you can get, but I also have a map of Cemetario Montjuic to help get us started. In the upper left there is a nice little green space with the graves commemorating the International Brigades. These were all folks who came to fight the fascists from all over the world. They didn’t do it with a military nor because their country endorsed it. They just figured it had to be done and they came and fought from France, Britain, Canada, the US, and many many more. Some of them didn’t make it home.

Coming back towards the entrance you should visit the memorial for Durruti, his comrade Ascaso, and the educator Ferrer. Francisc Ferrer i Guardia died well before the other two, not even in the conflict with the fascists, but in conflict with the forces of reaction. Francisco Ascaso Abadía was a close comrade of Durruti’s and a dedicated revolutionary who died on the very eve of the revolution while storming a fascist position in Barcelona. Buenaventura Durruti is, to my mind, the exemplar of revolutionary behaviour. After returning to Spain from exile he was desperate for work. While he was a well known anarchist militant he was nevertheless accidentally hired with a group of other mechanics. The employer tried to quietly claim they had erroneously hired an extra man and “we’re-ever-so-sorry” but Durruti had to go. Durruti’s fellow workers almost mutinied but he talked them down because fighting for him would not have served their revolutionary aims. Things were hard for his family and his partner had to take work, often far from home. Durruti then cared for their baby and generally fulfilled the role of a stay-at-home father. When other militants would come over they would laugh to see their famous revolutionary comrade wearing an apron and giving his child a bath. “Why do you do this? It is women’s work,” they claimed, but Durruti rebuked them and explained that there was no artificial division of labour and that they were poorer revolutionaries for holding such a position. Less than a week after defeating the fascist uprising in Barcelona, Durruti was on the march. The Durruti Column, like many of the militias, was held together by a passion for a new society. Discipline as we know it was non-existent: the commanders role was to help militia-men understand how failing to fulfill their duties would let down their comrades at home and on the front.

‘Revolutionary’ discipline depends on political consciousness–on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square. The journalists who sneered at the militia-system seldom remembered that the militias had to hold the line while the Popular Army was training in the rear. And it is a tribute to the strength of ‘revolutionary’ discipline that the militias stayed in the field-at all.
– George Orwell

Durruti fought on the front and in the rear for the revolution that many of his friends had not lived to see. After relocating the column to Madrid’s defence he was shot and killed overseeing the front. His funerary procession was huge. Emma Goldman wrote:

No, Durruti is not dead. The fires of his flaming spirit lighted in all who knew and loved him, can never be extinguished. Already the masses have lifted high the torch that fell from Durruti’s hand. Triumphantly they are carrying it before them on the path Durruti had blazoned for many years. The path that leads to the highest summit of Durruti’s ideal. This ideal was Anarchism–the grand passion of Durruti’s life. He had served it utterly. He remained faithful to it until his last breath.

Though the conflict still raged, the death of Durruti marks the end of the Revolution. His memory was used to advocate for the normalization of the militias and the introduction of the ‘Popular’ Army, something he would have vehemently opposed. In the end the government had to turn to conscription, everyone knew they weren’t fighting for a fundamental change anymore, it was simply a difference of degrees. Through the dark days of the fascist regime, anarchists continued to resist by building organization and by paramilitary actions. Today the libertarian socialist vehicle of the Revolution, the union CNT (Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo) still exists and operates openly under the new democracy. It is well worth visiting the CNT bookstore (La Rosa de Foc) for a wide selection of Spanish libertarian literature, a decent selection of books in English, reprints of Civil War era propaganda, and excellent souvenirs (I have a key chain celebrating 100 years of the CNT).

There are some famous squats spread throughout Barcelona, in particular there was one good one along Gran Via near Plaza Catalunya. The squats are in general very a-political, friendly, and the very public ones offer some good services (like free internet!). On the last day of my stay a series of historical-memory exhibits were setup throughout the city commenting on life under the fascists, so it is a significantly more aware city then elsewhere in Spain. The significant anarcho-syndicalist presence also means that connections with the Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) can show some big dividends.

Girona

I was only in Girona for an afternoon, but after my wandering through the phenomenal Barrio Viejo (Old Town) I discovered a full Civil War era air raid shelter and it appeared you were allowed to go down and check it out during normal hours. It was a bit of a shock because this was the first piece of Civil War history that I’d seen explicitly labelled with its historical context.

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I have covered a lot but I missed so much! Please feel free to send me information that you think should be featured. And not just the stuff in other cities that I didn’t get to, there is also the vibrant squatting scene, the resistance to the Franco regime, off-the-chain radical union activity, and much more. I don’t view this as a complete document, but as an initial contribution to helping people have a meaningful anarchist experience while in Spain.

So I took a lot of panorama photos on my trip and I’ve decided to show them all off here. These are on Facebook too, but because it sizes them down so I encourage you to take a second look. Hello again to the many people I met, I miss you all very much and hope you will stop and say hello!

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[I wrote this early in the summer. It's been chopped down quite a bit since then, but that is more so I don't pretend I'm an article. That said I still think this particular polemic has value and I hope you'll read it in the spirit of a proposal for the future of our species.]

I’m tired of hearing about the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m not saying that the collapse of Deepwater Horizon is not a tragedy of nature, but because it is a tragedy of humanity. That is oil we could have USED. It’s now spewing into the water and we have to use more oil just to clean it up. Even in capitalist terms this a an utter waste, but in survival-of-the-species terms the Gulf Oil Spill is an utter travesty and its time we started speaking out about what this means in absolute terms for all of humanity.

Most environmentalists treat oil the way Christians treat sin. They have it backwards: Oil. Is. God. Oil is the modern gift of Prometheus. We owe oil a debt of gratitude because it rocketed us out of the Malthusian Trap. We built everything on oil and it is thanks to oil, *not* despite it, that we are fortunate enough that we can even contemplate moving away from it to sustainable ultra-long-term alternatives. If we fail to recongize the central importance of this resource then every single fucking drop of it that we waste today is a year sooner where we will not be able to maintain this society.

Let me break it down for you if you are not following: Every barrel of oil that spews into the Gulf is a kid, generations from today, who is going to catch AIDS from a minor procedure because we can’t fucking afford to throw out the surgical tubing. Seriously. Go donate blood, or for a closer look, plasma. Do you know how much tubing and plastic is thrown out every time someone donates blood? Its shocking. Its a waste but it saves lives so we conside it worth it. You wonder about our priorities when you realize we use oil to manufacture plastic forks because we’re too fucking lazy to wash utensils. If someone said to you “I will give you plastics used to save lives or plastics to make forks, but not both” you would pick the former because you’re smart. There will come a time when your children will not be able to choose because we used up all the oil today like stupid fuck-wads.

Fuck corporate interest, fuck national interest, hell you can fuck ecological interest! This is a matter of import for all of humanity and its time to fucking act like it. We can’t just stop using oil, but we can start to use it more wisely. When dealing with centrally important resources like oil we can’t allow profit today to have a veto on the future of the species. Transitioning from oil is not an easy process, nor is it a short one. In fact we may never be 100% free from oil. As a consequence of that must husband this resource carefully or risk the human story ending in the barbarism of a new Dark Ages until the Earth eventually burns to a cinder with the Sun.

*BANG*

Suddenly my big stupid grin is a mask of horror. On the plus side it solves a particular problem I’ve been trying to deal with, namely how to describe having a good time in a way that is interesting. It solves it because now I am having a very very very bad time. The loud bang could be any number of things but my first impulse is to check if something is shearing off the bike. I stop so I don’t get too far away from anything that has fallen off, but my heart sinks when I hear the loud hissing noise. I know that noise and soon my rear tire sinks as well.

I have a flat tire. I haven’t mentioned this but I live in fear of flat tires, in particular pinch flats as they happen to me quite commonly. A pinch flat generally occurs when you slam into a curb or rock with your rear tire and it pinches the tube causing a small leak. Anyone familiar with flat tires should be able to recognize that this isn’t a pinch flat, but thats what I’m thinking and I’m blaming myself for it. I have done my utmost to baby my rear tire because pinch flats more often occur when you seat the tube into the tire shittily and the tube is compressed between the wheel rim and the edge of the tire. This is a brand new bike and I haven’t replaced the tube so avoiding flats has been my number one priority because the odds of a pinch flat occurring after the first go up quite a bit once I’m involved. I’m really choked.

Up until this point, its been a great ride. The weather was beautiful, the beach was pretty. Hell, I went for a soak at the last beach and have spent the last 30 minutes riding in my swim trunks drying off. The road turned into a trail that followed one of the many picturesque canals and my stupid grin was part realizing that I had really gotten into this bike-packing vibe and part amusement at the boatload of people singing some song in French about bicycles as I ride past and wave. I was comfortable as the crazy guy on a bike and it felt good.

Until now. Now I have a flat. I’m kicking myself “You should have paid more attention, obviously there was a rock that you slammed into, all this work babying your rear tire and you get comfortable for one second and pay more attention to the boat than to the trail and now you have fucked yourself. You’re fucked you know that right? That scary storm cloud that loomed over the beach? The one that turned the playful soak into a ‘maybe I should get going now’ race against the weather? That thing is going to dump a load of rain on you and good luck getting your tube fixed then!”

So. Optimistic thoughts all round as I start taking off my panniers. The boat chugs past and they’re still singing my song and I have to put on a grin and wave because if they realize how choked I am they’ll ask me whats wrong except I won’t understand. Easier to put on a happy face until they’re gone. I unmount the rear wheel and am about to remove the tire when I realize I should check for external damage… and I find a twig sticking out of the tire. Removing it I discover it is almost as long as my index finger and almost all of that was deep inside the tire. I contemplate it and how bad luck strikes at weird times and then snap it. Well. I try to snap it… it won’t even bend! It takes me a good long time to even bend it and I’m afraid of stomping of it because I think it’ll do to my foot what it just did to my tire! Finally it snaps and it turns out it is in fact a rusted piece of metal. Oof. Not good.

Once you get the tube out you can normally hear where the pinch is by pumping in some air. I don’t hear jack shit, but fortunately the canal is right there so option 2 is soak it in water and look for bubbles (I love the bubbles). I look at where the hole should be and discover not one, not two, but THREE punctures in my tube. I’m in shock. This is the most damage I’ve ever seen happen to a tube. No wonder the bang was so loud. I’m not even convinced this is repairable and I certainly don’t have time to find out so I get my spare out. In the end I get the spare tire in, switch my pump to the new valve type, and carefully seat it and then after some pumps confirm that it is seated properly (it wasn’t). An hour after the first panicky moments, I’m ready for the road again.

And now I think that this was again one of those moments of becoming comfortable on my bike trek. I started out ultra-professional, helmet, etc. Sorry mom, but I’ve been biking without a helmet since Barcelona. I just can’t be bothered anymore (for the kids at home: helmets are required for mountain biking because you will definitely slam your head into something in that sport). Earlier I finally was able to shed the jersey for swim trunks. Lance Armstrong would probably slap me for that. None of that matters because now I am a true bike hobo. I can do what I want, and when the flat comes I am no longer frightened. Hell, I think I may have finally seated it properly so I should be good until the next mysterious metal twig.

An email excerpt:

Jackie: Lots of successful campaigns (most, I’d venture to say) were preceded by many failures or only partial successes. Also, how are we defining these? Do we get active members from them? Do we build up an organizer? Do we learn some good tactics? Do we raise class consciousness? All are valid as well as the obvious “Do we organize a local.”
Me: Also, I think ‘raising class consciousness’ as a metric is a cop out. Its what we say when we did shit all but talked to people. It’s unverifiable, generally not useful without actual organization around it, and mostly just what we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night.

I was lucky enough to participate in probably my first serious action (i.e. it produced tangible results) here in Catalonia. It involved a lot of standing around and I ironically ended up thinking a lot about how this action reinforces class consciousness (after having slagged it mercilessly in the preceding email). So here’s the details:
It was an information picket at a suburb university, we had a two-sided handout in wordy and less-wordy form. There were multiple access points but it was manageable with about three groups. I was initially confused about the objectives, and clearly everybody else was as well. Before arriving I thought we were doing a full blockade, but later thought we were just handing out flyers, then later still I was informed that our objective was to ruin traffic around the university. It became obvious that the objective was to functionally block the university without necessarily announcing it. That didn’t require actually stopping everyone, which is an important distinction.

What I noticed during the initial phase, when we were just pamphleting, is that after a certain period of time the pamphlet became the passport. We started getting cars who already had a pamphlet and it was almost cute the way they would desperately wave it in order to get past us. What I realized was that this was an assent to our power. Whether or not they acknowledged the legitimacy of our makeshift passport, they acknowledged our power. Not only that, we can have a more lasting effect with the ‘pamphlet as passport’: If these people plan on leaving campus and returning, they have to carry that pamphlet with them the entire day. All of a sudden a shitty piece of propaganda has acquired the status of one of those critical things you carry around with you every day.

All of this was subtle ‘could-have-beens’ that I don’t think really sunk in for anyone else. Is it because I’m grasping here, or is it because we don’t normally think in terms of us having power? I think is is the latter, raising class consciousness needs to have a component that acknowledges the fact that we are using and wielding power. We don’t really have the ability to be surgical with it so it mostly takes the form of “We will fuck your shit up if we don’t get what we want.” This kind of recognition of the core truth of a strike action is critical. The ‘what we want’ part can be fair, equitable, and irrelevant without a foundation of ‘we can and will fuck your shit up.‘

Class consciousness is not just “Oh my buddy and I at work have the same grievances.” It is the acknowledgement of our common power and our willingness to use it for our benefit. Exercising that power, even in small ways like pamphlet-as-passport, demonstrate class consciousness and that is the bread-and-butter of day-to-day class struggle. The producers have a demand of the managers, they improve their position by demonstrating their class consciousness. But my ideal isn’t to have a society where the producers are simply in a better bargaining position, it is to switch the balance of power entirely. Here I think a second event from the action is instructive.

Eventually the cars started to get backed up pretty bad, especially when we were only allowing one car through at a time. Being the foreigner who couldn’t speak the language, a good role for me was clearly traffic direction. So I directed traffic effectively for awhile. When one of the organizers came to check up on me I queried whether we were trying to fuck up traffic or distribute propaganda, because we were doing really good of the former, but I wasn’t sure how effective the latter was when people were furious for having to wait 10-20 minutes to get anywhere. Fortunately we were trying to (with success) disrupt traffic.

But why bother in the first place with traffic direction? Not managing people would create additional havoc that adds to our existing disruption, thereby adding to the basis of our class power. I think I instinctively want to prove that we are capable of managing and maintaining some sense of order because how we act now reflects on how we would act if we become dominant. If the population at large only ever sees us causing a mess then they will inevitably turn to the forces of reaction to defend them from the demon anarchists. I’m not saying this should stay the cudgel of the working class — it should still come down like a pile of bricks on our target and when the dust has cleared I am happy with leaving the mess for the ‘haves’ to clean up. But managing the unintended consequences of actions should be part of any strategy which has a goal of fundamentally altering the balance of power. In the case of our action, we could have let the drivers eventually cause a traffic accident. Without our intervention it was not a question of if, but of when.

If our objective is to solely cause enough havoc to force bosses and bureaucrats to cede to our demands, then sure, let the cars crash and burn. But the secondary function of revolutionary unions has always been to prepare its membership to assume the duties of a functional society and I’m not sure we do that. We must be more capable at brinkmanship while simultaneously being able to manage the potential fallout of it. Within revolutionary unions we understand the need and execution of brinkmanship better than mainstream unions, but I’m not convinced we’re preparing for control.

Whenever you make a demand such as “don’t cut workers wages”, people will get up and ask you “what should the boss do instead to cut costs?” anarchist-communists shouldn’t then sit down and draw him up a business plan, but say managing the business is the managers’ business, we care about our own interests.

–Joseph Kay, Libcom.org

Radicals are good at raising class consciousness. The quote characterizes that sense of a common class interest and, more importantly, how we relate to the managers of capital. I want to consider what we should address in our direct action if we ever want the managers’ business to be our business. We have half the formula in place: Our actions should demonstrate power to the boss and if possible the public. That achieves whatever our short-term objective, be it shutting down a university or getting a workers back-wages. I propose that we must also consider collateral damage beyond our objective because this demonstrates responsibility to the public. Having the public recognize both power and responsibility being displayed in class struggle swings their support away from conservative reaction and paves the way for the abolishment of class roles. The public will see the abolishment of class roles as a reversal of positions and it is critical that they see working class people as responsible enough to hold their new class position. To exercise class power without showing the ability to manage the after effects on bystanders is to shoot the enterprise of revolutionary unions in the foot.

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.

Start of the week, I get my stuff together and ride my bike to the train station and take the train into Barcelona. Today is determined bike riding day. When I get to Passeig de Gracia station in Barcelona I start biking north.

And bike straight into a hill. See my objective is Parc Guinardo which is supposed to have some old air raid shelters from the Revolution, but I mistakenly believed the Repubicans would avoid putting their shelters on GIANT EXPOSED HILLS. I walk a pretty good chunk of this but it quickly becomes worth it as the vista is incredible. I have photos for an entire additional panorama that I don’t need because the view just kept improving as you climbed up.

Eventually I found the air raid shelters (actually bunkers with emplacements for anti-aircraft guns, turns out I confused this with another site) which are actually sort of open and you can walk around. The entire site is coated in graffiti, most of it pretty good. After I head along the hill to Parc Carmel and Parc Guell since I can see them without losing too much of my height before the ride back to the center of the city. I whiz thru Parc Carmel which is better maintained that Parc Guinardo, but ultimately less pretty in my opinion. At some point I cross into Parc Guell and then all of a sudden BLAM walls of tourists. I have no idea that I am in Anton Guadi’s park, all I know is these damned tourists are ruining what would be a fucking awesome roadway to cruise down. They force me to stop periodically and I realize the roadway itself is kind of cool and take photos. I miss most of the rest of the park and zip past the Sagrada Familia then turn around and take some photos there too. I’m pretty set though, I get to the coast and head towards Parc Montjuic.

Within this Parc is a cemetery that contains the graves of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia (founder of the Modern School), Francisco Ascaso (died fighting the fascist uprising), and Buenaventura Durruti (a solid anarchist who deserves to be on everyones t-shirts more than Che Gueverra). I am roundly defeated in my quest for the graves by the fact that the Parc itself is enormous, on another giant hill, and there is no good signage to find the cemetery. Eventually it is getting too late to continue so I ride back into town. I manage to find the Plaza of the Unknown Soldier when I get back to La Rambla. This was somewhat chancy and I begin to get annoyed with the Spanish and apparently Catalonian resistance to signing their Civil War history. The Plaza is special because it was one of many named during the Revolution (much as Gran Via in Madrid used to be CNT Street), but most of those plaza and street markings were scrubbed clean when the fascists won. This plaza marking survived because it got covered up just before the fascists won and survived all the years of dictatorship until finally they were renovating the church and discovered the sign. And there it is today, a simple painted reminder that someone else named the streets here once.

I head around doing some tasks, like picking up some posters from the CNT bookstore for the Anarchist Bookfair Silent Auction (getting those onto my bike was fun!), getting sent to three different Movistar outlets before I found out that to fix my phone I just had to restart it (I’m not used to firmware with significant OS bugs!), and then it was time to head back to Granollers.

I’m already an hour behind when I wanted to leave, which sucks because I’m going to try it on my bike again because I’m pretty sure I know how I screwed up last time. I am well into twilight when I screw up differently and end up heading towards Vilanova de Valles which is going a bit too far east and putting an extra hill between me and Granollers. Rather than backtracking along the road I bike on the service roads in the adjacent fields in the near-dark. That was really refreshing… in fact the entire ride had been an improvement, though it helps not to have the bags. Eventually I get back on course but get a bit turned around in an industrial area. I push past a construction barricade intending to just hop back onto the legit pavement on the other side of it when I realize the soon to be paved road seems to go in my direction… but right now its just gravel. So do I stay or do I go? What if it just ends (this has happened too many times already and by now we’re in night)? Fortunately I notice a guy walking along the construction so I ask him and I miss about half of the details but it seems like I should just follow the road and eventually I get to Granollers. And it works! I arrive triumphantly in Granollers and pick up some donairs for Sonia and I.

The train ride from Zaragoza to Barcelona is surprisingly eventful. As I’m racing to the elevator to get my bike on the train (having timed things closely yet again), I run into another fellow with a bike and panniers. I go down first and get my bike on board and then help him get his bike on board and we talk for a bit. His name is Gorki (thats Basque for Jorge) and his plan is to bike around Corsica because he’s heard they are very anti-touristy and independent. He’s interested in that so off he goes with his reliable old bike. We talk off an on over the long train ride, slowly exhausting our combined Spanish and English but when we get to Barcelona we stay together for a bit, if only to watch our bikes while we go to the bathroom and later get food.

Later I begin to wonder if I’ve tapped into some sort of bike-packer mojo because as we sit in the park eating bananas, bread, and chorizo another grizzled fellow with panniers and bike rides up and casually says “Hola chicos.” This guy is a Polish dude who used to work in Iceland before the financial crisis. He reminds me *a lot* of Rene, the guy who motivated this entire trip in the first place, my peerless vagrant. I’d love to hang out longer but by this time I’m already burning serious daylight and my notes on my path are rather rough.

Biking out of the city turns out to be really pretty as it turns out there is a bike/pedway along the river (really, a creek) and I know that I don’t have to worry about getting back onto the road until there are bridges that cross it. After getting onto the road and going for a ways I roll into a towns traffic circle and find some perplexing signage. There are signs pointing me to Granollers, where I’m going, but the road number doesn’t match what I have written down. Sometimes its better to avoid following the signs and stay on your road, but going straight through the traffic circle doesn’t seem to have the right road number either. I figure following signs is better and follow them through a couple of intersections feeling pretty good about myself. Hell, there are signs from Granollers, so I must be pretty clo– OH MY GOD THAT IS A HIGHWAY ITS TOO LATE TO TURN AROUND, at which point I am reduced to yelling “QUE MAL! QUE MAL! QUE MAL!”

I spent most of the remainder of the ride humming rhythmic variants of “I’m going to die!” to myself. I don’t want to talk what trying to bike across a merging lane is like. Successfully merging onto my originally planned route is probably one of the single most satisfying/relieving experiences of my life. It gave my arrival something of a triumphant air when I finally made it to Sonia’s house.

Sonia is pretty wicked and should be on CouchSurfing in my opinion. If CS lost half its Spanish population and gained Sonia then the site would still have improved drastically. We go out to grab some food and drop by a student friend of hers where we talk a bit about sites and I first get twigged onto the existence of a George Orwell tour. When her friends ask who I am she says I’m her “okupa” which is what they call political squatters here. I think this is awesome. There are plans for actions on June 8th around the general surliness that local labour has reacted to government cutbacks with and I’m already pumped that I can tag along.

The remainder of the week is lazy. I don’t even do anything other than walk around Granollers for the first day. The next day I head into Barcelona really late in the day, run into an American when trying to site myself in front of a bus map so he tags along as I head into the heart of the city because he needs a hostel and I figure its more likely to be down there than anywhere else.

On the way we run into a squat. Or occupied building. I don’t know what the right term is, but its illegal and kind of awesome. We spend a good couple of hours at least (on top of some serious walking) just chilling out. They point me to the CNT bookstore where I spend another hour, and then I figure I should get back. The following day I want to try and find some Orwell/Civil War sites and succeed partially before I have to head to the squat because there is a hackspace scheduled for this evening. I blow an hour and a half there waiting (knowing spain, the thing would really only get started an hour after the schedule said) but the only people who show up look more like dumpster divers of the organic rather than electronic sort. I spend Friday in a bit of a funk, but in the evening some friends of Sonia’s are going up to Costa Brava for a weekend of boating. We drive out in a very nice compact SUV listening to good tunes as I watch the country-side roll by. I realize I miss music. This is reinforced at the end of the weekend and I resolve to recharge my Canadian phone so I can listen to it while I cycle (since my spanish phone is being a piece of shit about detecting that I have music).

I’m not entirely sure if was a language simplification or shorthand, but I’m told that everyone other than Sonia, Susanna, and I own factories on this weekend getaway. But hell, fuck it, I’ll balance fraternizing with class enemies by shit-disturbing everywhere else. Also, it was totally worth it. Costa Brava (and Tamariu in specific) is Capital-P Pretty. I’m MacArthuring a lot but there was definitely a “I will return” moment when I left. Our first night is pretty low-key but we settle in and plan for the boat ride tomorrow.

They have a life jacket which I eschew for the less embarrassing floaty yellow tube. Boats are awesome and I begin formulating a life-plan based around living on one after a fellow in a bigger boat who knew Ramone floated in and cooked some steak on HIS BARBECUE. I’m one of the few people who gets into the water with any frequency as apparently it is cold. It’s not warm, but I’ve been in worse, and all you gotta do is not sit on your ass. And the sun is shining so all you have to do is dry off and eventually you warm back up. Jordi tries out a kayak they have and he ends up flipping it after he gets quite a ways from the boat. Some people from another boat have to help him get back in. When Ramone’s buddy Pere-Juan (Pedro-Juan) shows up in his bigger boat we switch over and have a much-anticipated lunch there. As the sun wears on and I worry more about sunburn we make the trek back down the coast and we troop into our pension.

That evening (and the following lunch) I probably consume more seafood than I’ve eaten in my entire life (and this includes an attempt at salmon at Laura’s behest in Madrid). Shellfish is still, no matter how you look at it, fucking weird. But its ok, and sometimes the sauce is awesome. Well-prepared sea bass still doesn’t compete with good chicken, but it would be an excellent selection for a change of pace. This bodes well for the life-on-a-boat plan.

Storm clouds over Madrid make me glad I’m wearing my biking rain pants. The train ride is pretty, but its clear that the weather report on the region was accurate.

But when I get to Zaragoza it is a beautiful day! No couchsurfers have gotten back to me so I head to the hostal I know about. Albergue Zaragoza is clearly more Spanish-oriented than Cat’s Hostel so I muddle my way through the reception, figuring out that I was good for one night but the next night might be a problem but that I could check out and check in if there are cancellations. When I ask him to repeat himself just to make sure I understand I’m gratified to learn that I managed to get the gist. I run into an American and we go for a walk, later we get an Australian for dinner.

Zaragoza is a very nice city and just about the perfect amount of busy. There is an enormous church here amongst other things and I’m thinking that my original plan to justbike to Monte Oscuro may need to be modified. The next day I do the check out and check in dance and rather than just get one more night, I get two more nights. Then I need to get some oil on my chain as I haven’t done any maintenance since I began the trip… this involves a short trip to a local bike store where I manage to get the first syllable of the word for ‘rag’ wrong (I was saying ‘frapo’ but it is ‘trapo’). Some confusion follows but we come to an understanding and once everything is ready to go, I start biking at about 1230.

The long and shallow climb out of the valley puts me on the some highlands where I see giant windmills. Windmills are pretty much everywhere in this region, and there is something majestic about how they peek out over hills and lazily spin in the wind. Even though I know how big they really are (having seen them in California before) it is always a shock to get up to them and really see it. After visiting a windmill I become convinced that I have either over-shot my goal or that it is ridiculously far away. In the end I head north to reconnect with the regional road I had been using previously and this ends up pointing me straight towards a line of high hills that I had dismissed as not the mountain range I was looking for.

The road I end up on leads me to Perdiguera from which a path leads to the hills. So of course I head towards them. Eventually the road gives out so I can’t bike, but by now I can see a ruined building on the highest hill, but behind several ridges. I climb one ridge and find out it ends before reaching the main one that I am shooting for.

I backtrack and climb the adjacent ridge which I had avoided because it had more thorny bushes. When I realize this ridge dead ends as well I consider climbing down into the ravine and trying the next ridge. I have a feeling that I will always need to climb one more ridge and I’ve been walking for quite some time up here. The wind is strong and moisture-less so I’m a bit chapped but I decide to go for it.

Having made my way up from the ravine I look about and realize I still have a huge climb through the ever present thorny bushes. I consider my situation. I’ve left my water at my bike, partly because I only have one bottle left and I still need to conserve it for the ride back to Zaragoza. I have no water, I have hiked far enough off trail that I am at real risk of becoming lost, I am unsure how easy it is to even backtrack, and it is getting later in the day. I think about how cool that will sound in my blog and then keep hiking. By now I’m periodically just crashing through thornbushes. I have convinced myself that the ruined building is either a Fascist or Republican position from the Civil War. I don’t even know for sure that I’m on the right RIDGE let alone precisely where the front lies, but that building up there, it must be from the war. It keeps me going. When I reach the highest point on the ridge… I discover that I have to descend another ravine and climb again.

At this point common sense manages to rally and come back. I turn back, and am rather surprised by the distance I have to hike back. I finally get back to my bike and ride back to Perdiguera where I take a break on a park bench and clean all the thorns and seeds from my shoes and socks. By now its 4 or 5 and I left at noon. I figure I’ll be fine because its mostly downhill, but I could really use some food. I left without breakfast and had expected to find a decent place to grab food along the way. Since leaving the hostel the best I’ve found is a strawberry popsicle. The gas station outside Perdiguera doesn’t have anything worth buying so I decide to coast towards Zaragoza.

The wind is now in my face, and while I can maintain 20-30 km/hr it is only thru pedaling downhill. At one point I reach a sheltered length and get up to 40 km/hr, then the road turns into the wind and I promptly lose 10 km/hr. The best I find is a gas station with the Spanish equivalent of Ho Hos, which I promptly devour. I make it to the hostel, take a badly needed shower, and then have to wait until dinner is done. But I make a huge amount of spaghetti which is good because I need a huge amount. I hang out with an odd/older australian chap and a german. I notice that my legs are pretty well sunburned. I stay up late on my laptop because there is a party in the building and some assholes are showing how they can sound just like a rooster. My plan is to stay up working on photos until they go back downstairs or go to bed, but eventually they defeat my remaining energy reserves and I go to bed.

I try to sleep in the next day, but it is not to be. I try to do the get up and have breakfast then sleep plan, but end up huffing about on my computer and then finally getting tired enough to go back to bed. After my siesta I eat some food and try to go out for a walk but am eventually driven back by a headache. On my way back I stumble across a couple of volleyball pitches that are stacked with latinos on team and in audience. It’s fun to watch for a while, though I’m curious why no one ever spiked… maybe some sort of pact because of the court size.

Zaragoza is definitely worth seeing, but I probably wouldn’t expect more than two days of attractions. In the end I’m hoping my host in Barcelona doesn’t expect me to be a super-jumpy tourist as I’d be fine with a break at this point.