Strong use of dynamic blue lighting in our Christmas street ambience this year. And you have to love those jolly red and white stripes as well. Ho, ho, ho!
I took this photo on Thursday night of the paddy wagons that were trawling along behind yet another protest march through central Barcelona (this one the second demo of the week against the Spanish government's proposed new education bill, also managing to group in a general protest about health, education and welfare cuts). And I must confess, when I stepped out into the street with my little digital snappy, it was a bit of a "fuck you" moment. You see, policing may be a dirty job wherever it's done, but the Catalan police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, are frankly a dreadful commercial for Catalunya. And on Thursday, police leaders and political bosses were forced to climb down from their Orwellian denial of a recent terrible incident - in November, Barcelona woman Ester Quintana lost an eye to what was almost certainly a police rubber bullet, which the Mossos had steadfastly claimed they couldn't possibly have fired. Not that they have exactly eaten humble pie now - the Catalan Interior Minister Felip Puig saved his skin by sacrificing the head of the riot squad, after it became clear they actually did use rubber bullets in that very area.
What happened to Ester (she tells her story at length in this video, subtitled in English) has been happening regularly over the last few years - apparently seven Catalans have lost eyes to police rubber bullets in the last five years. My memory from press reports is that several were just passers-by, and I sincerely doubt if any of them were shown to have committed violent acts. They were just there; in a densely populated city like Barcelona, people are always "just there" - ironically, that is actually one of the things I've always found wonderful about this city: so many people packed so close together and yet the street vibe is pretty easy going. Obviously police are going to need strategies for crowd control at times. But what they definitely don't need is a crowd control weapon used in a way which actually provokes crowds and ends up destroying the lives of random individuals.
Hmmm... written two blog posts, both about demonstrations. Oh well, I guess there will be a bit of that, since this blog is intended to have something of a political focus, and I live right at the political epicentre of the city, where we probably average about a mani a day. Or I might get bored and write about...ooh, love or something.
