My Barcelona Holiday Snaps.

     I recently had a short break in Barcelona, and found it a fascinating place. We walked everywhere and covered a fair bit of the city, and saw the usual contrasts we are accustomed to in capitalist cities. There are places of beauty and tranquility,

of course that doesn't mean that all is well and everybody is happy. As a matter of fact there seemed to be some people who had a distinct dislike for banks!!

    We also went to a large squat, but alas, it had been evicted some time earlier. The front of the building was covered in a magnificent mural, what a shame it was boarded up, the usual state repression on self expression.

    Another notable sign of state repression was watching the African migrants selling their wares on the busy streets of the city. They had developed a wonderful strategy for making a quick get-away when ever a police presence appeared. All their wares were spread out on a sheet, the corners of the sheet had thin ropes tied to them and the seller held the ropes, which were tied together, were held in one hand, as soon as the state enforcers appeared they simply pulled the ropes and slung the sheet over their shoulder and scampered off in different directions. While sitting sipping coffee at a pavement cafe, I saw them quickly melt into the crowd on two occasions as a police van came slowly round a corner. I always marvel at human ingenuity.

   We also visited the CNT library, and found it full of very interesting "things" and people, though language was a problem.

 

     However, the highlight of the visit was to the "Local" a wonderful anarchist centre, which has been there for 27 years. It was an Aladdin's cave of books, t-shirts, badges, CDs, history and wonderful friendly people. There were rooms for meetings and other resources for helping them with their campaigns, both local and national. I left feeling a bit envious, as we here in Glasgow have nothing remotely like their "Local". Sadly when I got home I discovered I hadn't taken a photo of that wonderful centre, so all I have is the memory.

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Their Power Is Illusionary.

       A week away indulging myself, coffee, reading, walking, looking and talking, but as they say, a week is a long time in politics. In that week there were riots in Hamburg, in Rio de Janeiro the cops dragged an eighteen year old youth up a dark alleyway and beat him to death, in Barcelona there was a weekend of demonstrations against austerity. Also in Barcelona, October 20 saw an animal rights demonstration in the city centre, and on October 22, in Rome there were protests against evictions. Here in the UK, Chinatown in London shut down in protest at UK Border Agency raids. If you work your way through the various news avenues, you'll find these sort of events occurring across the globe. City after city sees the population in discontent, disgust and anger, at a system the produces an abundance of wealth, but leaves the people who produce that wealth, in various levels of poverty and deprivation, a system that requires violence and repression to keep it in place.


 

 

      It is obvious that this system is not what the people want, it is forced on them by the power of the state and their masters, the financial/corporate Mafia. It can be destroyed, and a system created that sees to the needs of all our people, those who produce and transport everything on this Earth. The planet is being raped and plundered, and we are being shafted, by a small well organised bunch of parasites, but their power is illusionary, they have power if you believe they have power, however, without our obedience, they are nothing.

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Another Squat Under Threat.

      The system never rests, it continues with its defence day and daily, it has tremendous resources at its disposal. It has its so called "justice system" (protection of corporate property) backed up by its propaganda machine, that babbling brook of bullshit, the media, and it has its military style police force to back up the dictates of its "justice system". It is with these forces that another squat is under threat, this time in Barcelona. The occupants have asked for support and solidarity from across the world. The system may have powerful resources, but we have all the power in the world, if we come together in solidarity when attacked. Despite the system's well organised power, this world can be ours.

This from Contra Info:

 

 

      The only criteria we have for support is that it be marked by the very same political content we have had in the Expropriated Bank the whole time. We have always gone for self-organization, autonomy and horizontality in our struggle against capitalism. Therefore, even though it is Catalunya Caixa that is bringing up the case, our struggle is still against the whole of the system in which this bank takes part, in which we also include political parties, mass media and all of the State’s institutions. Any display of solidarity is very welcome as long as it respects this: we don’t want the judge to like us, we don’t want to appear on TV and we don’t want any kind of support from a political party.

Read the fulll article HERE:

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THE COLLAPSE OF PARTY POLITICS.

      Spain has the highest rate of unemployment in the EU, at present it stands at above 25% and rising, its economy is shrinking rapidly, and still the financial Mafia want more "austerity" heaped on the people. When is enough, enough?
This from International Journal of Socialist Renewal:

By Dick Nichols, Barcelona

       October 28, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The economic, social and territorial crisis in the Spanish state is morphing into a crisis of the two-party system that has provided Popular Party (PP) or Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) administrations for the last 30 years. Basque, Catalan and Galician nationalist forces (left and right), and the United Left (IU) and Union, Progress and Democracy (UPyD) parties are gaining support. However, only a brave gambler would put serious money on the future evolution of this crisis. While the two-party set-up has been severely weakened, a replacement party with enough popular support to impose a different solution has yet to emerge.

       Some contrasting numbers from the latest Metroscopia polls point to some contradictions in popular attitudes that help understand why.

        First, the actions and leaderships of the PP and PSOE have hit levels of disapproval never seen before. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy inspires little or no confidence in 84%, including in 64% of PP voters. PSOE opposition leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba inspires little or no confidence in 90%, including in 77% of PSOE voters.

The demands of the September 25-29, 2012, “Seize the parliament” protest got 71% support.
Read the full article HERE:

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ONE OF THE MANY STATE MURDERS.

 

         On September 25, 1973 in Barcelona, in what was supposed to be a well planned operation by Franco's plain clothes police, there was an attempt to arrest two anarchists, Salvador Puig Antich and Xavier Garriga. A shoot-out took place and a young Guardia Civil, Francisco Anguas Barragan was killed, Salvador Puig Antich was badly wounded, and arrested. He was tried by court martial and condemned to death. Though there was persistent doubt about his guilt, and demonstrations in many countries across the world to change the sentence to life in prison, Franco refused. On March 2 1974, at 9:40am, in a cell in Barcelona Central Prison, 25 year old Salvador Puig Antich was executed by garrote. On the same day Heinz Chez was also executed by garrote, these were the last two executions by this method in Spain.

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THE ROSE OF FIRE.

         As the "deficit reduction" and the "austerity cuts" bit ever deeper into the living standards of the ordinary people, what shape will the protests take? I always say, workers know your history, there are lessons to be learnt there.

This from Crimethinc.com

The History

“La rosa de foc ha tornat!” This was the expression of excitement on many people’s lips during the general strike throughout Spain on March 29, 2012. While the unions estimated an impressive 77% turnout, it was the fires blackening the skies over Barcelona that everyone talked about.

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, when more anarchist attentats and bombings were carried out in Barcelona than in any other two countries combined and dozens of churches and police stations were burned to the ground, the city was affectionately known as la rosa de foc, “the rose of fire.” The period of“revolutionary gymnastics” in the ’20s and ’30s foregrounded the city as a laboratory of subversion for anarchist struggles worldwide, a role that was taken further with the revolution of July 1936. The struggle of Catalan maquis—guerrillas—during the Franco years was the precursor to the guerrilla struggles that blossomed in Europe and Latin America in the ’60s and ’70s; in some cases, it was the vector along which experience and materials were directly passed on. But this history has largely been lost, thanks to the rupture imposed by fascism and democracy, and Barcelona lost its significance on the revolutionary stage.

With the backing of the democratic powers, forty years of dictatorship and repression effectively suppressed the anarchist movement in Catalunya and the rest of the Spanish state. A great deal of pro-anarchist sentiment remained, but this was dissipated when the rebounding social revolution was sidetracked by the transition to democracy in the 1970s. Hundreds of thousands of people were taking the street, hoping to pick up the torch that had been dropped in ’36, but the government played its cards well, the returning CNT played its cards poorly, and democracy carried the day. Since then, the city has been tamed, if not outright pacified, and the rose of fire forgotten.

Read the full article.

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IT'S A MAN MADE SYSTEM OF EXPLOITATION.

        All the reporting and discussion on the "crisis" always refers to the situation as if it were something mechanical, beyond the ability of us mere humans to control or even alter. What they never hint at is that it is not mechanical but human. It is human decisions made for short term selfish human gain. Individuals sitting in their marble halls making decisions as the shift billions in cash around the world, with no other reason than to increase those billions. The human cost, the effect on the lives of the billions of people adversely affected by those decisions is of no consequence. They neither notice nor care, unless it might adversely affect their gambling results. It is not something set in tablets of stone that we have to sit around soaking up the punishment inflicted by the financial mafia, we can take control of all the production and distribution setting up a society based on communities that see to the needs of all our people. We don't need the cabal shareholders that live like parasites of our labours, but they do needs us. Capitalist economics is not some phenomenon of the natural world, it is a man made system of exploitation, it could be wiped away if the will of the people so desire. A better world is possible, just think of a world based on mutual aid, co-operation, sustainability and humanity. Or we could accept this world of injustice, poverty and inequality and leave our grandchildren, a world of exploiation devoid of hope.

        The following is from "This is our job", originally translated from Liberación Total

        Street protests against the attacks of capitalist States on our living conditions have recently spread throughout Europe. Despite the strikes, actions, and massive demonstrations, and despite the broad movements that haven’t even expressed any grand revolutionary aspirations beyond the mere defence of minimum basic necessities, the States have responded with indifference.

        Appealing to confusing economic formulas, numbers, statistics, and abstract concepts, those States have tried to locate the problem’s origin in inaccessible, metaphysical realities. However, the origin and causes of our daily problems have no metaphysical foundation whatsoever. Poverty, exploitation, repression, and systematic abuse are the results of very concrete structures, of specific decisions taken by specific people who have specific interests.

Continue READING:

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AN ANNIVERSARY, MARCH 10th.

        Through out their history anarchists have been despised and persecuted by the state and employers alike. We could fill a very large telephone directory of those who have suffered at the hands of this particular authoritarian duo. From blacklisted to beaten, executed and assassinated the anarchists have had it all flung at them. It is not difficult to understand why this brutal onslaught should be thrown at this particular group of individuals. The last thing that the state or employers want is for people to think for themselves and take control of the society in which they live. In order to protect their wealth and power both these organisations need a subservient populace, anarchism would be the demise of such exploitation. Anarchists are about the complete restructuring of society, the abolition of exploitation, an end to power over anyone, and the creation of a society that sees to the needs of all our people. It is no wonder that the powers that be in the state and the corporate world will do everything in their power to dirty the image of, and destroy anything associated with, the words anarchist and anarchism.  

       However, we anarchist still have a lot to celebrate, in spite of the phony propaganda and the violence against us, we are still here, but we should always remember those events that have tried to prevent that being the case.

March 10th, From Wikipedia:

Salvador Segui.(centre)

 

Salvador Seguí (Tornabous, Lleida Province 1886 – Barcelona, 1923), known as El noi del sucre ("the sugar boy") for his habit of eating the sugar cubes served him with his coffee, was a Catalan anarcho-syndicalist in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions active in Catalonia. Together with Ángel Pestaña, Seguí opposed the paramilitary actions advocated and carried out by other members of the CNT.^[1] On March 10, 1923, while completing preparations to promote the idea of emancipation as a form of social empowerment among workers, he was assassinated by gunshot on Carrer de la Cadena, in Barcelona's Raval District, at the hands of gunmen working for the Catalan employers' organisation under protection of Catalonia's Civil Governor, Martínez Anido.^[2][3] At this same shooting, another anarcho-syndicalist, Francesc Comes, known as Perones, was wounded and was to die several days later.

He has received many tributes since his death, and a foundation has been launched in his memory, the Fundación Salvador Seguí, based in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia.

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