Spanish Revolution - Through the Kiwi Fields - In March to Athens on 24 January

Spanish Revolution

Through  the Kiwi Fields

In March to Athens on 24 January 2012 at 15:50

March to Athens

Day 78-IV, from Cisterna to Sermoneta. 16 km.

Sermoneta, January 24

Dear people,

Typically, the most vehement fear mongerer who led our march away from Latina, wasn’t present at Cisterna. She chose this particular day to take a rest. Well, too bad for her. She missed out on a memorable encounter.

One of the people who intervened in our assembly yesterday was a ten year old boy. He wanted to talk about the ‘football problem’. The thing is that the hole where the parking lot should have been built was used by the local boys to play football, but lately the police have closed it up. Now they play on the square, and every time the ball ends up in the bar, they don’t get it back.

'Popular Football Stadium of Cisterna'

So this morning, after I had already left, people took action. They opened up the building site, they put up two goals, and they baptised it the ‘Popular Football Stadium of Cisterna’. An inaugural game was played against the local youth to celebrate the event.

Last night there was also a big party of fraternisation with the ‘fascists’. It was only interrupted when one of us, pretty tipsy, started singing Bella Ciao, the trademark left wing partisan song. But instead of making trouble, the fascists showed their disapproval by using the assemblary gesture that indicates ‘offensive, racist or sexist language’…

Today’s walk led through the kiwi fields along the hills to a small fraction of the hillside village Sermoneta. We are camped outside a former railway station, which hasn’t been used for sixty years. There is almost nothing here. A bar and a couple of houses. But even in a place like this, we were received with open arms.

A local communist councillor was more than happy that we came by. He shares our goals, he knows everybody in the village, and he made sure that the we had water, electricity and the possibility to shower. When night fell, locals came by to bring us sacks of fruit and bread, and they installed a barbecue to cook pieces of meat for all of us under the starlit sky.

So yes, dear people, tonight things are just fine. From the far left to the far right, everybody loves us. The last of the group to arrive have even been invited to tea and meditation in a buddhist monastery. I hope it did them well. Because from the looks of it, the internal situation of the march will not always be as peaceful as today.