Démocratie Réelle Maintenant des Indignés de Nîmes

September 30, 1400 hrs.

Dear people,

Photos and another rough cut of what happened yesterday night. The video includes: arrival of police vans, people blocking them, people offering flowers, police charge, congress front, side street front.

“I’m your colleague, damned!”

I’ll also give you a brief update on press reaction to yesterday’s events. These can be divided into two. There are the newspapers who insist on reducing the protest to a mere confrontation with police, like El Mundo and Businessweek, even though very few noteworthy things happened in this respect yesterday. No riots. Two arrests. Twelve wounded. One man beaten up by police officers.

Lacking really violent scenes, other media like El País found themselves obliged to talk about the protest itself. They made interviews with the people in the streets about the austerity measures. Some of them said they showed up out of anger with prime minister Rajoy who had praised ‘the silent majority’ for not taking to the streets last Tuesday.

The BBC opened the ten o’clock news with the question: ‘How many people can the Spanish government ignore?’

The Guardian surprisingly keeps talking about what happened in the aftermath of Tuesday, when isolated units of riot police entered the Atocha railway station shooting rubber bullets and scaring the hell out of unsuspecting travellers.

In Lisbon, over a hundred thousand people attended the protest. There has been a huge demonstration in Warsaw yesterday as well.

Latest news, they say the man who protected the people in a coffeeshop on Paseo del Prado against riot police on 25S will be fined for ‘disrepecting authorities’…

September 30, 0145 hrs.

Dear people,

Rumours may not mean much, most of the time, but the fact is that people act on them. According to today’s rumour, the #29S demonstration was illegal and police were going to arrest everybody who participated in it.

No way they could have done so. I don’t know if the rumour had anything to do with it, but the turnout far exceeded my expectations.

When I arrived at Neptuno around six thirty there must have been already ten to fifteen thousand people in the square. In two hours the crowd reached its largest extent. All of the roundabout was packed, and part of the boulevards. Not as many people as last Tuesday, but many more than the day after. Foreign press estimates vary from forty to a hundred thousand people. National press say ten to twenty thousand. According to authorities there were 64 protesters and a dog.

Curiously, and contrary to my personal predictions, the average age of the crowd had gone up compared to the last two demonstrations. I see lots of middle aged and elderly men and women. I also see families with children. The tactic to scare them away clearly didn’t work.

As I walk around, I think of the determination with which the Egyptians returned to Tahrir in January 2011, and many times after that. ‘We must go on’, is what you hear people say, and I have a feeling that many of them are angry because the government continues to ignore them.

Police are relatively few, and at ease. They control the square from five sides. After the outrage caused by the infiltrations of last Tuesday, they had received the order to avoid the use of force wherever they could.

At around ten an assembly is improvised to harvest ideas on how to continue the protest. There is a lot of energy here, and we all feel the need to make use of it to take this movement to the next level. One speaker reminds us that the real power is not political, but economic. He calls on people to start boycotting certain multinationals and to transfer their money to banks that only invest in sustainable projects. Other ideas include not just blocking parliament, but the major arteries of the city and the country as well. Tomorrow at eleven a.m., the assembly will try to reach a consensus on these issues during a meeting at the Crystal Palace in Retiro.

After the assembly, only a few thousand people are left. They are waiting to see what police will do. They expect them to charge. “Midnight probably. Like last time.”

It all starts earlier. At around eleven thirty there are tensions and provocations on the side of the square, and bottles flying. With a small charge, police drive part of the crowd towards Cibeles. Then a line of vans moves to the centre of the square. The remaining protesters are divided over two fronts. At the barriers near congress, a few hundred of them peacefully sit down as they are surrounded by police. Others are driven into one of the side streets, where they try to make a barricade out of containers.

For a while, it’s not clear what’s going to happen next. It looks like police are preparing to make a mass arrest at the congress barrier. But finally they just force people out relatively peacefully.

On the other front the crowd is trying to get to congress from the side, so police push away the trashcan barricade and advance up the street. Citizen press is all over them. Wherever there is police, there are people with cameras shooting pictures from very close up.

It turns into a game of cat and mouse. Initially the riot cops chase people into the alleyways of old Madrid. Then at a certain point, the roles are reversed. Police don’t feel at ease in the small streets. Protesters go after them vociferously, singing that the people are not at all tired of resisting. They push the officers out of the centre, until the last units hastily get picked up by police vans that bring them to safety. Saigon, 1975.

That’s it for the night. The square is empty. The streets of the old city are left to the mob. Not a single window was broken. Not a single container was burned.

When I get back to media centre, news from Lisbon comes in. The crowd is massive, they are joined by one of the Portuguese police unions. Who knows, one day we might see something similar in Spain as well.

Dear people,

From the moment the first bullets were fired, I have been tempted to make an analysis of the situation. But it’s far too early. We will have to wait for tonight. Right now, social media are ablaze with the call to keep on the pressure. We will be at Neptuno at 1900 hrs.

Today’s Spanish newspapers were predictable. They opened with photos of protesters hitting police officers. They copied the police estimate of 6000 demonstrators and did not add their own estimates. 50.000 like I said yesterday was pretty low. Based on the calculation of three people per square meter in the centre of the crowd, and two on the periphery, more reliable estimates vary from 100 to 150.000 people. If a total crowd of 6000 people was able to give 1400 police officers such a hard time, then hell the police should be ashamed of themselves!

So, minimalisation and criminalisation is the main stream media’s device. But it doesn’t always work. It could backfire, like it did when police infiltrators made a mess at the end of the May 15 demonstration of last year. Within days, all major squares of the country were occupied.

The infiltration story seems ever more likely. You can find photos and films all over the internet to back it up. Even the cover photo of El Mundo was ambiguous. The man who attempted to hit a police officer with a stick was wearing a freaking earphone. The editors didn’t even bother to photoshop it out.

To get a clearer picture of the Spanish situation, you should read the reasonable main stream press from overseas. The Guardian published an interesting article the other day about the possibility of a ‘financial coup’ in Spain. The country is said to be bankrupt, and the financial markets will be keen to place one of their own puppets in charge like they did in Italy and Greece.

What makes things interesting is that Spain, as a country, is now under threat from three different sides. Next to the financial markets, you have your regional separatists and the 15M movement. Truly, these are hard times for Spanish nationalists.

The governments knows that. Nationalists form the backbone of the governing Popular Party. Giving in to any of these three threats will cause resistance among them. Moreover, prime minister Rajoy is weak and indecisive. He got voted not because people like him, but only because they disliked his predecessor. He is not the man you want at the helm of your country in a time of crisis.

The 15M movement alone is not enough to topple this government. But with financial and separatist forces already putting pressure on Spain, it could be enough to tip the balance.

If people return to Congress tonight, with determination, to face possible repression, the government will have a serious problem.

Social change has to start somewhere. It might as well be here and now. So, people, if you don’t have anything better to do, come to Spain! Help bring down this government. Take the future into your own hands. From here, things will spread.

We are the people. We are stronger. Morally, and physically if necessary.

Madrid, September 26, 0030 hrs.

Dear people,

They said there were about 1400 hundred riot police operational today. First thing I did when I arrived was check. I walked around all the access roads to parliament. I counted about 60 or 70 police vans. With all the backup, I think the figure was correct.

And yet, it wasn’t enough. Today, police got their asses kicked.

But let’s go one step at a time. All through the day, people kept arriving from outside the capital. Clearly, this is not a Madrid protest, it’s a national one. The amount of people I knew was stunning. From Acampada Sol, from the marches to Brussels and Athens. Almost all of them are here.

Until six o’ clock it wasn’t clear if it was going to be a success as far as the total attendance went. When I got to the gravity centre of the protest at Neptuno I knew it was. I don’t know about numbers, but the square was packed, and part of the boulevards leading up to it as well. Thirty thousand maybe. More likely fifty. Six thousand according to authorities.

The crowd wasn’t like the ones I remember. This is not only 15M, it’s much wider. Anarchists, communists, and lots of republicans. Compared to last year, the amount of republican flags has grown considerably.

Another thing, there were lots of journalists. ‘Official’ ones, and citizens. Almost all of the citizen journalists had created their own accreditation cards. Police didn’t know how to distinguish them, so they let them all pass. The citizen journalists were also prepared for the worst, they arrived with helmets.

The possibility of the protest turning violent had been a worry for many in the months leading up to 25S. They feared infiltrators, or people who simply wanted to riot.

At seven, a first provocation. A handful of demonstrators start throwing plastic bottles and cans of beer. Police react with a charge. They wanted to alleviate the pressure on the barricades by creating space on the square and dividing the crowd.

Unlike other times, people were determined to stay. The crowd is dense. We resist, hour after hour. Some of us throw frisbees and paper planes, or they blow bubbles. We’re not thinking of leaving. Around nine thirty, more provocations. Fire crackers this time. The reaction of the majority didn’t leave room for doubt. ‘Don’t throw anything!’ ‘Infiltrators!’ ‘Go away!’

The fire crackers were one too much. Police react. In the blink of an eye, they start to charge in small platoons. A fringe of fifty to a hundred protesters take up the challenge. They raise their scarfs over their noses, and they counterattack, without fear.

To be completely honest, I didn’t really mind that it went down. I was becoming a bit uncomfortable standing in the middle of a crowd of which I ignored the full extent. After the charge, there was space. Suddenly I could move freely and shoot footage in between police and rioters backed up by the crowd. It was absolutely exhilarating. Sedition is a wonderful drug, people. One of the best.

All around Neptuno police began firing rubber bullets. It felt like New Year’s Eve. The rioters dug up the stones of Paseo del Prado and began hurling them, together with trashcans, glass bottles etc.

I didn’t understand police strategy, at all. Had they used tear gas, the square would have been empty in a matter of minutes. I think they didn’t because of the police horses near parliament. Maybe they were convinced the crowd would run once they started to shoot. It didn’t happen. Instead, they were surrounded. They hid behind their shields, like a Greek phalanx. I have seen a dozen of them pushed against a wall, desperately seeking cover against a storm of stones raining down on them. When they charged, they charged out of fear, and they didn’t spare anyone. I have seen middle aged women caught in between the stones, the bottles and the rubber bullets. I have seen them resist. I have seen them return.

Police panicked once they were surrounded. They were beaten back on all sides. We won.

Finally, they only managed to break the siege by shooting their way out in direction Atocha. It was a crazy experience, no matter how many action packed movies you have watched in your life, to have a gun pointed in your direction and see it belching fire. At the end of the night, we collected the rubber bullets as souvenirs.

I won’t go into the violence question. The people who resorted to it were a minority. Maybe there were infiltrators, or maybe people are just really, really angry. The thing that counts, in my view, is the spirit of resistance that I felt today. We refused to let ourselves be intimidated.

Many stayed in Neptuno or returned there. They sat down, and they sung “No! No! We’re not violent!”

Casualties of the night are more or less these. About twenty arrests. Fifty wounded. One serious.

At this moment the hard core protesters keep resisting in Neptuno. Tomorrow there will be another demonstration. In solidarity with the general strike in Galicia, Asturias and the Basque country. We will be at Congress at seven. The siege continues. Good night, and good luck

Oscar