City of encampments

Yours truly is an old-fashioned liberal (that is to say; one of those beings who, although conceiving that the individual is generally vulgar, staunchly defends their freedom to do whatever they please, as long as it does not affect the health of others), and that is why I write that the right of fellow citizens to protest must be safeguarded as an essential good, especially if their claim is contrary to my creed. I like that Barcelona, ​​besides being "the best shop in the world" or a paradise for guiris to colonize our flat, still dresses up as Rosa de foc and combines its noucentista spirit with some occasional riot.

As the reader must imagine, all this comes about due to the numerous manifas and solidarity encampments that (predictably) will populate our streets in protest of the barbarity in Gaza and the recent arrest of the members of the Global Sumud Flotilla where, to paint it even more Barcelonian, an former mayor of ours is found. I find it hard to recall a single conflict like that of Gaza that has been resolved through community parades, and I find it even more difficult to understand how our students, when it comes to avoiding an undeniably bloody war, think it is more effective to sign up for bivouacking than to flood our boring and outdated university classrooms, in order to dedicate themselves to studying.

It also worries me, by the way, that the aquatic detention of a series of neighbors who unilaterally went to Gaza with the illiterate and surreal pretension of opening a humanitarian corridor with a dozen boats (where, by the way, no more than four packages of chickpeas could fit), occupies hundreds of television minutes more than the murder in Manchester of some former European colleagues who were doing something as normal as going to their synagogue. But having said that, insisting on the theme of free will, let everyone fight their battle as they wish.

We Barcelonans should also grant ourselves the grace of exercising our memory, even if it's a great bother; because if we make an effort in the art of retention, we would recall antecedents that suspiciously resemble this outburst of angry demonstrations. The most evident is 15-M, a protest movement (initially concocted by members of my generation who lamented not earning as much as their parents and who, because they couldn't, couldn't even get a mortgage) which, after storming the squares and shaking up the national political board, has ended with the entire left divided among egomaniacs who lived precariously and have now ended up buying a new-rich mansion in Galapagar or exhibiting problems of excessive friction with women. In turn and thinking of Barcelona, ​​all this anti-system rhetoric ended up crowning colauismo, which floated thanks to Spanish partitocracy and degraded our city by impoverishing it.   

Added to this trivial anecdote, one must also remember how all that was an invention of the Madrid system to neutralize the strength of the independence masses, much more just and ---above all--- even more numerous. One doesn't need to be a genius to see how the Spanish left is using all the present commotion in Gaza ---humanitarianly execrable, of course--- to be forgiven for their implicit collaboration when 155 was applied and during the demonstrations in which Catalans, armed with ballot boxes, had to deal with a method as democratic as beating up every single godmother. If the current Spanish leaders had defended the 1-O referendum, as the PSC proposed before 2014, I would believe their crocodile tears for the Palestinian offspring. Beyond getting angry with Netanyahu and collecting camping gear to occupy public space, in short, we should first exercise our memory a bit. 

With all this, I am not saying that the kind protesters who will populate Barcelona in the coming days, bringing back that unsettling hum of helicopters above our heads, are responsible for all this political tactic. I am simply claiming the complexity of understanding why people like Pedro Sánchez or Jaume Collboni have not become pro-Palestinian out of mere altruism. Because beneath solidarity, remember it very well, there is always some form of selfish interest hidden. Finally, do not forget; not a paper on the ground and ---as the nuns at school used to say--- when leaving, leave everything as it was when you entered.