My city is the guardian of all worries and, for a thousand centuries, knows how to manage frustration like no one else. Last Wednesday, a large part of the common people -among whom many Generation X colleagues stood out, overly educated and with a pile of useless master's degrees on their resumes- flooded the streets of Barcelona to tell the world that everyone deserves a home and a good salary or, more specifically, to affirm that "they" are worthy of it.
In a few days, these same neighbors will flock to the polls to give a few more years of sofa to the left-wing leaders who have led them to ruin; but that doesn't matter because, at this point, both progressive and right-wing politics converge in materialism (that is, far from ideals or ideological pomposity, it would be about ensuring that people have an affordable rent, a plate of soup, and enough money to connect to Wi-Fi).
During the general strike day, I received as many instastories of revolutionary enthusiasm from people who still believe they are proletarian as WhatsApp messages from libertarian friends complaining about not being able to access the office due to the general debauchery. It's not my specialty, but it would be necessary to put some sense into the crowd to remember that four burnt containers do not transform Barcelona into Tahrir Square or that, thanks to the blessing of virtuality and technology in general (also to the fact that most businesses, at least in my Ciutat Vella, remained open), one could work and live without any problem. It's a shame that, after the union party, a bunch of idiots decided to dirty the Eixample with their boredom; but it's not that big of a deal either, because frustrated people who have no memories of being middle class can only distract themselves with blows and bonfires.
Four burnt containers do not transform Barcelona into Tahrir Square
Contrary to most Barcelonians, anchored in a watered-down Christianity, I do not believe that human beings deserve anything for existing nor that rights are inherent to breathing. For many years, I made the mistake of thinking that, thanks to my own genius and the effort I have dedicated to studying my passions, this country owed me a red carpet.
But, with the grace of time passing, I have assumed that everything I love is a simple amusement for most individuals. I have a good pile of reasons to live angry (the week of the strike I had my current account at zero for many days, due to the beautiful and wild custom of the companies that support me to pay in the middle of the month, when the bills have already left me dry; at home we ate like paupers and that day will be a year ago) but, unlike the beats, I don't believe that my poverty is the plot of a system that enjoys kicking my ass.
I don't believe that human beings deserve anything for existing, nor that rights are inherent to breathing
Let pro-Palestinian readers not get upset! It really bothers me that a fellow citizen born in Nou Barris doesn't have the same life opportunities as a "caietà" from Pedralbes, my heart aches when I see highly prepared friends working for peanuts at the university, and it also tears my soul apart to witness how my partner saves up to buy a pair of Zara jeans.
Nevertheless, accusing the market economy and capitalism of all these evils seems foolish to me, especially because alternatives have always led to much more poverty. I was able to enjoy a privileged youth thanks to the madness of the nineties and now I am quite poor, but my economic situation (and therefore, the fact that I don't have a home, struggle to pay the rent, and don't even dream of getting a mortgage) is also a product of my own educational-work decisions, in addition to significant spending on drugs.
Accusing the market economy and capitalism of all these evils seems foolish to me
I know it's very hard to abandon the polytheism with which the social democratic welfare state was founded, based on the grace of believing one deserves material goods simply for being a citizen of the world, but I would tell my dear neighbors to think less about the small apartment and the salary... to focus more on the technological revolutions of the future and the radical protectionism that will prevail in Old Europe.
All this we are experiencing is a re-edition of 15-M
All this we are experiencing is a re-edition of 15-M, with slightly more good-looking spokespeople, politicians even more illiterate than those of ten years ago (whoever doubts the result of that adventure, just look how happy the speculators are, with the Barcelona of the buzz), the perfect agony of a society that no longer believes even in its own house of cards. I still have to ponder about the future that awaits us, although, as always happens, our city will be the ideal spectator; I hope that, among all of us, we can enrich it.