Published originally in Spanish. Ricardo Dudda. Letras Libres.
In the Pere Vila school, on the Paseo de Lluís Companys in Barcelona, several young people are watching a garden fence. With the sun just up, it starts to rain. The only people on the street are immigrant workers opening shops. There’s the grafitti left from past demonstrations («Stop poverty, stop Spain» and «Hello Republic»). On the other side of the fence, two policemen observe thee youths, who are there to protect the school – one every two or three meters – with a mixture of disdain and impotence. The police had orders to vacate the schools before six o’clock in the morning. Very few succeeded or even tried. Those who did only entered and identified those present. At nearby Mireia College several dozen people wait at the door. Inside, people have locked themselves in. Those outside listen to the radio with headphones. A middle-aged couple consult the website of El Nacional. The atmosphere is familiar, like a neighborhood party. There are many dogs, some people have taken advantage of the first walk in the morning to make an appearance.
Colegio Auró, in the Eixample. Two policemen are coming to give explanations to a deputy of the Catalan government coalition partner, CUP, but there is much confusion. Even the cops do not know what to do. One of them talks nervously on the phone in Spanish. He says that the gathering is peaceful. The street is not closed. The looks are in the direction of The Diagonal, where many of the police are heading. The atmosphere is tense, but the queue is civilized and orderly. Upper middle class, about 40-50 years old, a man talks about what will happen to the historical heritage after independence. A Russian reporter speaks live on TV via her cell phone. Small crowds form for the most stupid reasons, for rumors or some comment made in a voice louder than normal. Everyone seems aware of the the anomalous atmosphere. The whole city is full of it: it has not lost its normality but one gets the feeling that it is holding its breath.
Maragall Middle School, also in the Eixample. It begins to pour. Those who do not have umbrellas take refuge in some open portals. In one of them, a lady has pulled out a chaise longue. Others put chairs at the entrances of garages. Same profile of people, 40-50 years, middle class, here a little higher than before, some elderly. Here everyone reads Vila Web. Many speak in WhatsApp family groups. One man writes a message in one titled «My State»: «They say there are technical problems. The neighbors are sharing the wifi and the 4G «. «Are you on the street?» «If the police intervene, it would be nonsense, as the philosopher Marina Subirats says.» Screams of «Airplane Mode!» so people will deactivate the mobile data and not block the connection of the voting system.
Volunteers from inside the school from Ómnium Cultural, an association in defense of the Catalan language and ally of the Catalan government and processisme –the strategy and ideology of the independence movement – ask for patience. But people are not impatient. The elders vote first. There is a corridor, lots of applause and whistles and cries of “we will vote”. The elders smile excitedly, a lady makes the victory symbol. There is much romanticization of the old people here. If this vote is historical, what better than someone who has previously lived the story to tell it. In the case of this referendum, it is read as a supposed compensation for centuries of oppression, but also as a sample of transversality and common sense.
The brutal intervention of the police in some schools is not understood: the logistics of voting are poor and slow, and in some polling centers voting is difficult and disorderly. It does not seem that the police are needed to prevent the vote. And where it can be, it is so obvious that it is not a democratic vote but a performance, an expressive protest vote, that gives an equavalent result. For processisme, high participation is a moral and symbolic victory and does not require arithmetic. It is the will of the people, even if it is less than 40% of them.
At the Josep Maria Pujol School, in the Gràcia neighborhood, a girl explains to me that her vote has been counted by writing her national ID number on a paper and in a mobile telephone. It is one of the few colleges I’ve been where voting is smooth and fast. At the door, a fence separates the queue from protesters who chant and congratulate those who leave the ballot. «I have voted!», many sing. A group of excited ladies leaves jumping with joy. They embrace with strangers, some cry. Again, the elders are the ones who get the biggest cheers. «Yaya, if the police come, we’ll leave, huh?» a grandson asks his grandmother, who has his ID in her hand. The vote is expressive, non-binding and has no reliability, but there is a liturgy and an illusion of legality, especially for the elderly. Maybe because they know that voting is very important, because they could not do it for much of their life. I can not help feeling that they have been deceived by manipulative and lying elites, and nor can I help but think that citizens who come to vote are deceived or self-deluded.
At the Fort Pienc School, next to the Catalunya Nord bus station, the older people leave to cast their ballots excitedly. A group of ladies makes Sunday lunch with the illusion of having voted. The queue goes around the building. Many watch videos of police action in other schools on their telephones. The atmosphere is both festive and calm. Nothing dampens it, neither the rain nor the news of violence elsewhere. With his fist held high, an old man shouts «Salud y República!» in Spanish to a group of young people who cheer him on.
It is said that some who were not going to have indeed gone to vote in response to police repression. It is a strange logic. The referendum is to ratify what is thought to be a fait accompli, the independence of Catalonia. Using the vote in an illegal referendum to vindicate those injured by the police is inexplicable. There are better ways of exercising dissent than voting, which may have consequences and, in the case of this poll, is an explicit approval of independence. Those who voted ‘no’ or in blank knew that their voice did not matter. The process has turned the voting into an act, a means of expression, rather than a tool of political change. To put an end to this expressive and empty conception of the vote will be a difficult task.
The Ramon Llull School, next to El Diagonal, is one of the polling centers where more violence has occurred. When I arrive, the street is closed and there are lots of reporters. A helicopter flies over the neighborhood and groups of anarchists rest sitting on benches, some from the Castillian Left and others carrying Basque flags. A girl and an old man, both Italian, speak for their country TV. The girl cries and the man holds a ballot in front of the camera. The press crowds with them. A boy removes his T-shirt to show a friend’s camera his reddened back, fruit of a confrontation with the police. About ten journalists and cameras surround him. Then they interview him. Hours later the interview appears in TV3. The boy speaks of fascism and people applaud in Plaza Catalunya, where a giant television has been placed to broadcast the regional televisión station.
In the area of the Gothic quarter, in the Raval, in the Born, in the port, the situation is normal. Sometimes the center looks like a theme park in a state of emergency. The tourists buy postcards with the word ‘Olé’ on them and Real Madrid jerseys while a helicopter flies over the area. There is a heavy police presence. A demonstration organized by the fascist Falange leaves from the port towards Via Laietana. They sing «I am Spanish, Spanish, Spanish». Two men with the flag of Spain were aboard my bus from Madrid the night before.
In the afternoon there are hardly any police charges. The party continues in the Industrial School, in the Eixample. The Carrer Comte d’Urgell is closed to traffic. The occupants of the school have placed barricades at the doors and the police no longer attempt to get in. In the gardens there hundreds of people sitting on the grass, lots of press. In the barricade the couples take selfies. Several adolescents have come on a bike and smoke joints and drink beer. Others put up more fence. One group plays cards, others rest in a hammock. It is 1968, but with the authority on your side (at least the regional government and the city) and your parents and those of your friends also protesting.
A poster: «ACAB #haberestudiao» (ACAB stands for: All Cops Are Bastards). In the garden of the Industrial School, people applaud the last voters. Few are left, but the idea is to stay during the recount to protect the urns. An old couple leaves after and is cheered. The man can barely stand. They both cry, and in the audience, too, many are excited. «We have voted! We have voted!» The crowd shouts from time to time. One boy tells another that they should better sing «We will vote» because they have not been allowed to because they are younger. Then they sing the Catalan anthem, Els Segadors, and L’Estaca, by Lluís Llach.
Next to the Industrial School, in a cafeteria, two students from outside Catalonia talk about what is happening. «The truth is that we could have informed ourselves before, I regret not knowing anything.» Since 2012, the procés – as the modern Independence movement is known – has led many to complacency. Spain has taken far too long to realize how important it is. The Spanish government, self-involved, defensive and reactionary, is reduced to appealling to legality as its sole argument. But we should reflect on something relatively positive in all this: the government’s response is clumsy and its image very poor, but it is not utilizing Spanish nationalism, which has emerged spontaneously to some degree throughout Spain, in response to all this. Appealling to the citizenry will always be better than appealing to ‘the people’.
Outside the cafeteria, next to another polling station, two policemen are cheered: «You are the police of the town! You are our police! «, Not because they have done anything but precisely the opposite. The haven’t interfered. The cops smile shily. A while later, the caceroladas begin. Before midnight, President Puigdemont implicitly states that he will declare independence and calls on the national police forces to leave ‘the country’. It is a declaration of a coup d’etat. He then speaks of his willingness to engage dialogue and desire for mediation, but without preconditions.
This is a very strange revolution, perhaps because it is not a revolution but a mock rebellion for the well-to-do middle classes.
