Report about the 29M Strike in Barcelona, from Mikifus

Okay then, everything started the 28 on the afternoon. We made some concentrations and eventually projected some images on the wall of the mall:

At 00:00 first blockings started, the communications team was closing the Burger King and MCDonalds in downtown for example.

More action in other cities at 3:00 on the morning. Some industries parallized, some highways blocked with barricades, first detentions of people blocking the businesses.

On the morning the students blocked the metro station near the campus.

At this time helicopters are already over the city. Some TV channels went down.

Some other stations were blocked a bit later:

Many actions started around 10;00 on the mornin, for example, the elder people made a “gastronomic block” and gave food to the people on the demonstrations:

Police started to protect the mall and other places, more people being arrested.

Near 16:30 a demonstration was suposed to start in “Jardinets”. A dumpster was set on fire and the police started to go through “Passeig de Gràcia” with the vans, the street was full of people and they started to beat everyone to make way.

Here one person from our team (Susana, working with Niel in AfricaRise) was hitted by the police to the point that she went to the hospital and needed some stitches on the knee.

Then some people started to act against the stock exchange building, the big banks and big companies. They threw trash and set on fire some banks after breaking the showcases. More dumpsters burning to make barricades to stop the police.

This was the intention, there was a black block tactic called up by the anarchist unions.

At 18:55 downtown was in chaos. The main streets and the square were full of people, and the police decided to evict the square with extreme violence:

This was really shocking, because there was no problem on the square, only peaceful demonstrators that went to the activities and were not related with the fire…

This man has lost an eye:

More mates on the communications teams were injured.

Even the firefighters were yelling at the police:

The police used rubber bullets, smoke grenades, two helicopters. Tear gas too, which is prohibited.

There were two or more parallel demonstrations that went to other sides of the city. Downtown was constantly on fire, ambulances, police and firefighters everywere. The police started to maintain the people on different places and didn’t let us to be together by shooting rubber balls (not to the air now).

Nobody cared about the riots, the people remained around.

This was the situation:

And eventually:

The situation was tense until the night, more barricades and attacks to banks.

Moreover, you can see some infiltrators of the police:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQ0jyAazBM (In this one they carry estensible batons, which are prohibited)

They were arresting and attacking people until the morning.

Returning to our media center the streets were cut and there were dumpsters and police on every street.

Right now, 03/30/2012 20:40 there’s a helicopter over the city.

The situation in Barcelona was extremely violent, not as the rest of Spain. There was some violent demonstrators on other cities, but they were not many as in Barcelona.

Barricades were common in many highways and in other infrastructures as the harbors.

Madrid was mainly paceful and the demonstrations were a success.

Anyways there were arrested people everywher, but more related to the blockings of bussinesses.

At first there were only news about the strike, not about the riots. This was explained as a simple anecdote. Most newpapers didn’t talk about it as in many other situations with the movement . This made some of us think that the medias had already a strategy for the newspapers and they didn’t expect this kind of actions.

The expectation is on the new economic plan of the government more than in the riots-

They’re still talking bullshit as always. But in Catalonia they’ve announced an anti urban guerrilla plan and try to legalize the tear gas. They’ve bought tear gas already for one million euros… And it’s not even legal.

[NOTE]

This report is my personal view on the situation, we’ll work with this basis to make another report, more complete in this pad: http://titanpad.com/29minternational

Other reports from other cities and different news would be much appreciated.

I’ll start fast: This strike is bullshit. We needed strikes many months ago, but the main unions are controlled by the government, now the government has changed and unions are, from one day to another, against. They’re a tool for social control. The president said also that he expected a general strike, so this means it’ll have no real effect and everybody knows.

What do? Just go for our interests. We’ll take profit of having a mass protest day on the city. To act agains the banks, the politicians, and the main unions with their not so good strategy.

– Massive pickets (it’s well translated?) on the street.

– Block industries and prevent people from working.

– Some calls about consumption strikes.

– Parallel demonstrations that will join the main one, which will start on our square and end on the parliament.

– The press strike starts today to avoid newspapers for tomorrow. Some people said that would be great to DDoS also their webpages.

– Today a neighborhood will go closing some mall and other businesses that are fucking up the workers intentionally.

– Today it’ll be a 3D augmented reality projection on the mall next to our square (“El cortes inglés”), will post images if it finally goes on.

– There are sayings about some TV channels that will be turned off.

– Universities are occupying their faculties since a week now, their assemblies are growing everyday and they’re organizing a lot of events on their buildings. Here’s one: https://twitter.com/#!/acampadabcn_int/status/184979397554614272

They’re not alone, on high schools the people are working great and starting protests and occupations today.

– We’ll start the concentration before the demonstration by the unions, we’ll wait for them with a big banner about #12M15M (pic: https://twitter.com/#!/acampadabcn_int/media/slideshow?url=http%3A%2F%2Fyfrog.com%2Fobyjkwxj).

Four media centers on our city. One for alternative press, another for the “feedback” team (social networks monitoring and managing), third one for the live streaming (People Witness project), and finally the international communications one.

By the way this is a trial, to see which problems has this mechanism and then solve them for the next mobilizations as #12M15M.