It is the 2020s. The 14-M movement has spread stronger and the forces have gone own against it. I explain to some younger friends that the violence was already felt at the start in Saint Paul. We even saw horses in some of the first demonstrations. The media thought the occupations and demonstrations were picturesque and they tolerated the masses until they realised they would end up destroying the system that sustained them.
that is now all the media seem so hostile and vile against this unrest.
I had never been keen on any of the occupations, although I liked their ideals. now their discourse invariably seems to consists of an initial declaration of principles interrupted suddenly by a passionate criticism of the rest of the movement, to finish off with a vile exercise of shouting off each other.
To prove my point to my audience, I call two small boys who are clearly part of the occupation movement. I ask them to explain their points. They take turns, one at a time, to explain their politics, all very civilised . I allow them to continue without any questions or guidance, and then one makes a smirk remark about the other’s group or organisation. The other responds with another remark. Their voices grow slowly louder and their words stronger, to end up in a full argument with personal attacks and almost a physical fight. I have rested my case with my little audience.
I see it all as if it was a documentary, I am watching the situation with my friends and we all agree that something went wrong somewhere.
I have come to this meeting on my bike, some other people have come by car.
There was a time when we all came by bike or public transport, now some people think it is just not safe. My house is not far, I could have walked but it felt safer this way. While we have been on the meeting my bike has been outside in the rain, it always is but it should not stay there overnight. We all go out to get out of the meeting, some to our bikes, some to their cars. Nito tells me: I’ll get your bike and take it somewhere water proof. I want to protest, it sounds too much of a favour, but then he explains that he had to park his car is so far away he does not feel safe walking there. He can bike to his car, then put my bike in his car and take it somewhere both dry and safe. I see nothing against this. Yet, when he gets on my bike, I have managed to get some friend to lend me his car. I follow him on the bike to the place where his car is. He gets off my bike and puts it in his car, it is already in a dry place. At some point, some how, I will have to sort out some means of transport to go somewhere far to recover my bike. But at least for this night, the bike will be safe and dry.
I park right behind his car, next to a luxurious car. Before getting into his car, he looks at me and signals that car. So he has noticed that I was following him. I am glad he does not seem angry.
The more luxurious car is owned by a beautiful and well dressed woman. She is doing something very strange to her car. My friend leaves the scene and I feel compelled to interact with this woman.
It has been difficult to keep my own car stopped but now I have found the hand brake and I can safely talk to this woman without the fear that my car will move. I ask her what her problem is. She says she has had a puncture, so now I see that the weird things she seemed to be doing are the logical steps required to change a wheel in a car. I wish her luck not breaking any of her beautifully painted nails.
She invites me to her car, she has something to show me, the reason why she needs to change her wheel. Some one has kicked her wheel, probably in anger, probably one of those pesky protesters who do not approve of luxuries. She has requested cctv footage to find out what happened. She shows me a picture of her wheel. It is a close shot, so if it comes from cctv, it is a good crop of an image taken at very high resolution. The picture only shows a wheel and a shoe against it. She says, it is one of your neighbours who did this. How do you know? The name of your street is printed on the shoe. I look carefully. It is indeed printed on the shoe, as if it was a brand, but any cop would know that kind of print. It is the kind of print that is put against the will of the owner of the shoes, and it can not be removed. It is for identification purposes, for occasions like this. I look into the picture more carefully, wanting to find some evidence that this can not be any one in my street. The woman has reported the incident and the possible suspect to the police. The suspect has been summoned to some preliminary hearing. He has had to submit a statement, in which he admits that he is the owner of that trainer, but he did not kick the wheel. He had a lot of mud on the sole, it was the only place he could find at the time where he could clean it and he used the wheel as a cleaner to some dirty nasty soil he had just got. Some how it sounds like a plausible explanation and I wish him well, I wish that he will not have to face nasty experiences in the process that awaits him, the police, the cells.
Then the woman in the car tells me things about the owner of the car I have borrowed. I am horrified. Apparently this person has been getting into my apartment without my permission but with some good keys, for some time. She says I will find the proof if I get into their own apartment. I refuse to believe it but I go to the car owner’s flat and enter it. Two people are sitting at a table in the living room. They do not seem surprised to see me there. Somewhere in the paintings on the walls I see the proof that the woman was telling the truth.
Outside, in the streets, there is some unrest in crescendo, in slow crescendo. There was some when I followed my friend with the bike and now it is a bit louder.
I decide to meet my uncle and auntie in some safe place. It has to be some posh shop, like a jeweller’s, so that we are not suspects of belonging to this 15M subversion mass.
They are not very old but they both have white hair. Still, they are much older than me. They look like a proper, respectable, middle age couple, while I look a lot more youthful even though I have made the effort to look smart for this occasion. The unrest has grown louder and I take some care to make sure I am not mistaken with some poor protester.
My aunt and uncle introduce me to some very interesting people, and at one point we start to collective make arrangements to leave for home. All the way along the social occasion we have managed to show that we distance ourselves from the protesters, but we have sensed that all this is a façade on the part of all of us so that we are not reported to the police, for fear and safety. Now that the situation is a bit more delicate, because the crowds have gone a lot louder in the street, it is clear that none of us are fond of the police.
I look out to the street and I am shocked by what I see. It is a full riot! None of us expected this. Before we know, there is mounted police in the market arcade. Every one runs. My uncle runs. My auntie can not run so fast. The police on horses are approaching faster and faster. We are not going to go any faster, so I change tactics. I say to my auntie, look, you look really respectable. Let’s just make what we are actually doing, family members having a walk, going shopping. She agrees because she really can not walk any faster. The mounted police doubt on whether to club us like they have done with the other passers by or simply threaten us. Some horses go past, three stay with us. The cops have a weapon that can either be a baton or a machine gun. The three of them point their machine guns at us, one warning me that if I make a false move I will be dead. He mumbles this and I ask him to repeat that, because it is a strange threat, but his colleagues confirm this. One gun is pointed at me, the other at my auntie.
A young boy runs to my auntie from the rest of the crowd that had gone away running, gets his hand in her hand bag, grabs a cigarette butt and he goes offagain running. He has disappeared in the crowd. But this has made the cops suspicious. One of them dismounts. He wants to stop and search both of us. There are many things in my auntie’s bag. One of them is some plastic wrapping up something very small. The cop unwraps it, and then a very small dark soft stone drops to the floor. It is round, and very small, about a fraction of the size of a bike bearing ball. Yet, it is a gruesome offence to be carrying even that small amount.
My auntie’s eyes close. I don’t know what emotion she is hiding. She seems calm. But I know the situation is desperate. A club shows.
The next thing I know, I am in a cell, with my uncle embracing my auntie, on the floor. My auntie seems unconscious. Both of them are more or less covered in blood.
Suddenly a younger version of my uncle starts to narrate the history of the riots as if he was a tv, or documentary narrator. He says how at the beginning the media loved the 14M movement. But not now. Narrated from the present perspective, the documentary maker is scandalised that, at the first moments of the uprising, “these protesters were actually seen as the ‘cool yellow’, the good guys in the movies in front of the oppressor cops who were beating them out of the squares they occupied”. But then the powers, so lenient at the beginning, realised that they had to clean up the streets of the evil, the scum, the great bitch. I am seeing this documentary that my younger uncle is narrating. It shows how the police started to do raids before the masses got as angry as we saw today, when the riots ended up in my auntie’s arrest.
The narrator goes on: the streets had to be cleaned. Then the images show mounted police beating up, killing if necessary, some of the protesters, while the more scared have all but run away. ‘Then they had to clean up the mess.’ By the mess he means the blood and the dead bodies left on the squares. But that, the narrator, says, was a quick task. The images quickly show an empty and clean square. ‘but the great bitch always resurrected’ and the images show a naked stone woman resurge from the pavement.
I look at my auntie, who seems quite lifeless. She seems to be one more victim of the cleaning. I cry.