Protestation, pt 1

Barcelona, Spain
Today was the day for another anti-war protest in Spain. There have been signs up for at least 2 weeks with the pictures released through CBS of the tortured criminals, the main one chosen being the guy standing on the box with his arms out. The title of the protest was Ni Guerre ni Torture (no war, no torture).

Not being able to understand Spanish nor Cataluyan, I had no idea what the majority of the people were chanting. I did, however, take a full roll of film from the protest (27 pictures in all). Since, I am in Spain, and this were actual film, I will scan them when I actually come back to the states.

The main notice is that the protest was not very well organized, and very loosely tied together. It started out very chaotically, and eventually fell into some semblance of order. This also led to the many different causes that came out, like gay rights (rainbow flags have gay connotations here), Communism, anti-capitalism, and freeing Cuba (lots of Che Guevera).

The other thing one notices is the size difference between this protest and the ones in the US. This one was about two blocks by 4 lanes. The American protests are much much larger, and hopefully move faster). This also leads to people being much less crazy then their American counterparts. There was no burning of American flags, and the only usage of an American flag was next to another flag (currently forgetting which one, but I think it was Cuba) with writing on it that criticized Bush. There was no dressing up as terrorists, but there were a few people dressed up as prisoners. The closest to that was a single shirt with a blown up image of a terrorist.

I did pick up alot of fliers and propaganda sheets from the people though. They are in Spanish or Cataluyan though (two similar but different languages), so if anybody can interpret them, I could send them to you when I get back to the states.

An interesting side to the protest was a protest against the EU (or UE) and how they did not want the EU to have a constitution. I took a photo of the nice 4 page board they created for it, because I was struggling to read it (haven´t learned political termage in either language yet).