Hotel Madrid Evicted

Madrid, December 5

Dear people,

Today, after fifty days of occupation by the Housing commission of the 15M, the Hotel Madrid was evacuated by police. It happened at seven o’ clock in the morning.

Police were well informed about the situation they would find inside. They knew that most of the families had already been relocated in other squats. About a hundred people were present in the building. They were awoken rudely, they didn’t get the chance to gather their belongings. Elderly and children were present as well. They were treated a bit more kindly than the rest.

About ten people were taken into custody for not possessing certain documents. At the end of the day everyone was free again. The eviction took less than two hours. Police didn’t bother to remove the banners and the manifesto’s from the façade. They simply had the entrances closed by brick walls.

Guarding the entrance...

 

... and closing it up.

Immediately after the eviction a demonstration was called for in Puerta del Sol at eight o’ clock in the evening. Finally. These last few days Madrid seemed a city like any other, packed with happy christmas shoppers. It was disgusting.

But this time, between the christmas public, I witnessed the return of the lecheras, the police vans. There were about two dozen of them around the square. It was a wonderful sight. I missed it. Something was bound to happen.

"By and for the neighbours"

 

Sitting down under the Christmas 'tree'

 

Crowd in Sol

Indeed, something did happen. At eight o’ clock there were a couple of hundred people protesting. They would swell to a couple of thousand, but they wouldn’t fill the square. Police had blocked the street leading up to the hotel. Protesters gathered in front of them and sang their tunes. Unfortunately, many people directed their rage directly at the police and not at real estate tycoon Carlos Monteverde Mesa, the owner of the hotel (among many other buildings in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Paris and London), who happens to be a good friend of the governing Popular Party. Check out here.

Meditating in front of police, photo opportunity.

After a while the crowd turned its back on the police and started moving. We followed the itinerary that we have walked various times this summer when Sol was occupied by police. Callao, Gran Vía, Cibeles, Neptuno, Atocha, and back to Jacinto Benavente, where the street leading the Hotel Madrid was blocked by police from the other side.

“One eviction! Another occupation!” was sung over and over again, and along the way the crowd made a half hearted attempt to break down the door of another abbandoned building in Calle Atocha. At the end, people sat down in front of the police line for a couple of minutes, they held a moment of silence for the Hotel, and soon after that the crowd dispersed.

Crowd in Gran Vía

So, the Hotel Madrid is history. But was it a good history? Opinions difer on the subject. Most people share the noble cause it served, housing evicted families. Many people deplore the chaotic way the place was run, and the scenes of violence that took place there. Some people are glad the place got evicted, because it was offering a bad image of the movement. I myself haven’t known the hotel well enough to add my say on this. But fact is that the Hotel Madrid, which has served a purpose one way or another, now lies abbandoned yet again.

 

‘Towards a General Strike’

Madrid, December 2

 

Dear people,

Sunday night we came back late from Marinaleda. We wanted to arrive before the General Assembly ended in Puerta del Sol, so that we could present the flag of the little utopian village that we received as a present from the mayor.

It turned out the General Assembly had already ended hours earlier. It wasn’t a surprise. There is hardly any revolutionary vibe in Madrid at the moment. As a result of this, the demonstration that was held last sunday, a march from the neighbourhoods to Congress under the slogan ‘Towards a General Strike’, became a complete flop. Only about a thousand people attended. Most people didn’t know anything about it.

The heart of the local 15M movement remains the Hotel Madrid. It continues to be a troublesome place. Notwithstanding the efforts of many dedicated people, it often resembles a mental institution. One where the patients are in charge.

A few days ago someone set fire to a neighbouring theatre after having entered there through the hotel. The fire was put out, but it added to the bad reputation of the place. It attracts a lot of people from the street, people who need professional help. It’s not an environment where the citizens are going to inform themselves about the movement, or to take part. And the people who are seriously working to make something out of it are complaining of intense psychological pressure, about conflict between ego’s and factions etc. Many of them are giving up and leaving.

As for me, I’m no longer tempted to take part in Communications at the hotel. A lot of things need to be sorted out. First of all the water problem. You cannot house people who got evicted in a building where they can’t use the bathrooms. Fortunately, other buildings keep getting occupied, so that the hotel’s main function is that of a temporary solution where people get housed before they can be offered an appartment in one of the other squats.

With the lack of a real revolutionary movida here in Madrid, I might soon be on the move. In all directions things are happening. Strikes in particular. It’s a peculiar thing. Here in Madrid, there is constant talk of a strike. There is a General Strike commission active for months, but it doesn’t translate into deeds. The ‘general strike’ is like the revolution itself. People have faith that one day in the foreseeable future it will happen, but in practice it never does.

In the rest of the world it’s different, though. Portugal has had a general strike last week. England as well. When Occupy Oakland was evicted over a month ago, a general strike was called for immediately, and three days later the city’s port was shut down. And in Greece, people have just celebrated the seventh general strike in a year, the fourteenth since the beginning of 2010.

Here in Spain, people only sing about it. “Hace falta ya una huelga, una huelga. Hace falta ya una huelga general.”

“What’s lacking now is a strike, a strike. What’s lacking now is a general strike.”

Truly, it’s lacking.

My Kingdom for a Lottery Ticket

Madrid, November 22

"Don't endorse fraud. They already voted: the bank wins"

Dear people,

So the elections came and went. The predicted result came out. The right wing Popular Party has an absolute majority. Like any political party anywhere anytime, they rallied under the slogan of ‘change’. Which means things will stay the same, or get worse. But even without campaigning they would have won all the same. The Socialist Party left such a mess that people instinctively voted for the other side of the medal. It’s the logic of a two party system. The socialists can relax and sit back. They will probably return to power in four years time. That is, if the revolution will not have triumphed by then…

The result of the elections might have been predictable, but that makes it no less paradoxical. In a country where a massive popular movement has started to shake society at its very foundations, it sounds strange that a neoliberal party with fascist roots would gain such an overwhelming victory. But it was just as strange that a party which calls itself ‘socialist’ has been supporting the banks and the financial system at the expense of its own citizens.

These first few days I’ve had many happy encounters with the people I knew and worked with in Communications, Extension and Audiovisuals during and after the acampada. But the most touching encounter was one with a perfect stranger who came up to me to ask if I were Oscar from the March on Brussels. All he said when I confirmed was: “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

It’s natural for me to make a comparison between Madrid last spring and Madrid now. I shouldn’t do that. The days of the acampada are legend, it will never be the way it was. Or, to use an analogy, in spring it seemed like everybody was madly in love with everybody else. Now it’s like people are married.

The heart of the movement is the Hotel Madrid. It’s where most of the commissions gather. Since it was occupied on Global Revolution Day the place has known a lot of social problems, of which I ignore the details. But most people seem to agree that the organisation of the hotel has slowly started to improve.

Hotel cat

After walking around the corridors and talking to people who are active in the commissions I am very much tempted to put up my office here and continue working with Communications like I did in Sol. But on the other hand I am also tempted to move on. There is a National Assembly of the 15M movement planned in the libertarian communist village of Marinaleda, province of Seville, next weekend, which might be very interesting to cover.

In the last few months the movement has been occupying many buildings throughout Madrid and surroundings. This is completely logical when you have millions of abbandoned spaces whilst people are evicted from their homes as a result of the crisis. If the government doesn’t find a solution for them - as is its constitutional duty – then people will take care of it themselves.

One of the other occupied spaces I visited was the ‘15M Temple’, housed in an old garage near the former Audiovisual bunker. You wouldn’t say so from the outside, but from the inside it looks marvellous. The temple is open to all religions and atheists, and they have an excellent collection of Asterix comics in their library. I can definitely recommend it.

A corner of the 15M Temple

The entrance, and next to it, comrade Irene

So things keep on moving here. No way the 15M is going to stop. But on the day of the elections I was a bit disillusioned. When the results came in, there was hardly anybody in Sol, only a small group of hardcore anarchists burning things and trying to attach a banner to the metro station. I had hoped that people would have turned up in huge numbers, to deliver a message to the future right wing government, saying: This is our space, we’re here, we’re staying and we’ll be watching you.

It didn’t happen. There were more people in Sol next day, waiting in line. It wasn’t the line in front of the rationing office, not yet. It were people waiting to buy a ticket for the traditional Spanish christmas lottery.

When times are tough, you can try to change society, or you can place your hope for fortune on a series of numbers, so that you won’t have to worry any more if you win. Many people do both. It’s another one of those apparent paradoxes, which will probably make perfect sense somehow.

‘Fight the one percent. But whenever you have the chance, join them.’

Take care,

Oscar