Violence filmed in Pza Cataluña

A recent emotive Utube (shot May 29, the morning after thousand of fans had been celebrating Barças European Cup win) showed police using violence against people from the encampment in Plaza Cataluña and against two individuals in particular: an old tramp and a man in a wheelchair. The media naturally made a meal out of the whole affair and yesterday Counsellor Puig who is responsible for security in the region  made a statement to the Catalan Parliament.

He admitted that (he) and the police had made errors in attempts to 'control' the population in the square. He stated that: one, timing (early morning) was not ideal,  but he had wanted to avoid a 'night attack' which would have shown that the police were trying to dislodge the indignados from their encampment; two
police had understimated the violence the campers would use;

As excuse he stated some troublesome Barca fans had gone into the camp and used missiles from there against the police.  Police had sought dialogue but couldn't find anyone to talk to who was a representative for the group of campers.

He denied that police initiated any violence and that they only reacted to violence used against them. Equally he denied that the police beat up a tramp and the man in the wheelchair stating that the latter was used as a human shield.

Furthermore he criticised the media for showing biased film footage and for releasing the address of a policeman involved which resulted in the officer's house being graffitied.

He asked parliament what kind of public order they wanted in the country - one in which violence against the police is condoned and goes unpunished?

The situation is, like most clashes between police and demonstrators, not black and white. Aggression gives rise to aggression.  Police get their blanket orders to contain any crowds whether passive or violent but the police are individuals too. Security chiefs don't always get it right. No politician or police chief likes carrying the can because it can mean political death. The best way is to spread blame around thinly on your supporters and thickly on the opposition, if possible further tarnishing thir image - in this case the indignados camping in the square - who are not popular in an area with businesses which feed off tourism. Whether the media were biased in (not) mentioning/showing the violence is debatable (May 9 was the first mention I found in the right wing La Vanguardia for example) but what is not debatable is the unfaked extreme and excessive violence filmed.

Unfortunately the police have a poor record all over Europe for the way that they control political demonstrations - it's true of course that they have an extremely difficult job but there is no excuse for unnecessary violence. G8 and G20 meetings are notably political flashpoints as are demonstrations against human rights, racism and unemployment as seen in the UK, Greece Italy or France - especially when someone is killed or seriously injured as a result of police action. Of course it is also difficult to assess how much provocation of police is used - a male drunk can be extremely unreasonable and violent and a large crowd even worse.   In the past Cataluña's Mossos have come in for much criticism for over-zealous LAPD style control of people they arrested. The problem for them now is modern technology has made police actions instantly visible and counter-action possible to the whole world through social networks Twitter, Facebook and Utube  which now act as a balance to the battery of security cameras around the world secretly filming our daily lives. Whichever side of the socio-political fence you sit on you are no longer invisible and Sr Puig and his Mossos should have known that.

All's well that ends well in Nou Barris:

Some good news dug up by La Vanguardia the other day. They discovered that two Arabs were working as police officers in Nou Barris one of the areas where many immigrants live (17.6 of all the city's immigrants) and they had been particularly effective in policing Cuidad Meridiana which has a 35% immigrant population.

It seems Zuhair and Soraya ( not sure if they were real names) inspire confindence in that they prevent the communication breakdown which often takes place when an Arab person is arrested - or even just questioned.  They also have a good nose as to what's going on out there anda re able to ferret out information that Catalan officers would have difficulty in finding. So why don't we have more? OK, maybe we do as they were not reported as being the first ones in the force, but it's very difficult to find out. It's like asking how many people from Sabadell eat fish on Fridays or how many people in Cornella under 13 have had sex.

What was interesting is that local Arabs were surprised that an Arab woman had become a police officer since she would be moving in a predominantly male environment but seemingly the uniform was the important thing in giving her the respect  (DareI say it?) that she all too often does not have not only in the Muslim world but in Spain too. For that matter in the UK  as well where gender violence is one of the highest in Europe.

As a footnote to this in Dubai where I worked for many years, a local paper ( The Gulf News) reports that the nunber of complaints to the police about wives beating up husbands has increased enormously in the last five years. The culprits are it seems drugs, alcohol - and western television programmes. Now if they got Spanish TVout there I'd certainly agree with that!

Not another Barcelona blog!

Right now there's another blogette setting off in life, a tadpole recently hatched and swimming in a murky pond with all the other blogettes waving their flags for attention. Much more importantly the weather's warm. It's not raining and there's an intensely blue sky outside on my terrace. Which is one of the main reasons why a lot of people like me come from chilly damp northern Europe to live in Spain. Actually in my case that's not strictly true as I came from the other end of the thermometer scale, from 20 years in the 50º Celsius fry-eggs-on-your-car-bonnet Middle East summer temperatures in order to escape excessive amounts of sun. Barcelona, I considered, would be a compromise between the London in my own country and Dubai.



I arrived eight years ago and wasn't disappointed.  I found Barcelona to be a city with lots of positives and only a few negatives. In the Middle East I suffered achingly from CDS, culture-deficit syndrome. Now I gazed open-mouthed at the splendour of Barcelona's awesome modernist and contemporary architecture, its elegant shops, its museums and galleries, its wide boulevards where people actually walked - you only drove in the Middle East! Its exciting night life with thousands of bars, clubs and restaurants all had me transfixed like a wild boar in car headlights. And within a couple of hours from the city I could be skiing or scuba-diving . It was glaringly apparent why the city ranked high in the most visited cities in Europe list. Perfect you might think.

And you'd be right. It was. But you have to remember visitors and residents are never a homogenous mass. A society is composed of many strata.  Criminals like the good life too, and a city like Barcelona offers rich pickings to its criminal high-life. Lots of money can be made out of prostitution, drugs, money-laundering, robberies, scams - just to name just a few areas of lucrative 'free enterprise' on offer. The city has good zones but also bad zones where after midnight the police patrol in threes. In the eight years I've been here I've seen several examples of violence in the streets and had my wallet stolen twice. Mmm perhaps not so perfect!

I've set this blog up - after abhorting an earlier one (http://spanishflyonthwall.blog.com/ ) I'd had for two years - to write about the city from the point of view of outsider/resident so if you want objective description, this blog is not for you nor for the tourist who is just visiting 'the sights' for a few days. I'll be using newspapers as my main source and adding my comments to their new.  Hopefully the views expressed will be interesting enough to get you to comment.


So please feel free to agree - or just as important - disagree. I look forward to your comments. Let me know too if you are blogging about Barcelona .