it's always May

(Young protesters changing the name of the City Hall Square into 15th May Square in Valencia. Photo by: jacobictus)

It's only been three days since I was contemplating on the need to act, indignant for my passive reaction to what is happening in Greece, discouraged by the way the state has decided to use the police against protesters and disgusted with the way the mainstream media seem to back them up. Thanks to the same media, who have the suspicious tendency to discover a new "terrorist" every time our government is about to announce another set of austerity measures, I -and the majority of Greeks- was still ignorant of the massive protests all over Spain until a few days ago. It looked as if the sensitive journalists of the establishment have failed to realize what was, what IS happening in Spain, where people, young people still maintain the courage to take to the streets, march, shout, even camp in Puerta del Sol, Plaza Catalunya and elsewhere without having to face tear-gas cannisters and globs.

Even more, it looks as if in Spain, the media still see the people -especially the young- for what they really are. Unemployed, in search for a low salary and an even lower rent, disappointed with how their education has turned them into by-products of a system of labour that cares more about interest rates than people and infuriated with their leaders that are too stubborn to realize what is obvious to almost everybody except perhaps to some short-sighted bureaucrats in Brussels. That things, as they are, are simply not working.

The movement of May 15th, is a movement of the young, which sparked of in May, in a European capital. The similarities to that other May, the Parisian one of 1968 end here. The French of the 60s were suffocating in a world of post-war prosperity. They were asking for "imagination to assume power", they were clashing against the police and went back to school once their revolution was smashed. The Spaniards (and the Greeks, the Irish, the Portuguese, tomorrow even the French and Italians) of the 2010s are the casualties of economic warfare. They demand a decent job with a decent pay, a decent place to live. They are pacific and non-violent (for now) but once, when, if their revolution is crashed they will have no other place to go than the exact same streets they now occupy.

Just think about that.