We Will Be Silent No Longer: #spanishrevolution .01

A 20% unemployment rate and rising.

43.5% youth unemployment.

Pensions frozen. Age of retirement raised (and the years of contributions required to receive a pension extended). Redundancy compensation reduced. Spending on public services slashed. Public sector salaries cut. Private sector salaries frozen if you’re lucky (but bonuses for the bankers). A million unsold new houses. Vast swathes of land, ghost cities, scarred with the shells of half-built apartment blocks and grids of streets that are slowly being reconquered by vegetation. Hundreds of thousands of homes repossessed (and in Spain your debt isn’t wiped out when the bank takes your house). Shiny new airports opened to great fanfare (and expense) which have yet to receive an aeroplane. Relationships between bankers, politicians and developers that have long been far too cosy. 80 candidates in the recent local and regional elections who were under judicial investigation for corruption.

For coming on three years, Spain has been reeling from the financial crash and the hangover from the consequent implosion of a two-decade long property and construction bubble. The economy has flatlined and the vultures circle overhead as they eye up the next potential victim of the sovereign debt panic that has swept through Europe’s periphery. As the austerity measures imposed to keep the vultures away bite harder, working Spain (and unemployed Spain, and retired Spain) tightens its belt yet another notch and stoically surveys the devastation wreaked by casino economics. A few big winners and a great many losers.

¡Basta Ya! For too long we complained alone, in small groups, among friends, that things were looking bad and getting worse. In April we started to grumble out loud. On the 15th of May we began to shout. Indignant, we could take it no more. They tried to silence us, but we shouted louder. They tried to remove us from the places we had congregated, but more and more of us joined in so we could remain firm and stand tall and defiant.

We chanted and sang for hours and nights on end to keep our spirits up.

Angry and determined:

¡Que no! ¡Que no! ¡Que no nos representan, ¡Que no…!   (They don’t represent us!)

To a catchy, easy-to-chant tune:

¡Lo llaman democracia y no lo es! ¡No lo es!   (They call it democracy and it’s not! No it’s not!)

To an up-tempo techno beat:

¡Vue-stra cris-is no la pag-a-mos!   (We won’t pay your crisis!)

To the tune of the Spanish version of ‘Ten green bottles’:

Un banquero se balanceaba, encima de una burbuja inmobiliaaaaaria,   (One banker was balancing on top of a property bubble,)

Cuando veía que no se caía, se fue a llamar a otro banqueeero.    (When he saw that he didn’t fall, he went to call another banker.)

Dos banqueros….    (and on and on…)

And of course, the protest classic:

¡El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!   (The people, united, will never be defeated!)

Just because we were indignant, it didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy ourselves, and as midnight approached on the eve of the pre-election ‘Day of Reflection’ – when our protest would officially be prohibited – the singing got louder and the chants got wittier. At 00:00 of the 21st of May all 25,000 of us in the Puerta del Sol, Madrid, and the thousands more gathered in plazas across Spain and outside embassies around the world fell silent, shutting our mouths and waving our hands in the air; our mute shout to the deaf ears of the politicians. And then, as the clock in Sol chimed its twelfth chime, we roared in unison.

And something amazing happened. They heard our cry!

The next step is to make them listen…