The world is angry. The occupy wall street-movement finds its supporters everywhere, also in Madrid. I was there as a silent observer to see what angriness looks like, in its many shapes and what it actually leads to: nothing.
At around 3 o’clock this Saturday afternoon, Madrilenian streets were slowly flushed with people. People not having a job, people angry with the banking-system, people angry at politicians, people angry about injustice all around the world, people angry at Greece, anarchists, socialists, communists; they were all there.
My modest estimation is that there were at least 500.000 protestors on Madrilenian streets collectively showing their distrust and unease with current affairs. As life in Spain is like a ‘fiesta’, even at demonstration in which anger is the binding factor, the demonstration is slowly turning into a party. Loud music, people dancing, people singing. Some spontaneously arising shops selling beer and chips are doing great business: capitalism at its height in a demonstration refuting capitalism.
Being angry is easy, very easy. Feeling unity in this anger is even easier. When however, 500.000 people with different ideals would start to discuss solutions, unity vanishes as if it never existed. And when I roamed the same streets the next day, scanning for trails of what once was. I found some empty Heineken cans, some trampled cigarette butt and total silence. 500.000 people, showing a glimpse of unity before we all woke up the next morning, realizing that the unity did not really exist.
One man did struck me though.
Amongst, all the young, drinking, blowing, partying angry crowd. I spotted one old man. Not smiling, not dancing, just walking and holding on to his protest-sign. ‘Soy Abuelo no se permiterimos que se coman nuestras flores’, I am a grandfather, we cannot permit them to eat our new flowers.
I wonder how he woke up.
