Notes From Spain (media vrs. people)

14-march

Yesterday we spent from 18.00 to 3am in the streets, at last alternative,

Spontaneous demonstrations took place criticizing the government‚s cynical

and

Fascist manipulation of the events.

They even changed the TV programme last minute and showed a movie about ETA

Victims.... and they didn‚t show one scene of the massive amount of people in

The streets until 3.am. the best thing is that after all they have lied these

days they said in TV that the gatherings were illegal and anti-democratic

and that the elections "could" be suspended.( i liked the slogans -chants

that people made up constantly as we heard from friends what was happening

on TV. like "lo que siente el pueblo no es illegal" -what the people feel is

not illegal, or "nosotros lo dijimos, no a la guerra we already warned you:

no to the war") anyway we suspect that if the pp -partido popular,

conservative party now in power- don´t win they will claim they were

illegal.

this is amazing, really, like Franco times all over again.

thank goodness we have cell phones and internet!!

today the sun in shining again and we are going to vote.

see you in mars,

xxxsally



13-march

a terrible sadness has taken over the city

mixed with great anger and frustration about both the terrible act itself

and the political manipulation: we have general elections tomorrow and the

government (plus the main TV channels, all controlled by the government) are

doing everything possible, in a very fascist manner, to cover the fact it

could have been al quaeda or an Islamic terrorist group.

If they can prove or try to make the general public think it was ETA they

have chance of winning tomorrow by absolute majority, but if it´s clear that

it was al quaeda, obviously it has to do with their absolute support of bush

and the Iraq war and they could loose....

ETA has officially said it wasn´t them but in TV you only see "experts" of

all fields that go on and on about ETA and their history. Total confusion

and covering of information until monday.

So in the middle of the mourning and the news of friends of friends or

families who have lost loved ones or suffer from terrible wounds and

amputations (i will not give examples, the TV constantly covers al gory

details....but i can assure we are devastated hearing what people are going

through) we have to bear the political manipulation of this disaster.

i feel incredibly tired and pessimistic. i cannot concentrate on my work.

it´s like the 9-11 all over again, once more in another city i live in and

so near friends and family. however much one understands what is happening

rationally and politically it´s impossible to take it in

emotionally. but i´m very lucky no one i know directly was affected.

yesterday we were out in the pouring rain, after days of sun even the sky

was crying. we would have liked to attend an alternative demonstration

rather than the official government one with aznar, the royal prince,

infantas, and Berlusconi heading it, with a banner that said "against

terrorism and for the constituion". but there was none - there was one in

the Basque country but it probably wouldn‚t have been allowed here- so we

were in the streets milling around without following that stupid banner.

when will these politicians realize that violence, stupidity and greed only

create more of the same? what does this f. "fight against terrorism mean?

can one of these men in dark suits explain it to me?

because it seems to me that 9-11 has meant the beginning of a third world

war, a

new mode of war in which instead of the "privileged", rich countries using

their self proclaimed intelligence, culture, sophistication, democratic

principles, human rights & capacity of dialogue to try and help resolve the

injustice and conflicts which we are mostly responsible for, we are doing

everything possible to perpetuate hate, selfishness, intolerance and making

this spiral of violence escalate to an inhuman scale. is this so hard to

see? shall we emigrate to mars -water or not?- or is that red and empty

planet what we are heading for?

thanks for your messages, phone calls and sms,

they make a difference.

xxxsally