Old but New

As I said in my last post, I am updating my website, edwintoonephotography.com. That means new galleries are being created and I will continue to post links to them here as they open and that is exactly what I am doing now.

The latest gallery is a series of photos I took back on March 29, 2012 during a general strike here in Spain.  I posted most of these photos here on the blog but with only a little information about what was going on.  I have now created a featured gallery with these photos and a little more information. Most of the descriptions are pretty straight forward but a few include details that might be interesting to some.

Click on the photo below to see the full gallery.

Can Vies Day 4

Today is the 4th day of protest/riots over the destruction of Can Vies a squatter community center.  This morning there was a symbolic “rebuild Can Vies” and in the afternoon groups played music, people gathered and talked, and even a human tower was done.  As the day rolled on a medium size group of protestors started a marched that was joined by marchers from other neighbourhoods and grew into a pretty large peaceful march that wondered the streets as it got dark.

As far as I know the group remained peaceful until the police intervened near Las Ramblas. As of midnight the helicopters were still circling overhead, which leads me to believe that not all is well in Barcelona.

Surprised and disappointed (A few reflections on the General Strike in Barcelona)

First off let me say that I was surprised to see the police controlling the protest in such a good way during most of the day, yesterday in Barcelona.  As you may know a General Strike was held throughout Spain and Europe and in my experience, Barcelona does a horrible job of controlling these situations. I expected violent clashes and police brutality like I saw during the 29M General Strikes. (See http://edwintoonephotography.posterous.com/29m-a-few-more-photos and http://edwintoonephotography.posterous.com/shot-by-shot-of-the-bad-dog-walkers) But, wow!, bravo!, most  of the morning and day seemed very calm.  Yes, there were some clashes but what I saw was quickly quelled and brought under control without bystanders being hurt.  This may have been because there were police on every corner and the large protest did not start until 6pm.  But, even after the start of the real protest things seemed fairly calm. 

It was not until around 9:30 that things really got out of hand and this is where, again, I was truly disappointed in the way the police handled the situation.  I do not want to say that the police did not have reason for action but the action that they took was completely counterproductive. 

Protesters had been marching from Diagonal and Paseig de Gracia towards the sea from around 8pm.  During this time there had been a few acts of vandalism but from what I could tell, no burning of garbage containers or violent confrontations.  At around 9:25pm I was preparing to leave when I noticed that some protesters had set some fires on Via Laietana. It turns out that they had even started to burn an empty police car and were vandalizing other buildings.  The police rushed in to get things under control.

At this point I would think that the focus of the police force would be on chasing down on foot and catching the small groups that had set fires and were being violent.  But, this was not the tactic used.  Instead the police drive their vans at high speeds to corral any and all of the people including random bystanders.  Once they have people headed in one direction they jump out swinging sticks and shooting rubber bullets.  This sends the people scattering in all directions, so the police jump back into the vans race around again until have a nice little group they can attack again.

This technique is almost comical from a distance but it truly puts everyone in danger and creates more of a sense of chaos than calm.  The danger comes from two specific areas, high-speed vans racing at crowds of people and stampedes of people running over each other.  I witnessed an old man injured in the street after one of these stampedes and a police officer was actually hit by a van and later rushed to the hospital.

The escape from this comes from walking in a single file line with your hands up as close to the wall as you can get while the riot police yell at you and swing their sticks.  If you are lucky you do not get a swat from the stick and they don’t decide to do another high-speed corral.   

See more pictures from the protest at: http://www.demotix.com/news/1599049/general-strike-barcelona-ends-violently#m…

 

Students brave the rain to protest budget cuts in Barcelona

 See the rest of the pictures at demotix.com

 

Happy May Day

 

This picture was taken yesterday during one of the organized Day of the Workers peaceful protest.  These scary looking guys are not the so called anti-system “terrorist” (as the government calls them) but the police.  For the first time, as far as I know, loads of police showed up looking like this and shadowed the march.  Other than wearing an armband that said police they were unidentifiable.  As the protest continued many in the crowd yelled at them calling them an embarrassment among other things but the crowd remained peaceful.    

Finally, towards the end of the protest this group of “police” started to follow the crowd so I followed them, making sure to give them plenty of space.  I snapped a few photos and one of the group turned and approached me.  I, not trying to cause any trouble, addressed him politely and with respect.  He ignored this and simply told me not to take any pictures.  I asked if it was against the law and he said again don’t take any pictures. I asked again if it was illegal but he refused to answer. Because I was not sure of  law and had seen how earlier in the day they had pushed others including journalist with press passes around I did as he asked.