Barcelona pictures.

national | miscellaneous | news report

Monday February 17, 2003 12:36

by Brian Scanlan

singer at redbrick dot dcu dot ie

Pictures of the anti-war protest from Barcelona.

Some pictures and a short write up about the anti-war protest in Barcelona on Saturday!

One word for Saturday in Barcelona: MASSIVE.

1.3 million people, according to the Barcelona Ajuntament (city government) turned up to protest against the buildup in war, especially the Madrid government's involvement.

The biggest protest in Barcelona's history was organised by the major opposition party in Spain, and supported by the major trade unions. The Catalan people turned out in force, most of the people appeared to be with their families.

The most fun was generated by the multitude of art collectives, green groups and various anarchist groupings, who were well rehearsed and costumed, dancing to live drumming with flares and other small fireworks. The varied ethnic groups were loud and were a source of good "craic" - Latin Americans were out in force, as was the large Muslim community, and the handful of Tibetans were extremely colourful and loud.

I hadn't a hope of photographing anything other than a small percentage of some of the interesting stuff that was going on - It was simply too full to move around. It took 30 minutes to shuffle one block down Passeig De Gracia, which would usually take no more than 30 seconds to walk.

After spending around an hour moving from Diagonal down Passeig De Gracia, we cut off onto a sidestreet at the Casa Mila, where we caught one of the many impromto music/dance performances. We went back onto Passeig De Gracia a few blocks down, by that stage people were actually moving at more than a snails pace, and we covered the 1km to Plaça Tetuan in about half an hour. We didn't hang around the stage at the end, as we couldn't really understand what was going on (mi castellano es malo, mi catalan no existe).

The march was supported by the Ajuntament, who had taken advertisements out in the newspapers stating their support for the marchers, and their opposition to the actions taken by Aznar and co.

Most of the newspapers of the day had the "banned bomb" logo on their front cover on Saturday, and nearly every shop had anti-war posters pinned up (including those not on the march route).

It was (hopefully) a once in a lifetime event being at the march.

More photos that I took arehere.