My piece ‘Starfish’ was recently nominated for the Periscope Literary Prize, although didn’t win a position, ultimately. I am currently re-submitting it elsewhere, so I can only reveal an excerpt here:
Starfish
Dedicated to all the staff of Two Whales Coffee Shop
1) The ghost
The riddle of our living is the genius beneath the suffering. I uncovered this in Newfoundland. Here I was told a colonial story of which I am the extension.
A fishing vessel was wrecked but for one survivor, brought back to Petty Harbour. Distressed, boat-less, for days he paced the coast with a telescope, hoping to spy his shipmates. In the Newfy fog I was mistaken for his ghost. I was looking for whales.
I yearned to witness them from craggy cliffs, from where wind-stunted conifers pour lichen over blueberry carpets. Nature’s sensuousness expunged old manhood’s wraith. A whale-watching ride crafted into a slick but gutsy production in an otherworldly light, gave me finally, an encounter…
“In the Heat of the Fire – Solidarity, Retaliation, G20”
A demand for ‘amnesty’ for Basque political prisoners. A common statement on the walls of poor areas.
Day 7: Madrid
I woke at 5 a.m. to everyone else in the dorm leaving, noisily. I say ‘a little quieter, por favor’ and go back to sleep, but it leaves me with a weird feeling. What do they know that I don’t?
At the bus station I’m a little early so get a potato omelette and use the toilets. Of all the toilets I’ve been to since arriving, only one had a working lock and I can imagine it being difficult here for trans people or others who might be worried about getting walked in on. I’m anxious about the bus, but have no problems and soon we are rolling slowly through the plains and canyons of north central Spain, the greenery of the Basque land already diminished to a flat and never ending yellow. Half way there we stop at a gas station for a rest break. In the toilets someone has written ACAB with a circle A in felt tip. It feels like I’m on the right track. An hour before we reach Madrid we rise again into low mountains and the leaves on the trees turn green.
Arriving at the bus station I have a moment of worry when the police look at me funny, wondering what they would make of my revolutionary writings. But nothing happens and I’m soon on the street. Madrid feels more anonymous and work-focused than Bilbao and once on the underground I am instantly reminded of London. Gone are the punks, replaced by well dressed, body conscious individuals who do not smile. Arriving at Tetuán, where I have arranged to meet S, K’s friend, I find posters for a gym covering Anarchist ones. I remove them and politely re stick them underneath. A moment later a swarm of joggers runs past, intensely focused on themselves. I wait.
S told me 11 minutes – seems pretty exact, but he isn’t on time. When he arrives he is a pleasant young basque man in the classic anarchist mould, tall and thin and free spirited. He’s intense though, and interested in the politics – good to talk to. He shows me to the squat, which is well kitted out with a bunch of rooms and a cooker. They have five or six squats in this area, he tells me, which is interesting – it doesn’t feel like a sub-cultural neighbourhood, just poor. There are two others staying, young anarchists recently come from the Hamburg forest. They’ll have to remain somewhat faceless here for security reasons. S takes me to the market where I buy some stuff for dinner and a couple of beers. He has to run to an assembly – the word they use for meetings here – so I walk back to the squat alone. On the way, I find a nub of hash in a bag – serendipity or what! Get back and have a drink and a smoke and feel good. Serious conversation about the inevitability of climate rebellion – and what it means – in English enlivens the evening. I crash happy.
I love bubble letters.
Day 8: Madrid
Wake up and head out early for coffee and a cigarette at a cafe, where I write a song. There’s an idea floating for me and the Hamburg crew to do a little concert in two days’ time. Could be fun and one of them likes screaming in songs so I write a scream into the chorus. There’s a first time for everything, but I’ll let him do it – my vocal chords probably couldn’t handle that and my current smoking habit. The squat has a fucked up lock, so we can only open it from outside, but it doesn’t really slow anything down too much. We have neighbours just round the corner who are happy to pop round and open it up. On the way back from the cafe I run into the crew on its way out to a potential eviction. I turn around and go with them. We jump the metro and catch a few different trains. People are talking about the new Tarantino movie. They liked it. We discuss whether he is right or left wing – I argue he’s on the right but I get the idea I’m in a minority. Oh well, we arrive at the squat to find 50+ anarchists and poor squatters standing in the road waiting for security to arrive. They never do. The authorities call an organiser and when they hear how many of us there are they decide to come another day, ‘with riot police and firefighters’ – they say.
Heading back to the squat there’s some discussion of the different Anarchist groups in Europe. I get the impression we are similar all over, and facing similar issues – the eviction of our squats and social centres by newly confident right-wing governments and the unapproachability of serious direct action from a context which is relatively insecure. Alongside this, there is a little of the usual culture of revolutionary tourism and ‘living the life’ at the expense of efficiency, outreach and action. Then again, maybe I’m just hot and moany – I’d thought to have a day off today and sabotaged it again. Back at the squat, everyone else heads for siesta while I feel driven to write something. I get about a paragraph in – hadda get some music going, smoke, glass of water, faff – and the others get up to go liberate dinner. I’m down for a break and follow, even though I shouldn’t. First thing we do is head to a comrade’s to sort out some fancier clothes. One of us, who is gender non-binary, is getting changed in front of us – yes, I’m cis, used to be heterosexual and I’m a prudish Brit and no, I don’t know where to look, but I figure not staring is always the cool thing – and gets a call from the police. Turns out it’s just they’ve found a friend’s wallet but it makes them sweat for a minute.
The comrade who we’re borrowing the clothes from lends me a book in English, ‘total liberation’ – it looks interesting. We head out and I split off and go buy coffee and a croissant and read, feeling like a tourist and a bad person. Glad I did it though – the book is essentially the article I was trying to write, but ten times better. Head back for dinner and get invited to an assembly at 9. I also agree to give a talk on the IRA – should be fun. They have a lot of support here – I may be in the rare position of being more critical of them than everyone else in the room. We bike to the assembly, an experience scarily like playing a video game – I have to remind myself I have no spare lives, I’m just not as aware of the traffic or the street rules as I would be at home – and when we get there an old man is standing by where we lock the bikes. I presume he is a comrade – he seems friendly with the person who brought me. It turns out he is a security guard, as is his son.
The assembly is 50/50 men and women and seems very cool, but all in Spanish with no translation and after the first hour and a half of considering fundamentals of anarchist politics and the way people interact in meetings (with no actual context) I start to struggle. Cigarettes, changing my position, playing with my phone – this thing’s been going on for 3 hours now and I just wish I could understand some basic meaning. Ah well. There’s a tonne of ants near where I’m sat but none of them seem to be biting me. Anti-speciesist solidarity?
Jesus, did I get antsy at that thing. Too much experience of meetings made me overly self aware and I tried to look interested throughout cause I didn’t want to sabotage the vibe. You try looking interested when there are 1000 ants by your non-socked feet, you’re sitting on asphalt and you can’t understand more than 1 word in 20 that everyone’s saying. It’s not fun.
Still strangely glad I went though. It was interesting to watch, interesting to note the intensity of emotion combined with mutual respect of the participants – the product, I guess of all being committed to the action in question – and the absolute disregard for having a chairperson or any of the more hierarchical aspects of British leftist organisation. Behind the city thunder sparks in the clouds, the yellow light glows over the main road at the bottom of the hill from where we’re sat and I smoke cigarettes and watch the cars go past, so insecure and so unaware. Afterwards a few people give me a summary of the meeting; it was very intense, they say, because the decision as to whether to continue the squat affects everyone, but the people squatting are very tired. Spanish law means that new people entering a squat that is marked for eviction do so illegally (approximately – the detail is hard to translate) so the weight is on the current squatters to keep the place open. Me and A hop back on our bikes and head for the Embos and she gives me a running commentary on anarchist politics here as we slide through red lights, watching each way and laughing when we’re stopped by the flow of traffic. Back at the squat there is a minor plan developing, details of which I’ll leave hazy, but suffice to say a few of us go on a walk later and it makes us feel much better. There’s a woman here with us, J, who I’m attracted to, but it’s reasonably exploitative – I just wanna fuck. I get the impression she doesn’t and more to the point, my lack of Spanish leaves me unable to make decent jokes.
Let’s face it, if you can’t find out if you share a sense of humour, you aren’t getting anywhere, but my damn stupid subconscious isn’t listening and when she decides to sleep in the same room (in uncertain English, ‘Maybe I’ll sleep with you… in your room though’) keeps me in a state of suppressed tension all night. Damn, someone told me my grandmother is reading this.
Screamo:
I see your faces
I see your smiles
But I don’t understand
What keeps you going all the while
The world is burning
My love is dying and I I I I I
[screams]
I see you working
I see you dressing
but tell me how you feel
the world is burning
my love is dying and I, I, I, I
[screams]
and if I could feel the wind of your soul
if I could feel your heartbeat alone
I could believe there was something in you
something we could both call home
I didn’t even realise this was here until I turned to leave the square.
Day 9: Madrid
Sun comes up, it’s Wednesday morning… I lie in bed and sort the necessary on my phone. After that I don’t do too much except work on my talk. When evening comes it’s at 75% and I’ve stopped freaking out it won’t be done. I walk round to M’s place, another squat round the corner from the Embos and we all chip in to making a dinner for the community. It’s a nice example of vegan slop, with the ever present lentils and rice and everyone’s just as late as they would be at home. I just love the anarchist community…
If I seem a little neggy, don’t worry, I bounced back a couple hours later when, everyone else having flaked out, I convinced S to go on a little walk with me, dragging him away from putting a film list together for the talk. As always with these things it’s a lot of fun and the only thing I have to complain about is that my spelling in Espanol is fucking shite – no-one’s fault but my own. When we get back he says ‘and now I go back to my work, fuck you’ and gives me the finger and I feel that warming intensity of shared spirit I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy more than once since being here. Earlier today my comrade told me the decision I made a few months back to dedicate my life to the struggle was one that many of us were making, and I was not alone, or even unusual in the choice I made.
Sleep is a blanket of warmth like the arms of someone I love.
Day 10: Madrid
Talk day! I work like a motherfucker to get it done, with slides and everything, like being in college again, then catch a siesta till 6. We get one person turn up a little early, then a couple more an hour later and we begin. For once in my life I haven’t over written and even with everything said twice – once in English and once in translation – we don’t over run. I’m glad to have given it and maybe I make people think a little. People come and go and we watch Bloody Sunday, which almost makes me cry, despite the thousands of others who’ve died before and since. I couldn’t quite tell you why. My depression only lifts after a load of chocolate, some orange juice and coffee. J and the internationalists are about and we go for a walk in the city, dumpster dive – pretty much everything we find isn’t vegan – and I know I told you my lips would be sealed but I’m reasonably certain this isn’t prosecutable, we egg the fuck out of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) office round the corner.
We end up back at the Embos watching It Follows, which is pretty good if a bit slow and my subconscious still refuses to shut the fuck up. When it’s over I walk J round the corner to get ready for her flight at 7 to Marseilles for the Anarchist Bookfair there, jealous as ever of:
Her cheap and apparently guilt free air travel
Her opportunity to see Marseilles and the anarcho scene
Her girlfriend
Before I go she says we’ll stay in touch by Whatsapp but by this point the main brain is sitting on top of the lizard brain and showing it who’s boss and my heart doesn’t even lift a little. Back at the lab I knock out a song for the way I feel, still positive from the chocolate and action:
Don’t Look Back
If being a decent guy
ain’t what gets you high
well that’s alright
if seeing you ain’t mine
makes you wanna start a fight
well I don’t mind
But don’t blame it on me
The pain you feel
it ain’t my fault
For being me
Never said I needed you
but you needed me
So don’t chain me down
Cause i’ll break the chain
I don’t need your key
And if the dreams I have
You can’t believe
Well I’ll take that chance
Time is moving on
If you wait behind
I won’t change your mind
But don’t hold me back
The pain I feel
it drives me on
To paint the whole world black
I want you here
but that don’t mean
I’m gonna run on your track
So don’t be surprised
If we say goodbye
When I don’t look back
Cause I’m goddamn fucking free
and that’s a fact
Ah yeah
I’m goddamn fucking free
and that’s a fact
if you take the time
to liberate your mind
then you will find
me at your side
fighting hard
not fighting blind
for a world where we
could find a place
both yours and mine
So don’t hold me back
The pain I feel
it drives me on
To paint the whole world black
I want you here
but that don’t mean
I’m gonna run on your track
So don’t be surprised
If we say goodbye
When I don’t look back
If you’re wondering by now why I’m telling you all this, it’s because the paper always deserves the truth, even if it ain’t pretty.
By 6.15 I’m dead to the world.
If you look closely, you can see where an Anarchist symbol has been removed; this church was a very popular landmark and tourist attraction.
Day 11: Madrid
I awaken from two hours’ sleep and a dream where I am in a rich man’s house? Maybe? With some extinction rebellion older hippy dude and a couple others (I think the internationalists from the squat)… there are a couple of prize racehorses in a room, skinny and small, like children. They look ok until we realise they have blood between their legs. The music is on and there is weed smoke in the air. The phone rings and it is the police calling the owner of the house looking for his family… he has committed suicide on the other side of the country. I look across and the XR guy is using a wire brush to clean the blood from a chair. I shout at him to stop – he doesn’t hear over the sound of the music – I shout and shout until I am right beside him and grab him by the hair. In the real world, there is a sound of banging from the door and I run down the stairs with an erection bouncing everywhere (1) – I thought it was someone trying to get in but it is our friend who lives here who is going to university. He can’t get the door open from the inside, a problem that has been happening on and off since I arrived. We bang away at it and another comrade shows from upstairs – by this point, fortunately, the erection has deflated – and I go to get the key to pass to someone outside to open the door. I’m standing by the window when somehow he manages it – never, ever use this lock any more, he says and we nod and he goes and I crumble back up the stairs to bed to write this weird shit down before it slips from my head…
I wrote that at 8:30am – it would be sad if it wasn’t so goddamn funny.
– Later
Decent day doing basics; laundry, food, bag packing. I go out with Manu, new geezer in the flat, for beers and a joint and we chat about the struggle. We share a lot – we’re both relatively un-queer, non straight edge men, we both feel that we can achieve the most when we’re near our homes and we like similar music – if in different languages. I feel like I’ve made a proper friend in someone I didn’t really expect to. When I get back one of the internationalists cooks dinner and we talk about all sorts of stuff from ‘which variety of anarchist are you then?’ to ‘how do Australians pronounce things?’ Him and his partner are fun to be with and as the rain comes down with all the intensity that long dry days can bring I feel warm and close to these people and find myself looking out the window at the downpour and saying ‘the world doesn’t want me to leave Madrid.’ When the rain stops I go out and meet M at her home and the sense of family is complete; as we dumpster dive together and she tells me about her ongoing ‘terrorism’ case for allegedly bricking a window (2) I feel that same sense of comradeship that has haunted me since I first arrived in Santander – haunted, because it’s so hard to act on, when all the machinery of nations is aligned to prevent our solidarity. When I leave after hugging everyone and exchanging contact details it’s almost like leaving home again and I feel an echo of the mystery and adventure and tension that filled me as I got onto the boat in Plymouth.
I’m early for the bus, bit of a rare thing – maybe I’m getting better at this? – and buy a load of very unvegan food in hopes it’ll kick back against a developing sore throat (don’t judge me, it worked). I have a half a beer and find my usual first-drink depression settling in. Waiting outside the station I become a sort of cigarette distribution point for local Romanian folks and I’m mildly glad to have the excuse to leave off catching the bus. On the way a priest in dog collar points out where I’ve dropped my baccy. Supporting me in slow suicide doesn’t seem very Christian but I say gracias. Almost miss the bus anyway cause it’s at the wrong stand and then settle in to my seat – lucky bastard, I just happen to have another empty one next to me – and try to find a comfortable position to go to sleep. I talk to my dad on the phone but we’re both in a funny state of mind and ring off before we can get pissy with each other. Leaving Madrid behind I’m caught by the realisation of its size; I regret not having truly explored. Oh well, I drift off into an uncomfortable doze as the darkened landscape flows by.
Footnotes:
(1) This was a constant presence in the mornings throughout the trip and had nothing to do with the dream, which was probably a result of the horror movie and a meme I saw the night before about David Cameron starting to hunt on horseback again.
(2) There were also a variety of other charges made against this person, none of which I believe to any degree, some involving bombs etc. The general comment among comrades in Spain was that false charges were a way of attempting to terrorise the movement by the Spanish state.
Last night was too sober, I had trouble getting to sleep and everything irritated me. I was sitting in the common room of the hostel late at night drinking a glass of water and looking at the posters – British colonial, Chinese communist and Hindu – when the lady who ran it came in.
“The common room is closed.”
I felt snappish and down but said only “perdone” as I washed my glass and went back to bed.
In the morning I am desperate to leave the hostel. I finish a diary entry before I realise I have missed the bus I had planned to get. I rush pack and shower and leave for the station. There, I wait at the terminal but when the bus arrives they turn me away – I need a ticket. No matter, I buy one for the next bus with space – the 1220. I sit on the steps outside and eat my first cigarette of the day. Bilbao is worrying me. I haven’t booked anywhere to stay when I get there, nor found any connections to meet. Never mind, I head to the library and do some research on my laptop and engage with everyone back home. Roger Hallam says we have one year to change society. They always exaggerate, but not by much – 18 months is the figure I’ve heard.
I feel incredibly far away, denialist and self-indulgent.
I head back to the station and grab a coffee on the way. On the bus to Bilbao I speed write one article and plan another. I for one will go down fighting.
We rise up into the basque land, fiercely beautiful and steep, the home of irregular warfare. Turning a corner, Bilbao appears as an almost equal city, every building a similar size and style except for a monolithic oval of glass and steel at its centre, phallic and strangely imperial. The bus arrives and I step out realising I’m in a big city again. I’m a little freaked out by its bustle and anonymity, so after a detour to a cafe toilet – no lock on the door – I book a hostel. It’s cheap and there is only one room left and I know I’m being stupid but I do it and when I’ve paid I check where it is – an hour across town, on top of a mountain. I’m exaggerating but hill just doesn’t cover it. Never mind, I hoist my bag onto my shoulder and get my walk on, rationing myself to only two pictures of graffiti on the way. There are many older ladies begging in doorways, in what I think are Kurdish shawls, but i don’t stop to talk. I tell myself I’ll find out what this means later. Bilbao is already more metropolitan and multi-ethnic than Santander. I even saw a vegan option in a restaraunt!
This mural tells the story of the woman who lived there and her resistance against the authorities who wanted to demolish the building.
Half way there I see a punk looking at me friendly and ask “por favor, donde espacio anarchistas?”
“Like a squat?”
“Yeah”
“It’s just round the corner, up the steps”
Fuck sake. I mark it for later and continue.
Beautiful old poster from the Japanese G8 mobilisation.
– later –
Wandered into town, bought coffee, talked ear off possible new organiser from home, supermarket bought basics, back to the hostel…
Came out to a beautiful sunset. Walked down into town – realised I wasn’t wearing a jumper. Back to the hostel…
Descended the mountain to the river, then right up a thin street, I hear the roar of a crowd from the next street over. Calle Somera is crowded with small groups drinking beers and smoking, fed by the bars that open on both sides of the street. Radical stickers are everywhere. I can’t find the squat so I buy a beer and wander round, but like so many scenes like it it’s hard to join. I stop and buy weed from a geezer (twice the price it should be, I later learn – fuck it, I’d bleed the tourist too) and chat to the Swedish guy sitting next to him, but we share approximately nada. I keep wandering until I see a young woman on her own in an antifascist hoodie, waiting around. I stop to chat and find she has passable English, just bad enough to be fun working out words she doesn’t know – good diversion. I explain I am an anarchist – “but I am a communist!” She exclaims. I try to draw her into discussing politics but she says it’s hard enough in Spanish.
“You can also fight with wrinkles in your pussy” – Google translation. Corrections welcome.
Her friends, a bunch of punks, show and we roll a joint (porro). They are all quite beautiful and young and fill me with nostalgia and sadness. We have the conversations I’ve had so many times before; stoned surrealism – her friend‘s cat can teleport, possibly see ghosts, maybe is a ghost – drugs as a right of passage – she’s 17, says one year she couldn’t stop doing amphet – romantic violence in punk music – ‘Volo volo, Carrero volo!’ (1) And I’m filled with the same sense of wanting to reach out and protect, with a maturity born of reading of death, these fragile open egos. Somewhere, mixed in, is the usual inappropriate sexual frisson of power which I will keep locked in my shoes.
I ask her to translate the chorus of the song I’m writing into Spanish, which she does, and tells me it is very beautiful. I want to yell ‘many things are beautiful, this is nothing, you are so young and will die!’ But just say ‘muchas gracias’ a few times. She shows me a video of her and her friends playing a cover of a punk song. The drummer is twice as fast as everyone else. She heads for home and the remainder head to a pontoon on the river, where I jump around like an overclocked robot worrying her friend wrecked on absinthe will fall. He doesn’t. More weed, more tobacco – my lungs feel full of tobacco – and rap music. Most of the kids here are communists it seems, maybe legacy of ETA, but one who is an anarchist has a tattoo that says RAP with a circle A. I can’t find anything to talk about so I head for the hostel, stopping half way up to buy crisps and beer which I consume on a bench by, apparently, the most regularly patrolled road in town. I try to catch up on my diary and work on my song as I watch the police drive by and the drunks wander past.
‘Migrants welcome, racists out’
– later still –
I get back to the hostel and two men from Barcelona are smoking outside. One recognises the Anarchy symbol on my jacket and says hi – he’s an anarchist too, but we don’t share enough language to learn in depth. He’s studying to make violins; used to play but then he got meningitis and his hands can no longer tension the strings. His friend rolls a joint and shows me his poetry, then Billy Joel’s piano man. They’re good people to stay up too late with. Before I go inside I meet a German man who’s in town for the football – says it will be like street war between the teams. We talk politics and the left club St Pauli. He says there are a lot of fascist football supporters in Germany, big wide old men who get aggy with the young. I get inside and spend an age trying to sort out my bed before giving up and sleeping in the duvet cover. It’s good.
First graffiti of Bilbao!
The song:
Cariño (After Carmelita, by Warren Zevon)
I hear American voices talk nothing
And laughing with gossip exchanged
And as I slip between
Awake and asleep
I’m home with you in my dreams
Chorus: (Spanish parts sung in harmony)
Slowly, my sweet boy
I think I’m sinking down
Tranquilo cariño
Creo que me estoy ahogando
As I wonder what you’re taking
On the streets of my hometown
Me pregunto Si te estaras drogando
En alguna Calle de mi ciudad
Well I took the bus to Bilbao
And I met the image of you
And as she laughed when
I told her your name
A part of me howled at the moon
(Chorus)
My darling I feel you fading
Beneath the stress of my life and the strain
Of finding yourself
Of making your way
And always escaping the pain
Sunset from just outside the hostel.
(1) ‘Volo volo, Carrero volo!’: Luis Carrero Blanco, was prime minister for a time. When ETA, the paramilitary group fighting for Basque independence, blew him up in his car, the debris landed on balconies on the fifth story. So a Basque punk group wrote a song saying ‘Carrero Blanco, fly! Fly!’ They made his dreams come true!
Day 5 -Bilbao
Wake up hungover and decide to have an easy one. Laundry, shower etc. Go looking for a library but the maps fail me – it’s a civic centre and closed anyway. Walk to a laundromat in the midday sun – mistake. Get there and it’s more expensive than getting it done at the hostel. Glad I brought water or it’d be day 2 again but minus the good bits. Walk back past the Guggenheim and pop inside but it’s all too much for me. I stop at a cafe, eat a vegan hamburger and read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Just at the point where the moon, in revolution, is attacked by soldiers of Earth and women, children and men die defending it and I feel heavy at heart, which surprises me given I’ve read it 3 times before. But it reminds me that the innocent always go first. On the way back I try the squat. No luck. I see a sticker that says ‘Tourist Go Home!’ I make it back to the hostel – just.
– later –
When I get back to the hostel the Barcelona bais are planning a foray into the city. I make some dinner – only marginally distracted by a South African guy who asks what kind of political organiser I am (I give him the spiel) – then head out. In town, there has been a demonstration (manifestacion) and we catch the aftermath – milling crowds of middle aged basque folks wearing stickers that display their allegiance to the amnesty campaign. Recently, I am told, two young men were imprisoned for a year for ‘terrorism offences’ for telling the police to fuck off in the pub. The willingness of the police to use terrorism legislation is part of the legacy of ETA, which has a lot of support among the young here. We sit on a step near a bar and watch the traffic flow by – there are a lot of punks here, more even than in Barcelona I’m told – but I suspect it’s largely fashion. Mixed in with the punks and the protestors are tourists here for the football. It’s a weird mix, and where it’s busy it feels halfway to a riot – but the police know not to harass anyone and besides I don’t know if it is as militant as it seems – drinking in the street here is traditional, much more so than in England.
I’m waiting for the toilet in a bar and a man queuing behind me asks if I’m a punk. Si, I say, habla ingles? A little. We get by with our bits of shared language while we wait – you’re young to be a punk, no? He asks. Mi padre y my madre punks, I explain. Sex pistols? He asks. God save the queen! No! I laugh and agree. The door opens and I enter into a tiny cubicle covered in punk, anarchist and communist stickers. My friend, the Anarchist from Barcelona, tells me that his right leg is very weak, from meningitis. He’s watched the paralympics and wants to get his lower leg removed and replaced with a false one. He was going to do it, but he passed his test at making violins, so he’s put it off. There is something beautiful about his weakened, wasted skin. He’s only 26 but looks ten years older. I’m glad he and his friend have taken me in, and I feel part of a crew again. We get Chinese takeaway and go back to the hostel, chat and smoke till midnight, then crash out.
Etxerat (‘homeward’) is an association of family members of Basque political prisoners.
Day 6 -Bilbao
It looks like another quiet one, at first at least. I start by getting lost in the network of streets down the hill from the hostel, which is enlivened by seeing a massive feminist symbol on a wall (no idea how they did it.) After that I visit the squat, but no one answers my knock. I lose some time after on the phone, trying to diagnose computer issues from 300 miles away – a sign of my ego maybe that I even think it possible. But it’s good to keep in touch with my friends and smothers any discomfort I might feel at being alone. Eventually I wind up back at the squat, feeling like an overplayed record, banging on the door.
This time there is a fan running inside, but otherwise it’s the same.
After a brief and unproductive period of irritability (mucho calor – it’s hot) I do the obvious and research anarchism in Bilbao on the phone. Turns out there’s a social centre across the river, but it’s closed. I walk there anyway on the off chance I can meet someone. When I get there I find only an imposing door and more graffiti. I decide to head to a vegan restaraunt my friend recommended but only get 5 minutes down the road when I come across a semi circle of bars with beautiful antifascist murals around them. Deciding it’s worth one more shot, I pop inside and ask my now standard ‘donde esta espacio anarchista?’ Which gets me ‘Anarchista, que?’ Eventually I show her the sign on my hoodie. She understands then and takes me outside to introduce me to two men sitting at a table. They tell me that until Tuesday, there was a space called Anna Campbell here. But the police didn’t like it, now the locks have been changed and it is closed. After some discussion though they tell me of Karmela, a former school that has been occupied. Better still, it’s on my way back to the hostel.
I get lost again, though this time it’s the gps that’s out, not me.
When I arrive, it’s to a nicely painted wall and a locked gate. I email the address on it, find and message their page and wait. For what, I’m not sure. Someone to come home I guess.
I’m just not ready to go back to the hostel yet. Its utilitarian modernity is like an open prison.
Eventually, two people come home.
Both are Moroccan and one, H, speaks good English. They seem completely undisturbed by finding a random Englishman outside the gate, let me in and show me around.
It’s beautiful. No other word for it. A former school, its many rooms are well looked after and prepared for different purposes: meeting rooms, including one for LGBTQIA folk only, a climbing room, a playroom for children, a gym, a cinema, a library, a kitchen, a bar… everywhere the walls have been painted with antifascist and anti state murals. Once I’ve been given the tour, I buy a beer from the bar and we sit and chat about politics. Karmela, it turns out, is an illegal squat, managed by a neighbourhood assembly. I also learn they have another word for Anarchists here, bahar (or something like it – too many words…) H is very on side, as is his friend, who tells me that in Morocco everything is taken by the king – who then lives abroad. We talk about our hatred of government – they make a problem, then charge you to fix it – and the racism of police. H’s friend shows me the marks on his wrists where he was handcuffed. I leave, with an invitation to return at 7 – one which will not go to plan.
This guy said I was the first anarchist he’d met in Bilbao. I suspect he hadn’t tried very hard.
– later –
Got back and had dinner, then felt low on energy and didn’t get back to Karmela till 7.45. No one’s there except the boxers at the gym, who don’t take particularly kindly to me ringing the bell and refuse to let me in. H has gone home, so I sit around for a bit thinking, as it gets dark. I decide to walk to the squat for the legendary ‘one more try’, plus the chance of starting conversation in the punky bars nearby. When I get there, there is someone just about to ring the bell. When the door is answered I explain, but once again I’m not welcome – they’re in a meeting and after that they’re going home. I ask if there’s anyone I could talk to about Anarchism here. ‘Go talk to the man in the white shirt’ the lady tells me, pointing to someone sat outside a bar.
So I stagger down the steps, by this point somewhat tired of badgering people and, at a kind of polite moment, interrupt the conversation to repeat my badly translated introduction. I finish – everyone’s looking at me like I just landed – and one says ‘we speak English’. Oh, I say, I’ll stop speaking to you in bad Spanish then. Do we look like European Anarchists? The same man asks. No, I reply, the lady up there told me to talk to you. That breaks the ice a little, they invite me to sit down and I go buy a beer.
It turns out they all used to live in Bristol and finally I get the full treatment on the political situation in Bilbao.
There are many anarchists here, I’m told, but they work as part of other social movements; the anti state wing of independence, squatting and anti-gentrification. The CNT, the major Anarchist organisation in Spain, is largely irrelevant here – it’s too Spanish and insufficiently supportive of prison abolition and the Basque language. For the Anarchist Party back home, this raises important points – to organise a group over here it would be necessary to send someone with a strong knowledge of the independence movement, especially someone fluent in Basque. The insularity of Bilbao and the Basque land generally, with its culture of opposition to outsiders – seen as a source of oppression – explains somewhat the difficulty that I’ve had making connections and my general feeling of insecurity when not wearing a visible Anarchist symbol, itself meaning rebellion and opposition to the (Spanish) state, more than anything specific.
But if K, the person I speak to who’s lived here the longest, is unimpressed by the possibilities for any political organisation here outside of the independence movement, it’s also clear that Independence is an ever receding mirage. Just look, they tell me, at the repression that Catalonian independence has produced. Within the independence movement there are divisions between those who want a Basque state and those who don’t, which in itself suggests potential for an Anarchist movement, if one likely to be allied with and infiltrated by radical socialists and communists.
I’m glad to have met them. If culture and age differences prevent us developing fast friendship, nonetheless we know we are comrades, and K sets me up with a contact in Madrid, who offers to let me sleep at his house. The next morning I go to Karmela one last time to meet H for coffee. He doesn’t show, and I leave after half an hour to catch the bus. It seems a fitting end to my time in Bilbao, which has been characterised by a sense of potential somehow always beyond the tips of my fingers. I’m looking forward to the opportunities a new city might bring.
I sat on my haunches with my back against the white-painted brick wall of the gym, the bag in front of me still reeling from the lazy combinations I had given it.
I positioned myself between the bag and the guys playing around in the ring, wanting a little privacy to centre myself back in the present, the challenging present. It is the climate crisis, always the climate crisis.
Remembering now the romance in boxing films, all that stuff about underdogs coming out of nowhere, training at odd hours to surface blasting into the lime-light.
The mass movement we need to end the climate crisis is non-violent, but it sure does help (a conscious Americanism, a nod to those romantic films) my personal resilience and resolve, after I’ve unloaded my arsenal of frustration, grief and anger, to see that swinging bag.
The day I travel to Spain I’m not sure I will make it. My work as an organiser is busy and exciting and my family life is in crisis. I rush around worrying and am surprised when the knots disentangle themselves. In the last hour I visit comrades in Plymouth before realising I’ve not left enough time to catch the ferry. I run to the port, thumb a taxi en route and make it with 15 minutes to spare. I board and wait until I can watch Plymouth harbour disappear from view. On the top deck I stop to try and bum a cigarette and my passport falls from my pocket – I stamp on it before the wind can blow it overboard. Too close a call. I button it inside my jacket from now on.
Sticker in Plymouth
On the ferry I meet a young farmer on his way to drive around Spain and we discuss politics. We agree on the major points but he cannot apply his analysis to his own actions; he’s scared for the future of climate change, like everyone, but is driving a 20 to the gallon Hilux on his travels and farming beef. The next morning he appears at my table in the cafe and proceeds to follow me around the ferry like a lost dog for the next couple of hours. A lonely loner, like I once was, but one who stinks of exploitation. I ditch him, buy baccy and proceed to smoke my way through the rest of the trip.
If I’m hoping to escape politics, I quickly realise I don’t have much of a chance – on the way off the ship I overhear three conversations about Brexit, Corbyn and the future of England. Bollocks.
On leaving the ferry…
Day 2 – Santander
Arriving in Santander I head into a bar where I’m drawn into conversation with a man from Colombia. We discuss politics:
“is all shit” – with a finger pointed upwards.
“Soy anarchista!”
“Ah anarchista, si – sex pistols!”
Turns out his politics doesn’t go much further than liking punk music and being unemployed but he buys me a beer and walks me to the hostel.
An hour or so later I wander back out into the evening to look for a vegan place to eat. I find two, after some walking, which are both closed, contrary to the internet. No worries, I buy falafel at a kebab shop and collect some pictures of anarchist graffiti, which is everywhere. Wandering to a punky bar, I ask “donde esta espacio anarchista?” and am directed a few streets away. No sign there so I ask more locals, who take me back to a different bar around the corner. Introducing me as an anarchist I have a moment of apprehension as no one seems to know what to do with me. After a moment they take me inside and it turns out I’m in an anti-fascist bar. A woman with blue dyed tips says “anarchista?” “Si” “Ahhh anarchista! This is a safe space.” She introduces me to her boyfriend who high fives me and introduces me to others and we discuss Spanish and English politics…. politicians are just as useless and corrupt here as anywhere else apparently. I settle into chatting with three medical students and after a few drinks, a game of battleships I win by cheating and a game of connect four that I lose they drive me back to the hostel drunk. I hop out of the car. “Anarchist forever!” They shout. “Si! Anarchist forever!” I reply and instantly walk smack into a lamppost. Symbolic? Let’s hope not.
Bar stickers
Day 3: Santander
I start the day by leaving my phone in the hostel, the first of several stupidities. After coffee and croissant I make my way to La Libre, an anarchist social centre and library five minutes from the hostel. With the help of several customers and google translate I have a long conversation with the mujer behind the till. She seems damn sensible and gives me an overview of Anarchism in Santander – about ten active folks keep the space open and organise events. It seems very similar to the situation in Devon, but they’re very impressed at the progress we’ve made. One person had visited when she was in England and thought Devon was dead to the revolution. We end on good terms and she hugs me fiercely – I have yet to get used to the Spanish comfort with physical closeness between men and women. From there, I walk to an occupied social centre on the edge of town, which appears empty if well kept. Here I make my second stupid mistake, taking a small sip of water from a discarded cup on a table. I’m still feeling sick at time of writing, about two hours later. I remain surprised at my ability to completely disregard years of advice as to caution drinking water in hot countries. Oh well, let’s hope it kills me and I can forget.
– later –
Well, that was dehydration. About an hour and a half after I staggered to a nearby taberna and drank a bottle of water the nausea passed, along with the heat of the day, and I wondered back to the Centro Social Okupado (CSO). There I’m surprised to find the occupier, a lady called M, home with three dogs. I introduce myself and find she speaks very good English. She’s just cooking when I arrive and, after I blag – the sickness has suddenly left me very hungry – makes me several large thin pancakes that I eat with olive oil, feeling guiltily that I’m stealing her food. But she convinces me that she has already eaten and we proceed to discuss politics.
Santander orange…
It turns out the Centre was set up mostly by French folks who were staying in Santander, which, she explains, has a long history of being right wing. The graffiti I’ve seen, I now realise, is probably years old – she explains the council don’t bother to remove it. I ramble for about half an hour about our scene back home and realise as I do so that we’re very different in that there are few wanderers among us, no squats, and very few of us living the classic ‘anarchist lifestyle’. It occurs to me this might be why we get so much done.
She shows me around the social centre, where for a moment I think I’ve finally found the mythical Anarchist Conservatives, the Black and Blues – but it turns out the blue was meant to be purple and the paint didn’t mix well. The place is beautifully made and I donate a few cents to the library before getting ready to leave. Before I go, M tells me she spent 66 euros getting to a meeting organised over Signal the week before which no one else attended – buses can be expensive here.
‘All good things are free and wild’
Just as I’m leaving another occupier turns up, David, I introduce myself also as David.
“Tu?” He says,
“Si,” i reply, then remember a word the medical students had taught me; “Tocayo!” He laughs.
Tocayo is someone who shares your name.
Before I leave this part of Santander I climb to the top of the hill and look out over the fields and thinning houses to where the cliffs meet the ocean. A donkey haws in the distance and I see horses tied in a backyard. It’s beautiful, but my legs are tired and I turn back towards the city.
I catch a bus into town and end up eating out again, too tired to figure out what I want to cook. The place I find is a Chinese restaurant, apparently marooned from the mid ‘90s with that same dim fluorescent lighting that’s in Hong Kong thrillers and the largest computer monitor I’ve ever seen sat on the desk by the till. Once everyone but me has left, the family that runs it come out and have dinner at one of the tables. I eat as much as I want for once, and tip.
Empty lots like this were far more accessible and overgrown in the cities I travelled through than in the UK.
Centre of the Web 