A bigger HASSLE

Riots, dis­tur­bances, protests, bru­tal human rights vi­o­la­tions, night­time shenani­gans or “po­lice-com­mu­nity li­ai­son”? The events that began im­me­di­ately after the elec­tion here in Lleida, Barcelona and Girona (as well as Va­len­cia and Madrid) can be called what­ever you like. But any­one who thinks that it’s all about some­thing as ab­stract as free­dom of ex­pres­sion is fool­ing them­self.

Young and not so young peo­ple are march­ing, chant­ing, smash­ing shop win­dows, loot­ing and doing the now rou­tine burn­ing of rub­bish hop­pers for much wider-rang­ing rea­sons than just the im­pris­on­ment of yet an­other rap­per. That was merely a trig­ger.

Quite ap­pro­pri­ately the other day, I was stand­ing, for a change, not sit­ting, in my lounge room when I watched a young Cata­lan on Eu­ronews TV in­tel­li­gently se­lected by the ed­i­tors pos­si­bly to give a more com­pre­hen­sive ex­pla­na­tion for why he and his friends ven­tured out into the cold and put them­selves at risk of ar­rest or worse. (At the time of writ­ing, an­other cit­i­zen had lost an eye from a rub­ber bul­let.)

The young man in a black face mask with both his eyes still good enough to show on cam­era, made a point that is en­tirely ab­sent from most media re­ports and com­men­tary. While all the ac­tion was going on be­hind him, he was in­tent on say­ing that Spain is the worst in Eu­rope for youth un­em­ploy­ment, cur­rently still over 40%. He could also have com­mented on under-em­ploy­ment as a chronic symp­tom here since the 2009 eco­nomic ‘cri­sis’.

It’s no co­in­ci­dence that some demon­stra­tors fo­cused their ag­gres­sion and frus­tra­tion on banks, de­stroy­ing fur­ni­ture and equip­ment after break­ing in. As a sym­bol of cap­i­tal­ism’s fail­ure for the av­er­age per­son there is no bet­ter tar­get of what to smash up. The pan­demic has not cre­ated record cases of house evic­tions or al­ready low salaries un­changed for more than a decade. It has sim­ply made the sys­tem we live under more pun­ish­ingly ex­treme.

One of the most rel­e­vant facts also in the back­ground to the lat­est episode of ’hit the streets and get hit’ now ap­plies to at least two gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple. Those who are my son’s age (late teens, up to early 30s and my gen­er­a­tion in our 50s) who are avail­able to be “gain­fully em­ployed” sim­ply are not put to good or fair use. This too breeds frus­tra­tion.

In my own case, for the last nine months or so of the pan­demic, the best that hyper-cap­i­tal­ism is of­fer­ing to some­one like me with two uni­ver­sity de­grees and two decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in class­rooms with adults and teenagers is that all we can hope for is a patchy timetable teach­ing lit­tle kids in China. On­line for 10 euros or less an hour.

In other words, any­one in a job is sup­posed to con­sider them­selves lucky and be thank­ful for get­ting paid peanuts. Es­pe­cially if you live in Barcelona, peanuts sim­ply don’t pay the rent or the mort­gage. That is also why huge num­bers of adults under 30 con­tinue to live in the fam­ily home.

Equally, there’s one other cru­cial el­e­ment that has hardly been re­ported. The jailed rap­per in ques­tion (whose name may as well be spelt has­sle, not Hasel) has also crit­i­cised [al­leged] pre­vi­ous tor­ture and death of demon­stra­tors and mi­grants, aside from his lyrics about the cor­rup­tion of those higher up our eco­nomic and so­cial food chain. Plenty of local peo­ple know that. It mo­ti­vates them.

So why is this not being stated in media out­lets who can get away with ex­er­cis­ing free­dom of ex­pres­sion?