Coffee for nobody: Catalunya, la crisis and the end of Spain?

  

It seems strange for a nation famed for its exuberance, but Spain's national anthem, La Marcha Real, is one of only two wordless anthems in the world. It seems strange, but this reluctance to declare what Spain stands for and where it came from speaks volumes about the country's discomforting recent past, and its increasingly volatile present. 

La Marcha Real was not always wordless. Until the country's fascist dictator, Francisco Franco, died in 1975, it was full of the patriotic bombast that characterises most national anthems. The words were removed in 1978, during the country's uneasy transition to parliamentary democracy. As a mark of this uncertainty, nothing was written in their place.

I wrote the cover story for The National's weekly Review section last week, about what the Catalan push for independence means. Photos for that piece by the superlative Dave Stelfox, and you can read some of Carlos Delclós's terrific writing (in English) from Barca here.

Also, if you missed it, my November essay/reportage for The New Inquiry about the Spanish general strike, also republished in Salon here (The New Inquiry version is better, cuz it's accompanied by my strike pictures - also, you should subscribe, it costs a ridiculous $2 a month). I'm in Spain again at the moment, working on The Village Against The World, to be published by Verso this autumn.

Flying pickets at midnight: general strike in Madrid

Today's #N14 general strike is a one day strike, beginning not with pickets in place for 9am, the start of the average working day, but at midnight - ie over four hours ago. In fact it started with a rally at 8.30pm last night in Puerta del Sol, called by CC.OO, Spain's largest trade union. After speeches about Rajoy, labour reform, the Troika, capitalism, unemployment, and eviction-prompted suicides;(more on all this later, as it's way past my bedtime), about 4,000 people went to CC.OO headquarters for some rhetorical and actual nourishment - more speeches, plus piles of free bocadillos, coffee, non-alcoholic lager, and coca cola, the necessary fuel for a night of flying pickets.

Everyone piled up on flags, stickers, fire-crackers, horns, whistles and flyers, and at 11.45pm, set off to shut down the capital of Spain.

As I write, I think it's fair to say that every ATM machine and shop window in Madrid now looks like this (although some of them have superglue and spraypaint on, too). The stickers say 'CLOSED: GENERAL STRIKE' and 'WE ARE LEFT WITH NO FUTURE':



After the violent clashes following the attempts to 'occupy congress' in September, the authorities obviously aren't taking any chances this time. Nothing like two layers of fencing and one layer of riot police to demonstrate the health your representative democracy is in:

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Utopia and the Valley of Tears coverage round-up

My ebook about Marinaleda and the Spanish crisis - only £3.60, available here - came out in late August and has been doing very well, thank you for asking. I'm going back to Spain this winter to research a longer book, for Verso, about the history of the utopia - about the communist village as an ecosystem. Until then, here's a quick round-up of some of the fall-out:

Here's an extract in The Guardian.
Here's an extract in El País.
Here's an extract in The Occupied Times.

Here's an interview I did for Dazed & Confused (print), here's an interview I did for Monocle (radio, 18mins in), and another interview about the #25s protests for Monocle (radio, 11mins in). There was also BBC Newsnight, which is no longer online, and Novara on Resonance FM, which is not yet online.

Here's a review in The National, a review on Search for the Master Copy, a long review-essay in Greek for LiFO, a review on Z Blogs, and a shout on Boing Boing. (If you want a review copy get in touch at the usual address.)

I'm doing a talk about utopias and the Spanish crisis at the Cuts Cafe in London on 18 October at 6pm - details here.

And finally, it's going to be translated into Spanish and published as a physical and digital book early next year by Artefakte. The Verso book will be out autumn 2013.

New book announcement: Utopia and the Valley of Tears

“I think there is a cultural point in Spain, there is a Catholic way of thinking. They say that life is... a valley of tears. We have been in all this richness!” Juanjo exclaimed, gesturing at the river, and the ornate city around him. “But now! Now the people think: it is time for the valley of tears.”

A worse unemployment rate than Greece. A Spanish economic miracle turned catastrophe. A lost generation of indignados with no homes, no work, and no faith in the system. An austerity government who in six months have pushed miners to armed conflict, firing home-made rocket launchers at riot police. An Economics Minister whose last job was director of the Spanish branch of Lehman Brothers.

And right in the middle of the Andalucian countryside, a little-known communist utopia led by a charismatic poet-rebel, a town of landless labourers who for over 30 years since the death of Franco, have fought capitalism - and won.



My new book, Utopia and the Valley of Tears: A journey through the Spanish crisis, will be published digitally on 20 August 2012. A longer, different, paperback version will be published by Verso next year.

For enquiries, or to register your interest, email valleyoftears2012 @ gmail.com, and you will receive one reminder when it is published - and that will be the only one, I promise.

***

“It sounds like science fiction: a small rural town led by a charismatic mayor tries to turn itself into a communist utopia. But it's fact - it's happening right now in Andalucia, and colliding with the region's real-world history of violent rebellion and radicalism. Hancox's book could not be more timely - with Spain on the brink of social crisis and the shadows of the past emerging.”

- Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight Economics Editor

“As the crisis of neoliberalism smacks Spain in the face and tear gasses its young, Dan Hancox ventures to Marinaleda a tiny Spanish ‘utopia’ with a charismatic mayor. The struggle to take back land and create jobs, he tells us, is the most noble of dreams. Right here in the sacred heart of resistance and anarchism, the battles of the past merge with the future. Unemployment mounts, houses are repossessed. A generation migrates. Surely this tiny paradise is  just a mirage?

“Hancox captures the optimism necessary for alternative ways of doing politics, economics and living together. As the borderline between dream and reality shimmers in the heat of Andalucia, we begin to wonder if living as if change were indeed possible is the very key to making actual change happen. Do we really have any other choice?”

- Suzanne Moore, The Guardian

We wanted to be the sky: a DDR fishing boat, Nas, and Bloc chaos

Hi, sorry I've been a bit quiet on here. I've just finished a book on Spain, I'm editing a website called ourBeeb full-time til October for openDemocracy, about the future of the BBC, and somehow I've still found time recently for these three Guardian music features. So here they are!

I was lucky enough to go to Hamburg with ace photographer (and mate) Dave Stelfox to spend a weekend on a 1960s East German herring boat, the 80 metre long MS Stubnitz, to see the engine room, sleep in the bunks, and find out how an incredible Swiss sound artist called Blo saved the boat from the scrap heap, to turn it into an incredible cultural powerhouse, roaming the high seas. Here's the feature about the Stubnitz, ahead of its first ever visit to London, for the ill-faited Bloc Weekend.


Ahead of his new album I went to meet the legendary Nas to talk about what it's like when you're considered the greatest rapper alive, but you're pushing 40, you've seen hip-hop change beyond all recognition, got close to Amy Winehouse over Skype, and had a long, messy break-up with Kelis. He was very philosophical, and said some weird things about cows. Here's the piece.
   
What happened at Bloc? I was there, and I don't really know where to start, but Friday night's debacle involved two and a half hour queues, dangerous crowd surges, panic, police lines, a cancellation in the small hours of the morning, Steve Reich, and music made by a mass improvised shipping container drum orchestra. There's video and audio, pictures, tweets and 1500 words in this epic collaborative report, with mad love to combabes Chris Wood, Nick Wilson and Dave Stelfox for the bits that weren't the words.

Shostakovich to Plan B: How to defend a great city with violins

A quick note on the source material for Plan B's controversial new single about the London riots, Ill Manors (quick link catch-up: Dorian Lynskey on why it's the best protest song in years, and Josh Hall and Richard Osley on the problems with making Plan B a political poster-boy).

The instrumental for Ill Manors was lifted from a German pop song, Peter Fox's Alles Neu (produced, amusingly, by 'The Krauts'), but the original source is this violin riff above from Shostakovich's 7th, generally known as the Leningrad Symphony. Why do I bring this up? Because Shostakovich's 7th is a tremendous example, decades before hardcore or jungle or grime reshaped Britain from the dancefloor upwards, of why political music needn't have vocals in it, shouting in your face about exactly why and how it's political. It's a symphony with a direct, descriptive narrative, quite specifically about the defence of Leningrad from the Nazis during WW2; a stirring call to arms in the face of a relentless, brutalising assault on the collective body. Listen to those artillery-fire drums from the 5:20 mark!

It's about a great city under siege, and the ordinary people who suffer in its heart frantically trying to resist. A situation I would argue shares some - albeit thankfully less fatal - similarities with London 2012.




The opening shot of the Ill Manors music video sees Plan B standing high up on the edge of a London towerblock roof, playing air violin, and looking out over the smoke rising from the city beneath him - surveying the battlefield much like a Soviet general might have done, as the Nazi troops moved in.

How's that for long-lasting political currents in music?

***

PS has anyone else noticed that Ill Manors (the full length film around which the album is based) was green-lit in 2009? Casting took place in August 2010, a year before the UK riots. Makes me think that this whole project is a bit less opportunistic than it first seemed.

A short note from Catalunya

I'm in a small village near Barcelona for a month, working on something big on Spanish utopianism, its anarchist history, the indignados movement, and the mega-crisis that is slowly engulfing one of my favourite countries.


(CGT offices. The Spanish anarchist trade union once had 1 million members, in the early 20th C)


(Three generations of the 2nd Republic. Demo against labour reform, 11 March 2012)


(Capitalism and crisis, old friends. This poster is from 1979, the exact moment of neoliberal escalation)

There is lots more to come. In every sense.