Protest (songs)

One way or another it seems to have been a week of protests of one kind or another.

I left the library at around 8.30 on Monday evening and had to walk through a give-us-a-job demonstration on Plaza de la Princesa. The CNT had filled the square with banners and were letting everyone know that unemployment is unacceptable.

Then on Tuesday evening there were demonstrations in various places in Galicia, protesting about raising the retirement age to 67. The unions say that 30,000 people took to the streets in La Coruña, Lugo, Ourense, Vigo and Villagarcía. Vigo and La Coruña were the biggest with between 10,000 and 11,000 each, although the police figures put them at between 4,000 and 5,000. (I always wonder which one can’t count!)

The ladies at my painting class were talking about it, some of them being quite determined to go along, just as they did for the demonstration against merging CaixaNova and CaixaGalicia. They are a very aware lot my fellow painters!

It seems that the demonstrations were mostly good-humoured, with comic versions of popular songs, as you might expect. However, they were also at pains to point out that the workers aren’t responsible for the crisis and put a good deal of blame on the banks. Será que os tiburóns financieros veñen a polas nosas pensións? one of the protestors commented, suggesting that the “financial sharks” were after everyone’s pensions.

(I find it quite interesting that so many protests and demonstrations take place in the early evening. It just wouldn’t work in the UK. Everyone would be at home having their tea and the city centres would be almost empty. Here though, people are still shopping, going for a stroll, just going home from work and are out and about on the streets.)

The week went on in the same vein. On Wednesday I came across a protest camp outside the headquarters of the Xunta here. The dock workers were trying to stop their jobs disappearing.

Now, I can remember a rosy, idealistic time when they (whoever they are) promised that by the 21st century everyone would be able to retire at 50 if they wanted to do so. We would all work reduced hours, but not reduced pay, so that we would have time to enjoy our leisure activities with friends and family. That way there would be jobs for everyone. Life would be dignified and we would all be happy. Well, something went wrong with that idea, didn’t it?!

By Thursday I had got quite used to seeing protests all over the place so I was not at all surprised to hear the usual pitos, the whistle blowing that accompanies any kind of demonstration, as I walked home from my yoga class. Outside a building on García Barbón, a building in the process of refurbishment, a small group of people were gathered to publicise the fact that the developers were unos explotadores. People making their opinions known, venting their exasperation!

Yesterday, however, Friday, instead of bringing protest brought the protest song. We went to the CaixaNova Centro Cultural to see Joan Baez, described by the newspaper El Faro de Vigo as La reina madre de la canción protesta, the queen mother of the protest song.

A slight figure with short cropped silver hair she came on stage at 10 in the evening and sang until nearly midnight. There were old songs and new songs, mostly in English but some in Spanish and even one in gallego, "Adiós ríos, adiós fontes" a poem by Rosalía de Castro set to music. Apparently she sang in catalán in Barcelona. I do like it when these famous singers have done their homework and go out of their way to make the crowd love them even more. I was surprised, however, at how little Spanish she was able to speak to the crowd, addressing the audience mostly in English with odd word in Spanish sprinkled about. Somehow I had expected her to be fluent. It must be those early songs she sang in Spanish which I, studying the language, was really proud to understand.

She sang a fair amount of Dylan and even gave us an excellent rendering of Leonard Cohen’s "Suzanne". Despite what the reporter in El Faro de Vigo said, she did not sing "Diamonds and Rust". But we sang along to "Fairwell Angelina" and "Blowing in the Wind". I found myself singing "No nos moverán" instead of "We shall overcome".

When she had been given her bunch of flowers and finally took her excellent band off stage, the audience wouldn’t let her go. Of course not, we wanted an encore.

So back she came, having already taken her shoes off, and we got another few songs out of her. And she didn’t once protest that at 69 she is past retirement age. No she just sang "Gracias a la vida" and wished us, “May you stay forever young!”