In these modern times, we the people now have three admittedly weak ways to influence our leaders and the direction they should be taking – through the ballot-box, via the keyboard and thirdly by going out into the city with your either comic or angry protest sign to join the demo del día.
Sometimes though, the protest can even work wonders if it’s large enough.
We saw the masses take down the French monarchy in 1789, the Russian tsars in 1917 and the unlamented Nicolai Ceaușescu and his wife in Romania in 1989. Perhaps something along the same lines will surprise us in Washington in the weeks to come, perhaps not.
Here in Spain, this weekend also had its share of multitudinous protests: the twin concerns of decent and affordable housing on the one hand, and the threat from private medicine (particularly in Andalucía) looming over our National Health.
Being a long-term foreign resident, I’ve never had the right to vote anywhere beyond the municipal level found here where I both live and am inscribed on the padrón, which, for what it’s worth, means that at least in a small town like mine, my vote can count for something (vaguely).
The main drawback to exercising one’s democratic rights to mark a cross on a piece of paper – or put a papeleta in an envelope – is that it only happens every now and again. It’ll be not far short of four years before the Americans have another chance at an election, probably two or three years to wait here in Spain.
As far as posting memes or opinions of my own or of others on Facebook or over on my Spanish Shilling blog, or here in this column, then I hope that you are all paying attention, but if not, well never mind. Write me a letter.
Thus we come to waving a placard out there with the crowd: well it sounds fun but personally, I’ve rarely participated beyond that time some PP idiot decided to bulldoze flat Helen and Len Prior’s house in Vera back in 2008. We all drove into Almería and caused a fuss. That and a few other demolitions cost Andalucía’s property market at the time many tens of millions of euros and attracted the attention of the international media. I was interviewed on the radio and was heard (by friends who later told me) both in Miami and in Melbourne! My fifteen minutes of fame.
‘The best thing about protesting is the feeling that you are not alone with your opinions’, says my soulmate, who is rather more of an activist than I am.
This past weekend, many millions of folks would have agreed with her.