Trying again, Cataluña....in plain text I hope

[Erik T. Burns]

“WE LOOK AT the world, at governments, across the spectrum, some with more
freedom, some with less. And we observe that the more repressive the State
is, the closer life under it resembles Death. If dying is deliverance into
a condition of total non-freedom, then the State tends, in the limit, to
Death. The only way to address the problem of the State is with
counter-Death, also known as Chemistry,” said Flaco.
He was a survivor of Anarchist struggles in a number of places both sides
of the Atlantic, notably Barcelona in the ‘90’s. Provoked by the bombing of
the Teatro Lyceo during a performance of Rossini’s opera William Tell, the
police had rounded up not just Anarchists but anybody who might be in any
way opposed to the regime, or even thinking about being. Thousands were
arrested and sent “up the mountain” to the fortress of Montjuich which
crouched thuglike over the city as if having just assaulted it, and when
the dungeons there were full, prisoners were kept chained in warships
converted to prison ships, lying at anchor down in the harbor.
“Fucking Spanish police,” Flaco said. “In Cataluña they are an occupying
army. Any of the prisoners of ‘93 who weren’t Anarchists before going into
Montjuich arrived rapidly at the heart of the matter. It was like finding
an old religion again, one we’d almost forgotten. The State is evil, its
divine right proceeds from Hell, Hell is where we all went. Some came out
of Montjuich broken, dying, without working genitals, intimidated into
silence. Whips and white-hot irons are certainly effective for that. But
all of us, even those who had voted and paid our taxes like good
bourgeoisie, came out hating the State. I include in that obscene word the
Church, the latifundios, the banks and corporations, of course.”

Against the Day, chapter 28
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