March for dignity?

I thought my next post would be about Garcia Marquez and his colonel..., but nope. Much to my regret, this will be about the March for Dignity in Spain. Again, in English... because Spanish people already know the details and got their own conclusions, more or less similar -or different- from mine.

Don't think I'm just a sourpuss. I'm not. But I feel really sorry for spanish society, especially the youngest factions, and really embarrassed about the image the world is getting from us. Maybe I'm a sourpuss after all. For my last moans regarding this topic, see this post.

But anyways..., the march. This is their "manifesto" (in English, yes, you're welcome, I know, right? I'm so nice). The English version, though, is a little bit different from the Spanish one, as they include paragraphs like these:

In our country if you were born somewhere else in the world, if your skin’s a different color or you have another religion, they take away your fundamental rights (healthcare, education et.) and can even shut you up in an Internment Center, even though you’ve committed no crime.

Simply for speaking our own minority language, simply for wanting to live in accordance with the culture of our land, we can be fined or even thrown into prison like during Franco’s fascist dictatorship, but now they call it democracy.

Well, I don't need to say this is a bunch of lies.

... But I'm gonna say it anyways: This is a bunch of lies!

I've had, and have, a few foreigners quite close to me in Spain, and yes, I know cases of foreigners being stopped by the police, and I know one case of a foreigner being held by the police..., because the guy was in fact illegal and undocumented.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he deserved being held and sent back to Paraguay, you know how in my fantasy dreamworld full of rainbows I still think the world should have no boundaries and we should be free to go wherever the fuck we want to go, and managing our frontiers as if the land was actually our property, and closing them to honest people that committed the terrible mistake of being born in the wrong place, and forcing them to jump fences crowned with blades, is the biggest and most insane injustice I can think of. But sorry, back to the point..., so, I'm not saying he deserved being held and sent back, but legally at least, the way things are, that was the right thing to do. That the guy was stopped in the first place just because he looked south-american, that's probably true, and that's a topic for a different discussion.

The next paragraph is another big lie, and one doesn't need to think too much to realize it... If that was true, schools shouldn't be allowed to teach galician, esker, catalan or valencian. A different matter is the fact that, no matter who may disagree, the official language of our precious nation is castilian Spanish, and therefore that's the language to use in the context of official national affairs. But galicians are free to use their official regional language in their official regional affairs, and so do basques, catalans and valencians. But the idea of making the whole country learn galician, basque, catalan, valencian, majorcan and castilian is just absurd, you have to pick one language to rule them all, and guess what, castilian spanish is the official language in the whole country. The same principle can be applied to English as the official language of the EU, and I don't remember miss Bottle complaining when she had to use English to talk about the spanish cups of cafe con leche... As for "to live in accordance with the culture of our land"... Come on, what does that even mean?

My conclusion is that the English version was made to show the world, that doesn't know exactly what the situation is in Spain, a radicalization and a repressive environment that are not completely true. If they were, they wouldn't have had any objections to include those paragraphs in the Spanish version too.

I'm completely "peeing out of the pot" here, because discussing the points of the manifesto was far from being my original intention, but let me just point the last thing about it: from my modest point of view, the right of "bread, work and shelter" and the right of free abortion can't -or shouldn't- be put together in the same bag. (And I'm sorry I used the word "point" three times in the same paragraph.)

So yes, I agree with the main (again) points of the manifesto in general, but it's not difficult to realize that, like most things, it was deeply politicized from the beginning.


But anyways. You may or may not agree with the manifest but, as you can see, they didn't say anything about breaking down glasses, setting urban furniture on fire or stoning a few cops, that I can remember. What it was supposed to be, at least "officially", was a peaceful march for... well, all those things above discussed.

And this, again, leads me to today's starring topic: "Our youth is hopeless".
You know I think american kids take themselves too seriously. I also think spanish ones don't take anything seriously. And going to a protest with the main goal of "messing it up" (liarla parda, as we say) is becoming quite trendy lately, and so is showing a natural hate for the police.
If you are protesting for "bread, work and shelter", then the slogan "Cop, son of a bitch" might just not be the one that best serves your purpose, no offense.
Yes, the police used the force (sorry for this little joke, couldn't help it!) inappropriately many times in the last protests against the government, but the unjustifiable violence of a few protesters brings the best arguments down (not to mention the not so good ones)... and kind of justifies an equally violent repression from the cops. Dude, if you're gonna stone them, let them defend themselves shooting rubber balls! It's just fair. If you try to use a brick to finish off a cop who lies unconscious on the ground, then don't cry and make a fuss when their buddies try to handcuff you.

This all makes me think that these people don't really care about the matter in question. I mean, they kind of get along with the cause, but they use it as an excuse to get violent. Otherwise, I don't get it.

What I try to say with all this is:
1. The situation is horrible, but not that horrible. Exaggerating things makes you loose credit.
2. Someone should teach values to this youth of today. Some of them definitely missed that "slap on time".
3. Don't stone the police if you don't want to get shot rubber balls. Also, burning street containers is wrong.
4 (and now, seriously). We live in a society where everything is politicized, and where the different parties try to manipulate the mass, encouraging radicalism, sharpening the hate among social groups and the polarization of society (multi-polarization, if you want). There's a deep lack of values and a deep lack of objectivity. You may support the cause, but you can't support the violence. If you're a violent, and although you support the cause you're best defined as a violent, then have your own March for the Violence. Don't fuck.
Also, and in counterbalance, you may not support the cause, but you must understand that violent people are a minority and you can find them in both sides.
5. This is how the world sees Spain, and we might have already screwed it too much to try to fix it.