After Ceuta and Maricarmen, the violence of Barcelona

Saturday's violence in Barcelona has changed the conversation. In September it was Ceuta, then Maricarmen Abascal and, now, the evening of broken glass in Barcelona, with the threat that next Saturday we will be back at it. What do we know and what do we not know about what happened? The most important thing is what we do not know: who summoned these young people via TikTok?

And what we do know: yesterday, and this is first-hand information, the Mossos did not see the hand of Russia or any foreign agent with the capacity to provoke a hybrid war. Rather, they were inclined to think of domestic work, within Spain. And just as they said, with almost complete certainty, that they did not see foreign interference, they could not rule out that it was a false flag attack, that is to say coming from the extreme right, which would take advantage of the incidents to cry out against immigration, as Donald Trump did this morning: he said that the incidents in Spain have to do with the massive entry that took place in Ceuta. Vox didn't take long to make the video: Ignacio Garriga speaking on social media and saying that this was perpetrated by “hundreds of foreign youths”. Well, after arresting 128 youths and identifying 300, the Mossos have seen that the backgrounds of the violent ones were very diverse, both geographically and familiarly, meaning that there were people from many places and many backgrounds. That the cliché that they were all “subsidized immigrants” is false. And, all in all, the work of taking advantage of all the available information has just begun. Garriga took the opportunity to make it very easy: if Sánchez wins again on November 29, we will live in this chaos; therefore: either chaos or Vox. And don't think that Feijóo stayed very far behind: "Since they have lost the street, they want to set it on fire".

As you can see, anything goes. But if, precisely, there is anyone who is not interested in burning streets, it is those who govern…

For the Mossos, the operation did not go well. The police themselves have explained that they knew about it since Monday, but were surprised by the violence of the action. Surprised? After what had happened in Limoges or Milan, what made them think it couldn't happen in Barcelona? It is true that there was a similar call in Madrid and another in Girona, but no one went. Why in Barcelona? It is not known.

If the extreme right is rubbing its hands, the socialists (Mayor Collboni, Minister Parlon, President Illa) are very worried. Violence like this shifts the conversation towards the extreme right. They have failed the shopkeepers and the entire city. It is true that, as a precaution, the City Council removed street furniture, but the shopkeepers say that no one warned them.

You only have to read what the shopkeepers, affected or not, in the city center are saying: “We are terrified”, because there is a month left until November 29, and there is a general strike in between.

The newest thing about Saturday's violence was, according to the Mossos, that the hooded individuals did not engage in the classic action of hiding at the tail end of an organized protest demonstration, but rather they were summoned on TikTok, met up via WhatsApp in groups of no more than 15 or 20 young people (in jargon, they call this “the funnel”), showed up in the center of Barcelona, and began to destroy and loot. In a word, the violent ones started breaking windows, skipping the preliminaries. Today, there are no more preliminaries. There is no need to load up on reasons. Preliminaries are a thing of the past. In the world of social media, there are no previews. One thing leads to another without introduction, middle, or end, without opening music or opening credits. Monday, a call-to-action poster starts circulating, images from France run around; Wednesday, some friends meet up, adolescent testosterone, nothing to lose, and by Saturday we have loot to win.

We await the police's clarifications and, naturally, that it does not happen again.

Good morning.