[REpensar Barcelona] Los Martinez against the monster that is 22@

[josep saldaña cavallé]

G4 SUMMIT Graffiti, Guns, Globalization and
Ganas<http://bcnweek.com/feature69.html>

by Simon Friel <http://www.bcnweek.com/contributors.html#simon>. BCN Week

If you ask somebody to define exactly what "subculture" means, they will
probably look at you askance for proffering such a banal question, then
promptly fail to give you anything like a substantial and well-defined
answer. If you look it up online, you will come across a lot of waffle that
ties itself up in knots by relying excessively on the word "culture". You
will find words like *subversion, Punks, ambivalent, non-domestic, Goths,
negative*, and *tribes*; and you will be a much better man than I if, from
it all, you can derive any real meaning or significance.

When it's too difficult to decipher the meanings of words, it is often
easier to take solace in images. As I walk through the streets of the city,
I notice colours jumping out at me and dragging my attention away from the
grey. The walls of the city are screaming out, looking for answers that I'm
not sure I have. The walls are talking, and I think we ought to listen.

The images on the page opposite are all brought to you by Los Martinez, a
group that lives and breathes on the same streets you traverse. But the
identity of the group is less important than engaging with its discourse. If
you look closely, you will see that their work has real content, something
you won't find in "subcultures" defined largely by fads and pouty posturing.
Interacting with Los Martinez, you are moved uncomfortably from your
previous position of impassive alienation. The sharp nip of recognition you
feel when you look at their work, particularly their hearts, makes you an
active part of a systematic and structured opposition to the dominant
culture you were ineffectually loving to hate. You have become a true
outsider. You have moved away from subculture and joined the ranks of a
counterculture.

One hundred years ago, the city of Barcelona and its people passed through a
period of great poverty. A poor population struggled to live and, in extreme
cases, starved to death. The ratio of food spending against housing spending
was around 5:1. People lived in times of economic hardship and misery, but
for the most part they could afford to pay for the roofs over their heads.
In modern day Barcelona, the situation has been completely reversed. A
normal person, earning 1000€ a month, could survive spending only 200€ a
month on food, but would be very hard pushed to cover the cost of owning an
apartment in the city with the remaining 800€. Most people won't starve in *La
Millor Botiga del Mon*, but if you're not rich, you had better look for
another place to rest your head at night. It is in the reality of this
environment that Los Martinez are attempting to offer an alternative message
to the people of the city.

Los Martinez are a group of like-minded individuals who found each other by
chance as they worked individually on the streets, and who then joined
together to produce work in which we find a seamless fusion of art and
social commentary. They are social warriors, committed to reclaiming public
space as our own by turning it into a free gallery. But the artistic beauty
of their message should not fool you into taking their work lightly. This
collective group of creative friends is not only fighting to reclaim the
city's public spaces. In the barrios where speculation and big business are
displacing residents, tearing down buildings, and trying to negate the rich
history of the places they wish to reinvent in their own selfish image, Los
Martinez are also out on the front lines alongside real people.

In Bon Pastor, Los Martinez painted walls alongside niños gitanos del
barrio, in protest of the forceful eviction of families from the "casas
baratas". In Barceloneta, they worked with the vecinos del barrio in their
fight against the Ayuntamiento's *Plan de Ascensores*, a scheme that would
see elderly people and families evicted from their homes. But it is perhaps
in Los Martinez's old home of Poblenou where their fight has been the most
intense, and it is this place that best highlights the unrelenting
determination of their struggle and their continued belief in it.
Nevertheless, it is here, too, where the odds against the success of their
movement can seem largest.

In Can Ricart and Poblenou, Los Martinez were part of the group of 3,500
vecinos and friends of the neighbourhood that protested against the monster
that is 22 en . This privately-funded, local-government-supported venture has
displaced the majority of Poblenou's artistic community, as well as many
families who had lived for generations in what was tradit ional ly one of
Barcelona's few authentic working-class neighbourhoods. It's an ugly thing
in itself, and a pattern that's becoming all too familiar, but 22@ is made
even uglier because many of the companies that operate out of this new
state-of-the-art business park are ones that deal directly in, or have links
to, the manufacture of arms. Indra, whose president heads the committee of
22@, is the world's biggest non-US supplier of military equipment to the
world's largest military machine, the Army of the United States of America.

The protests in Poblenou, like so many others, were to no avail, and the
pain felt in this particular defeat has been worsened recently by the
attempted validation of 22@ and its presence in the neighbourhood through
the three-day Inside22@ festival, run under the artistic direction of Niu
and in direct collaboration with the 22@ committee. How is it possible that
Niu, one of the groups that originally fought alongside residents and other
artists against 22@, are now actively encouraging the presence of their
conquerors in a celebration that is such an incredibly frivolous and
insensitive rewriting of history?

But wait. It is too easy to point fingers at the speculators, propagators of
war, and those who are completely consumed by the capitalist ethos of
"More". If we look closely at the hands we point with, we might note,
uncomfortably, that they too have a red tinge. As literate people living in
a powerful Western democracy, we are all complicit in the ills of the world,
and in one way or another there is undoubtedly blood spilled in our name
every day. Maybe Niu, in the wake of 22@'s successful establishment,
decided, as so many of us do, that this is the way things work in the world
and there's nothing they can do about it.

But wait. It is too easy to point fingers at the speculators, propagators of
war, and those who are completely consumed by the capitalist ethos of
"More". If we look closely at the hands we point with, we might note,
uncomfortably, that they too have a red tinge. As literate people living in
a powerful Western democracy, we are all complicit in the ills of the world,
and in one way or another there is undoubtedly blood spilled in our name
every day. Maybe Niu, in the wake of 22@'s successful establishment,
decided, as so many of us do, that this is the way things work in the world
and there's nothing they can do about it.

Perhaps this elephant in the corner has allowed an overriding sense of
apathy to fester within all of us; an apathy and a complacency that seem to
have become the most prominent and bitter cultural capital of the day. We
have been tricked into thinking that we are redundant and unable to offer
any resistance to the forces of the world that shape and control our shadow
lives. We have accepted our defeat and fallen out of love with the
unfamiliar faces that stare back at us blankly from the other side of the
mirror. Politicians don't listen to us. Wars are fought despite our Saturday
afternoon marches against them. Nothing we do makes a difference, so why
should we care? In discussions with members of Los Martinez, I saw that even
they feel the weight of capitalism's demand for conformity. Though they
fight for others selflessly, seeking no personal promotion through their
acts, their lifestyle choice comes with the cost of being reminded every day
that they don't own a house, or have 2.5 children, or a job that they can
put on a resume. That they have chosen an "unconventional" life.