We are Pirates de Catalunya (PIRATA.CAT), the pirate party from Catalonia, Spain. As you may know, this last Sunday there were protests for a ‘true Democracy’ in Spain, only a week before from our local (and some regionals) elections at May 22nd.

Here we have a brief about the current status of Barcelona’s camp from our spokesman:

Hi there,

I was camping last night at Barcelona until 05:15AM, and then back home to write the act of the 4AM organization Assembly…

Last sunday we had protests for a true Democracy all across Spain (58 cities). More than 100.000 young people claimed for transparency, citizen participation, no more social cuts, etc.

After Sunday’s protest, 50 people camped in a square in the heart of Madrid. Yesterday, Monday 12 other cities were added to the camping protest.

The peak hour was 11:00PM, when there were 2.000 people in Madrid and other 200 in Barcelona.

In Barcelona there were 80 people camping in Plaça Catalunya (Barcelona’s central square) last night, and lots more are expected today. We have organized people in different teams to make this work smoothly.

There are Catalan pirates in all these social movements (from malestar.org, DemocraciaRealYA, #nolesvotes) and the camping protest itself. I could also see one of Partido Pirata Madrid’s candidates, second on row, in one of the protest videos and looks like I appear in two out of the three biggest newspapers (I am the 2nd candidate in Barcelona as well :)).

We are using piratenpad teams (thanks to PiratenPartei!), Mumble, IRC, Facebook groups, Doodle, Twitter, a simple polling application but with advanced anti-fraud non-registered-user poll system (developed by Pirates de Catalunya’s CTO), etc. We use whatever tools necessary to deliver information and help in the organization and decision-making.

Catalan Pirates had been trying to engage IT usage in social movements, so we can take advantage of these resources to build flat organizations.

There was up to 50 policemen and a cleaning team at the square, but we could stop them pushing us away by showing our good faith, self-organization and with lots of legal stuff to bypass the law:

• we are not camping, we are sitting down
• we are not an illegal protest. We are just in groups of 19, so, below 20 this is not an illegal concentration.
• we aren’t sleeping on the street, we just lay around…
• and so on.

There are 3 informal shifts to keep the place full of people (80-90% not sleeping the whole night).

Madrid was pushed away around 5:30AM, however, they surely plan to camp somewhere else. They were 300 people staying and there’s protest running in front of the Spanish embassy in London.

Legal teams are working to bypass the laws in Spain and keep the protests running. We can’t use tents because it could be identified as “illegal camping”, you can’t make fire, you can’t drink alcohol on streets, you can’t stay in groups of more than 19…

This protest depends on good weather, luckily this is happening in Spain, and we have more than 225 sunny days a year 🙂

Spread it away and keep #spanishrevolution as world wide trending topic 😉 It’s really cool to be part of a R-evolution, who’s next?

Talk Soon!

—

Pirates de Catalunya

https://pirates.cat

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Should you have any doubts, or to request an interview, please contact partit@pirates.cat.