Financial Times- Half a Million March in Red Barcelona

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday March 20, 2002 16:59 by Joe Carolan - Globalise Resistance globalise_resistance at yahoo dot com The Other World which is possible 087 9032281

report from British establishment paper

Financial Times - March 18, 2002

EUROPE: Huge protest march passes off peacefully
By LESLIE CRAWFORD
Hundreds of thousands of people staged a peaceful demonstration against global capitalism in Barcelona on Saturday, underlining
that their movement did not die with the September 11 attacks against the US and that their protests need not be marred by violence.

Organisers said the turnout, which they put at more than 500,000, surpassed their expectations. The march was the largest staged in "Red Barcelona", a city that was collectivised
by anarchists during the Spanish civil war and which retains strong leftwing sympathies.

The protest would have been much larger were it not for the fact that dozens of buses carrying anti-globalisation protesters were detained at the French border. Spain suspended the Schengen
treaty, which guarantees the free movement of European Union citizens, during the duration of the EU summit.

To lessen the potential for conflict, organisers agreed to stage their main demonstration on Saturday evening, after the
EU summit was over. The route of the march was also away from the the summit venue. Barcelona's city authorities agreed that riot police would keep a low profile during the march.

"One of our main aims was to remove the stigma of violence that had become attached to our anti-globalisation movement," said Luis Edo, a member of Attac, a group that advocates a worldwide tax on speculative capital movements and the
forgiveness of third world debt. "We convinced police that we were capable of keeping the peace."

The march was organised in three blocs, like samba schools in
a carnival parade. The first was led by the Movement against
a Capitalist Europe, with more than 100 organisations. A middle
group was led by European "nations without a state" - Catalans,
Basques, Corsicans and Scots who want to be independent nations
within Europe. The third group of Socialist party and trade
union activists did not even get a chance to parade, such was
the human logjam on the streets.

Police later reported isolated clashes with radical youths
which ended with some smashed shop fronts and 50 arrests.

Mr Edo believed the Barcelona protest set a milestone for the
anti-globalisation movement. "Our challenge now is to convince
the public that our proposals are not Utopian," he said.