My Cana­dian friend Alex asked me about them, so I wrote this reply:   Alex: Out of curio­sity, what are your thoughts on the riots/protests in Spain? Do you iden­tify with them? Have you ever been a part of any demons­tra­tions (at any point, not just recently)? Fran: I’ve been to seve­ral, 15M the last one. I remem­ber still the huge demos­tra­tions against joi­ning the Iraq war and after the Madrid bom­bings. Pro­tests are actua­lly fre­quent, but often very poli­ti­zed or very union-centric. Valen­cia is a con­ser­va­tive city which is often seen as very cola­bo­ra­tive and sub­ser­vient of the cen­tral goverment, […]

Self quote from here: If your boss’s busi­ness has a posi­tion of eco­no­mic domi­nance over a com­mu­nity (which hap­pens a lot at local and regio­nal level, even if on ave­rage there seems to be enough com­pe­ti­tion), it’s not very dif­fi­cult for them to impose a socia­lly con­ser­va­tive agenda on it on the threat of being barred from your best chance at get­ting a job in the area. If you were bla­cklis­ted by your boss, then asso­cia­ting with you would become dan­ge­rous for all your acquain­tan­ces. You would eit­her cave or leave, and, even­tua­lly, the local society would become toxic for […]