la lucha sigue...

so, when I left off last time, I think we were about to board a bus from Marseille to Barcelona. I once swore I would never take another Eurolines bus in my life, but as life would have it.... its better not to swear.

The 7 hour bus ride wasn't too bad, and we did it at night, so we arrived in Barcelona around 6am and walked through the sleeping town. Well most of it was sleeping, as we wondered through the Gothic Quarter, some people were waking up and heading to work, while others were still stumbling back home from the night of partying. This is Spain after all.
We stayed awake on coffee and tea until we could check into our room at the Pension, which is great. Anyone coming to Barcelona, stay at ´La Calma´, Anyway, we´ve spent most of our days exploring, we went to a squat that has been occupied for years, and is an amazing example of permaculture, called Can Masdeu.

We´ve also done all the touristy things, and we spend almost every night just drinking wine in a plaza, or maybe beer if its really hot. We rented bikes and went out to an amazing beach that wasn´t too far from the city. Got sunburn. Also went to the Zapatista collective that I worked with 5 years ago when I was here. Last time, I helped paint a mural, but nobody seems to know its whereabouts now (it was painted on fabric, not a wall, so it could be mobile....).

I decided I wanted to visit the grave of Buenaventura Durruti, after reading how he was buried in Montjuic cemetery. But there are thousands of people buried there and I thought it might be a bit of a challenge to find him. Also, in Spanish cemeteries they stack people in tombs so its really confusing. The "Mont" in Montjuic stands for mountain, its also very tall (incidentally, the "juic" means jewish). So we began our research. At the zapatista collective, they referred me to Virus publishing, which is an anarchist publishing company (I actually remember sending them packages from AK Press when I was 18 years old in San Francisco). There, we looked up in a variety of books about Durruti, any info on where his tomb was, but we gave up. They suggested I try the CNT office nearby. So off I went, and they too, were very nice, happy to see me and my tattoo, but did not know where in the cemetery Durruti was buried.

Finally, today, we just decided to go. And I found a guardia near a maintenance office. I asked him if he knew, and he gave me a map that had it marked on it. Ten minutes later we were standing at the foot of his tomb. The workers at the cemetery were watering all the plants around him. I can´t help but wonder if the fascists in the cemetery get the same treatment (and for the record, it didn´t look like it. there were a lot of dead plants and brush around most tombs).

So, thats all for now. We leave tomorrow night by boat across the Mediterranean to Genova. Its an 18 hour ferry ride, but should be worth it.

Hope you´re all doing well.
hasta la pasta (hey, this time that actually makes sense),
Esteban