I’m a nobody

Introducing myself

All the versions of this article: [English] [Español]

Introducing myself

I’m just a worker, a friend, a workmate, a father, an activist like any other. Everything started the 15th of January of 1991. The United States of America attacked Irak due to Kuwait war: my world, our world changed. From that term I can only remember the numerous meetings, strikes and new experiences I gained: everything was new. Ivo punched me in the face, Marta kissed me. I was in the 1st year of BUP (today 3rd of ESO, Spanish Secondary Obligatory Education), and I joined the team that always looses, but that never stops the fight.

At the numerous and different secondary schools through which I intellectually crawled I met and convinced more people to play in my team. We had to look for excuses, pretexts or public injustices to do what we liked best: making a fuzz, cutting-off streets and encouraging conflicts in the need of changes. We wanted to kiss in the streets, show our teeth and be teenagers. We didn’t want to do the military service, the 500th anniversary of the “discovery of America” didn’t convince us, neither did the speculation around 1992 Barcelona’s Olympic Games nor the education policy of the Catalan political party CIU. We had an amendment to totalitarism.

Terms passed mounting up defeats and I decided to direct my future. My higher education had the moral duty to know in depth the reason why we always lose. Building B of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) made a lot of use. There was a moment in which we could stop the campus and make everybody know that we were in a bad mood. We had enough reasons: one day Aznar came to Bellatera surrounded by police cars, rubber bullets and whacks. Franco’s police were back, but there weren’t called “los grises” anymore. That was the fuzz that ended declaring Bush’s buddy unwelcome person in the UAB. Zas! Later, during 2001 came all the social movement against the Universities Organic Law, with trip to Madrid by bus included. The fear we felt in Villa-y-Corte was also new. We experienced our first kettling with guys disguised like Robocop, dressed in black.

We are graduated and sent to a cruel world where the antagonist doesn’t incite us anymore, not even formally, to debate nor to contrast opinions.

We have a high education in Arts and the approval of the campus pedagogic system to indoctrinate more teenagers to become part our team but the educational administration has consolidated mechanisms by which you will never pass the barrier to enter the education system for which you are qualified. So, a bit of sniff-sniff on the pillow and you move on. We always lose, we never surrender.

I worked for low, off the books and dream salaries with all the uncertainty that accompanies to live from hand to mouth. Learning to learn. To reinvent yourself: looking for the excuse, the pretext and any evident injustice. I found a space in the technological sector, free software area. I assisted to some formal and regulated courses, hours of no sleep, experimenting with the unknown, and as always, joining the losers and increasing the team staff.

One day, two years ago, I left the most evident deprivation. I signed an indefinite contract with a public corporation that has an extended net of establishments throughout the Spanish territory and I turned into another salary earner, in a nobody that clocks in at 9.30 am and regains freedom at 19 pm. The salary is ok, is not bad, that’s all there is, etc.

And then comes the day when you don’t expect it. And you loose again. You loose your job. You’re fired. They give you a kick in the arse and the tell you to clear up your things. You already know: your team always loses. You are given money to shut up. You don’t take it. NOT SATISFIED. A continuous fight, one more fight.

What team are you in? We win or we lose?

I’m a nobody. Like you. That is, I’m not a nobody. Like you. And, like you, I’m weak. And strong.

X