A Guide to Spain

We have seen them wrapped in flags, singing along to the chorus in the back stadium, pressed up against police barriers, or walking freely through the streets of Madrid with shrieks of war and a rebellious spirit that even the barbarian tribes that ravaged Europe in the days of Maricustia would envy.

If we close our eyes tightly, we can almost hear the legendary mob of the Svevians, the rampages of the Vandals, and we can even hear the distant echo of the neighing of the horse of Atila, who once conquered everything in his path in that steppe where grass no longer grew. The Atilas of our days have perfected the technique: where they tread, democracy no longer comes to life.

It is difficult to draw an accurate portrait of the protesters, as dislike for the Sanchez government''has assembled a noisy and motley assortment of wildlife that eludes any taxonomy. In this mix of characters that came out of the movie "From Our Roof," one seems to find a handful of people with "cayetans" on their banners and golf courses, phalangists, people professing daily Mass, nostalgic readers of Rock Barea, fans of the band Taburete, snobs in tailcoats with hunting scenes, Benedictine seminarians, bald heads, Lieutenant Pelaez in peaceable clothes, trigger-happy barons who have fallen on hard times, pious patriots and socially aware sheiks with more money than an Italian food restaurant.

Our mind, prone to parallelism, sees the protests in front of Ferraz as caught in the mirror of other not so distant protests,''round Congress, the Dignity Marches, crowded with marker posters and a landscape of tents. It was the golden age of fascist debate. In those days, for days and wine, the Intereconomía TV channel was able to infiltrate the tent camp to show an interview where an actor with styling, with a jacket over her shoulders, complained about the smell of stink. José María Aznar Fausto had by then joined in the joys with esRadio, describing the protesters as a church order of beggars, this protest with criminals and Franciscans. Esperanza Aguirre, who has blessed Intereconomía and esRadio with tasty government subsidies, even suggested that shareholders run for office.

Then photojournalist Manel Armengol was an intern when he captured some of the most evocative shots of the Transition period on Barcelona's San Joan Avenue. Against a backdrop of smoke and de-energized trees, with unfaithful ferocity, the Greys swoop down on a defenseless mass of citizens, covering their heads with their hands against cue defeats. The sense of historical solemnity contrasts with the eccentricity of the pictures that are now rolling through the arteries of the social''nets, with that aesthetic of hooliganism that will carry through neo-fascist uprisings around the world, from storming the Capitol to bolsonist speeches.

But this televised clowning, this extravaganza of caning, becomes less funny when one realizes its synchronicity with the limits of the state, the unbreathable stink pit that covers the surface as soon as the hare is plucked. While the viewer is amused by the weirdness, the incitement of the ultras, Judge Manuel García Castellón breaks into the inaugural mess like a drunken mammoth, and takes out of his mantle a Possibleist case that confuses rallying with terrorism, Puidemon with Otega, even takes revenge on Jesús Rodríguez, one of the journalists who exposed the infiltration of the National Police in''civil movements.

We might never have reached these extremes if the Popular Party had not signed the 2015 change to the penal code as part of an anti-terrorism agreement. It was about taking advantage of the shock of the terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo to enshrine the kind of elastic definition of terrorism that could be used to try puppeteers, imprison rappers or prosecute jokes about Carrero Blanco. It should have chilled the discontent of the streets and silenced social media. It should have ignored UN warnings to keep Altazu youths in line and curb Catalan independence with bogus terrorist accusations.

No one is surprised that Esperanza Aguirre