"I only felt afraid after the moments captured in the photos, when thousands of supporters surrounded the square and booed at the police. I was afraid they would jump at them and that the police would respond and there would be a tragedy. Those were moments of great, great tension. They were moments from another era, one which I believed we had overcome long ago. " Sebastian Ledesma Moran (man in wheelchair - full account below)
I don’t feel like being cynical.
These demonstrations may die down eventually but I believe a significant seed has been sown.
It might just take a while to germinate.
Right now, all I want to do is raise awareness of the injustice that has been committed.
Felip Puig, the leader of the Catalan police, has shown no remorse after his brutal ‘clean up’ operation.
The memo he passed onto his loyal team on the morning of the 27th May must’ve read something like this:
1. Steal all their stuff
2. Beat them up (even if they are really old!)
3. Don’t give away your identity (even though the law says you have to!)
The police confiscated computers, microphones, speakers, cables and other personal possessions.
Owners who tried to retrieve their belongings were told they must present a receipt to prove ownership and if they didn’t the items would be destroyed.
Despite footage showing brutal beatings of individuals, attacks on passive youngsters and elderly, and police vans swerving dangerously into people, Mr Puig maintains that the police were protecting the population from a violent group.
Judges are unable to investigate complaints because police have been ignoring the law that requires them to wear an identity number.
Puig is currently trying to abolish this rule so that police can remain anonymous.
One image has become symbolic. It’s of a man in a wheelchair holding a flower.
In front of him a police man is lashing out with a club at the people behind.
When asked about this incident, Felip Puig said that the policeman was defending the man in from the violence behind him.
This man was so disgusted with the counsellor’s lie that he wrote to the newspapers.
And this is what he said:
(I have translated from Catalan to English) Click Here for the Original.
"I am the person in the wheelchair who appears in a number of photographs of the attempted eviction of Plaça Catalunya and I want to name the issues in this controversy. My name is Sebastian Ledesma Moran, I am 55 years old and I want to clarify three things:
1) That the images are a true reflection of what happened there.
2) That the Mosso d'Esquadra (Catalan police) was not defending me as Felip Puig and some of the media have claimed, but that he was attacking me, as the bumps and scratches on the left side of my wheelchair caused by a club can prove.
3) That I did not receive any blows to my body because the Mosso who was threatening me with his club (as seen in the photo) was stopped by another Mosso who said, ‘No, fuck, not that one, because they’ll take us to court.’
I also want to make it clear that I am neither a hero nor a victim, not a "yob" or, much less an idiot. I am just one more ‘indignant’. Every day I participate in the activities of Plaça Catalunya, especially in the functional diversity committee, which among others deals with issues of disability.
And you can rest assured that we will continue our protest and peaceful struggle until the situation changes.
I will have to take my chair to the workshop for repair, because if they don’t paint over the scratches they will begin to rust. I do not know or care about whether this cost will come from my account, mind you. What really worries me is that when I was young I had to run away from ‘los grises’ (national police) and that these policeman, who I believed were on my side, had made me run away from them. How will I explain to my daughters that this is the police we asked for?
During the police charge I heard several Mossos d'Esquadra saying: "What is this man doing here? Take him away! Take him away! " I am fed up of people questioning why I was there: I have every right and every duty to be as outraged as the next person. Why didn’t they want me to be there? Is it because it makes it difficult to dole out blows with pleasure? And I think it’s very serious that controversy was generated by the possibility that I was struck and that it doesn’t seem to matter that other people were harmed or suffered severe panic attacks. We are all equal before the law and have the same right to protest and defend ourselves, especially against the senseless aggression last Friday.
Those who were behind my chair, who the police were trying to hit, were there because Iold them to hide th tere, convinced that they wouldn’t do much to me. Nobody manipulated me or told me to protect my fellow ‘indignants’, as has been reported. It is only I who felt manipulated by the version given by Felip Puig about the police action.
We were carrying out peaceful resistance at the entrances of the square to prevent the trucks leaving with all our belongings. As you have seen, we were not able to recover anything that they took, not the signatures we collected nor our mobile phones, or anything at all. Added to that, they have now left our belongings in a type of dump.
I only felt afraid after the moments captured in the photos, when thousands of supporters surrounded the square and booed at the police. I was afraid they would jump at them and that the police would respond and there would be a tragedy. Those were moments of great, great tension. They were moments from another era, one which I believed we had overcome long ago. "
