Malaga, 20 January 2024. (Photo: John Collins)

I woke up this morning in Malaga with the knowledge that today was an important day in Spain: a day of nationwide demonstrations calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. At a time when European leaders continue to fail to meet their basic moral obligations vis-a-vis the Palestinian people, more than 70 Spanish cities from Alacant and Albacete to Zamora and Zaragoza were scheduled to host actions under the common banner of stopping the genocide, ending arms sales to Israel, and cutting off diplomatic relations with the apartheid state.

I do have a confession to make, though: I was exhausted this morning. It was hard to drag myself out of bed, even though the sun was shining (there’s a reason why it’s called the “Costa del Sol,” after all) and I knew that I needed to write about this protest. I had already been to a lot of solidarity events here in Spain since I arrived last summer - maybe I could skip this one?

But I got up and walked down to the Plaza de la Marina, surrounded by palm trees and just a few steps away from Malaga’s port. The sizable crowd was buzzing, with small groups putting the finishing touches on banners. One woman carried a South African flag, recognizing the courageous role of South African in bringing genocide charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court. Someone handed me a flyer that read “Palestine is Resistance!” and announced the formation of a new group, Malaga por Palestina (Malaga for Palestine).

Then we began to march. Was I still tired? I certainly was. But then, in the midst of the sea of people chanting “Long live the Palestinian struggle!” and “Boycott Israel!”, I saw something that jolted me out of my sluggishness:

I didn’t know this man, but in his face, I saw the faces of so many Palestinians who have been forced to flee their homes - from the residents of Yafa or Lydd in 1948 at the start of the Nakba to the families desperately seeking shelter in Gaza today as Israel ruthlessly and systematically eliminates the very conditions of life in their towns, cities, and refugee camps. And I saw the faces of the thousands of Spaniards who were driven into exile at the end of the Spanish Civil War as Franco’s regime took over and began to exact revenge on those who had dared to stand up against fascism.

And as we continued to march, I found myself drawn to a group of young people who were leading the crowd with incredible energy and passion:

”Gaza, resist! Palestine exists!” chants at the January 20, 2024 solidarity march in Malaga, Spain. (Video: John Collins)

They moved effortlessly between Spanish, Arabic, and English as they combined chants with brief statements explaining the situation in Gaza and the importance of strengthening the boycott movement. As the march wound its way through the center of the city and approached the McDonald’s along the main drag, they made sure to stop and encourage us to raise our voices even louder to call attention to the fast food chain’s complicity in the Israeli occupation.

A struggle across generations

In moments like this, I often turn to the words of John Trudell, who helped lead the American Indian Movement (AIM) during its formative years starting in the late 1960s. When you attend a protest march, you spend a lot of time chanting, but there are also a lot of opportunities for listening. In his song “Listening,” first released on his legendary 1983 album Tribal Voice, Trudell spoke of a reality that I was seeing in front of me today on the streets of Malaga:

I was listening
To the voices of life
Chanting in unison
Carry on the struggle
The generations
Surge together
In resistance
To meet
The reality of power

What I saw around me at this march was a visible and powerful manifestation of this process of “surging together” across the experiences and perspectives of generations. Older people standing along the sidewalks nodded their heads as young people led mesmerizing rounds of “Free, Free Palestine! Free, Free, Free Palestine!” Children bounded along with their parents or sat on shoulders to get a better view. And the elders, many wearing fluorescent vests, moved along at their own pace. How many marches have they joined over the years?

Also at the march were representatives of a group called Unadikum, created in 2010 through the work of several Spaniards who participated in a solidarity flotilla that sought to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Consciously connecting their own actions with the history of the “brigadistas” who came to Spain to fight on the anti-fascist side during the Spanish Civil War, they represented a determined effort to keep alive one of the world’s most venerable traditions of transnational solidarity.

Today’s march in Malaga also included representatives from Sumar and Podemos, two left-leaning parties that have recently split - a sign that the decades-old problems plaguing the Spanish Left remain frustratingly present. Yet they are united on the question of Palestine and determined to continue pressuring the socialist-led government to take real, material steps to weaken the Israeli state and hold it accountable for its genocidal actions. Every mass demonstration in Europe stands in stark contrast to the inaction of European governments - or, worse, their stubborn and shameful support of Israel. It is a reminder of how much farther the movement must go in order to win the political fight.

In the meantime, however, there is no question that a new generation is living that distinctive experience of learning about Palestine and discovering how the Palestinian freedom struggle implies a struggle against so much more than just Zionism. Geographer and activist Linda Quiquivix put it beautifully in her recent contribution to David Palumbo-Liu’s Speaking Out of Place podcast:

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— David Palumbo-Liu (@palumboliu) January 19, 2024

Quiquivix’s poetic words speak directly to the intergenerational reality of the struggle against not only Zionism, but also the larger forces of fascist and ecocidal domination. Those forces have their own mechanisms of generational transmission. Just today, I was reading a sobering article about the case of Fred Dube, the South African scholar who was stripped of his job at SUNY Stony Brook 40 years ago for daring to ask his students to consider the racist elements of the Zionist project. In the context of the current genocide in Gaza, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the chair of the Board of Trustees at Stony Brook during the Dube case was none other that Donald Blinken - the father of current US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whose complicity in Israeli war crimes is undeniable.

The political and economic elites of the West - much like the philosophical elites - have made their position clear. Theirs is the “reality of power” referenced in Trudell’s haunting lines. Today in Malaga, however, I glimpsed a different kind of world built on a different kind of intergenerational transmission - a world where the wisdom of the elders meets the refusal of the young to be manipulated into silence, a world where the practice of liberation is “natural energy properly used.”