After two days in the police dungeon I had the privilege of being yelled at by a judge, who described the protest as an "urban guerrilla" and alternately "paramilitary" action designed to hit La Rambla when the largest number of people would be present, in order to send the message that the squatters were a military force. At one point during my statement he interrupted me to yell that in the US I would be thrown in Guantanamo for such an action. He gave me a 30,000 euro bail (which a secretary later told me she had never seen for such charges in 25 years of working there) and sent me to Modelo prison.

Yes, the Spanish judicial system is full of fascists.

[My vacation], oddly enough, had landed me in the same prison that once housed many of the anarchist revolutionaries of the Spanish Civil War. Once I arrived, I got down to just about the only thing one can do in prison: waiting, and organizing my new life within its much diminished horizons. At first I was under the impression that trial would come within a few months, but soon I found out it may take two years.

And the glacial slowness of Spanish justice, also a well-known problem.

Sigh.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.