City councils of different political signs and different autonomies reactivate the figure of the night watchman who disappeared in the 70s. And, in these times of global neo-fascist rise, it is worth remembering the role of watchful eyes of the Franco regime that they often played
Citizens can now report irregularities with nightstands in Seville through the new municipal app
The eye you see is not an eye because you see it; It is an eye because it sees you.
The course of history is made of great shocks and subtle changes. In the daily excitement in which we live, many of these go unnoticed, although they affect our habits and, thus, shape our minds. In Seville, 2024 ends with two curiously related PP city council decisions: the creation of a municipal App for residents to report non-compliance with bar terraces and the end, with a promise of extension, of the first year of night watchman service since, in the 70s, it was decided to extinguish them.
Although it has been 4 years since the fateful 2020 of the covid, most of us will remember the telltale fever that, fueled by fear and boredom, led many confined people to keep watch, behind curtains and curtains, and report to the police if other neighbors came or went . The emergency, police or municipal services are of course there to respond to alerts and citizen complaints, it is also true that there are bars that do not comply with the regulations both in decibels and in the number of nightstands. But instead of strengthening the public inspection system, Apps are created for citizens to act as “neighborhood spies” does not seem like the most fair, effective system or guarantor of coexistence.
That councils like that of Seville create Apps for residents to monitor and accuse bars of non-compliance and at the same time reinstate the role of night watchmen points in a direction of espionage and denunciation typical of undemocratic systems.
Nor would I say that creating a service with 10 couples of calm men and women in a city of 687,488 inhabitants and 3.5 million tourists annually is key to our safety or well-being. In fact, in this first year of work I have not seen any and it is not strange, since they operate only in the historic center and this, with its 4 square kilometers, is the largest in Spain and one of the largest in Europe. It occurs to me that we could invent a gymkhana to search for them like someone looking for a needle in a haystack… With the prize of beer and tapas on one of our “neighbor-watched” terraces.
They sprout serenely like mushrooms
It turns out that this recovery of the old figure of the night watchman, linked to the black and white of Franco’s times, is not a mere idea of the Sevillian mayor of the PP, José Luis Sanz. After the disappearance in the 70s there have been several attempts (Madrid from 85 to 87; Catalaayud (Zaragoza) a few months in 2007,Murcia (2007-2014). And in recent years they have also recovered in Catalan municipalities such as Mataró (PSC), Santa Coloma of Gramenet (PSC), Award de Dalt (Junts) and Cornellà (PSC) – all four in the province of Barcelona – and Figueres (Junts) -in Girona. The pioneer in reactivating them is Gijón, today governed by Foro Asturias with the support of Vox, which He reinstated the watchmen in 199926 years ago.
Humble professionals yesterday and today, because in the past They received tips of 1 or 2 pesetas that neighbors and merchants gave them, and currently they are usually hired among women and men over 45 years old, long-term unemployed, disadvantaged or immigrants, it is common to make them an endearing portrait. But, during the Franco regime, they were often watchful eyes, controlling figures, at the service of the regime that oppressed freedoms. Just like so many building doormen, as Contemporary History professor Daniel Oviedo Silva explains in The enemy at the doors. Doormen and accusatory practices in Madrid (1936-1945).
My own parents and uncles, clandestine PTE militants in the 70s, suffered the denunciations of the caretaker of the block where their student apartment was. My partner and I, decades later, at a friend’s house in Havana (Cuba), experienced surveillance and blackmail by the CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) of the neighborhood to keep part of the medicines, hygiene items and things that our friends needed and we had brought them.
“We must not forget that the night watchmen were also a tentacle of municipal power for the social control of the neighborhoods,” the historian and founder of Somos Malasaña, Luis de la Cruz, published 10 years ago in this same elDiario.es. But it is forgotten. That is why it is necessary to remind them that “belonging to the police force or justice assistants (…) had control tasks, such as collecting the pamphlets they found and taking them to the authorities, or, in some times, taking them to the police force.” guard anyone who was walking on the street after a certain time.”
What gives or takes away security?
Of course, it all depends on the context. And our society, today democratic, is not that of the repressive Franco regime. But, with the current panorama of global fascist rise, does promoting neighborhood spies, be they informer neighbors or watchmen often renamed “civic night agents”, give or take away security?
Isn’t the effort to have us surrounded by cameras in the streets and doorways, geolocated through our cell phones and smartphones, within drone shot, already chilling? Shouldn’t we instead focus, in the opposite direction, on legislating to control the three neuroscience companies (Precision, Synchron and the Neuralink by Elon Musk) which, as he explained this week Javier Ruiz at SERwith the supposed good goal of reversing cerebral and physical paralysis and tackling mental illnesses such as depression, are already working on brain implants that can read, download and even hack human thoughts as a business today valued at 400,000 million dollars, a third of Spanish GDP?
The threat to freedom comes today from companies like Precision, Synchron and Elon Musk’s Neuralink with their brain implants capable of controlling human minds and from the lack of decision on the part of the Administrations to redistribute wealth as needed to boost society. social majority.
The real threat to freedom, democracy and the well-being of the social majority is there and in inequality. In which in Spain the 10% richest monopolize 54% of wealth and the 1%, in fact, have a quarter of everything, while the The poorest 50% of our society shares 7.8% of resources.
True security for neighborhoods is not built with couples of watchmen but with investment in public education that encourages families in abandoned, marginalized and impoverished areas. And, as an APDHA report points out, 10 of the 15 poorest neighborhoods in Spain are in Andalusia, 6 of the 15 in Seville, 3 in Córdoba and 1 in Málaga, so their town councils and the Andalusian Junta, the mayors José Luis Sanz, José María Bellido, Francisco de la Torre and the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno, all from the PP, have a job to do.
#neighborhood #spies
