It happened in May of 2014. On the 8th of May, precisely. It wasn't cold but not too warm either, a perfect day for protesting outdoors, on the main square in the historic center of the city with a long history.
It was a local protest of an environmental kind.
The city administration decided to turn a green, coastal area open to the public into a resort or a series of hotels. As always when it comes to tourism-related development in the last few decades, quite a bit of corruption has been involved and quite a few crucial rules were skipped.
After months of debating, accusing, back & forth between factions, and quite a few hot articles in local newspapers that sold more copies than usual ...
... a protest erupted.
I mean, saying that anything erupted on that occasion is an exaggeration but sounded like an effective end of the previous sentence, so I used it nonetheless.
It was a nice, positive protest, people were kind, and I was there with a small, partially broken camera I was using in that period.
While the people were focused on protest ...
... dogs were playing. Well, some of them did.
A few policemen were also there.
This photograph showing a police force trio next to a small group of protesters of all sizes and ages is probably the best shot this post has to offer.
Yep, that was a cool street scene.
Here you can see a little dog that was walking around with a little help of two wheels.
I photographed many people I know personally ...
... and I caught a politician known to me only from the newspapers and TV.
It's the one in the glasses in this shot.
The dude was in the Croatian Parliament in the late nineties and early two- thousands so his fame and recognizability had a relatively wide reach.
His star has thoroughly faded since. No one I know cares who the fuck this man is anymore. Which is quite reasonable.
The event was fairly entertaining.
A small choir was singing uplifting, righteous songs. "Bella ciao" was repeated quite a few times.
Some songs and slogans were borrowed from the communist, partisan tradition which can be charming and endearing if you lean leftwards or kinda irritating if you, as the majority of the Croatian population nowadays does, are oriented toward the stuff the right is perpetually proposing. You know, the usual crap, nationalism, historical revisionism with great sympathy for local fascists, and religion that dictates civil matters.
Here you can see a lady who was explaining some stuff to me. Can't remember what the talk was about but it must have been pretty passionate.
My crapy camera was damaged by the salt a year or two before the protest so it showed ugly, confusing aberrations on the shot when pointed towards the sun.
In today's post, you'll see quite a few photographs that had the potential to be pretty good but were ruined by that stuff.
At some point ...
... a weird cowboy dressed all in black appeared from somewhere and walked like a big star through the protesting crowd.
The dude looked like a gunslinger ready for a duel that would resolve the situation in a fragment of a second.
He put his finger on his temples to focus his mental energy or something ...
... he raised his powerful fist toward the town hall, and then ...
... nothing happened. I had a good laugh and the town hall resisted.
I still don't know who that lonesome cowboy is and if was even real.
Here you can see an activist talking to the microphone between two songs sung by the small choir. This dude made much more sense. We all learned a few things from him that day.
At four in the afternoon, a man was reading a book in the empty part of the square thirty-forty meters from the town hall.
Some people told me that it's some kind of performance. It made sense. The man is an artist. A painter, mostly.
However, no one could tell me what the performance was supposed to be about.
The book was a collection of lectures by Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning writer from Turkey.
The dude looked like a hermetic, introverted piece of individualist puzzle dipped into the atmosphere of community and collectivism created by the protest.
The banner shown in this and the following photograph ...
... stated, "Oh how nice it is to be stupid." The phrase is a part of the homonymous song by "Riblja Chorba", the Yugoslav/Serbian band whose name was translated as "Fish soup" a minute ago by Google Translate.
The song was released in 1982 on the "Flee Market" album. A cool rebellious song from an iconic album of the eighties in Yugoslavia.
Here you can see a trio of ladies debating something.
Here you can see another lady explaining something to a friend of mine who is a camera operator by trade.
In the following photograph ...
... the same Adidas man can be seen recording the event.
Here you can see the portrait of a friend who lives in the village of Valtura and who was singing in the choir on the 8th of May 2014.
Yep, it was a very photogenic choir.
This is a shot taken in the pause between two series of songs.
Another banner, there's nothing worth mentioning on this one.
A group of people - that's all I can tell you about this photograph.
Here you can see two local journalists performing a ritual dance.
The choir was situated in front of the Temple of Augustus, one of the most beautiful works of Roman architecture in the city.
You can see another banner in this shot. This one was photographed near the arcades of the town hall's porch.
Here you can see the portrait of a man with a yellow whistle. His name is Elvis. It's a friend of mine. I mean, I don't see him often so it would be a stretch to call him a close friend but he's a friendly dude and we know each other, so yeah, it's my friend.
This shot shows a group of protestants on the porch. The lady in the foreground had a silver whistle. I mean, the whistle was metallic so it looked like silver.
Here you can see a series of photographs taken there on the porch, close to the town hall's entrance. Some ladies were whistling.
Little Red Riding Hood was arranging flyers on the floor in front of the entrance.
As you can see ...
... she did a good job.
Here you can take another look at the sunny square ...
... and the people there.
This photograph is slightly out of focus but since I like the look of the palace in its center, I decided to include it despite the obvious flaw.
The hand in the foreground of this shot is holding something that looks like an extravagant spray bottle.
In the following photograph ...
... another hand is holding a mobile phone in the background.
Here you can see two politicians on the way to the town's hall. A crucial meeting, debate, and voting was about to start there soon.
I photographed one of those dudes again a few hours later, on the way out.
In these two photographs, the focus is on the official patches ...
... sewn on shirts, t-shirts, and jackets of the security personnel at the entrance.
This group of fairly well-dressed dudes looks like a male choir ready to start singing a traditional Dalmatian song.
Something like this.
New York was far from there but its name was present on the t-shirt of at least one of the protesters.
In this tryptich, you can take another look at the amazing result of Little Red Riding Hood's child labor.
The dog of one of the protesters was a bit bored, I think.
Meanwhile ...
... the security dudes were cool as always ...
... and a bit bored as well, maybe. I don't know ...
... standing still and being bored looks like a big part of that profession so maybe they are immune to boredom somehow.
Maybe they have a mental technique, a system to cope with that psychologically. Maybe that's part of the training.
Anyway, some of the protestors were doing the same, just standing there, so as the afternoon was turning into evening, there was quite a bit of boredom visible on both sides.
This lady works in the town hall, I think. She was ready to enter when the photograph was taken.
Here you can see two security dudes chatting. The board above them signals that the building is a town hall. It's a bilingual board that shows things in Croatian and Italian becouse this is generally a bilingual region, and Pula/Pola is especially bilingual with a strong Italian community.
Here you can see the protesters on the porch.
I was one of them.
In the evening ...
... there was more action.
At some point, someone brought a few Pizzas for the folks inside.
We were performing some kind of siege if I remember well.
One of the ladies in the city council was pregnant so she got out easily.
Here you can see the police officers explaining something.
The one with the hat in this dark shot it's me.
One of the politicians who stood for the cause of the protesters came out to say a few words to the people outside when this photograph was taken.
In this and the following shot ...
... a representative of the protesters is trying to explain something to the security people at the entrance.
Here you can see a group portrait with three policemen.
In this shot, a representative of the protesters is talking with one of the politicians.
The evening was quite interesting.
I mean, the whole protest was a fairly eventful experience ...
... but the evening siege was the most interesting part to me.
And that's it. I have no more photographs to show, so the post ends here.
AS ALWAYS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK - THE END.