Anticapitalist flashmob fun in Spain

Uh oh…looks like the Banco Santander got hit:

A bunch of rowdy flamenqueros (and a cash cow) got together in Seville about a month ago and staged this funtastic protest. Here’s a Brit’s eye view of what they’re protesting and why:

Santander, when all is said and done, is not doing much to help the Spanish economy get itself out of the hole it is in, as it carries on with its unstoppable international expansion. However, neither does it seem to show much interest in helping re-establish the flow of credit to small and medium enterprises in the UK.

After its aggressive expansion in the British banking sector, with the purchase of old building societies like Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, Banco Santander now seems to be in total agreement with the controversial declaration of hated Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond who, only two years after provoking the mother of all crises, claims that “bankers should no longer feel sorry”. Under the leadership of Ana Patricia Botín, Santander UK has just announced its decision to withdraw from negotiations with the British government to increase credit supply to small businesses and individuals still asphyxiated by a credit crunch that is much more painful for UK small and medium enterprises and families than the crunch that affected the banks two years ago. That credit drought in the interbank market was remedied by enormous rescue operations employing public money and the nationalisation of banks such as Lloyds, which now pays eight million pounds a year to the former chief executive of Santander UK, Antonio Horta-Osorio. Santander UK has also turned its back on negotiations on more responsible remuneration formulas.

In other words, it’s sucking the money–the lifeblood–out of the economy, with no thought for anyone but itself. While banks got rewarded with mucho taxpayer dinero for gambling with and losing the customers’ (ahem: taxpayers’) money, the little people lost their jobs and their homes–and thus, all means to keep the gravy train rolling. Little wonder, then, that the protest song’s lyrics go like this:

Banker, banker, banker
You’ve got the wallet
I’ve got the money
Banker, banker, banker
You’ve got nothing
I’ve got the whole world.

It would behoove the bankers to remember who pays their salary. Um, that would be you and me, the little people. And if we should STOP paying, and the banks end up with nothing from us but empty houses that no one wants to buy (because they can’t), and out-of-work, dispossessed taxpayers keep voting against any government that tries to bail the banks out, then what?

Use your imaginations, kiddies, that’s what you’ve got ’em for. And keep reminding those fucking bankers who their real bosses and moneymen are.

PS: For extra fun, see this episode of La Hojilla in Venezuela. Mario Silva and Jorge Amorín discuss this video in the second segment, about 5 minutes in.