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Why I Am A Metro Strike Essay

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I stood there in annoyance. Several of the Barcelona metros were closed for the evening as I tried to make my way back to the Eixample neighborhood after a long day of work. Extremely jet lagged and dehydrated from the lack of drinking fountains, I waved down a cab during the busy rush hour traffic. Walking would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the terribly long and hot trek in the midst of summer. Had I know the significance of this metro strike, I would have felt far more inclined to take another mode of transportation, but for the next hour I would be another one of the ignorant Americans traveling abroad. As soon as my phone connected to Wi-Fi, as I walked up the stairs to my apartment, it exploded with twitter notifications, emails, and text messages from my program directors, roommates, and international news accounts. They all warned me of riots occurring in the Gràcia district of the city, not too far away. I quickly typed “riots in Barcelona” into Google and several recent news articles popped up. In summation, all the articles stated an outbreak of riots began after squatters were evicted from a former bank causing an immense ruckus within the city, closing down roads and metros. An assembly of young and old Catalonians marched back and forth along the street civilly until the outbreak occurred. Police arrived and the situation intensified almost immediately. Trash cans were set on fire, window displays were smashed, and cars were overturned. Protesters

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