On a warm mid-July evening back in
2012, I was in Madrid, Spain for an International Convocation with my
church, the CEC (Charismatic Episcopal Church). This was the second
night of the convocation and the night service had just let out so,
some of the youth group invited me to go out with them for dinner.
The original group was going to be much
larger than the group I ended-up setting out with. The larger group
of youth were taking too long so we told them to meet-up with us
later. So, I set off with 5 others, a guy from Paris, France, two
girls from Bonn, Germany another girl from Orlando, USA and one girl
from Madrid, Spain who was our local guide for the night.
To be honest, I had NO idea where we
were going, I just knew that food would be involved at some point
soon. Even though, I was not even really that hungry, I was just
eager to hangout with my new friends.
Once we got to the Goya Metro Station,
the closest station to the hotel we were at (Hotel Convencion) I was
filled-in on the fact that we were taking the Metro (Subway) to the
the Sol Metro Station as the place we were going to eat at was near
the Puerta Del Sol Plaza (location of City Hall). Now we had, as an
entire youth group as well, as some of the clergy and non-clergy
adults took the same trip earlier in the day for a multinational
Pro-Life rally organized by our church. I eventually found out that
the reason we did that rally during mid-day in the Madrid heat was
because our leadership was told that there was going to be another
rally in the evening which we should avoid. This information was
conveniently not passed on to any of the youth to tell us to avoid
that area later on.
The Metro ride was boringly uneventful
and we were happy to have reached our terminating station. We made
our way through the large underground plaza before exiting up onto
the Puerta Del Sol Plaza. Once we got out the exit, I knew things
were off kilter... really off. To the right of the exit there was
some riot police in gear guiding their vans into a parking area at
the edge of the plaza. The plaza was packed with people, not uncommon
considering the Spanish night culture and there was obviously a large
protest going on in the middle of the plaza. My friends and I made a
Conga Train (myself at the back) as we made our way through the less
densely packed outer edges of the Plaza past smaller circles of
protesters and pot-smoking hippies.
As we made out way through, I told my
friends, though I am not sure they heard me, “Something is
happening that should not be happening.” I knew in my Spirit that
things were not as peacefully loud as it may have seemed. For the
first time in my life I fully understood the term, “You can cut the
tension with a knife.” I could physically feel the tension in the
air. Then part way through the plaza, I looked to my right at the
mass of backs as the people faced city hall, then my mind flashed to
a thoughtful vision, “What if these people turned on us?”
Thinking in terms of a stampede away from the direction of City Hall,
not to attack us directly.
Needless to say, my vision came true no
more than 30 seconds later as a loud BOOM to our right caused a
deafening silence to fall over the plaza. Then as people in the
center, who I could not really see, began to turn and run the rippled
reaction outward of the crowd was swift. To our horror we were facing
a stampede of about a thousand souls rushing towards us.
My group, at least I thought at the
time, turned to the left and ran from the crowd. I could have sworn I
saw our local guide run in-front of me, something that was not the
case. However it is a good thing I did think that, because it caused me
to noticed the girl from Orlando. I recognized her dark blue cardigan
flash in front of me as I was running to get next to the nearest wall in an effort to avoid being trampled. I was able to grab my friend's arm and we made it to the wall.
Once we got to the wall we were able to stop but, only for a
second. Though many people were still running, some had started to
fight back against the police by throwing rocks and beer cans at them.
The loud cannon like booms that seemed to have triggered the stampede
in the first place were still ringing strong. Police had started
shooting teargas and other crowd dispersents into the crowd. It felt
like we were sitting ducks at the wall so we turned the corner down a
side street and ended up running into an El Corte Ingles department
store. The store's security rushed to the doors to stop the rioters
from coming in however, we were able to duck under some clothing
racks near the entrance to get into the store past the guards.
Once in the store, I realized that my
friend had gotten hurt. Twice her foot got stepped on leaving her big
toe bleeding with the nail barely holding on. NO ONE in store spoke
English! I thought, “We are on the sales floor of a major
department store, in a major tourist district, in a major European
city and no one speaks English.” Wow! I found out that when it
comes to finding English speakers in Spain, one will find that it is
not very common compared to the number of English speakers in say
France, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, etc,. So, we had
no way to ask what was going on with the riots and we were only
really assisted when my friend showed her bleeding toe. While the
lady was willing to help, my friend was too afraid to have anyone
touch it and we made our way out of the store, which was soon to
close anyway.
Now, were were not dumb enough to exit
the same way we came in. While we had no idea where exactly we were,
we certainly were NOT going to head back to the Plaza. Even though
that was the location of the only metro station we knew of.
Afterwards, looking at a map I found that we were not far from Sol
Metro Station at all. But, the thought of accidentally getting pushed
onto the tracks by crazy rioters crossed both our minds.
Anyway, once out of the store we found
some people who spoke English. However, they were college-age South
African tourists who were as clueless of the day's events as we were.
They offered to show us the video that they had taken but, after
already being an extra in the production I was not really interested
in seeing it.
Finally a local lady with a stroller
over heard us and came up. She pushed a stroller in one hand and held
Kindle device in the other. She, could not tell us how to get “home”
(as we refereed to our hotel) but, she told us that we needed to get
back to our hotel/home as it was not safe right now. Her advice
offered us little comfort to say the least.
We decided to try and find a taxi as
the lady let us know that Sol was the only Metro Station around. We
start walking down the street directly in front of the door we used
to get out of the department store. As we walked, we came upon two
ladies sitting on a bench resting and they had the familiar protest
signs next to them. The white signs were like “No Smoking” signs
but with a pair of black scissors instead of a cigarette. Asking them
for insight as to the cause of all this madness, they in broken
English said that it was because the government was going to cut
Miner's Benefits and the signs meant “No Cuts!”
Ever since we left the store, the side
we exited on was strangely quiet, too quiet. As were were finishing
up our nice conversation with the friendly locals, the booms started
again and the crowd that had been on the other side of the store
poured through the alleyway towards us... again! DE JA VU!!!
Ladies told us to run and we hesitated
not! We ran a little further down the street we were already on and
decided to take cover in an underground parking garage. Now, while I
was going to take the steps like a normal person, my scared friend
jumped a small retaining wall and ran down the exit ramp. I followed,
though I simply turn back slightly ran down the ramp, her jump was
actually unnecessary. So, despite the obvious dangers of running down
a blind cruved exit ramp, we were both in this together at this
point. Thank GOD that there were no cars coming though 30 seconds
later, there would have been as one was paying and ready to exit.
Everyone there was surprised to see a
couple crazy English speakers show up via an exit ramp for cars only.
I let my now sobbing friend do the explaining, actually I had no
choice. The lady who was in the car that was getting ready to exit
was a God send and decided to help. Though she could not speak good
English she had school aged daughters who were learning English. She
pulled to the side and asked the garage attendants to phone our
hotel. As I should have remembered from the night before, the number
on our hotel key-card was not even an active number. The lady then
said, get in the car I will try to take you to your hotel. Though
both my friend and I had been told, “NEVER GET INTO A CAR WITH A
STRANGER!” we felt it was our best option. She really had no idea
where our hotel was as she lived on another side of the city but, was
willing to help us anyway. In the end she took us to a line of taxis
and after much thanks we got out and took a taxi back to our hotel.
While in the taxi, we passed a line of
ambulances loading up injured people. Some were bloodied with torn-up
clothing. Needless to say, we were worried about our friends. While
we had not forgotten them we had previously been very preoccupied and
after seeing the ambulances we feared the worst.
Once we got to the hotel I started to
get money out to cover the ride but, my friend beat me to by
practically throwing the money at the driver telling him thanks and
that he could keep the change. We were so glad to get back to the
hotel, only to find that none of the other youth had even left yet.
We walked up just as they were departing and warned them not to go
and asked that they phone our friends.
After telling the whole incident
multiple times over that still young night we finally went out to eat
with an American friend to a pizza place across the street. Oddly
enough, as it turned-out, my friend was looking for her parents who
we passed twice at an out-door table on the way to and from the pizza
place. Her mom was nurse and my friend wanted her to take care of her
foot but, she ended up letting the waiter at the restaurant bandage
her toe right there as we waited for our pizza. He sure earned his
tip!
So, to finish the story, we did not see
any of our friends until the next morning at the last day of the
convocation. As it turns out, they simply huddled together while the
crowd ran around them. After the one guy got hit by a police club
they said they were really tourists and were allowed behind police
lines. They got some ice-cream and headed to their respective
dwellings 30 minutes later when the Sol Metro Station was re-opened.
I did not go back to my room until
after my friend was reunited with her parents at the table we past
twice. My mom was relived to finally see me as apparently she had
been watching the riots on TV. While this whole incident left my mind
a little jumpy at crowds for a while I have since gotten over it and
have moved on to new adventures. While I hope that I never have to
live through such an incident again, I would NEVER give up this
experience. I look back and laugh at it and think, “Wow! That was
actually kind of fun!” :D
