Basque police and feminist "protocols": the standoff over who treats a needle-stick injury

When the protocol wants to replace the Ertzaintza

Five plainclothes officers arrive at a txosna (a festival stall) in Bilbao to attend a young woman who says she suffered a needle stick. The women running the stall ask them to leave: they have their own protocol. The scene, which has circulated in recent days, sums up a tension that has long been brewing in Basque nightlife: who is in charge when a party becomes the scene of a suspected assault.

The episode ended with the women running the stall reported for obstructing police work. According to the version circulating, they were the ones who called emergency services and the young woman's parents, and agreed with the emergency service that they would bring the affected woman to the ambulance. When the officers arrived, they refused to change what had been agreed. The Ertzaintza, for its part, maintains that it is obliged to intervene. And in the middle, a word that justifies almost everything: protocol.

What a protocol is and what it is not

A protocol is an internal procedure. It is not a law, it does not override the duty to assist the authorities, and it does not turn a collective into a police force. In the case of the txosnas, these protocols are agreed with city councils and emergency services, and from that comes a veneer of legitimacy that some mistake for normative rank. The underlying discussion is not whether volunteers can accompany a victim: it is whether they can decide that the police should not intervene.

The legal answer is quite simple. The Ertzaintza is the full police force of the autonomous community and its actions do not depend on the permission of an association. Another matter is how the scene is managed to avoid re-victimising the victim. But there is a big difference between coordinating and standing in front of five officers and telling them to take their badge elsewhere.

The phantom needle stick no one is arrested for

The matter has an offshoot that is even more uncomfortable: according to a calculation doing the rounds, all summer, across Euskadi and the rest of Spain, not a single person has been arrested for needle sticks. The Ertzaintza itself puts the word "needle stick" in quotation marks in its communications. Meanwhile, photos of alleged suspects circulate on social media who, once identified, were carrying nothing unusual. The witch hunt is already underway.

That is the real risk. The day a mob believes it has found the needle-sticker, the protocol will be of no use. Lynching attempts at Basque festivals have already occurred, with the alleged attacker singled out without any evidence. The festival as an autonomous territory has a limit: the law.

From the Movimiento Nacional to the Feminist Movement

There is a deeper reading hovering over the conversation. For decades, the Franco-era Movimiento Nacional was the umbrella that justified everything. Then came the Basque National Liberation Movement. Now, in the middle of 2022, the Feminist Movement presents itself as a structure with its own press conferences, demonstrations and protocols. The question is whether that is a support network or a parallel apparatus competing with the institutions.

The propaganda of the organisations close to the abertzale (Basque nationalist) milieu has changed register. It no longer seeks to win trinc with slogans in Spanish and Basque; it now sends cryptic messages, only in Basque, with indecipherable logos, aimed at those already inside. It does not want to convince: it wants to consolidate. And in that framework, the protocol is the liturgy.

The word that switches off the brain

The magical use of "protocol" is not exclusive to the txosnas. During the pandemic it served to justify PCR tests without informed consent, fifteen-day quarantines and contact lists that ignored privacy. The word worked like an incantation: if there is a protocol, it gets done. Nobody asked about the patient autonomy law. Nobody asked about rights.

That mental habit is now being carried over into nightlife. If a collective says it has a protocol, part of the audience assumes it has authority. And it does not. Authority belongs to the Ertzaintza, with or without the sympathy of those present.

The day they believe they have found him

The question left hanging is not what exactly peine in that txosna. It is what will happen when a group of people convinced of their own protocol runs into a suspected attacker and decides to take justice into its own hands. That day, the protocol will not be the solution. It will be the problem.