Sol camp: soap added and 150 people, according to a tweet

The Sol camp and the list with soap added before the rain

Puerta del Sol is once again filling up with mats. At the time of this discussion, a tweet puts the encampment at around 150 people. What's really worrying is the sky: according to circulating messages, rain is expected from the afternoon and throughout the week, just what an open-air camp doesn't need. The list of materials circulating among participants —milk, water, a broom, sleeping bags and tents— describes the movement better than any manifesto.

There's one detail on that list that has become the running joke. Several participants claim that the soap appears at the end, written in different handwriting, as if someone had suddenly remembered it was needed. One user calls it outright “trolling”.

The camp shopping list: milk, soap and a broom

The inventory of what's missing works as an X-ray. On paper: milk, water in «flus flus» bottles, a broom, mats, sleeping bags and tents. According to the comments, milk appears twice, some joke that the water is intended more for atmosphere than for drinking, and the soap arrives late. The broom, underlined, betrays the obsession with not leaving the square a mess.

According to the most repeated readings of that list, the order of the materials tells the story of the organization. The sleeping bags and tents would have been provided by those who could provide them —jokingly, Open Society is even mentioned as a funder—; the soap, by contrast, was added by hand when everything else was already there. Among the most common comments is the idea that there's too much of what gets smoked and not enough of the basics. It's a diagnosis as unkind as it is unoriginal.