El Poble
Carys Wall (UK/ES, 2024)
6 min
El Poble is a soundscape of a protest in Valencia, on the 9th of November 2024, when more than 100,000 people marched through the city demanding the resignation of the president of the Valencian Government. The protest was in response to the DANA flooding at the end of October which caused catastrophic damage in the region and killed over 200 people.
People chant "they're not deaths, they're murders" and "while you were eating, the people were dying", in reference to the Valencian president's long private lunch on the day of the flood. After a few moments of silence, protestors set off their phone alarms, referencing the emergency alerts which were sent at 20:11 on the day of the flood, when many had already drowned and bridges had already been washed away.
While the flooding and protests in Valencia were extensively documented through photography, this piece is a record of the sound of the moment - of the the anger, fear, and grief, as well as the solidarity, resilience, and hope that filled the air. El Poble experiments with the audio pan to create a jarring and disorienting listening experience.