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This is a picture of the confusion of history. Who said what? Who did what to whom? In the epic of great events just as in the intimate warfare of a domestic quarrel, it is impossible to get stories straight. Here, a crowd of people seem confused about their own part in a dramatic escalation of protest and police violence that gripped the streets of Madrid this week.

A restaurant owner remonstrates outside his establishment with its touristic menu of platos combinados while people caught up in the clashes take refuge inside. A woman has her hands up, apparently using a gesture of surrender from old war films to tell the police she’s not throwing stones. Other people too put up their empty hands. One man may have a camera. Others are torn between fear and curiosity. Are they protesters or witnesses or a bit of both? And where do the restauranteur’s sympathies lie?

[Read more] A picture taken outside a restaurant in Madrid during protests embodies the shouting down of reason, by Jonathan Jones