Clowns, politics and disobedience in the Catalan referendum for independence

In the morning of 20 September 2017, against the backdrop of the Catalan Referendum for Independence, Jordi Pessarrodona, a former member of Clowns Without Borders, made his way up to the front of the demonstration, put on his clown nose and went into mimic and repeat the actions of the policemen guarding the doors of the Department of Economy, in Barcelona. Pessarrodona’s embodiment of the clown’s irreverent aesthetic transmuted the protest space into a stage for nuanced subversion. This protest action spoke eloquently, forging an exchange that simultaneously disrupted the authority of the police’s presence. This paper reflects on the dynamic interplay between gesture, embodiment, and political resistance. Through historical contextualization and performance analysis, this research unravels how Pessarrodona’s performance uses humour and play to disrupt the traditional tension of the street protest, becoming an embodied manifestation of Catalonia’s struggle for self-government.