Spain's 'Robin Hood' leads march to protest exploitation of the poor
Politician leads rally to highlight how poor people are exploited
If this was revolution, it was a remarkably calm affair.
When the man sometimes billed as Spain's most dangerous left-wing politician, Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, led his utopian army of marchers through the baking southern heat into the small town of Albolote, the biggest fuss was among those jostling for photographs beside the charismatic revolutionary.
Riot police stood by, but the 500-odd tired, sweaty marchers simply dropped their banners, flopped under the cool trees of the town's Guaynabo Park and reached for their water bottles.
Gordillo's reputation as a modern-day Robin Hood has grown this summer after a series of "workers' marches" across southern Andalucia saw followers raid food from two supermarkets and hand it to the poor.
Flash occupations of bank branches and an empty luxury country hotel have kept his small Andalucian Workers' Union in the headlines as debate rages about a style of direct action that attracts those seeking radical change to Spain's current diet of soaring unemployment, recession and harsh austerity.
"The right likes to make out that we are a dangerous bunch of criminals, a sort of modern Pancho Villa," Gordillo said. "But that is the same strategy as always. First they criminalise you and then they try to get rid of you."
After more than half a dozen arrests over three decades spent fighting for the rights of landless Andalucian labourers, Gordillo, 60, will not be easily put off his latest crusade.