A busker calmly continued his rendition of The Bangles’ 1988 hit “Eternal Flame” as an anti-coronavirus lockdown protest in Barcelona, Spain, flared around him over the weekend.
Video shows Peter Geddes, 65, playing his electric keyboard to a backdrop of explosions, police vans, flashing blue lights, protesters throwing objects and what appears to be a trash can on fire.
“I didn’t do it to get attention,” the musician told La Vanguardia newspaper on Tuesday. “There is a certain obligation for the musician to continue playing if there is an audience that is listening,” Geddes explained. “Also, I felt that I should protect people by hugging them with music.”
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Geddes has been busking in Barcelona since the mid-1990s.
The video went viral on Twitter, where fans suggested it was the perfect metaphor for 2020. Some likened it to the scene in the movie “Titanic” where the band continues to play as the ship sinks.
The clip caught the eye of Spanish Grammy Award-winning singer Alejandro Sanz, who wryly commented on Instagram: “This man represents many of us.”
Protests have erupted in cities across Spain following Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s decision last month to send the country into a six-month state of emergency which has led to the imposition of nighttime curfews and the limiting of internal travel in a bid to mitigate a new wave of COVID-19.
