At 12:00 o’clock a flood of constitutional and European flags was still descending towards Cibeles. Through Serrano, through Alcalá, along Paseo del Prado, along Gran Vía or through Alfonso XII. Late, but on time. Dozens of buses from all over Spain rested on the banks of the Retiro like stranded barges. There was less crowding than on other occasions, but this continuous trickle was having an effect, and a quarter of an hour later the main tributary of the demonstration already surpassed Colón, a kilometer away. The sun, which fell fortuitously and vertically on the indigo blue of the community insignia, gave the call the last push of attendance.
The large demonstration by civil society against the pacts of Pedro Sánchez and the independentists of Junts and ERC then broke out in a univocal cry against the amnesty: “Not in my name!” According to the organizers, there were around a million people. The Government Delegation lowered the figure to 170,000 attendees, more than double the 80,000 it estimated last Sunday, also in Madrid, at the rally called by the PP.
Without party acronyms or politicians’ speeches, but with the presence of the PP and Vox leadership, this Saturday’s protest in Madrid was designed as the central axis of the response against the agreements to erase the crimes of the process. That is, as the inaugural episode of “the resistance.” This is how the philosopher named it Fernando Savaterwho insisted that we are only facing the “first step” of that resistance.
They led the protest Freedom Forumand Alternative, Union 78, Catalonia Sum, Foot on Wall, Is over!, and a long list of more than a hundred organizations. His manifesto emphasizes that Spain is entering “a new phase of a process that puts the very existence of Spain at certain risk” and “we cannot remain impassive in the face of it.” “We risk being or not being,” he warns.
Having already averted the danger of having collapsed in the previous protests, the demonstrators broke out in a great ovation to Alejo Vidal-Quadras to unseal the act. The former president of the Catalan PP and founder of Vox is recovering from the shot in the face that he suffered a week ago just a few blocks away. From the main stage, the words of the tweet with which he gave proof of his recovery echoed over the public address system: “Sanchism turns the electoral adversary into an enemy to be expelled from the system through the destruction of basic constitutional consensus.”