Tens of thousands of people – 170,000, according to the Government Delegation; a million according to the organizers – flooded Madrid's Plaça de Cibeles yesterday to protest against the PSOE's pacts with the pro-independence parties that have allowed Pedro Sánchez to be reinstated as president of the Spanish Government. Yesterday was the turn of the civil organizations, accompanied by the Popular Party and Vox, who took the center of the Spanish capital under the slogan No in my name: no amnesty, no self-determination, for freedom, unity and equality!
The protest, unlike those that take place every night around the national headquarters of the PSOE, in Carrer Ferraz, was indeed communicated to the Delegation of the Spanish Government. The 170,000 people in which this body counted attendance are more than double the 80,000 that, according to the data it provided last Sunday, filled the Puerta del Sol and the neighboring avenues, called by the Popular Party. These are numbers that, in any case, are far from the figure of one million participants provided by the organizers.
At yesterday's demonstration, attendees filled the area around Cibeles, streets such as Alcalá, Paseo del Prado or Gran Vía, and this time they carried almost as many European Union flags as Spanish flags. Around noon, when the event began with a memorial for Alejo Vidal-Quadras, who is recovering from the gunshot he received on November 9, the square was filled with banners that read " Sánchez seller of the traitorous homeland" or "Pedro Sánchez is the Judas of the 21st century". The chants that are becoming common in these protests were also heard: from "Puigdemont in prison" to "Sánchez, resignation" or the more innovative "I like fruit", which has been popularized by the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso , after saying "filde puta" to the president of the Spanish Government during the first day of the investiture session in Congress.
Yesterday was the turn of civil society, but the right and the extreme right did not want to miss the appointment. The leader of the popular, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, arrived in the center of Madrid accompanied by some of his territorial barons, among them the Madrilenian Díaz Ayuso, Mañueco (Castile and Leon), López Miras (Murcia) or Prohens (Balearic Islands). He was greeted with shouts of "president, president". In front of the microphones of the media, Feijóo demanded that the President of the Central Government "not raise walls" between Spaniards. In addition, he warned citizens that although "the alarms of democracy are on", there should be no "fear" because Spain is a democratic system.
The ultra leader, Santiago Abascal, insisted, with his most bellicose speech, that "the consummation of the coup" has already begun after the PSOE registered on Monday the amnesty law proposal for those accused of the process . The leader of Vox, who did not get the photograph he is looking for with Feijóo, spoke to the president of the PP through WhatsApp to ask him for a meeting to "build a joint response and analyze the possibilities that the Senate has to stop the amnesty law".
The bulk of the demonstration dissolved after the reading of a manifesto in which it was warned of a "de-constituent" process based on a "corrupt" investiture by Pedro Sánchez and which, in addition to the amnesty, envisages a referendum Among others, the philosopher Fernando Savater intervened, who was in charge of closing the event.
Then, a group of 3,000 people moved to the surroundings of the PSOE headquarters in Ferraz. After a short protest, as they do every night, a hundred of them, encouraged by far-right social network agitators, set off on the way to the Palau de la Moncloa, cutting off part of the A-6 motorway. However, the police prevented them from approaching them and kept them "bagged up" for a few hours until they started to leave shouting "I'm Spanish, Spanish, Spanish".
