The demonstration called by civil society this Saturday in Madrid against the amnesty has exceeded its own predictions of success. Organizers estimate attendance at around one million people. The Government Delegation has quantified the participation at 170,000 people, more than double the 80,000 it estimated last Sunday in the rally called by the PP.
They did not speak politicians. Because the call was not theirs either, headed by Foro Libertad y Alternativa, Unión 78, Foro España Cívica, Cataluña Suma, Pie en Pared, S’ha Finish!, NEOS, Association for Tolerance, Catalan Civic Coexistence, From Spanish to Spanish by the Constitution, OLE (Another Electoral Law), Resiste España, Nuevo Espíritu de Ermua and a hundred civic organizations that already promoted another rally in Cibeles on January 21 under the motto ‘For Spain, Democracy and the Constitution’.
But there were eight speeches, which drew great applause in Madrid’s Plaza de Cibeles, although the protesters extended towards Colón, Atocha, Puerta de Alcalá and Gran Vía.
The president of S’Ha Hacet!, Julia Calvet, opened the speeches with an appeal for the youth to continue “mobilizing” in an “exemplary” way on the streets against the Amnesty Law project, which must pass in the next few years. months by the Cortes after the pact between the PSOE and the Catalan independentists.
As a representative of an association that has been the subject of recurring harassment in Catalan universities, Calvet has taken the microphone to ask institutions “with sufficient power” to act: “Don’t abandon us, pick up the phone and stop the coup.” .
The Venezuelan journalist Miguel Henrique Otero compared, “despite the immense differences between the legal system of Spain and Venezuela” the situation of both countries. He warned against those who, in his day, “relativized the seriousness of what was happening” and thought “that they have already reached the limits and cannot go any further.”
“It turns out that the idea that there were limits that could not be crossed was no longer valid. Today the institutions are occupied by incompetent people and members of the party,” he summarized, to ensure that between Spain and Venezuela he appreciates “similar procedures, a shamelessness similar and a similar capacity to lie, which became the most obvious policy of that power that decided to perpetuate itself at the cost of whatever.”
The professor and EL MUNDO columnist Félix Ovejero addressed the many “socialists” who he claimed were gathered in the Plaza de Cibeles, among whom he cited himself as the heir of a social democratic tradition. A tradition in his opinion already orphaned now.
“The PSOE is ideologically dead, and very dead,” he diagnosed to appeal to the socialists “who rebel against indignity, who are ashamed of the party that was once theirs.” “It’s up to them to find their place elsewhere,” claimed Ovejero.
In his speech, Ovejero also recalled Miquel Iceta’s role in the constitutionalist demonstrations of 2017. “He refused to call for the first demonstration, in the second he was jumping the fences about to break his head for appearing in photos with the flag.” of Spain. But finally we were together, and it was good,” he recalled, to lament the change: “Today everything has changed and the laws are written by criminals.”
Conchita Martín, widow of Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Antonio Blanco, murdered by ETA in Madrid in 2000, expressed her opposition to the idea of the “wall” that Pedro Sánchez himself built during his inauguration.
In his speech, Martín demanded true “freedom”, without laws that establish inequality and that favor coexistence in Spain. “Ruling a country requires doing it for everyone,” she said to close her speech, visibly moved and leaving the stage in tears.
Another of the most celebrated speeches of the morning was that of the writer and also EL MUNDO columnist Andrés Trapiello, who took the floor to portray Pedro Sánchez’s “gaslight” strategy to make those who opposed the the amnesty Between applause he cheered the “quixotic” spirit of those gathered in Cibeles and surrounding areas and issued a warning to the President of the Government: “The impossible awaits you, convincing the Spaniards that white is black.”
Trapiello defined the amnesty as a “moral and indecent mockery” and finally shouted the slogan of the demonstration: “That outrage, not in my name! Neither amnesty, nor self-determination.”
From a distance, the organization issued a message from the playwright Albert Boadella, who warned of Spain’s path towards “a dictatorship.” “It fucks me up!” He stated that his career began fighting against a “military dictatorship” and now he has to fight against a “progressive dictatorship.”
The Portuguese MEP of the Social Democratic Party, Paulo Rangel, also drew applause, with energy and a rallying tone: “Europe is with you, with freedom and the rule of law,” he shouted before numerous flags of the European Union, which filled the first rows. of the demonstration.
“In my entire life as a jurist, as a politician, as a citizen, I have never seen a democracy in which it can be accepted that parliamentarians are going to supervise the courts and the judiciary,” said Rangel, who defined these commissions agreed upon by the PSOE and Junts as “a line that cannot be crossed.”
“I promise you that in the European Parliament, in Brussels, in all the countries of Europe, we are going to support you to resist and we are not going to let Spain, due to political opportunism, stop being a world reference for freedom and democracy. and coexistence,” Rangel concluded to emphasize that the Amnesty Law “is dangerous for liberal democracy, for the rule of law and also for the unity of Spain.”
The philosopher Fernando Savater closed the speeches at the Madrid demonstration against the amnesty by defining it as “the first step of a resistance that must continue.”
Highly acclaimed, Savater’s speech ironically claimed that Carles Puigdemont must be “escorted”, in reference to the Catalan verb that translates as ‘listen’. “It seems good to me: we have to escort him, take him to Alcalá-Meco and leave him there,” he concluded to applause.