The challenge of "resistance": Vox demands continuous demonstrations against the amnesty and the PP sees it as "difficult" to keep up

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 senior staff of the PP and Vox, the protest this Saturday 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 Fernando Savater named it, who insisted that we are only facing the “first step” of that resistance.

The protest was led by Foro Libertady Alternativa, Unión 78, Cataluña Suma, Pie en Pared, S'ha Finish!, and a long list of more than a hundred organizations.. Its 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 protesters burst into a great ovation for Alejo Vidal-Quadras to unseal the event. The former president of the Catalan PP and founder of Vox is recovering from the shot in the face 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 by destroying the basic constitutional consensus.”

The first chants then began to be heard, still timid, as if to warm up: “United Spain will never be defeated!”. And then the most enthusiastic cry of the demonstration, “Puigdemont to prison!”, which immediately escalated to “Pedro Sánchez to prison!”. The insult “Pedro Sánchez, son of a bitch!” also thundered, followed by its euphemistic synonym “I like fruit.”. They insisted on the latter to its author, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, upon her arrival in Cibeles.

The Madrid president – by far the most acclaimed – called to “stop what is happening in Spain together.”. «They are taking us to an extreme and meaningless situation, never seen in democracy. And the damage is irreversible,” he warned, from the background of his statements to the media.. “We are not going to have any kind of fear,” Feijóo harangued his people, also through the press.. «It is one thing to have the power and another to be right. It is one thing to have obtained enough support, but they know that they do not have the votes to do what they are doing,” he stressed.

“Lower your arms”

Of course, at the end of the protest, PP sources warned that it will be “very difficult” to hold such massive demonstrations again and in such a continuous manner once Sánchez has already promised his position as president with 179 yeses out of 350.. Because? Due to the natural tendency of Spaniards to “lower their arms” when they consider it impossible to get the Government to back down. And the Genoa leadership is convinced that Sánchez will continue “until the end” with his plan to amnesty a decade of crimes related to the attempt to separate Catalonia from the rest of Spain.

Santiago Abascal wanted to turn the focus towards the PP, and revealed that he had asked Feijóo for a meeting to articulate a joint response and analyze the possibilities that the Senate has to stop the amnesty law. The leader of the PP responded “without further ado,” according to those around him. In any case, the president of Vox added to the press that “we cannot give up the battle as lost, we must continue resisting with sustained social mobilization, give a coordinated institutional response in the regions where there is no coup majority, in the Senate.” and communicate to all our international allies what is happening in Spain with the attack on the independence of powers and the equality of the Spanish people.

“I know that right now, in this square, there are also many socialists” like him who are ashamed of a PSOE that is “ideologically dead,” said Félix Ovejero, professor and columnist for EL MUNDO.. And the writer Andrés Trapiello – also a prominent author of this newspaper – stressed that “the buying and selling” of the State has uncovered an operation by the PSOE to gaslight anyone who thinks differently: “Sánchez wants to drive us crazy” with “an amnesty that is an “an eyesore and a moral mockery,” he said, because “his personal ambition has no limits or scruples.”

Albert Boadella warned that Spain “is on its way to ending up in a dictatorship”. “It fucks me up!” added the playwright graphically.. And the aforementioned Savater was the one who closed the speeches: “Puigdemont must be escorted, it seems good to me: he must be escorted, taken to Alcalá-Meco and left there.”

After the event, a series of protesters blocked the A-6 highway during the afternoon and remained about 150 meters from one of the entrances to the La Moncloa complex.