Thousands of people united by a white tide that is sweeping the whole country took to the streets yesterday in several cities in Spain to demand quality and universal public healthcare. Protests that have coincided, in this case, with World Health Day. The conveners demand, among other things, more resources for primary care, denounce “excessive” waiting lists and demand job improvements for healthcare professionals.
In these rallies, the messages on the banners were repeated: “Healthcare is not sold, it is defended” or “We are victims of privatization”. And a cry was also heard in these protests: “Cutting healthcare is a criminal act”.
In Barcelona, ??around 2,500 people took to the streets yesterday, according to figures provided by the Urban Guard. In a vindictive atmosphere, the participants met in Plaça Urquinaona and walked along Via Laietana until reaching Plaça Sant Jaume. One of the founders and spokesperson of Marea Blanca in Catalonia, Toni Barberà, stated that today more than ever it is necessary to “reconquer” a state health system that the administration is cutting. And he added that at this moment it is decisive to sit down to “talk and put on the table the current disaster that has been reached with commoditization and privatizations with absolute impunity”, added Barberà.
Another Marea Blanca activist and spokeswoman for the association, Carmen Esbrí, emphasized that the aim of these protests is none other than to prevent health from becoming “a market”. Healthcare, he affirmed, “is infected by merchants who traffic in this public service in an obscene manner and by politicians who try to consolidate this mercantilist model”.
In Madrid, a human chain of more than 300 people joined by sheets and stretched white ribbons surrounded the Puerta del Sol. But it was in Andalucia where the largest concentrations were recorded. Thousands of people took to the streets of the main capitals of this community yesterday with the same vindictive message. In these protests in Andalusia, all under the slogan “Defend public health”, the demonstrators reproached the regional government of the PP for the “continuous cuts”, according to the collective, which cause the “saturation” of primary care, “endless” waiting lists or the increase in the private healthcare budget, among others, since since 2019, the SAS has referred 263,568 operations to private healthcare.
This is a tide, it was recalled in many of these protests, which is also spreading through other countries in central and northern Europe. It is “an evil” – the desire to privatize, say unions and activists -, which is spreading too quickly with the “blessing” of governments.
The Andalusian Government of the PP, today one of the most criticized for this healthcare model, defends that it has deployed a “record investment” in Andalusian healthcare with “45% more and 25,000 new professionals”, given that the average investment in healthcare per inhabitant remains below the national average and Andalusia closed 2023 with 142,507 patients on surgical waiting lists, of which 53,014 were outside the guarantee decree, about 17,000 more than the 36,004 who were in this situation six months earlier, on June 2023. Although the Board does not hide that “a lot remains to be done”.
In Castile and León there was also a sanitary white tide yesterday; more than a thousand people took to the streets in the provincial capitals of Ávila and León and in the Leonese town of Ponferrada.
