More than a hundred forums and civic associations have called on citizens “from the left, the center or the right” to fill the Plaza de Cibeles this Saturday at 12:00 p.m. in a protest against the amnesty and in defense of the Constitution, a mobilization that will be attended by the top officials of PP, Vox and Ciudadanos, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Santiago Abascal and Adrián Vázquez, respectively.
Under the motto “Not in my name: neither amnesty, nor self-determination. For freedom, unity and equality!”, the organizers have drafted a manifesto in which they warn of a “deconstitutive” process based on a “corrupt” investiture ” by Pedro Sánchez and that, in addition to the amnesty, contemplates a referendum. For this reason, they appeal to citizen mobilization because the Spaniards are playing “to be or not to be” with the Amnesty Law and the pacts of the PSOE with the independentists.
Among the conveners are 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 for 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’.
Several short interventions are planned in Cibeles, such as that of Portuguese MEP Paulo Rangel, Professor Félix Ovejero, writers Andrés Trapiello, Conchita Martín and Albert Boadella, Venezuelan journalist Miguel Henrique Otero and the president of S’ha Acabat!, Júlia Calvet . The last speech will be given by the philosopher Fernando Savater.
Sources from the organization have announced that a video will be shown about the altercations that occurred in Barcelona after the ‘procés’, with a tribute to the police officers who defended security and were injured by even receiving cobblestones on the head.
In that film there will be a “special tribute” to Iván, Ángel and Álvaro, three police officers who have had to leave the force due to the consequences they suffered then. “Although they will not be able to attend, we will give them a very strong applause from all of Spain,” the same sources have stated.
The problems on the streets will occur by hourly sections. From 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., incidents are expected in Plaza de Cibeles, Paseo de Recoletos, Paseo del Prado, Alcalá and Gran Vía. From 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. there will be traffic cuts on Alcalá Street and Puerta del Sol. From 5 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. At 10 p.m., incidents are expected in the Puerta de Toledo Glorieta and in Toledo, Marqués de Vadillo, General Ricardos, Paseo 15 de Mayo and Paseo Ermita de Santo streets. And from 8:30 p.m. to midnight there will be incidents in Marqués de la Ensenada, Génova, Sagasta, Carranza, Alberto Aguilera, Princesa and Plaza de Moncloa, as detailed by the Madrid City Council on its website.
The PP, Vox and Ciudadanos parties have announced their support for this protest in Cibeles and, in fact, their presidents will attend. In the case of the PP, Feijóo will be accompanied by the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, and by several of its territorial ‘barons’, such as Isabel Díaz Ayuso from Madrid, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco from Castile and Leon, Fernando López Miras from Murcia, or the president of the party in Castilla-La Mancha, Paco Núñez, according to ‘popular’ sources.
The PP, which already mobilized hundreds of citizens in the provincial capitals throughout Spain last Sunday against the amnesty, is helping to disseminate this call through social networks. “Let’s all go,” Ayuso wrote, accompanying his message with the protest motto.
In the ranks of the PP they see reasons to take to the streets again after Sánchez’s investiture debate. “If there was a reason to go to the streets this Saturday in Madrid to demand democracy and the rule of law in Spain, the President of the Government in his investiture speech has increased it by calling half plus one of the Spaniards fascists, extremists of right and not democrats,” said this Friday the head of Institutional Affairs of the PP, Esteban González Pons.
In their manifesto, the promoters assure that Spain is facing a “serious crossroads that will determine its future” and that makes “civil society action cannot be postponed”, given that “for the first time” in 45 years of democracy, the PSOE ” “has abandoned his duty to defend the constitutional order” and is preparing to approve laws that “impossibly fit” into the Constitution “in exchange for staying in power.”
What’s more, they believe that “the very existence of Spain as a space of guarantee” of rights and freedoms and “as a multi-secular historical entity” is “put at certain risk.” For this reason, “in this decisive hour” in which, in their opinion, the Spaniards are playing “to be or not to be”, they call “on all citizens, from the left, from the center or from the right, to postpone the ideological differences and unite in the defense of the agreement and understanding that have marked the path of the last forty years.
After denouncing the pacts of the PSOE with “secessionism, the executors of terrorism and communist populism” to access the government of Spain, the associations accuse the Government of Pedro Sánchez and its partners of “delegitimizing the monarchy and all the organizations whose function it moderates or control and act as a counterweight to the executive power” and to “colonize the institutions.
The promoters assure that the amnesty, “whose unconstitutionality was maintained until a few months ago by the same people who now shamelessly use it to obtain an investiture that is born corrupt,” is not only contrary to the Constitution, but is “the best metaphor for the Spain” towards which they want to direct” the Spaniards.
Thus, they emphasize that it is a Spain “in which the distribution of power is agreed upon with the rule of law and the Nation as currency” and in which “there is a transition from the now unusual forgiveness to those responsible for the coup d’état in Catalonia, to the overwhelming political and legal legitimation of their actions”.
“We Spaniards cannot forget that on October 10, 2017 at the headquarters of the Parliament of Catalonia, the president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, proclaimed the independence of Catalonia. Never since the beginning of our democracy had Spain suffered an aggression of such severity to its territorial integrity and to the bases of the Constitution that we Spaniards gave ourselves,” they emphasize.
Furthermore, they denounce that the majorities in Parliament are “used to annul the control mechanisms and dismantle the system of balances and checks” and with a “hijacked” Constitutional Court. “A Spain in which we move from the already unusual forgiveness of those responsible for the coup d’état in Catalonia to the overwhelming political and legal legitimation of their actions,” they lament.
For all this, and within a “spirit of civic rebellion,” the organizers say they want to show politicians, the European Union and the entire world that they will not allow their rights to be “meekly taken away” and that “democratically and multitudinously” ” they proclaim: “Not in my name: neither amnesty, nor self-determination. For freedom, unity and equality!
The organizers have sent this statement from this Saturday’s event (in Spanish, French, English and German) to all Embassies, Consulates, foreign correspondents, EU authorities and MEPs.
In order to follow the event and the interventions that will be made on the stage installed in Cibeles, the organizers have distributed a QR, while providing a bank account to receive citizen contributions.
