The protests against the amnesty in front of the national headquarters of the PSOE continue to lose strength. After Thursday – the day on which it was announced that the PSOE and Junts had closed the pact – reached their peak, the volume of the rallies has been losing momentum night after night.
Proof of this is that yesterday, two hours after the Socialists registered the proposed law, barely a thousand people gathered in the vicinity of Carrer de Ferraz in Madrid in front of a police force that was also less numerous than in previous days.
Police sources predict that spirits will heat up again on Wednesday when the investiture session begins.
Yesterday everything started, like the last few days, around 8 p.m., praying the rosary, and then the usual insults were uttered against the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont. There were also homophobic words against the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who yesterday reported to the Prosecutor’s Office a journalist for “pointing out” on social networks some police officers who act in the protests “encouraging them to be publicly identified”.
Minutes after the protest began, and when it seemed that spirits were not yet ignited, the leader of the Spanish far-right appeared, Santiago Abascal, together with one of the most controversial – and most influential – journalists in the United States, Tucker Carlson. One of the main figures of the American right – he has more than 10 million followers on X – published a photograph on this network next to the president of Vox: “In Madrid”. Carlson, who was once fired from Fox, was one of the advocates of the storming of the Capitol.
There was applause, and shouts of “president, president”, for an Abascal who continues to encourage citizens to take to the streets against the pacts that will serve for Sánchez to be re-elected president of the Spanish Government.
The data reveal the loss of muscle of these protests, which will predictably be reactivated tomorrow. According to the data that the Delegation of the Spanish Government in Madrid has been providing every day, on Thursday attendance was estimated at 8,000 people. 24 hours later, half, about 4,000, gathered at the intersection of Ferraz with Marqueses de Urquijo. At the weekend there were 1,700 demonstrators on Saturday and 1,200 on Sunday. Yesterday, according to the same institution, there were 1,200 people.
The Ministry of the Interior believes that the hot days will return on Wednesday and Thursday, days when the investiture of Pedro Sánchez will take place, as announced by the president of the Congress, Francina Armengol. The device is already running. The surroundings of the Chamber began to be armored yesterday: agents of the intervention unit began to control access, comb the area and place fences. Traffic, for now, has not been restricted.
It is expected that from tomorrow more than 1,000 riot police – a higher number than deployed, for example, during the oath of the Constitution of Princess Eleonor – will take to the streets of the center of Madrid following the forecast of protests not communicated in Carrera de San Jerónimo or Plaça de Neptuno, where there was an attempt to camp at the weekend that was dissolved a few hours later. The 15-M attempt against the amnesty had to wait.
