Human tide against the Financial Coup takes over Spanish, Catalan and Galician cities

In spite of the extremely cold temperatures, yesterday the main avenues of most cities in the Kingdom of Spain were packed with people. Shopping? Fiesta? Not at all: another massive demonstration against what has already been dubbed the Financial Coup against social rights, creating massive unemployment while the elites remain at large and getting even richer, and allowing, even favoring the destruction of the economic fabric to levels not remembered by anyone still alive.

Valladolid

A Coruña

The protests began at 14:30 in Valladolid (Castile), followed by A Coruña (Galicia), where they set fire to an effige of the Spanish Nationalist Minister of Education J.I.  Wert, who is pushing against peripheral languages, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Canary Islands), with a banner that read:

Against the Dictatorship of Capital: Popular and Direct Democracy

At 17:00 four columns of thousands began marching from the periphery to the center of Madrid.

To these protests, the speakers of the ruling party replied with the vacuous and fascist claim that they are a "threat to democracy" by which they mean their ample majority in parliament with just a 31.6% of the popular support (prior to the "austerity" measures, barely 52% among the two main parties).

By 18:00 the columns and newly arrived people converged in Neptuno Plaza, near Congress, where there are masses of police forces.

Madrid, Neptuno Plaza (early)

As people arrived, loudspeakers mentioned the more than 50 cities that have mustered protests this Saturday, which was cheered by the crowd.

In Santander (Castile) for example more than 8000 people marched through the streets.

Santander

In Bilbao (Basque Country) some 3000 people marched. Another protest took place in Donostia (San Sebastian).

In Catalonia there were also demonstrations in Barcelona, Tarragona, Reus, Lleida and Girona but these were not very numerous.

In Mérida (Castile) hundreds marched for the social salary, while in Cáceres the demo was much larger, gathering some 6000 people.

Mérida

In Logroño there was also one quite strong demo.

Logroño

Further down the Ebro, in Zaragoza (Aragón) lots of people also marched against austerity.

Zaragoza

Madrid (Neptuno Plaza)

In spite of some clashes and some 40 arrests (see videos here) the Madrid march dissolved some time after 20:00 (end of legal authorization) without much fuss.

Source: Kaos en la Red[es].