Concentration at Puerta del Sol in Madrid this Monday.Andrea Comas
Feminism has not been able to massively measure its strength in the streets this 8-M and has changed the large mobilizations for rallies, symbols and tributes.
The limitations due to the pandemic limited the protest for the real equality of women.
In lines and with safe distances, with dances and masks, by bicycle, from houses, on balconies, in networks and in groups, the protests have continued because the reasons persist and, in addition, the health and social crisis of the coronavirus it has widened the gaps.
The protests have been seen, despite the rain and the virus, dyed purple in many Spanish cities, and this year Madrid has not been the epicenter, as in the last three, which left images full of protesters around the square decibels.
International Women's Day, in pictures
Essential women
Feminism parks its differences in the 8-M of the pandemic
Women: the year of a thousand plagues
They continue to earn less, take the worst jobs and suffer violence for the mere fact of being women.
The UN recalls that equality in power will take at least another 130 years in the world.
"This day is also for women who do not want to continue to accept discrimination, insecurity and injustice," said the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who has promised to place gender equality at the center of economic recovery.
"Spain cannot afford to get out of this health, economic and social emergency again at the expense of women," said the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero.
Madrid has not starred in the mobilizations after the Constitutional Court upheld the prohibition of holding acts in the street that was decreed by the Government Delegation for “public health” reasons.
Feminist organizations have asked the women of the capital to come out to the balconies at 8:00 p.m., as with the sanitary applause of the confinement, while protesting for a treatment that they have not seen in other mobilizations.
“No one has gone to the Rastro [Madrid's open-air market], or to the entrance of the football stadiums [in reference to the crowd that received Atlético on Sunday at the Wanda Metropolitano], or to the subway to control crowds.
It has only been done with women ”, said the Secretary of Equality of the UGT, Ana Sánchez de la Coba.
The accusations made by the opposition for alleged recklessness in last year's marches still weigh on Madrid, which were not attributed to other events on those dates, such as political rallies or sporting events.
The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, has pointed out that "March 8 has become a symbol of what was done wrong last year" and has accused the Government of hiding "international alerts" and putting "thousands at risk of women".
In the rest of Spain, women have gone out in mobilizations with a safety distance and masks.
In the Valencian Community, Galicia or Andalusia, for example, dozens of mobilizations have been held in which "the comrades of Madrid" have been remembered, the work of the "essential workers" has been vindicated and "more feminism to get out of the crisis ”.
"This year they wanted to gag us and they couldn't," said the members of the 8-M platform in Malaga, who have gathered in the center of the Andalusian city and have danced separately from each other.
In San Sebastián, a demonstration with three columns has traveled the Paseo de la Concha with the slogan: "Change everything from feminism."
In Santiago de Compostela, also in columns, women applauded and sung in a protest called in the Plaza del Obradoiro.
In Catalonia up to 60 different mobilizations were planned.
In the main one, convened on Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona in the afternoon, the route was divided into eight sections to accommodate 3,600 people, with the motto: “Together, diverse and rebellious, we are unstoppable.
Always feminists ”.
"We do not want women to continue to be the only ones responsible for sustaining life," the organizers of the Bilbao protest said in the closing statement, amid applause, separated and wearing a mask.
In Paris, several thousand people have demonstrated to demand “an end to discrimination and sexist and sexual violence”.
The protest has been presided over by a giant clitoris.
In Berlin there have been hundreds of people in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
In Athens, a thousand people have gathered against sexual violence in a protest marked by the pandemic and also by their own Me Too movement.
During the morning, in an institutional act behind closed doors and broadcast by
streaming
, Minister Irene Montero recalled the "millions of women who in 2018 stopped this country with a historic feminist strike."
Montero also thanked the younger girls for their impulse: "Thanks to you, this present and future is feminist."
Spain "cannot allow a few to break glass ceilings while the majority, the humble, poor, migrants, are still tied to a sticky soil that condemns them to pick up those crystals," he said.
The effects of the pandemic have taken a toll on women.
The female unemployment rate is 17.4% compared to 13.8% for men, according to data compiled by the Efe agency.
And the pension gap persists: they collect an average of 858 euros of retirement pension compared to 1,312 euros for men.
The far right
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has recalled that the violence does not stop on 8-M either.
In Massamagrell, in Valencia, a woman was attacked by her ex-partner.
"The answer can only be to accelerate the feminist agenda," said Sánchez.
Since there is an official count, which began in 2003, 1,082 women have been murdered by their partners or ex-partners in Spain.
The president has promised to approve "very soon" the Organic Law of Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, known as
the only yes is yes law
, which would be the first major regulation in the area of equality approved by the coalition government .
He has also referred to the risk of the advancement of parties such as Vox, which denies inequality and gender violence: “We cannot ignore another threat that is terrible, the appearance of the extreme right, with its hate speech and its stark machismo;
the extreme right is not a force of resistance to feminism, it is a force of retreat ”.
Vox has again requested that the 8-M be celebrated the national day for the victims of the coronavirus, while the famous feminist mural of the Madrid district of Ciudad Lineal with the faces of 15 women that the party had asked to erase has dawned shattered.
Stains of black paint covered the faces of activist Angela Davis, writer Chimamanda Ngozi or painter Frida Kahlo.
With information from
Ferrán Bono, Caridad Bermeo, Marta Pinedo, Cristina Saldaña, Jakub Olesiuk, Emilio Sánchez Hidalgo, Cristina Vázquez, Santiago Cañas, Jesús Cañas, Cristian Segura, Juan Navarro, Mikel Ormazabal, Sonia Vizoso, Ginés Donaire, Nacho Sánchez, Silvia Ayuso
and
Javier Arroyo
.