Ana Maria Ortiz

Quico Alsedo Madrid

Madrid

Updated Friday, March 8, 2024-22:02

  • 8-M The impossible dialogue of the two feminist currents: "We do not need the minister or anyone to come to reconcile us"

  • Equality Battery of measures on violence against women: promotion of the Trafficking Law and tougher criteria to remove protection for abused women

The prediction of rain that threatened participation in the

8M Commission

demonstration , the main one of the two held in

Madrid

, finally did not come true.

Closed umbrellas, raincoats in bags and backpacks and many more people than expected.

So much so that the socialist ministers and politicians, who were waiting at the Prado Museum to join the march that started from Atocha, took more than an hour to do so.

They waited for the head to pass, reserved for the women of the town and neighborhood assemblies, and the batucada made up of 500 people.

There were

Ana Redondo

, in her first 8-M as Minister of Equality, the also ministers

Pilar Alegría

,

Teresa Ribera

or

Elma Sainz

, the wife of

Pedro Sánchez

,

Begoña Gómez

, and the socialist candidate for the European elections,

Nicolas Schmit

, among others.

The only minister (male) of the Government,

Fernando Grande-Marlaska

, was the main object of the chants of a group of women from the Migration and Anti-Racism Commission.

They livened up the wait by shouting "Marlaska, you scoundrel, jump over the fence" or "abolitionists of the Immigration Law", in reference to the Government's immigration policy.

Or "here is the trans resistance", in reference to the sector of socialism critical of the Law.

Manu

, 3 years old and with two 8-M already on the wheels of his cart,

followed the route more placidly .

The child was eating a sandwich with one hand and holding the poster pinned to the stroller's bag with the other.

On it he had drawn a frog with a crown and this message: "Friend, sister, I won't make you a frog."

Manu was the leader of another dozen carts, all occupied by children from the Tobogán daycare center.

"I have always come to the demonstration, but now more than ever we have to do it to look to the future and try to maintain more or less what we have achieved because it seems that it is in danger," explained his mother,

Cisca

.

Not far from her, he walked with a striking orange T-shirt, filled with messages such as "shared custody", the

discordant note

: a 74-year-old woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, and who claimed to be there "in defense of men "and for feminists to see.

"And you, his son, who did you have it with, with a streetlight?" She asked another woman with whom she had started an argument.

With purple crystals adorning their faces and two signs - "they wanted to cut my wings and I started to fly", "they want us as muses because they fear us as artists" - they attended their first International Women's Day alone,

Noa

(16 years),

Icíar

(16) and

Inés

(17), Baccalaureate of Arts students.

Until now they came with their parents.

They chose the 8M Commission march because they had read that it was "the largest", but they had no idea of ​​the demands of each of them.

The division of the feminist movement in two has been blamed for the drop in participation in recent years: 27,000 people in 2023 (17,000 in the 8M Commission march), 50,000 between both demonstrations the previous year.

This 2024, 30,000

people have attended the main event in Madrid

, according to the Government Delegation, almost double that of 2023, but far from the 300,000-400,000 of the single call of 2018 and 2019.

In Barcelona yesterday 40,000

people took to the streets

,

20,000

in Bilbao,

6,000

in Granada and

3,500

in Malaga.

The 'alternative' demonstration

Alternative feminism to the official one, which today is the most focused on the 'queer', took center stage yesterday in the march separated from the most massive one through the center of Madrid.

If this second one, sponsored by the Government, flooded the central axis of the capital from Atocha to Colón, right in the middle of that route, in

Cibeles

, classical feminism was conjured at 7:00 p.m., which brought together about

6,000

people according to calculations this newspaper -4,000 for the Government Delegation, which last year numbered 10,000 attendees- with two essential differences with respect to the main march: rejection of the

Trans Law

, on the grounds that it erases the definition of a woman and puts minors with hormoneation and surgery, and a 100% abolitionist position regarding prostitution.

"Why are we in this demonstration and not the other one? Because this is the feminist demonstration, the other one is just brilli brilli and dancing," said

Alejandra

, 39, who was holding hands with

Marta

, 30. "In the other demonstration there are whoremongers, and here there aren't," he summarized, to quickly clarify: "Well, let's see, here there will also be whoremongers, with 40% of men engaging in prostitution. What there aren't are women who are in favor of legalizing prostitution".

The march, called by groups such as Femes - the socialist feminists -, Alliance Against the Erasure of Women and the State Platform of Women's Organizations, among others, started very cold in Cibeles but ended up bursting all the way to Plaza de España on a freezing afternoon and windy, an ordeal point at times due to the weather, but with a very festive and vindictive aroma, and apparently with greater attendance than the alternative march of 2023, which went up Atocha Street.

"Rape cock in the blender", "intense is the new hysterical", "whore in the cauldron", "Manolo, Manolo, you make dinner alone"... The slogans fell into a demonstration that attracted classic feminism, the seventies, to many young people - not a few men too -, but it cannot compete in that sense with 'queer' feminism, which accuses the classic of being transphobic for opposing the fact that sex "can be chosen", as it said, from its wheelchair

Rocío

, 56 years old, who claimed to have been coming to the demand for "more than 20 years," which she believes is "more necessary than ever."

"In reality, trans is used to divide us, especially because if you don't promote trans, you are not a modern feminist, when in reality all those people have not informed themselves about what transgender propaganda promotes, which is crazy," she explained. Dew.

Along with her, her friend Marta said that "in reality the usual demonstration is this, the other is a nonsense that they have put together in recent years around the transgender issue."

And she expressed one last regret: "I don't know to what extent all this is useful for anything, but at least it is useful so that we don't feel so alone, and so that we are less afraid."

The usual picturesqueness was not lacking.

About a hundred women dressed in masks and white tunics made the entire journey, walking in formation like a silent army, each one with a candle in her hand, behind a banner that claimed responsibility for the women killed at the hands of men and called it "sexist terrorism." ".

Another large banner called for the abolition of prostitution covered with 'flyers' for paid sex services.

There was also the inevitable batucada, and the most creative posters, like the one carried by

Luisa

, 17 years old, with a painted witch and the teaching: "We are the granddaughters of the witches you burned."

"It is difficult for us to understand each other about prostitution," Raquel, 49, was already reasoning near Plaza de España, "but the important thing is what we have in common. Which is a lot."