The Atlantic Alliance’s ears were ringing at noon on Sunday. Several thousand people demonstrated in the center of Madrid to demand the dissolution of NATO and demand peace, two days before the opening of the next summit of the organization in the Spanish capital. According to the organizers, 30,000 people took part in the demonstration while the Madrid prefecture mentioned only 2,200 people.
A long procession made up of convoys bringing together left-wing activists, anti-capitalists, anti-globalizationists, ecologists, feminists, communists or even movements such as “Fridays for Future” and “Extinction Rebellion” marched calmly and under heavy police escort in order to denounce the holding the next meeting of the organization in Madrid from June 28 to 30.
Podemos keeps a low profile
There was no member of the government from the radical left, member of the government coalition, with the exception of the communist Enrique Santiago, the secretary of state for the 2030 Agenda (in charge of the implementation of the development goals sustainable), the other ministers and Podemos figures preferring to keep a low profile two days before the summit.
Among the slogans chanted by the demonstrators is often “No to war, no to NATO!” “, while several helicopters flew over the procession on one of the main avenues of the capital. The placards read: ‘Make peace, not war’, ‘Enough military spending, give to schools and hospitals’ alongside an image of a crying woman from Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica , one of the most famous canvases in the world, which became a plea against the war.
Hostess of the NATO summit next week, Madrid will be placed under high security with a total of 10,000 law enforcement officers deployed for this meeting, which will be attended by US President Joe Biden, his counterpart Emmanuel Macron and the heads of government of the United Kingdom and Germany, Boris Johnson and Olaf Scholz. This summit will be dominated by the question of the Russian threat and by the invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24 by President Vladimir Putin.