In Spain, thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday to demonstrate for a social restart after the corona crisis. Several unions called for protests in around 60 cities.
“We want the country to be rebuilt. We need a national understanding that the pandemic should not be politically exploited, ”said UGT union chief Pepe Alvarez, AFP news agency, on the sidelines of the Madrid demonstration.
Seriously suffering people
Public services need to be improved, Alvarez said. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government did more for social justice “than all its predecessors” by introducing a minimum wage. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of “hard-suffering” people in Spain, complained the union leader.
More than a thousand people took part in the demonstration train through the capital. Most of them wore respirators.
With dignity from the crisis
She fears that in the end ordinary people will have to pay for the crisis, said 61-year-old protester Ana Sanchez de la Cueva. “There are two reasons why we are here: to demand a serious economic recovery, so that we can all get out of this crisis with dignity, and to advocate strengthening public services.”
The economic turmoil caused by the corona crisis has plunged hundreds of thousands of people into unemployment in Spain. In March, the unemployment rate rose to 14.4 percent, and by the end of the year it could rise to 19 percent, according to the government.
28.000 Tote
Because of the Corona pandemic, the Spanish government declared a state of emergency in mid-March and imposed the sharpest Corona curfew in Europe. Nationwide, almost 250,000 people have been tested positive for the novel corona virus since the pandemic began, and more than 28,000 people died.
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