Yasmin de la Cruz was born in Berlin, is the daughter of Dominicans and lives in Madrid. Model, mother of two children, this morning has attended with thousands of people at the anti-racist rally called at 11.00 in front of the headquarters of the United States Embassy in the framework of the global wave of protests that arose as a result of the alleged murder George Floyd, suffocated by the knee of a police officer in Minneapolis on May 25. What at first was a concentration in Serrano street, has become a demonstration that has traveled the center of Madrid.
Half an hour after the start of the concentration, De la Cruz “came out of the soul” to lie face down next to his friend, Francis Rojas, and they shouted, louder and louder, “I can’t breathe“(I can’t breathe), Floyd’s plea before he died and one of the mottos of the demonstrations. A circle of people has surrounded them while the young woman cried out in tears: “We are one” (we are one).
De La Cruz has risen with tears in his eyes and several
s have approached her to take a selfie. “I have felt the burden that has to be what they did to George. It hurt a lot. God knows we don’t deserve this, ”said the young woman afterwards.
The protester, with short curly hair, had a piece of her hair burned by her high school classmates from Madrid. “It traumatized me, made me feel like I didn’t fit in. Now I want to love myself as I am: my race, my culture, my eyes and my skin. And I want to know the other races that I don’t know and I also want ”, said the young woman, who assures that in every store she goes to they check her bag. “When they see that I have not stolen, they do not ask for forgiveness,” he says.
Like her, thousands of people have attended the anti-racist rally in Madrid, called by various groups (Black African and Afro-descendant Community from Spain (CNAAE), manteros union, student union), which have developed before a large police presence and have reached Puerta del Sol. The Government Delegation in Madrid had authorized the protest with the limit of 200 people and always that the safety distance was respected, but the measure has been impossible to comply with in a call that has exceeded that number several times.
At the Plaza de Colón, Coral de la Torre, from the Student Union, has picked up a megaphone and shouted an impromptu speech. “We are here to unite with the brothers and sisters of the United States, to point out racists. To Donald Trump. To Santiago Abascal,” he shouted.
“No human being is illegal” and “Here are the anti-fascists”, have been one of the most chanted slogans by the attendees, as well as some specific ones about the situation in Spain: “The immigration law kills people every day” and “CIES not”. It has also been possible to hear “Madrid will be the tomb of racism”, which has gained strength in the emblematic places of the capital such as Puerta de Alcalá and Puerta del Sol, where the conveners, at around 1.30 p.m., at the end of the march , they have asked the protesters to shout the motto of the American demands: “No justice, no peace”(Without justice there is no peace).
In the central square, the spokesmen have read a manifesto stating the specific reasons in Spain: “It is easy to link the death of George Floyd with the deaths in the Mediterranean, the 14 people in El Carajal (the death of immigrants during an attempt to enter by sea, he swam to Ceuta in 2014), Lucrecia Pérez (the considered first racist crime in our country, which sparked protests in several cities), Mame Mbaye (the Senegalese who died in 2018 fleeing from the police) ”. To illustrate their struggle, protesters have knelt with their fists raised at the end of the protest, the gesture of the largest anti-racial movement since the death of Martin Luther King.
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