Spain rises with indignant feminist murals on Women’s Day

This March 8 Women’s day, he woke up black in Madrid. This is how the inhabitants of Ciudad Lineal saw it, one of the 21 districts that make up the capital and 20 minutes from Puerta del Sol, when they woke up to find that the feminist mural that adorns the gym with the faces of fifteen iconic women had been marred in black paint overnight.

The ‘Unity is strength’, as the mural painted in 2018 was named, brings together portraits of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, the indigenous Guatemalan leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, among other empowered women, were part of the Madrid City Hall Shared Walls project.

Since the beginning of the year, the fresco which bears the legend “Capabilities do not depend on your gender” has been taken in the middle of a crossfire between the right-wing parties, which demanded its elimination, and those on the left, who managed to keep it.

This Monday, after the indignation suffered by the mural, the neighbors stuck on the black paint a reproduction of the female portraits which recreated the wall of the sports hall.

That of Ciudad Lineal was not the only feminist fresco to wake up indignant. Also one in Alcalá de Henares – which was inaugurated on Friday March 5 and another in Seville, where this Monday groups of women surrounded the Parliament of Andalusia with purple ribbons.

This Monday, the session of the Constitutional Court decided to maintain prohibition at the events planned in Madrid.

This was the decision of the Superior Court of Justice in Madrid as the pandemic turns protests into “A serious health risk public and for people ”.

The Constitutional Court denied the precautionary measure which envisaged to suspend the ban, while admitting the calls for protection presented by the unions which planned to cross Madrid on Monday.

Purple flags were seen on some balconies and sanitary workers came to the doors of their work centers to manifest in silence.

“Because the cause of women is the cause of all humanity,” said President Pedro Sánchez during the institutional act of official commemoration. “The far right is not a movement of resistance to feminism but of retrogression,” Sánchez said.

A few hours earlier, on the radio, the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, had spoken of the ban on demonstrations in Madrid: “I must respect”, she declared. Of course, I sympathize with and understand the feminist movements that have seen how the far right has manifested itself with impunity. Yesterday we saw again fan concentrations of a football team without any problem and I believe that focusing on the feminist movement is part of a campaign of criminalization, ”added the Minister for Equality on Monday.

“It is a criminalization of the women’s movement. They threaten us that if we go out on March 8, they can penalize us and fine us. What are they encouraged to arrest us all! “, He said to Bugle two days ago, Josefina Martínez, Argentinian historian who has lived here for a decade and who is the spokesperson in Spain for the international group Pan y Rosas.

“These are neither sectarian nor ideological motives. These are objective reasons and we are preserving the health of the people of Madrid, ”the government delegate in Madrid, José Manuel Franco, justified his decision. According to him, the 104 demonstrations now banned could have attracted more than 60,000 people.

“March 8 is not measured, it is measured every day and every moment. What other political parties govern and take resources for equality? This is the question for March 8, ”the first vice-president of the government, Carmen Calvo, politicized the cause.

Almost all Spanish political parties celebrated Women’s Day, except Vox, that he considers it to be ideological propaganda and that he proposes March 8 as the day of commemoration of the victims of Covid-19.

In Spain, in cities where protests are allowed, this iconic day has unfolded creatively and with few audiences, following security measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

In Catalonia, 60 marches have been announced, including one on Paseo de Gràcia with a static demonstration. In Zaragoza there were pots in front of the University and in Pamplona they hung a rope with “the dirty laundry of the patriarchate” in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento.

Madrid. Corresponding

ap