Thousands march in Madrid in favour of life and against the “culture of death”
Thousands of people took to the streets this Sunday in the capital to defend life, “from its beginning to its natural end”, and to reject the “culture of death”, implicit, as denounced by the Plataforma Sí a la Vida (Yes to Life Platform), in the abortion law.
Convened by the Platform, made up of more than 500 pro-life associations, and supported only by Vox from the political parties, the demonstrators walked along Calle Serrano to Plaza de Cibeles (Madrid) and made their presence felt with music, dance and a multitude of green balloons.
With Coldplay’s ‘Viva la vida’ and Spanish pop-rock songs from the 2000s as the soundtrack, the marchers carried banners with photos of human foetuses and slogans such as “listen to the heartbeat, I tell you I’m alive”, “the voice of the heart”, “is this the heartbeat you want to hide?” and “no mother regrets being a mother”, in a march that also included flags of Spain and the Cross of Burgundy.
At the head of the protest, in front of the main banner with the slogan “yes to life”, Alicia Latorre, president of the Spanish Federation of Pro-Life Associations, in statements to Efe, rejected the “culture of death, which has no place in Spain”, and said that the protest aims to “show the greatness of life”.
On the current abortion law, Latorre said that it is “even worse and more perverse than the one we had” and, in her opinion, “is going to get even worse” because “it takes away the rights of the unborn and leaves mothers even more abandoned”, which is why she hopes that “it will disappear as soon as possible”.
Asked whether they consider the voluntary termination of pregnancy to be feasible in certain contexts such as the rape of a woman, the president stressed that abortion “never solves the trauma of rape” but “adds one more” and said that, in this situation and “many others”, “special solutions” should be “sought”, but “never take life” or “abandon the woman”.
The spokesman for Vox in the Congress of Deputies, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, said that the defence of life is “a good cause” and pointed out that his party is “a little sad to be left alone in the defence of certain causes and certain ideas”.
“We will continue to defend life with conviction, joy and desire, especially in a context in which the government is approving laws of death, such as the law on assisted suicide or the law that allows 16-year-old girls to have abortions without parental consent, and a whole series of initiatives that go against life”, she said in statements to journalists.
