ARCHIVED - 53,000 flags on a Valencia beach to honour the victims of coronavirus in Spain

However, the gesture was hijacked by those with opposing political views and the far-left ripped the flags out and threw them away.

Unfortunately, the whole covid crisis is causing political disharmony instead of a unified front to fight the spread of the virus, and as usual in Spain, flags are being used to express the political divide.

An initiative by the organisation ANVAC, Asociación Nacional de Victimas y Afectados por Coronavirus ( the Association for the victims of and those affected by Coronavirus) became the focal point for a manifestation of political differences this weekend in Valencia, when the organisation repeated an initiative which gave them huge media coverage last week; planting 53,000 Spanish flags, one for every victim of coronavirus.

Although the official fatalities count is just over 30,000, the figures produced by Euro MoMo and the National Statistics Institute do both co-incide that the number of deaths over and above what would normally be expected for the corresponding months, indicate that the number of deaths by coronavirus exceeds the official total by 23,000. The Ministry of Health does accept that this is probably a more accurate fatality count than their own official figures as many deaths in carehomes and the domestic environment were not included in the official figures as the victims were not PCR tested (at that point there simply weren´t the tester kits available.) The Ministry has always said that the true figure will only be known after the event when all of the data from funeral parlours and the civil registry have been cross-referenced.

So for the moment, 53,000 is generally accepted as being a more realistic estimate of the total number of covid deaths in Spain to date.

Last week ANVAC “planted” 53,000 Spanish flags in the Parque Roma de Madrid, a visible spot alongside the motorway, which gave high visibility to their symbolic act, each flag representing a mother, father, brother or sister, a person, not a statistic.

On Sunday morning Valencia city awoke to find 53,000 flags planted in the sand on the playa de La Patacona de Alboraya (Valencia) as a repeat of the Madrid protest.

ANVAC planned to hold a one minute silence at mid-day to honour the victims of the pandemic and remove the flags at 19:00 in the evening, as the sun went down.

"With the light of dawn we honor today in Valencia the memory of our victims. We continue to fight against oblivion. Dignity and justice," the association said in a message posted on Twitter.

Photos of the initiative and messages of support were widely re-shared and re-tweeted by politicians belonging to the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox (far right).

But as news spread of the action and the curious went down to the beach to see the spectacle and photograph, the Frente Obrero Group, a far-left organisation which campaigns for the re-institution of a Republic in Spain, went down to the beach and removed all of the flags, putting them in bin bags, before unfurling a large republican flag on the beach.

Frente Obrero put out a communication saying that “ the association that has carried out this initiative, Anvac, "is linked to Vox, which has already carried out a similar action in Madrid" saying that they had "cleaned the beach of the 50,000 flags put up by Vox", whom they accused of being "homeless and opportunist in the face of the pain of all workers."

PSPV, Compromis and Podemos at this point shared tweets expressing their disappointment that the initiative of ANVAC, which was set up as a non-political group to help all those who have been affected by coronavirus, including those who have suffered financially because of the virus, had “allowed itself to be dragged along by the far right”, by which they mean Vox, which is a rapidly growing political organisation in Spain and has been highly critical of the management of the coronavirus crisis (and of the other political parties which are actually in power and trying their best to deal with the situation) and vocally supported ANVAC and its actions.

The day concluded with the representative of the Spanish government, the Government Delegate, issuing a notice that the Local Police of Alboraia had opened an investigation into the incidents as no official permission had been given for the flags to be planted on the beach in the first place, for which reason, the organisers could now find themselves facing a fine and possible prosecution.
 

Desde ANVAC no permitiremos que se olvide a ninguno de los 53.000 fallecidos por el Coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/xpYaqQQTuV

— Asociación de Víctimas y Afectados por Coronavirus (@ANVAC_) September 28, 2020

Support for the initiative was shared on Twitter:

La playa de la Patacona, en Alboraya (Valencia), ofrece este domingo una estampa inédita con más de 53.000 banderas de España plantadas en homenaje a los fallecidos y afectados por el coronavirus, una iniciativa de la asociación nacional de víctimas Anvac que comenzó en Madrid. pic.twitter.com/uMlIAQmIf1

— Julián Gómez (@Nebiros96) October 5, 2020

And then in came the militants from Frente Obrera

#ÚLTIMAHORA Militantes del Frente Obrero arrancan las banderas por las víctimas del Covid de la playa de Valencia https://t.co/bXgOXh19Pm

— El Independiente (@elindepcom) October 4, 2020

The 53,000

The bulk of the figures in the official government estimates of last winter in Spain, come not from the actual hospital deaths, but from examining the MoMo figures and figures produced by the National Institute of Statistics, as many people die at home, or die from the aggravated effects of flu, ie pneumonia. These bodies look at the deaths reported by death certificates in the civil registries of Spain (the INE stats) and the Mortality Monitoring System in Spain (MoMo), of the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII), which gathers information provided by the 3,929 computerized civil registries of the Ministry of Justice from all over Spain. By examining the percentage of deaths over and above what could normally be expected at any given time and comparing them against the flu spikes (the flu season starts in week 40 of a given year and ends in week 20 of the following year but usually starts to peak around specific weeks depending on the weather and strain of flu), they can generate very accurate estimates of the total number of deaths attributable to flu, and in Spain every year this hovers around the 4,000 mark.

The latest MoMo figures for the summer period were published in mid-September.

On the comparison date the Spanish Ministry of Health had reported 30,004 deaths from Covid-19, ALL of which have been PCR tested.

Between 13th March to May 22nd during the main period of the coronavirus pandemic, there were 43,034 more deaths than statistically expected for this time of year, representing an increase of 55% over what would normally be expected.

And during the summer period, 3,560 excess deaths, some of which could arguably be attributed to the warm weather, so for arguments’ sake, let’s remove a generous 1,000, making the total of excess deaths in total, 45,594.

The INE data is always latent, and there has been a big delay in processing the deaths in civil registries, so INE data is only available for the first 21 weeks of 2020, to May 24th, during which period 225,930 people died in total, an increase of 24.1% or 43,945 actual people, over and above what would be normal, very similar to the MoMo, but considerably higher than the 30,000 official covid deaths (bear in mind that the data from May 24th onwards has yet to be added).

Another set of figures which back up these figures were published  by the 5,547 care homes of Spain, through the regional governments. Their figures stated that 20,058 residents died in care homes during the first wave of the covid crisis from covid, although most of these were not PCR tested, so therefore the Ministry of Health and WHO refuse to include them in the official figures, but, they do tie in with the excess death figures of the MoMo and NIE.