ARCHIVED - Mass marches banned on International Women’s Day in Spain this year

8^th March demonstrations were a key factor in the rapid spread of the first wave of the pandemic last year

Monday 8^th March is International Women’s Day, a date which has become more and more important in Spain in recent years and has seen the holding of mass meetings and events promoting the equality of opportunities for both sexes, but this year the national government has announced that no such rallies will be permitted in spite of the importance of the issue.

That the ban on mass meetings should be headline news is due largely to the fact that last year the extremely well-attended marches and other events are thought to have been one of the most important causes of the spread of the first wave of coronavirus infection in this country, and the government came in for heavy criticism for not having acted sooner and banned the celebrations on 8^th March. It was not until the following weekend that the national state of emergency was first declared, and opposition leaders were extremely vocal after the event in expressing the opinion that the first wave of contagion could have been far less devastating if action had been taken earlier.

To be entirely fair, though, it should also be remembered that a week before the state of emergency was declared the virus had still hardly been detected in many parts of Spain: in the Region of Murcia, for example, the number of confirmed cases was precisely 1.

To have imposed a lockdown at that stage would certainly have been criticized as an unnecessary over-reaction!

Laying aside the arguments of a year ago, though, the ban on all “8-M” demonstrations was confirmed this week by Carolina Darias, the Minister for Health, who explained that there is simply no place for them in the current situation. There has been a sharp decrease in the rate of transmission over the last couple of weeks, but the Minister points out that only in the last couple of days has this resulted in the transition from “extreme risk” status to “very high risk” levels, and in no way is this compatible with the holding of mass gatherings like those of a year ago.

Almost certainly, however, smaller displays of solidarity with the cause will be permitted in some areas, and in Madrid, for example, the central government delegate has reiterated only that gatherings of over 500 people are prohibited on the recommendation of the regional government.

In consequence, there are likely to be numerous events on a much smaller scale in the national capital, although the Mayor of the city, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, is adopting a cautious approach. He advocates symbolic gestures rather than marching in the street, recognizing that in a group of 500 people there will inevitably be little respect for social distancing and that it will be impossible for such an event to be risk-free.