The parade coincides with a strike started on November 21 in hospitals in the capital at the call of the principal union of doctors to claim better working conditions and salary increases.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
A million people paraded, on Sunday, February 12, in Madrid for the defense of the region’s public health system, for months for months by the lack of workforce and means, according to the organizers of the parade. The prefecture has counted 250,000.
The demonstrators, including many members of the nursing staff, found themselves in different districts of the Spanish capital, before converging towards the town hall behind banners proclaiming “health does not sell, it defends itself”.
“In Spain, the public health system was very good, but, in recent years, it deteriorated strongly, especially from the pandemic,” deplored Ana Santamaria, a Madrid who came to parade with a friend. “To get an appointment, you have to wait until weeks. Suddenly, people go to the emergency room, which are completely overwhelmed,” added the latter.
“We can no longer follow “
The demonstration, organized by collectives of inhabitants, is the third large -scale for three months in the Spanish capital, after those of January 15 and November 13, which had gathered 200,000 people, according to the prefecture.
It coincides with a strike started on November 21 in the capital’s hospitals at the call of the main union of physicians in Madrid (AMYTS), to claim better working conditions and salary increases.
“There are endless waiting lists. We cannot follow,” explains Maite Lopez, nurse in the public, who manifests to be “finally heard”. “The situation is dramatic, she deplores. We cannot care for patients.”
The discontent aroused by the failures of the health system has extended in recent months to other regions of Spain, a very decentralized country where public health is regional authorities, but it is in Madrid that the movement is the strongest.
Isabel Diaz Ayuso, President of the Madrid region and the hard wing of the People’s Party (PP, right), has repeatedly accused the demonstrators of being motivated by “political” interests.