Accustomed as the Catalan independence movement is to mounting million-strong demonstrations that obtain a significant response in the international media, it is worthwhile remembering that the rally this Sunday in the Plaza de Colón in Madrid by the entire Spanish right, supposedly believed to be conservative and extreme, to protest against the pardons for the political prisoners that the Pedro Sánchez government plans to approve in a few days, had a poor turnout.
About 25,000 people, according to the PSOE-run Madrid delegation of the Spanish government, six times more according to the PP-run Madrid city council, are the official figures that have been dished up. In any case, the highest of those, 125,000 people present, is a figure not to be sneezed at on a hot Sunday in June, but is far below any expectations based on the political and media noise level that its organizers have reached over the last few weeks. Sincerely, if this is the best turnout that the right-wing trio can manage, even with crowds bussed in from the provinces, then Pedro Sanchez has an easy runway on which to land the pardons for the Catalan political prisoners, even if the hellish noise from television, radio and press tries to make you believe otherwise.
The PSOE leader came out almost unscathed from Plaza de Colón, after a demonstration that obviously targetted him, and he ended the day with a victory for his own candidate in the PSOE primaries in Andalusia: Juan Espadas, who crushed Susana Díaz. The defeated former president of the Andalusian community has come to the end of an era and her struggle with Sánchez has ended in the worst possible way. The Spanish prime minister may be fickle, and poor at keeping his political promises, but what is certain is that he does not forget all those who have ever stood up to him, and the woman who they called La Sultana in better days could not resist the tsunami against her triggered from the Spanish government palace.
If Casado, Abascal and Arrimadas came out at the initial announcement to support the rally, it was the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who provided some content for it on the day, beyond the continuous criticism of Pedro Sánchez, by trying to put the monarch Felipe VI in a tight spot. The king, who seems to be more in tune with the right than with the PSOE, received a warning from Ayuso: "What will the king of Spain do in response? Sign the pardons?" It is true that he cannot do anything else, when one reads the constitution, but what we don't know is whether the deep state has concocted something or if it is all just bluster.