Hundreds of people demonstrated this Monday afternoon in Palma, at the call of the transfeminist coordinator and on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, against the “criminal alliance” which constitutes “patriarchy and capital”.
They chanted this throughout the journey, from the Plaza de España to the Plaza de Cort, during a march during which they also claimed that women who died due to gender-based violence “they are not dead” but “murdered” and called for “direct action” against patriarchy.
In the absence of the Balearic Islands government delegation which communicated the official number of participants, hundreds of people marched through the streets of central Palma brandishing banners which read, for example, that “shame must change sides.”
The motto of this demonstration, the first to take place this afternoon of 25N, is “Against sexist violence, let’s organize feminist self-defense”. For the spokesperson of the Transfeminist Coordinator Saskia Vallori, This is necessary in the face of “the amplification of reactionary discourses that we observe and experience, and in the face of the consequences that result from it”.increase in gender-based and sexual violence.
Vallori also highlighted the need to take into account that gender-based violence is “structural” and that, therefore, “It’s legitimized by the institutions.” “Capital and patriarchy work together to ensure that working class women continue free breeding and care tasks“, he warned in statements to the media before starting the tour.
Thus, she urged all women, especially working-class women, to organize “not just on protest days.” “Only in this way can we change sides of shame and fear and be the aggressors who cannot go out into the street, and not women,” he said.
Even if feminism in Mallorca, as in other regions of Spain, will demonstrate separately this Monday – the transfeminist coordinator on one side, the feminist movement on the other – Vallori justified his division by estimating that female workers experience “violence in a more virulent manner” sexist and institutional.
However, the spokesperson for the Transfeminist Coordinator called for unity, because according to her, this is what will give the movement “the power to change things”. “It is more urgent than ever reorganize a united feminist movement“, which fights reactionary discourses, which is combative and class-oriented”, insisted Vallori.
It took a little over half an hour for hundreds of demonstrators to reach the Plaza de Cort, where they continued to chant slogans to the rhythm of a batucada. “Patriarchy and capital, criminal alliance”, “Against patriarchy, direct action”, “We don’t kill them, we assassinate them”, “We want to be free, not brave” or “With clothes, without clothes, don’t touch my body” These are some of the slogans chanted throughout the demonstration.
The demonstrators, besides two large banners with similar messages – “Against patriarchy, socialist self-defense” and “Against patriarchal violence, self-defense and counterattack– carried red and purple flags, as well as estéladas and Palestine. In Cort, they read a manifesto in which they warn against the existence of speeches that seek to go against the feminist movement and its advances in favor of women’s rights.
“We live surrounded by abusers, and abusers come in all colors, types and ideologies,” they warned, and mentioned cases like that of the former deputy Iñigo Errejón, that of the director of Catalunya Radio Saúl Gordillo or that of Dominique Pélicot. “Their impunity ends when mutual support, organization and feminist consciousness reach all women,” they stressed.
