"We are seeing a regression": 25,000 people take to the streets in Barcelona to defend women's rights

Barcelona"As long as decisions continue to be made about our bodies, ignoring our health, underestimating our tasks and our criteria, undervaluing the physical and emotional cost of our motherhood, exercising violence against us with total impunity, we will occupy the streets without rest." This is how combative Antonia, forty years old and mother of a three-year-old, expressed herself this afternoon. She has attended the 8-M demonstration accompanied by her family. She assures that she has not missed a single one. This year, the threat of rain in Barcelona has not scared off the desire for feminist protest one bit: up to 25,000 people, according to the calculations of the Guardia Urbana, have gathered this afternoon in the University square of the Catalan capital to demonstrate, one more year, that the feminist struggle is not going backwards, but is maintained more, it is never maintained, but is maintained more The reactionary wave that has made the extreme right rise everywhere.

In 2025, it is no longer just about demanding real equality and ending violence against women. At this afternoon's demonstration, the frontal rejection of policies that try to gain power by squeezing difference and inequalities has been more present than in other years. Elisabet, one of the attendees at the demonstration, thus assessed the impact of the extreme right on women: "Free and conscientious women are against nature because of fascist ideology because we alter the order that wants to keep us submissive, silent and exploited. But the extreme right is a danger to all people; consequences," she says.

This fight against the onslaught of the extreme right has shared the spotlight with another major demand: the visibility of care. In fact, this is the issue that the organizers have chosen to bring women together on this 8-M, under the slogan "Care sustains life." Thus, the main head of the demonstration started its route a few minutes after six in the evening, focusing on the importance of care as a basis for equality, denouncing the precariousness of the sector and demanding social and institutional co-responsibility. The route continued along Gran Via, Passeig de Gràcia and Ronda de Sant Pere until reaching the Arc de Triomf, where the manifesto was read. The banners advanced to the rhythm of the protest with slogans such as "Exploited care, rebellious mothers" or "Housework, labor exploitation." They were mixed with the classics "Long live the feminist struggle" and "Patriarchy kills" and with other more creative slogans such as "Sir, please relax a little.".

Among the women who called the most, at the beginning, was a group of mothers of disabled people. "We are absolutely invisible, we raise them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I am 63 years old and I cannot retire. Every night I still have to lift my twenty-year-old daughter to put the diaper she needs. We are physically exhausted and this system does not help us at all," explained one of them at the ARA. Not far away, Irene, who attended the demonstration with her young daughter and a group of mothers from school, stressed the importance of having role models: "It is important that, from a young age, they know that they have the right to demonstrate and that they learn to raise their voices," she said.

Very close by, Marta explained why she goes out every year: "There are many rights that must be defended every day. We are noticing a regression in many spaces," she explained. Blanca, a young scientist, also added to this complaint. "I continue to notice micro-machismo every day in my profession; when women's opinions are belittled in a meeting, when a man repeats the same idea that a female colleague has just said, or when men spend many more minutes talking than we do," she said by way of example.

"The question is: where do we not notice sexism?" reflected Paula, another of the participants in the demonstration. "It is everywhere: from the doctor who tells us that we are overwhelmed and decides not to do any tests, to the worker who decides to explain to my colleague, who knows as little as I do, how he unblocked the pipe, to the comments about our physique at work or the flood of publicity that tells us that we should."

A minority division

One of the novelties this year in Barcelona is that, for the first time, two demonstrations have been held, as has been the case for years in Madrid. The one in Plaza Universidad, called as always by the 8M Assembly (which brings together different feminist movements) and another alternative, in Plaza Catalunya, organized by the 8-M Feminist Coordinator, with Feminists of Catalonia, the CNT and the Feminist Party of Spain, among others. This second march focused its protest on the rejection of the law recognizing and equating the rights of trans women with biological women. On the other hand, this group also demands the abolition of prostitution. Finally, about 400 people have decided to follow this second call.