MADRID – The Spanish extreme right-wing party Vox wants March 8, International Women’s Day, proclaimed as National Day of Covid-19 Victims. Each year, this day is marked worldwide by the militancy and sense of solidarity of women.
Deliberate choice for International Women’s Day
The choice of this day is no coincidence! According to Vox, the government encouraged participation in feminist demonstrations on March 8 in order to fill its ideological agenda. In turn, putting the health of Spaniards at risk. The proposal was announced on Monday by political action committee spokesman Jorge Buxadé. And will be submitted by Vox to Congress, the Senate and all institutions in which it is represented.
All victims
Vox believes that the Spanish have an obligation to honour all victims of the coronavirus. Furthermore, it considers 8 March a good date to do so. The deceased and their relatives deserve to be respected and recognised. Additionally, all those who have lost their jobs, or cannot work and even the children who ‘could not go to school for months’ as well as the families who have had to turn their lives around are also remembered.
Moral duty
‘We have a moral duty, a duty of gratitude to the Spaniards to commemorate March 8 as the national day of the victims of the coronavirus,’ Buxadé stressed and continued: ‘we join the sentiments of the Spaniards to respect March 8 and to remember the victims of the coronavirus, arguing that a year ago the government was already ‘fully aware’ of the danger of the virus, yet decided not to take any action’.
In doing so, Buxadé emphasises that the proposal is in line with the general feeling of the population that in 2020 March 8 ‘participation in feminist marches with a purely ideological aim was allowed and encouraged by the government. Despite being fully aware of what was going on, in the months that followed, the government, did not to close the borders. Also they decided not to buy additional health materials, not to shrink the Spanish health system and not to deploy the armed forces and the state security forces’.
Investigation into Sánchez
On March 25, an investigation was launched, following a declaration made by a private citizen against Prime Minister Sánchez and against all government representatives of the different autonomous communities and of Ceuta and Melilla. The reason for the complaint is that they did not prohibit mass demonstrations on March 8. Months later, the case was closed by the Provincial Court.
Spanish matter
The investigation assures that the government was ‘aware of the danger’ of March 8 and that ‘the massacre was coming’. As a result, Vox denounced the delay by the Constitutional Court in dealing with the party’s appeal against the alert. Additionally, the party asked the members of the Constitutional Court to ‘show professional dignity’ and indicate whether the government acted correctly.
‘Never before has a state of alarm, which curtails rights and freedoms, been raised. Because of this, we were all locked up at home. Consequently, Spaniards have the right to know whether a government is allowed to do this,’ said Buxadé.
He rules out the possibility of appealing to European bodies if the Constitutional Court remains silent. ‘Problems of the Spaniards must be solved by the Spaniards’, he concludes.
