That may be the last time I was on a big demonstration—the ones where I joined one of the coaches to take protestors to London. I'm sure I did some picket line duty into the 1990s, and I've been a half participant in a couple of things here about worker's and women's rights but my real demonstration days were Cruise Missiles at Molesworth, the Miners' Strike, Ban the Bomb, and the Anti-Apartheid protests of the Eighties rather than the Anti-Capitalist or Environmental themes of more recent times. Daniel Ortega apart, I have no regrets about the placards I waved and slogans I shouted back then.
The other week, I went on a demonstration for the first time in decades. This time it was in Elda/Petrer and it wasn't quite on the same scale as most of the protests I got involved in when my bones still didn't ache. I don't think there were many of us, in Elda, but with one of those wildly unsubstantiated guesses that we all make about numbers, I said to someone who asked on the day that I reckoned there were about a thousand people there. When I checked just now the local paper's estimates were about the same.
We were there to shout for better funding for the state health service, to shout to stop the drift of money from the public sector towards private health care and to shout against the scramble within Europe to spend more money on submarines, tanks, and all the other paraphernalia of war - because a deranged politician tells our governments they should - at the expense of basic services. Odd actually because that's another conversation I had recently, with the Spanish language AI application; all about the cost of tanks and submarines and destroyers and suchlike when cheap and cheerful one-way attack drones and torpedoes can do to them what inexpensive shoulder-launched SAM missiles did to high-tech Soviet Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters in Afghanistan. But I digress.
I was there, in Elda, because I felt guilty when a woman I know, through the book club, was talking about how a coach, that the pensioner's club had arranged to go to an earlier pro health service march, had to be cancelled for lack of interest. She'd been disgusted at the terrible turnout. As she upbraided the population of Pinoso, I felt individually guilty because I'd meant to go that last time but chose a cup of coffee with friends instead. This time I didn't, I went to shout and march. I joined in with the chanting - it was a sort of call and answer system with the loudspeaker equipped car at the front setting go little couplets - Sanidad no se vende and we'd reply with Sanidad, se defiende - Healthcare's not for selling, Healthcare's for defending or Recursos a la pública - No a la privada - Resources to the public system - not to the private.
Spain has a free-to-users health service. Of course, that's not strictly true because the money comes from taxpayers, but it's what we all understand as a free health service. When someone gets ill there's a system to try and fix them up without profit being the driving motive. It's available to anyone within the Social Security system. Just like in the UK, there have been cuts to the service; there are shortages of trained staff; working conditions for the current workforce are criticised; and there is insidious but constant pressure from right-of-centre administrations to send people to private hospitals and clinics for routine tests and procedures rather than investing in the system of public care. It's strange—writing this piece reminded me that when I was teaching English, I had lots of conversations with Spaniards, unaware of the free health care system in the UK, who were quite sure that Britons came to Spain as health tourists to take unfair advantage.
I don't suppose a few hundred people walking down the road from Petrer to Elda in the rain is going to make Carlos Mazón (President of Valencia) suddenly change his mind and dig deep to fund local services but at least this time I didn't go for coffee. And, as I remember it, there are no cruise missiles at Molesworth and Nelson Mandela died a free man.
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The title I remember from a march in favour of the miners during the Miner's Strike. It started from a park in Leeds. The march was led by a brass band. A portly man wrapped in a tuba asked the bandleader - in a broad Yorksher accent. "And Brian, if the' start feetin' - what shud we do?" Brian's answer: "Stand thi ground lad, stand thi ground!"