#and in the evenings i'm doing political campaign stuff 🙃 and on the weekend i have uni

[yohankang]

second day of my new job, i don't understand 90% of what people around me are saying

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

What's happening in Spain

I know there's a lot going on in the world, and that there are more pressing issues, but I thought it would be of use to share what's happening in my country.

First, a bit of backstory. After the 2019 elections, the far-right political party VOX entered in the Spanish parliament, and hasn't stopped getting more and more traction since.

What this has done is legitimize and accept their hateful discourse in media and the parliament. All of the racists, homophobes, mysoginistic fascists members of the party have polarized society, creating more hate than ever and even polarizing political parties; the right-wing traditional party, PP, is getting closer and closer to VOX's ideology as time passes, and some of their members share the same values and ideas (basically, they're fascists).

Although some individual members of left-wing political parties have stood up to them in the parliament and local assemblies, as a whole they really haven't done much to stop them; and the media is even encouraging all these people to have a platform, as they are more polemic and thus, get more views.

This has created, as I have said, a escalation of hate throughout the country:

VOX targeted MENAs (Unaccompanied Migrant Minors) in their Madrid government campaign this past May (btw, the judges who were investigating the diffamatory posters they put on the metro just ruled that there's no reason to call them that and deemed them as harmless 🙃), along with generally spreading bullshit against immigrants, and last month, a 31 year old Moroccan immigrant living in Mazarrón (Murcia), Younes Bilal, was brutally murdered by a former military officer.

VOX calls the feminist movement a "lobby" and advocates for the defense of the "traditional family", and nearly every other day a case of a woman killed by gender-based reasons hits the news, as well as fucked up events like a husband who drowned himself and his two daughters after kidnaping them off the coast of Tenerife to make his ex-wife suffer.

VOX also is against same-sex marriage, has voted against every LGBT law the government has proposed, and lots of members say pretty fucking homophobic stuff on a daily basis. This last month, and especially this weekend, the violence has quickly escalated, and there have been multiple reports on hatecrimes against people for their sexuality, the last two ones being reported today (July 6th). Here's a post I made with a sign showing off all the reported attacks leading up to Samuel's death.

And now we get to Samuel. Samuel Luiz, a 24 year old nurse from A Coruña (Galicia) was beaten to death by 13 guys on July 3rd 2021. Here, here, here and here are some articles I found on the topic in English if you want to read all the story. After it made the news, an avalanche of protests protesting Samuel's death and the escalation of homphobia were set up for monday, July 5th, which was yesterday at the time I'm writing this post. Here are some pictures I've gathered from twitter :

Sources: x, x, x, x

Here's an Instagram post by a Spanish news agency with more photos

I don't know how to post videos so here's a twitter post with a video of the manifestation, and here's another one, this time in A Coruña, where Samuel was from.

As you can see, these are all pacific protests. Well, the police force went on to attack the protesters with no reason whatsoever; it was especially brutal in Madrid.

Sources: x, x

@spainonymous (a great account to follow) posted a video of the police bashing on protesters, and here you can find a thread with both pics and videos of the whole thing. Here is a video of one of the cops encouraging a fellow cop to beat some protesters.

Thankfully, people on Twitter worked fast, and during last night and today they have been tweeting out to the official account of the police force denouncing the cops that can be seen in the videos with their identification number. If you have Twitter, it would help us a lot if you can also do this, you just have to copy paste this and this tweet!

Also, if I have something wrong, feel free to correct me, and also add whatever you want, please!!