Colón rally draws 25,000 amid right-wing photo controversy

Colón rally draws 25,000 amid right-wing photo controversy

How many people fit in Plaza de Colón when the organizer is a civic platform rather than a political party? The official answer came from Madrid's Government Delegation: approximately 25,000 people. Organizers raised the figure to 200,000. Between these two numbers, as elastic as ever, a battle unfolded that wasn't about capacity but about narrative: 129 associations grouped under the so-called "Platform for Constitutional Spain" called for a demonstration demanding Pedro Sánchez's resignation and immediate general elections. Leaders from the PP and Vox attended, delivered their speeches, and left. And that's where the problem began.

The flop that doesn't hold up with archive photos

The first line of fire was comparison. Against the official image of a full square, photographs circulated that The Objective and La Razón published as if they were from the day: one of Cibeles Square from 2023 and another of a pandemic-era protest, with visible masks. The detail is not minor. Cibeles and Colón are not the same place nor are they close by: between both points lies the entire Paseo de Recoletos, so joining them in a single march would require a human tide difficult to disguise.

Some argue the error was a simple file mix-up. Counter-evidence suggests the reused material had different dates and locations, and the correction arrived after the images had already circulated. The practical consequence is that the anti-Sánchez demonstration ended up being debated less for its size than for the traceability of its photos.

Why aren't PP and Vox filling the streets like before?

The second front was absence. The call was civic, but parties sent their leaders, not their electorate. This is the recurring diagnosis: PP and Vox voters have grown tired of demonstrations that change nothing, and the proof lies in the fact that the gathering did not translate into mobilization equivalent to what both parties achieved in other eras. Questions about the whereabouts of the PP leader, absent from the photo, circulated more strongly than any slogan.

The contrast with the other side of the board was immediately raised: a call in Bilbao would have gathered, according to estimates, ten times more people. The comparison isn't neutral—it measures different things in different territories—but it serves its purpose: to remind us that mobilization capacity is today a contested asset.

Madrid's vote that won't mobilize on a Saturday

Here enters the disorienting data. In Madrid, there are more than a million voters who backed PP, Vox, or the "Se acabó la fiesta" group in 2024, and who distributed differently in 2019. Results by party in the region show the shift: PP went from 715,871 votes (22.15%) to 1,131,527 (40.69%), while PSOE fell from 1,043,827 (32.3%) to 782,765 (28.15%). Vox dropped slightly, from 319,443 to 298,285. Podemos plummeted from 413,228 votes to 123,946, and Ciudadanos virtually disappeared from the map, going from 589,877 to 30,641.

With that electoral cushion, the lingering question is why it doesn't translate into street pressure. The skeptical response offered is uncomfortable: a Saturday morning is not a good day, and an afternoon at Ferraz doesn't seem appealing either. Viewed this way, the Colón demonstration wasn't a failure of mobilization but a success of comfort.

PP's internal fight overshadowing the demonstration

As the square emptied, attention shifted to the party. There is open talk that Feijoo's chair is being shaken, and that the PP congress will be another display of unity toward a leader who, according to rumors, drags boredom. The circulating hypothesis is that the sector that placed him there won't give up on its candidate, and that the dispute between factions will be fought quietly for months.

The most cynical calculation, and therefore the most repeated, is that the current PP president would prefer not to win: governing with Vox and current numbers would be a bigger problem than remaining in opposition. It's a hypothesis, not a fact, but it explains why the demonstration was read as an act of obligation rather than conviction.

Corruption: the comparison no one wins

The third axis of debate was the past. It is argued that PP corruption has no parallel with PSOE's, citing the Gürtel case as proof of a scale that, according to this version, has not yet been reached in cases affecting the current government. The response from the other side reverses the argument: cases touching the PP would be petty compared to what is currently being investigated, and the drumbeat of old corruption serves to cover up present issues.

Neither side has closed reasoning, and the relevant data is that both use the same manual. Corruption functions as a thrown weapon, not as a problem to solve.

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In the end, the Colón demonstration left three things: an official figure of 25,000 people, two mislabeled archive photos, and a party that doesn't know if it wants to win. Brutal, indeed.