The #FridaysForFuture arrives in Barcelona | Society
The environmental movement of #FridaysforFuture (Friday for the future) has entered Spain by the Catalan strip. After several concentrations in front of the University of Girona, Barcelona has joined this trend that started the 16-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg Strike every Friday since last summer in front of the Swedish Parliament.
A breath of air that has left this Friday an unusual manifestation in Barcelona. No flag was seen among the more than a hundred protesters who occupied the Plaza Sant Jaume. The closest thing to a banner was the blue-green balloon they were protesting. And the uniformity in the banners of other marches was replaced by dozens of slogans and different designs drawn by hand on cardboard. Although the most striking has been the age of the attendees, the vast majority of them did not exceed 20 years.
Guillermo Chirino, a 22-year-old student from the University of Barcelona and one of the spokespersons for Fridays For Future Barcelona, explained that the goal is to put the climate crisis in the foreground. "We demand that a state of climatic emergency be declared, and for that we want to interpellate politicians, the media and society," said Chirino.
For many of them, it is the first mobilization due to the climate they come to. "I had attended demonstrations of other causes, but this is the first time I went to an environmentalist one," says David Sànchez, a student in Environmental Biology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who says he learned about the initiative a few hours before begin to.
For the organizers, this Friday has been a success of attendance and, as they say, they have come to feel somewhat overwhelmed. "Two days ago we were less than 20 people," said Chirino, who has also confirmed that will try to promote in Barcelona the international student strike convened for March 15.