Gaza, cycling and the rain in Spain
The national cycling competition that takes place every year in my homeland has been suspended in its final phase because of the protests regarding the genocide in Gaza. I cannot remark enough how big a deal this is, both in terms of exposure and regarding the weaponizing of a common bad practice that mass media have in my country. It has been a lot of fun to watch this going down.
For those of you that may not be in the loop regarding how mass media works in Spain, almost 95% of the main TV channels and newspapers have their headquarters in the same city: Madrid. Due to this fact, there has always been an excess of information about the things that happen in this city versus what happens in other parts of Spain. We have a say: "When it rains in Madrid, so it does everywhere else."
Last Sunday, protesters effectively weaponized this problem by assembling a big protest in the last phase of La Vuelta, the cycling competition I mentioned above. It simply was not possible for the Spanish mass media to silence a protest happening right under their noses. I am very happy about this because I think we learned a very important lesson: you can only be ignored for so long. Make your protest loud and big enough, and they will not be able to ignore it.