BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of Italians and Spaniards marched in Rome, Barcelona and Madrid on Saturday against in a massive show of growing international anger over the two-year-old war.
The protests in Spain had been planned for weeks, while the demonstrations in Rome and Lisbon followed widespread anger after the Israeli that had set sail from Barcelona in a bid to break the blockade of the Palestinian territory.
Rome’s police said 250,000 people turned out, while organizers said 1 million attended, for a second straight day of Italian demonstrations.
Italy already saw rally on Friday across the country in a one-day general strike to support the Palestinians in Gaza.
Over 40 Spaniards, including a former Barcelona mayor, were among the 450 activists that Israel removed from the flotilla’s boats this week.
Barcelona’s police said 70,000 people marched, with organizers saying it was 300,000, while thousands more rallied later in the evening in Madrid and several other Spanish cities as well as Lisbon, Portugal.
The calls for protests in Southern Europe come as Hamas said it has accepted laid out by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the war, which has left and stirred against Israel.
Protests in Rome criticize Meloni
The protest in Rome that followed a route by the Colosseum was organized by three Palestinian organizations along with local unions and students.
At Piazza San Giovanni, protesters chanted and applauded the name of Francesca Albanese, an Italian who is the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories and a vocal critic of Israel.
Although the organizers had requested that only Palestinian flags be carried, there were some banners praising the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas. One read, “October 7, Day of Palestinian Resistance,” a reference to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that sparked the war, while another large flag read “Death, death to the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. A group also chanted the same slogan, state broadcaster RAI reported.
Opposition lawmaker Riccardo Magi, secretary of the center-left Piu Europa (more Europe) party, who was among the marchers, took Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government to task for its refusal to recognize a Palestinian state, following the example of Spain, France, the U.K. and some other Western countries.
“Meloni cannot continue with this obscene victimhood: these are spontaneous demonstrations against the inaction and complicity of her government. She must acknowledge this and begin working diplomatically for peace,” Magi told Italian media.
Big rally in Barcelona
Spain has seen an upsurge in recent weeks while its left-wing against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. Protests against the presence of an Israeli-owned cycling team last month, while Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and asked for the ban of all Israeli teams from international sporting events.
People packed Barcelona’s wide Passeig de Gracia, the city’s main central boulevard. Many families turned out along with people of all ages, carrying Palestinian flags. Hand-held signs bore messages like “Gaza hurts me,” “Stop the Genocide,” and “Hands off the flotilla.”
While the protests will likely not sway Israel’s government, protesters hope they could inspire other demonstrations and encourage European leaders to take a harder line against Israel.
María Jesús Parra, 63, waved a Palestinian flag after making an hourlong trip from another town to Barcelona. She wants the European Union to act against what she described as the horrors she watches on TV news.
“How is it possible that we are witnessing a genocide happening live after what we (as Europe) experienced in the 1940s?” Parra said. “Now nobody can say they didn’t know what was happening.”
A few thousand protested in Lisbon as well.
Smaller rallies took place in Athens and Skopje, North Macedonia. Greek police believe a bigger gathering and march will take place Sunday to coincide with a pro-Israeli one. The two protests are separated by some 3 kilometers (2 miles) and police will be on hand to prevent the pro-Palestinian march to the Israeli Embassy, as as happened on previous occasions.
The war in Gaza started after Hamas’s attack in October 2023, which left around 1,200 people dead, while 251 others were taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has so far killed over 67,000 people and wounded nearly 170,000 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government. U.N. agencies and many independent experts view its figures as the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.
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Santalucia reported from Rome, while Associated Press writer Demetris Nellas in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.
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