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Protesters vow to continue Madrid sit-in


Spain’s anti-government protesters have promised to remain in Madrid’s main square in protest at the country’s political establishment.

Thousands of angry protesters against the government’s austerity measures and growing unemployment rate raised hands on Sunday to vote for staying in the Puerta del Sol square.

“We have started something in Sol, we have started to spread to the rest of the world, so this is not the time to stop it,” a protest spokesman in the encampment said on Monday.

Spain’s M-15 movement has inspired other European countries as well.

Hundreds of Parisians on Sunday took part in a protest rally at the Bastille Square, calling for a popular democratic uprising among Europeans, while some 20,000 Greek protesters gathered near the parliament building in Athens with the same call.

“The support we received internationally was very important, it was something that moved us in Sol, especially the mobilization in Paris was a very big support, and also the mobilization in Greece,” the spokesman for the Spanish protest said.

Spain has been witnessing demonstrations against the government’s austerity measures since mid-May.

The massive protests came after the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero introduced a slew of drastic austerity measures.

The measures include the cutting of civil servant wages, as part of its plans to curb the budget deficit from 11 percent a year earlier to within three percent of the GDP, a limit set by the European Union by 2013.

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