MADRID (AP) ― Spaniards angered by austerity measures, including budget cuts and plans to partly privatize some of their country’s cherished national health service, held a rally Sunday in downtown Madrid.
About 10,000 people, including health workers dressed in clinical white and blue, marched from four large hospitals on the outskirts of Madrid to central Puerta del Sol square behind banners saying, “Our public health service is not for sale, it’s to be defended.”
Some protesters said they were outraged by Madrid regional government plans to convert a large hospital specializing in rare and infectious diseases into an old people’s home and then sell it.
“Our hospital, Carlos III, is a medical reference point. We treat highly infectious illnesses. We serve a lot of patients. Yet they still want to get rid of it,’’ said nurse Natalia Fernandez, 34.
Javier Fernandez-Laquetty, Madrid councilor in charge of the region’s health care, said the measures being implemented seek to achieve greater efficiency and guarantee that tax-payers survive the crisis with first-class hospitals.
“The measures are to ensure, responsibly, that we continue to have a high quality universal public health service, open to all,” he said.
Rally organizers, who called the march “a white tide,” said Madrid’s regional health workers would hold four days of strikes on Nov. 26-27 and Dec. 4-5 to criticize the government’s actions.
“We have built hospitals and health centers with public money and the government is handing them over to its friends,” said nurse Maria Victoria de Lucas, 52.
Health care and education are administered by Spain’s 17 semi-autonomous regions, rather than the central government, and each sets its own budgets and spending plans. Regions account for almost 40 percent of public spending.
Many regions are struggling as Spain’s economy contracts into a double-dip recession triggered by a real estate crash in 2008.
Some, having overspent and being unable to borrow on financial markets to repay their huge debts, are cutting budgets.
Spain’s regions have a combined debt of 145 billion euro ($185 billion) and some 36 billion euro must be refinanced this year. The country is trying to avoid following Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus in having to ask for an international financial bailouts.
