FREEDOM WINS BIG IN SPAIN, SETS TREND

As we reported in our 22 September issue, the anti-lockdown message of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the head of Madrid’s regional government, had begun to resonate with Spaniards. 
Díaz Ayuso, a member of the country’s Popular Party, said in September that the lockdowns spell economic disaster: “We have to avoid at all costs a state of alert and above all confining people to their homes. A state of alert and confining people are an economic disaster,” she said.
Her message served her movement well – it won her a landslide victory in the Madrid regional election last Tuesday, which resulted in her party more than doubling its seat count, taking more seats than the three left-wing parties combined. The report said she fell just shy of an absolute majority. 
As we had reported, Ms. Ayuso’s campaign slogan was one word: FREEDOM.
“Madrid is freedom—and they don’t understand our way of living,” she told supporters. She told the Financial Times she experienced explosive support from “every social class, from every corner of society, in favor of freedom, in response to such a difficult time.”
“I’m not going to let my guard down for a single minute. Now we’ll see what surprises [the central government] has in store for us after the election and will carry on doing whatever we need to by acting as a counterweight and opposition force,” she told a radio station in the country.
The paper pointed out that Díaz Ayuso was congratulated by Italy’s Matteo Salvini, the head of the League party. He called her a woman of “common sense and courage who has combined protection of health, right to work, and freedom.”
Lluís Orriols, a professor of politics at the Carlos III University in Madrid, told The New York Times that “maintaining Madrid open and economically active was something visible to all, while demonstrating that lockdown measures really help keep people healthy is something harder to do.” 
Pablo Casado, her party’s leader, told the FT, “Today, freedom has won in Madrid; tomorrow it will win in all of Spain.”
TREND FORECAST: While the election results were briefly reported in the mainstream press, the significance of what Ms. Díaz Ayuso’s campaign theme represented was mentioned but brushed aside.
In our analysis of the series of anti-lockdown protests that have swept across western nations, “FREEDOM” is the one word that rings with all of them.
While there are large masses that march off to the dictates of those who rule them, so, too, are the masses who believe in who they are and will not succumb to tyranny and injustice.
As the Madrid election proves, in their hearts and in their souls, a majority of “We the People” want Freedom. Thus, we forecast that FREEDOM will be a primary political platform in current and future elections. 
TRENDPOST: As we reported in our 23 February article, “YOUTH REVOLUTION 2021: PROTESTS RAGE IN BARCELONA,” Spain’s economy shrank by 11 percent last year, according to the National Statistics Institute, which El País reported is the country’s biggest contraction since the late 1930s. 
The youth in Spain have realized – and proved at the polls – that they do not have a future under the current conditions in the country and, like in other countries, they have lashed out against the status quo.