Colón and Cibeles are two of Madrid’s iconic squares, and though a landmark of the bourgeois, the Salamanca downtown district, the Recoletos boulevard connecting them has long been a stomping ground of the Spanish left. Since political freedoms were restored at Franco’s death, every major progressive rally has packed its arterial thoroughfares, whether for union strikes, to protest the country’s partaking in the Iraq War, or the welfare-cutting response to the 2008 crisis—and everything in between.

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