In the weeks leading up to the European elections, we launched a communication campaign to mobilise the vote in the European elections. More than 600 organisations that are part of La Coordinadora called to defend democracy, sustainable development and human rights in the face of the advance of militarisation and anti-rights agenda in the European context.

The EU has tripled its security and defence budget while reducing spending on solidarity and rights; in the last 10 years, at least 29,827 people have disappeared in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe; according to official data, 20% of women in the EU have suffered gender based violence; not to mention the fact that maintaining the current European production and consumption model would exhaust the resources of four planets, which also compromises the lives of future generations.

These are just some of the data disseminated by La Coordinadora’s campaign with which a large part of the spanish cooperation and humanitarian organisations sector has made a call to vote and defend our rights. With four slogans, based on the axes of peace, feminism, environmentalism and migration, we explained the importance of these elections with an analogy: “If you get distracted on the beach, you lose your umbrella. If you get distracted in the European elections, we lose our rights”.

On 8 June, on the day of reflection, we planted bloody umbrellas in front of the European Parliament headquarters in Madrid, in the Puerta del Sol and in the Plaza de Callao to draw attention to the importance of voting in the European elections.

In parallel to the campaign, a letter was sent to the main political forces with a set of proposals, agreed upon by more than 600 organisations, expressing our “concern that the European institutions have proposed and adopted decisions aligned with investment, geopolitical, security or energy interests” as opposed to the founding values of the EU.