It’s still Monday, but Martin Sagrera, an 87-year-old retired sociologist, already has everything prepared for the demonstration on Sunday. That day, a march in favor of public health aspires to fill the center of Madrid and he, as he has been doing for decades in thousands of protests, will go to distribute free the little banners he makes at home. They are simple: a thin wooden stick, a Din A3 or Din A4 sheet and a motto, a phrase, sometimes a single word: “They have to be few, you have to synthesize”.
Despite its flimsy appearance, their posters have raised their voices to defend a multitude of causes: the fights against dictatorships, wars, terrorism or gender violence, or the defense of human rights, environmentalism, pensions, decent housing, health and LGTBI rights. His list of slogans is endless.: “Bad governments divide the towns”, “Bread and shelter, at a fair price”, “More toilets, much needed”, “Gay, ok”, “Meat, poison”… His messages strung on rods go through a good part of the recent history of Spain. From 23-F to the marches against ETA, from 11-M to 15-M, Martín was always there.
It is, as he himself assumes on his own website, the “greatest bannerman in Spain”. “And perhaps international,” she adds. “The other day we held four demonstrations, on a Saturday morning. It was a record,” she is proud. For him, his work is still necessary in a country that he considers he does not go out on the streets enough. And he contrasts the examples of France or Portugal. “We mobilized, and less and less. The gag law did a lot of damage, although it had happened before. This town does not move, people are very passive. That’s why my banners are seen more and morebecause every day there are fewer people,” he admits with regret. “We have to protest, dude!he exclaims.
The banner factory is located in his own home, an attic where the protest tools are piled up next to the shelves with books. “I have seven archive rooms and two more halfand in a nearby basement I keep more things”, he abounds. A now closed terrace serves as the main warehouse. Everywhere there are boxes that keep banners of the demonstrations to come, but also of old demands, many ready to see the light again, if necessary. In one corner is an “OUI” in large letters. “That is from a demonstration in Marseille against the extreme right,” she clarifies. The space is inflamed by protest messages and by the light of a warm winter sun that reminds him that the afternoons are already longer.
Martín does not print the mottos in his house. For that he resorts to a nearby copy shop. What he does do with a friend or collaborator is stick the papers with adhesives and staples on the sticks, who orders online in large quantities. The days of demonstration he loads the banners into his car and stands in the center of Madrid to distribute them. In large marches, he can deliver hundreds.
The cost per poster is not very high, but the almost industrial proportions of some of its print runs raise costs. Since he does not charge for them, Martín is sometimes asked how he pays for them, and he explains that he can afford it thanks to inheritance from one of your grandparents.
But in the ‘banner’ workshop there is another job: the intellectual one. A good motto is essential. “If you have a small sign, you have to say very few and very clear words,” she explains. The key is “synthesize and synthesize”. And Martin learned this in the gospels and in the proverbs: “I have always liked the gospels, first, and then, the sayings. There is a proverb that says: ‘The sayings are little gospels’. Because they summarize the topics very well. I have read sayings since I was little. And that has helped me helped to synthesize”.
From academic life to protest
Martín is already 88 years old, “a palicúa number”, assumes as a Catalan from Palafrugell (Girona), although he grew up in Andalusia, as his accent reveals, before he Francoism would “throw” him out of Spain. “I was going to be a priest, which was what was in style. So, I went to study in Rome, which is where bishops are made“, he admits. But that went awry and ended up in Pariswhere he received his doctorate Philosophyalthough he also studied History of Religions, Sociology and Demography.
Later, he moved to Latin America, where he lived for 15 years. There he finished maturing his activism, while developing his work as researcher and teacher at different universities. From his visits to the United States, he had been impressed by the demonstrators who went out to protest alone, with the only company of his own banners. And he soon he took the lead. In 1959, when he was in Puerto Rico, alarmed by US President Ike Eisenhower’s visit to Spain, created his first protest poster and took to the streets with their slogan: “Let’s decolonize Puerto Rico and Spain politically and sexually.” “I was young then, and more indignant than now“, he jokes.
Sexuality, religion, demography or racism have been the subject of much of his research, embodied in some of the more than twenty books he has published.
To its return to Spain, after the death of Franco, he brought activism in his suitcase, although he also had many doubts. “Why am I going back if this hasn’t changed?” I thought then. He decided to settle in Madrid, so as “not to bother” his family, divided between Barcelona and Seville. The capital, the epicenter and amplifier of the protests in Spain, would serve as a platform for his demands for the entire country.
Activism made it compatible only for a brief time with the political militancy. “I am not from any party, but when I returned to Spain I thought ‘I have to marry the country, after so many years’, and then I decided to join the PSOE,” she explains. He did not hold positions of responsibility and immediately resigned. “The parties have something of a church and I am a critical, analytical person, intellectual in the worst sense. In addition, politics is very hard, “he admits.
The 23-F coup attempt
After his return to Spain, 23-F made it clear that the darkest past was still lurking. Atheist “thank God”, despite his first vocation, he remembers the day of the coup and how he joined the protests to defend democracy against the wavering that he appreciated in the Church. “Those days the bishops were meeting in Madrid, and until the next morning they did not say ‘no’ to the coup. They waited for it to happen. That day I had not made posters, but rather a manifesto entitled ‘The coup and the bishops’which I ordered printed on a cyclostile photocopier”, he recalls. When there were still a few months to go before the first government of democracy approved the divorce law, he had unexpected help in his protest against the ecclesiastical hierarchy. “The one who made them for me, since he wanted to get divorced, helped me distribute them“, he evokes with a smile.
A little later protests broke out against Spain’s entry into NATO, of which some posters still remain, although today he no longer shares those positions: “The number of thousands of banners I made against NATO… But it was in other circumstances. Now, having the war in Europe and as we are… There are four left who are against it.”
The war in Ukraine and the “scarce” mobilization against the Russian invasion is precisely one of the issues that most concern him now. If there was someone in Spain aware of the authoritarian drift of Vladimir Putin long before the military aggression against his neighboring country, it was Martín. When the Russian president visited Spain in 2006, he went out to protest with his banner: “Ruin with Putin. Freedom of expression. Dissidents to prison”.
From 11-M to 14-M
With emotion and pain, he also remembers March 11, 2004, the day Madrid shuddered under the blow of the Islamist terrorism. And also the days of commotion that followed one another, until the general elections of 14-M. On the 12th, like hundreds of thousands of people from Madrid, he attended the protest march. He did it with banners proclaiming a simple but resounding “No.” Some he already had, but he splashed them with red ink to emphasize the horror of jihadist barbarism. “When we left, the town was marching, it was not possible to reach the place of the demonstration, there has never been a demonstration like this“, testifies.
However, the scene soon changed from mourning for the victims to a political dispute, agitated by the management of the Government of Jose Maria Aznar, who insisted on pointing to ETA when the first indications already pointed to an Islamist authorship. On Saturday the 13th, in the day of reflection, thousands of people mobilized to protest against the Executive. A friend told Martín that he had organized a concentration in front of the headquarters of the PP. So, he did not hesitate: “I remembered that I had the banners with the word ‘PEACE’ for the war in Iraq and I started taking them out. I called another friend very involved in the ‘No to war’. He and his son had, in turn, more banners. We took them there, spread them out, and went back for more. It was impressive”.
Martín believes that his role contributed to let everything go peacefully Despite the tense atmosphere: “A guy with a ‘PEACE’ sign was not going to start throwing stones. And a policeman was not going to charge someone who was carrying a ‘PEACE’ sign,” he reasons. But the media impact was inevitable. “The next day, there were newspapers that had two pages with the images of the people in front of the PP headquarters asking for peace with the banners–relives– and I think that had an influence”.
On 14-M, against the forecast of the polls, the PSOE won the elections. wrapped up in events Martín saw himself turned into a protagonist and could not avoid being singled out. “The right wing blamed the socialists. They said they had it prepared. I appeared in the newspapers and some accused me of that. But that was not something that the PSOE had set up“, he defends. And he goes further: “It was a coincidence, it was beautiful and I think it helped the country; I’m not saying a party anymore, but it helped the country not to divide more”.
The protests against ETA and the 15-M
The demonstrations against ETA also embodied, for years, society’s response of dignity in the face of the cruelty of the gang’s terrorism, another long and dark episode in the history of Spain. “It was one of the things that has disgraced this country, because many freedoms were lost,” laments Martín, who estimates that He came to participate in “some 80 or 90 demonstrations”. Not only in Madrid, but also in the Basque Country and other parts of Spain. Their banners with the motto “ETA No” became one of the icons of the fight against terror. For more than a decade, luckily, he has not had to return to the streets with them.
Martín also joined the 15-M protests. So he did see a mobilization very close to his way of seeing things spring up. In the concentrations of the outraged he participated from the first day. “That was crazy. There were daily demonstrations. There has never been that effervescence“, yearns. In the end, however, he ended up distancing himself, somewhat disenchanted and “sad” because “in Spain we don’t know how to organize ourselves”.
Related news
But neither the books nor the demonstrations have been enough to quench their vindictive desire. According to his account, throughout his life he has distributed 20 million documents, which he has sent on occasions by post to dozens of countries – “in the Post Office they looked at me desperately” –. Besides, he keeps commanding letters to the press, another of his favorite channels. He has written “about 8,000”. And when there is no demonstration to meet his demands, he mounts it himself. It’s what he calls “monomanifestation“.
after sunday, will review the protest calendaras always, with the information from the Government Delegation or on Telegram channels, in search of another opportunity to defend the causes that he considers just. Martin is followed plenty of reasons to go out.