“Today at 6pm, Genova Street, to find out the truth. Pass it on.”
And they did. This simple text message exploded through the streets of Spain, spreading across the city, then the country through mobile phones, email and through blogs on the internet.
Between 3pm and 6pm on March 13, this message reached enough people to have large scale demonstrations on Genova Street, where the headquarters of the Partido Popular party (the former Spanish governing party) was located, and in Barcelona, Galicia and other cities across the country.
“No one knows what the election results would have been without the protests.” In 1981, a soldier led an attempted coup in the Spanish parliament. It was later called “the night of the transistors”, due to the fact that the nation was glued to its radio sets to find out what was happening. Some people are now calling Saturday, March 13, “the night of the mobile telephone”.
