Abortions Protested in Madrid

Thousands of people marched though Madrid on Sunday to protest against abortion, as Spain's leftist government prepares a law to guarantee access to the procedure at public hospitals.

Carrying signs that read "Abortion is not right" and chanting "More respect for life", demonstrators walked through the centre of the Spanish capital to Cibeles square in central Madrid where a manifesto was read aloud.

"There are other alternatives. After an abortion there is always trauma but that is not talked about," said Yolanda Torosio, a 44-year-old secretary who attended the protest with her daughter.

The protest was organised by the "Yes to Life" platform which estimated that some 20,000 people took part. The central government's representative in Madrid put the number of marchers at about 9,000.

The crowd included parents pushing strollers, retired couples and groups of youths, some carrying Spanish flags.

While Spain decriminalised abortion in 1985, women in the predominantly Catholic country still face obstacles when choosing to terminate a pregnancy since many doctors refuse to care out the procedure.

According to the OMC Spanish doctors' association, "most" obstetrician-gynaecologists who work in the public sector consider themselves "conscientious objectors" and refuse to carry out abortions.

As a result women in some regions must travel hundreds of kilometres for an abortion because there is no private clinic nearby and the local hospital will not perform them.

Socialist Prime Pedro Sanchez's government is preparing a law to ensure that all public hospitals perform abortions, and wants to ban protests outside of abortion clinics as "harassment".

IT also wants to modify the law so minors of 16 and 17 can terminate a pregnancy without their parents' consent, as is the case in Britain and France.

Polls show a majority of Spaniards are in favour of keeping the country's existing abortion laws, which allow the procedure on demand in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Spain's Liquid Gold

For centuries, people have tapped pine trees to extract resin. But in one Spanish province, locals believe this age-old practice could save rural towns while also helping the planet.

Stretching north from Madrid, north-west Spain's autonomous Castilla y León region is a patchwork of vast mountain ranges, high plateaus and medieval towns. While most visitors come to marvel at the castillo castles that lend the region its name or admire the enchanting cathedrals in León and Burgos, much of the area is blanketed in scrubby sierra and high-altitude meseta plains that extend as far as the eye can see.

But in the provinces of Segovia, Ávila and Valladolid, a drastically different landscape emerges. Here, amid the Tierra de Pinares and Sierra de Gredos mountain ranges, a thick, 400,000-hectare protected forest of fragrant resin pines stretches up into the mountainous folds. Shielded from the hot Spanish sun and lined with trails and, this forested frontier is a popular hiking destination for locals and tourists. And, if you visit at the right time of year and look closely, you may see workers crouched next to the tree trunks, continuing a centuries-old tradition of collecting the pine's "liquid gold".




Deep in the forests of Spain's autonomous Castilla y León province, workers carry out the age-old practice of resin tapping (Credit: Susan GiróA booming market
Pine resin has been used by different civilisations for thousands of years. In Spain and across much of the Mediterranean, it was used to waterproof ships, treat burns and light torches, among other things. But according to Alejandro Chozas, a professor in the forestry engineering department at Madrid Polytechnic University, it wasn't until the 19th and 20th Centuries that the extraction of pine resin became truly profitable in the Castilla y León region.

As technology and industrialisation helped turn the thick, milky sap into things like plastics, varnishes, glues, tyres, rubber, turpentine and even food additives in the mid-19th Century, the owners of Castilla y León's dense Pinus pinaster forests saw an opportunity. Soon, workers were hacking into the bark of resin pines across the region in order to collect the valuable sap. And while this time-consuming process has now ceased across much of the world, in the past decade it has experienced something of a rebirth in Castilla y León, which is home to more resin manufacturers than anywhere else in Europe and one of the last places on the continent where the practice persists. TO READ MORE ABOUT SPAIN'S LIQUID GOLD, CLICK HERE...