Monday, March 12, 2007

Pick Any Number, Just Make It A Big One

Before examining the political consequences of Saturday's event, let's have a quick look at the now traditional numbers game that always follows any of these anti-government demonstrations. It seems that my prediction that Madrid's regional government would put the attendance at over 3 million was too much even for their highly imaginative counters. They did, however, manage to get over 2 million attending. Now, if you consider that the total surface area covered by the demonstration is a bit over 200,000 square metres this gives an average density of 10 very angry right wingers per square metre....plus big flags!

Estimates by those whose contact with planet Earth is a bit more regular put the attendance at between 250-350,000, which of course is not bad but does not satisfy the needs of those who believe they are heading a massive civic rebellion. El Mundo's web site initially put the estimate within this range, but the article was quickly removed and the printed paper never quoted such a low figure - see the story on this at escolar.net. Over at the Manifestómetro you can find a truer picture.

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