Hundreds of people demonstrated on the streets of Faro
Downtown Faro, from Jardim Manuel Bívar to Largo de São Pedro, was filled with people yesterday (Thursday) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April.
A demonstration on the streets of the Algarve capital, organized by the Organizing Committee for the Popular Celebrations of the 25th of April, which brought together the trade union, associative, social and cultural movement of the Algarve, brought hundreds of people to the streets.
“The people felt the need to come to the streets and affirm the values of April, in celebration, in struggle”, stated Catarina Marques, Coordinator of the Union of Unions of the Algarve (USAL), in an interview with diariOnline South Region.
The union leader highlighted, in an interview, that “April remains to be fulfilled when we have decades of right-wing politics that disinvest in public services, in the National Health Service, in Public Schools, which are achievements of April. We still need to meet April when we have a country with low wages, low pensions, where people live in poverty, in social exclusion”.
Catarina Marques told the diariOnline South Region that “in the Algarve there are 11 thousand children in extreme poverty, most of them children of working parents.
When they impede the right to housing, enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, when money continues to be sent to wars…. All of this is missing April.
The right-wing policies that successive governments have implemented in our country do not allow for the full advances and achievements of the 25th of April”.
“Hundreds of people made a point of being present to defend and affirm April, for the advances and achievements that the Carnation Revolution provided, which were enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, but above all for what they mean today with the demand for its fulfillment, to improve the living and working conditions of all of us”, explains USAL.
Great day of struggle on May 1st
The Union of Unions of the Algarve is already planning the May 1st celebrations, next Wednesday, in a region where “more than 70% of contracts are precarious contracts”, says the union leader.
“We noticed determination and commitment on the part of workers on the issue of wages, regulating working hours and ending precariousness.
We are waiting for a great day of struggle on May 1st, which also represents a great affirmation of the strength of the workers”, he concluded.
