The President of the EL, Lothar Bisky, joined the demonstration directly after the meeting of the EL Executive Board of European Left happening in Barcelona, hosted by EUiA.

In the centre of the Spanish capital, on Plaza Mayor, leaders from several parties made speeches in front of thousands of people carrying banners and flags of IU. The first speaker was the regional member of IU in the Assembly of Madrid, Eulalia Vaquero, who affirmed that the austerity measures respond to "the interests of traders and national and international unscrupulous speculators ". She added that the Socialist Government "has signed the most anti-social measures throughout the European Union", and in the direction of "going against the labour and social rights of workers and the rights of citizenship".

Furthermore, the general Secretary of the Communist Party, José Luis Centella, claimed that "there is another way than the one that the Prime Minister has chosen", and which is of "being with people, with workers, raising social alternatives to the crisis". He also referred the forthcoming general strike on September 29, as a movement that “will show that Zapatero was wrong, that he has chosen the wrong path and this country is following the path of the anti-capitalist left, which is not under the orders of the International Monetary Fund, but our people".