Margaret Thatcher Square opens to makeovers in Madrid

MADRID’S new Margaret Thatcher Square has been getting unofficial makeovers since its opening last week.

Within hours of the official opening, supporters of Britain’s Hillsborough Justice Campaign plastered the ‘Plaza Margaret Thatcher’ signage with ‘Don’t Buy The Sun sticker’ stickers in protest at the Sun’s support for Thatcher and the paper’s demonisation of the 96 Liverpool soccer fans who lost their lives in the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster.

After council officials rapidly sought to remove any trace of protests, unemployed Madrid youth moved in to ‘rename’ the square “Plaza de la Juventud Exiliada” (“Square of the Exiled Youth”) in protest at the conservative Spanish Government’s austerity regime that has driven so many jobless young people to emigrate.

Madrid Mayor Ana Botella (wife of former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar) unveiled the Plaza Margaret Thatcher on 15 September and described the British premier, who died in April 2013, as one of the past century’s “most extraordinary figures”.

The right-wing mayor also recalled how Thatcher narrowly survived the IRA bomb attack on the British Government at the 1984 Conservative Party conference in Brighton in 1984.

Plaza Margaret Thatcher is located in the upmarket Salamanca district, compared to London’s exclusive Knightsbridge, and is alongside the Plaza Colón and the Paseo de la Castellana, where many Spanish and international companies have their  headquarters.

The plaza is owned by the Banco de Madrid and the luxury Meliá Fénix Hotel but is open to the public.

Sheila Coleman, spokesperson for the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, said:

“I think that most of us will be shocked that there is a square in Madrid named after Margaret Thatcher.

“The fact that people have chosen to put stickers about Hillsborough on the nameplate is a comment on those in Madrid who decided to name it after her

“It shows the loathing of Margaret Thatcher and how people can react when they see her name.”