More than five million women across Spain have observed a mass strike to protest against pay inequality and highlight continued discrimination and gender violence as the country marked International Women's Day.
Unions reported that 5.3 million women observed walkouts in what was the first nationwide feminist strike in a country where women earn on average 22.9 per cent less and where 924 women have been killed by domestic violence since 2003.
"If we stop, the world stops," read the manifesto for the strike as published by the 8th of March Commission, a feminist organisation. "Women all over the world are called to the feminist strike."
Thousands of people were expected to join a march through Spain's capital Madrid on Thursday evening, while over 200 other demonstrations were planned for towns and cities across the nation.
Major trade unions and international organisations such as the United Nations have backed the feminist strike and called for limited strike action across several industries, including transport.
"Achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls is the unfinished business of our time, and the greatest human rights challenge in our world," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement.
The mayors of Madrid and Barcelona, Manuela Carmena and Ada Colau, have both put themselves firmly in support of the strike action and Madrid's city hall is to be illuminated in purple light to show solidarity with the marches Thursday evening.
The governing right-wing Popular Party and the smaller centre-right Citizens Party recognised the necessity for gender equality but opposed the strike as a means to achieve it.
"Happy Women's Day. The government is working for real equality: we have to count on the collaboration to afford women the same societal conditions as men," Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy wrote on Twitter.
