What was claimed
A video shows a protest in Spain against the effects of WEF globalism.
Our verdict
This protest happened in Madrid on 12 February but was about the healthcare system in the region and not about the World Economic Forum.
‘WEF protest’ in Spain was actually over health system
20 February 2023
A video with over 200,000 views on TikTok claims to show a protest in Spain against “the effects of WEF globalism”. The same video has also been shared on Facebook.
But the video actually shows a protest about healthcare that occurred on 12 February. According to reports, hundreds of thousands of people joined the protest. Reuters said the demonstration was against what protesters “say is the destruction of the public health system by the conservative regional government”. Pictures from the day show protest signs saying things like “How many more have to die?”
We often fact check claims made about the World Economic Forum (or WEF) and its Great Reset initiative. Miscaptioned videos or images of protests are a common form of online misinformation. It’s always a good idea to check the validity of pictures and images before reposting them. You can read more about how to tell whether a video is reliable in our guide.
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How do we know when the video was taken?
The watermark in the bottom left of the video says it was taken in Madrid on 12 February 2023. Specifically the video appears to have been taken of the Plaza Cibeles in Madrid, a common site for protests.
We can also tell from objects in the video that it was taken on that date.
Photographs of the same square during the 12 February healthcare protest show two broadcast vans (one white and one blue and white) to the bottom right which are also visible in part of the video on TikTok. Both vans can be seen from a slightly different high up angle during the protest, and in pictures and videos from the ground.
This was the third such protest on healthcare in the region in recent months.
Full Fact could find no mention of the WEF in news coverage about the protest.
Other versions of the same video online correctly state that it was a protest about the healthcare system.
Image courtesy of Álvaro Bernal
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because it doesn’t show a protest in Spain against the WEF, but about the healthcare system.