Since last year, Spanish government, backed up by an absolute majority in Congress and Senate, has been designing a group of measures and law reforms, commonly known by the population as “The Gag Law”. Ultimately, Spanish Congress passed this law on March 26th.

A panel of human rights experts from the United Nations said they were concerned about the Public Security Law and the Penal Code initiatives, which they say will violate Spanish people’s human rights.

One of the objectives of NoSomosDelito (WeAreNotCrime) platform against the Gag Law is public awareness of their message, especially outside Spain. To that end we created the Holographic Protest, the first of its kind in History and also a PR event initiative which through creativity, innovation, and symbolism would attract the attention of worldwide media.

On March 26th, the same day the Gag Law was approved, we launched a teaser website which encouraged users to participate in the demonstration in a virtual way: uploading their pictures, recording their shouts and sending their protest messages. At that time we did not revealed the location where the protest would take place, in order to avoid confrontation with the Spanish authorities.

On April 10th, we projected the protest on a 7x4 meters screen in front of the Parliament building, taking advantage of a filming permit. Media covered the event all around the world, while we documented it in a short film and print ads that were distributed some days later.

On March 26th, the same day the Gag Law was approved, we launched a teaser website which encouraged users to participate in the demonstration by uploading their pictures, recording their shouts and sending their protest messages.

On April 10th, we projected the protest in front of the Parliament, taking advantage of a filming permit. We chose the most difficult place (demonstrations have been banned there), but also the most symbolic. The projected video was produced from previously filmed and website user-contributed material.

We also had a special cabin for NoSomosDelito spokespeople to be interview by media as real-time holograms.

The campaign was a global hit in media all around the world, with an estimated earned media (at the time of writing) of 16 million euros, and a global audience of over 800 million. It was covered by the main national and international press, TV and online media, and made into the front page and editorials of some of them, such as the French newspaper Le Monde, The New York Times and The Boston Globe. It also appeared in countless local and specialized media.

17.857 people participated in the demonstration via the website, although after that moment, participations kept rising over 20.000. The online petition for the withdrawal of the law was signed by more than 330.000 people.

Our protest gathered over 50.000 tweets and about 400 million Twitter impressions.

Ultimately, the protest was debated in a session of the Spanish Congress.