Spanish movie director Pedro Almodovar joined tens of thousands of people in a march through the Spanish capital to protest the continuing war in Iraq and to demand the closure of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Chanting "No to War" and "The People of Madrid with the People of Iraq," the protesters marched along a near 4km route from central Cibeles Plaza to Atocha square.
Organizers of Saturday's event estimated the crowd numbered 400,000, but several eyewitnesses put the attendance at less than a quarter of that figure.
City police did not provide a crowd estimate.
Other rallies were held around Spain, with some 2,000 gathering in Barcelona and 500 taking part in Seville, news reports said.
Political party representatives, union leaders and people from the acting and literary world took part in the Madrid protest.
Almodovar told the private Europa Press news agency he was on the demonstration to protest "the barbarities they have been committing in Iraq for the past four years."
"We're here for peace and for the closure of Guantanamo because it is a disgrace for civilization," he said.
The protests were called by some 50 organizations, among them Spain's two main unions and the country's main political parties, but not the right-wing leading opposition Popular Party.
"I'm against all wars but especially this one. This is terrorism on a world scale," said Gaudencio Garcia, 74, who traveled 45km from the small farming town of Azuqueca de Henares for the Madrid protest.
Spain was the scene of major anti-war protests in the run-up to and during the first months of the war, with demonstrations in Barcelona and Madrid attracting between 1 million and 2 million people each.
Former Popular Party prime minister Jose Maria Aznar was one of the strongest supporters of the US' decision to invade Iraq.
The party was voted out of office in elections in March 2004, days after 191 people were killed in bomb attacks claimed by Islamic radicals to avenge the presence of the country's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After winning the election, Socialist party leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero immediately set about fulfilling an electoral pledge to bring Spanish troops in Iraq home, claiming it was an illegal war.
Meawhile, in Istanbul, Turkey, more than 3,000 people protested the war in Iraq in two separate demonstrations.
More than 2,000 anti-war activists marched on the Asian side of the city that is bisected by the Bosporus strait, carrying signs that read: "Bush go home" and "We are all Iraqis."
Close to 1,000 other demonstrators, most of them members of far-left parties or groups, held a separate protest in a main square on the European side of Istanbul.
In Athens, Greece, about 1,000 people marched peacefully from central Syntagma Square to the US embassy to call for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
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