Spain’s First General Strike in 14 Years Halts Barcelona Transport
Millions joined Spain's first general strike in 14 years over housing costs. Public transport nearly stopped in Barcelona and 27 people were arrested.
Millions of workers across Spain joined a 24-hour general strike on Wednesday, the country’s first in 14 years, according to The Guardian. The stoppage was backed by the largest unions and by tenants’ associations, and its central demand is action on the housing crisis. In Barcelona, public transport came close to a standstill.
Government officials said that by midday 27 people had been arrested over minor incidents across the country.
What happened in Barcelona and elsewhere
Workers in Barcelona blocked roads, some of them with burning tyres, while buses and trains barely ran. In Madrid, scuffles broke out between pickets and police near the main wholesale market, and demonstrators pulled large recycling bins into streets to stop traffic.
Unions reported high turnout in several sectors: 90% in the automotive industry and at ports, and 82% in waste collection. They also said participation varied from place to place. Support was strongest in coastal regions such as Catalonia and Andalusia, where housing costs have climbed hardest. Many schools and universities were reported closed or running at minimum capacity. In Madrid the strike came on top of a teachers’ dispute that began nearly a month ago over working conditions.
Spain’s state weather agency issued 14 alerts for two storms bringing strong winds, rough seas and heavy rain, which hung over the afternoon marches planned in cities across the country.
Why housing is at the centre
The strike’s official slogan is “Salaries. Housing. Prices”. Frustration over housing burst into public view in September, after the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the home where she had lived for more than seven decades. Protests and encampments followed across Spain.
The Guardian describes a market in which homes are increasingly used as tourist lets, speculative assets and short-term rentals. Rents rose by 80% within a decade, it reports, while the cost of homes went up by 63%. Tenants’ unions want limits on evictions of vulnerable people, rent freezes and a crackdown on short-term rentals.
Sandra Mora of the Madrid Tenants’ Union told the broadcaster RNE that workers, who are also renters or mortgage holders, can bring the economy to a standstill. Unai Sordo, head of the Workers’ Commissions union, told Cadena Ser radio that access to housing is the issue dividing the country.
Before the strike, the tenants’ union of Granada went through that city’s most touristed areas and vandalised about 300 lockboxes used by short-term rentals, posting photos of the disabled boxes online.
What this means for the election campaign
Spain votes in a general election on Nov. 29. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, a Socialist, called the early vote after right-wing parties blocked emergency legislation meant to address the housing crisis. Polls suggest the likeliest result is a right-wing coalition between the People’s Party and the far-right, anti-immigration Vox party.
Sánchez had been trying to keep the campaign on social issues, but attention moved to infrastructure after at least 69 people died in Spain’s second deadly high-speed rail disaster this year. This week he used the strike to shift the focus back, posting a video that credited the labour movement and the right to strike for gains such as the eight-hour workday and national health insurance. “It wasn’t easy, but they changed Spain,” he said.
Parties on the right had said ahead of the strike that unions were trying to keep Sánchez in office. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the right-wing leader of the Madrid region, accused strikers of “holding citizens hostage” and said everything was gridlocked. She acknowledged that union activity is a constitutional right. She also said she told People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whom polls suggest will be the next prime minister, to promise that the disruption will end.
Source: The Guardian
