Millions of people across Spain have joined the country’s first general strike in 14 years, staging pickets to protest soaring property prices ahead of elections in which the far right could be catapulted to power.
At the center of Wednesday’s 24-hour national shutdown, singularly demanded by tenants’ associations and then supported by workers’ unions, is a reaction against Spain’s worsening housing crisis.
Sandra Mora, from Madrid’s tenants’ union, told broadcaster RNE: “It is extremely important to remind people that we, the workers – who are also tenants or who also pay mortgages – are the ones who have the power to stop production and paralyze the economy. »
While worker unions reported high participation in the strike in several sectors, including 90% in the automotive and port sectors and 82% in waste collection, they said participation was uneven across the country. The strongest support has been reported in coastal regions, such as Catalonia and Andalusia, where the surge in housing costs has been particularly acute.
The Confederation of Tenants’ Associations called the strike a success, saying in a statement that as of midday, around 4 million people had participated.
Many schools and universities have reportedly been closed or operating at a minimum. In Madrid, the union action came on top of an ongoing teachers’ strike that began almost a month ago to demand better working conditions.
In Barcelona, workers set up roadblocks – some with burning tires – as public transport was virtually paralyzed. Pickets were set up shortly after the strike began at midnight, blocking entry to factories, markets and transport hubs. Major roads leading to Barcelona, including the AP-7 highway, were blocked in both directions.
In the evening, a huge demonstration filled the city’s main shopping street, with demonstrators chanting “No more rent! Rent strike now!” and “We paralyzed the country, now we are going to change it.” » Organizers claimed 400,000 people took part in Barcelona, with local police putting the figure at 55,000. At night, small groups of hooded protesters vandalized shops and set trash cans on fire, sparking a series of clashes with police.
In Madrid, government officials estimated that 120,000 people attended despite the pouring rain. Scuffles broke out between pickets and police near the country’s main wholesale market, while thousands of protesters poured onto the city’s main boulevard, temporarily halting traffic. Government officials said more than 50 people had been arrested following minor incidents across the country.
Almudena López, 74, and her husband attended the protest in Madrid with their children in mind. “My son is 43 years old and he still doesn’t own a house because he can’t afford it,” López said. She explained that her son, who works in IT, has to rent a small room in a shared apartment. “When I was young, if you had a college degree, you could get a job with a little savings – which always required sacrifice – but you could get by. It’s not like it is today.”
Bad weather threatened planned afternoon marches after Spain’s national weather agency issued 14 alerts for two storms expected to bring strong winds, heavy rain and rough seas.
Tens of thousands of people nonetheless gathered in more than 90 marches, pouring into squares in Barcelona, Madrid and other cities. Marches in Cádiz, Seville, Cordoba and Huelva had to be canceled due to forecasts of winds of up to 120 km/h. In the evening, a downpour suppressed protests in Barcelona and sent almost everyone home.
Long-simmering frustration over Spain’s soaring property prices came to light in September after 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal was evicted from the house she had lived in for more than seven decades.
As protests and encampments grew across Spain, it highlighted a market where properties were increasingly used as tourist rentals, speculative assets and short-term rentals, driving rents to rise by 80% in a decade while the cost of housing soared by 63%.
Ahead of Wednesday’s strike, Granada’s tenants’ union sought to highlight this connection, traveling to the city’s most touristy areas to vandalize around 300 safes belonging to short-term tenants. “No to capitalists, no to rent seekers, no to their accomplices,” the organization wrote on social networks, publishing photos of safes rendered unusable.
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Housing campaigners and unions have called on the government to intervene more in the market, with tenants’ unions demanding measures such as cracking down on property speculation, eliminating tourist rentals and strengthening tenant protections.
While nominal wages for many people in Spain have risen in recent years, Unai Sordo, president of Spain’s largest union, the Workers’ Commissions, said no amount of collective bargaining would be enough to resolve housing costs which have soared by up to 12% a year. “There is a problem that divides the country, it is the difficulty that many people face in accessing housing,” he told the Cadena Ser channel.
Spain holds general elections on November 29. The early vote was called by socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez after right-wing parties torpedoed emergency legislation aimed at tackling the housing crisis.
Polls suggest the most likely outcome will be a right-wing coalition between the People’s Party and the far-right anti-immigration Vox party.
While Sánchez sought to focus his campaign on social issues, the debate shifted to infrastructure issues after at least 69 people were killed in Spain’s second deadly high-speed rail disaster this year.
This week, Sánchez took advantage of the strike, whose official slogan is “Wages. Accommodation. Price,” to shine the spotlight, releasing a video in which he praised developments such as the eight-hour workday and national health insurance and attributed them to the labor movement and the right to strike. “It wasn’t easy, but they changed Spain,” Sánchez said.
His position contrasted sharply with the rhetoric of right-wing parties who, on the eve of the strike, characterized it as an effort by unions to help Sánchez stay in power.
This week, Madrid region right-wing leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso accused strikers of “taking citizens hostage.” Ayuso, who was asked this year about her administration’s decision to spend €6.3m (£5.4m) of public funds on a residential penthouse to be used as a temporary office, added: “Everything is chaotic, everything is blocked. »
While recognizing that union activity was a constitutional right, she also attacked what she described as the “union representative mafia.” and said she had taken her frustrations to Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who polls suggest will be the next prime minister. “I’m going to confess something,” she told Spanish television. “I spoke to Feijóo and said: ‘Promise me this rubbish will end.’”
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