SPAIN erupted on Saturday as thousands of workers and youth poured onto the streets of 50 cities demanding action triggered by the eviction of an 87 year old woman from her home last month.
The eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, who is disabled and had lived in her home for 71 years, proved to be the ignition point of a housing crisis that has developed across Spain as social housing has declined at an alarming rate with estimates putting it at just 1.5% to 3.3% of the housing stock.
Into this vacuum created by the dearth of publicly owned social housing has stepped the private equity companies.
Maricarmen was forcibly evicted from her home after she was unable to pay the massive rent increase by her landlord, a private investment company, that hiked her rent up by 230%.
The protests that erupted from the initial outburst following her removal last month saw a massive escalation on Saturday following the defeat of the government’s proposed emergency measures designed to heads off the storm of working class anger – anger that was in no way placated by the desperate decision of the private company to reverse its eviction notice fearful of the revolutionary anger it had unleashed.
On Friday, Spain’s coalition government, led by left centrist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, put forward two decrees which included a range of measures that banned evictions until 2030, tax increases for tourist apartments, and banning investment companies, or vulture funds as they are called in Spain, from buying up housing.
Sanchez’s coalition was defeated in the vote by a coalition of right-wing parties leading to hundreds of thousands of workers and youth taking to the streets across Spain.
In a statement issued following the rejection of the measures, the Confederation of Tenants’ unions called on people to take part in Saturday’s demonstration saying: ‘They’re not going to stop us’ before continuing: ‘In the face of a parliament that is out of touch, the answer is more organisation and mobilisation. The next step: a general strike.’
The Madrid Tenants’ Union said that although the government’s proposed measures were insufficient their rejection ‘exacerbates the housing crisis which is costing the working class their lives.’ And repeated the demand for a general strike over the housing crisis.
In Madrid, 500,000 responded by taking to the streets of the capital holding banners reading: ‘There will be no peace for rentism’ and ‘I study to have a future, not to have a tiny apartment’ while demonstrators shook keys and chanted: ‘We have the keys of all the city’.
Meanwhile, France is being convulsed by an uprising of school youth with over 500 schools closed as students protest against the intolerable conditions they are forced to study in.
Demonstrations over extreme teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and crumbling school buildings spread across the entire country last week forcing the French trade unions to call for a day of action tomorrow in support of student revolt.
The CGT and Force Ouvriere trade union federations have called for their members to back the day of action.
School students are standing up to the brutality of the French state and its police force, and winning the overwhelming support of teachers and public servants who identify with their fight for a decent education denied to them by a French government that inflicts savage cuts to social funding in order to slash the country’s huge national debt – which is approaching a record 3.6 trillion euros.
What is clear, is that a revolutionary tide is sweeping Europe and the UK with young people, who are the most revolutionary section of the working class, in the vanguard.
This mass movement will not be diverted by the trade union leaders calling one day of action, but is increasingly demanding that the next step is forcing the unions to call indefinite general strikes and go forward for the working class to take power by bringing down their capitalist governments and bring in workers’ governments and socialism.
Dumping capitalism and advancing to socialism is the only way forward for workers and youth today.
