SPAIN’S two largest unions led their first general strike since 2012 yesterday, as workers set up picket lines through storms to demand higher wages and affordable housing.
Called by the UGT and CCOO alongside the CGT, CNT and tenants’ unions under the slogan ‘Wages, housing, prices’, the 24-hour stoppage reached 90 per cent at ports and in the automotive sector, 85 per cent in the meat industry and 82 per cent in waste collection in the early hours, the unions said.
They reported total stoppages at Volkswagen’s plant in Navarre and SEAT’s in Barcelona and a 10 per cent fall in electricity demand.
‘There is no salary that can cope with the price of housing in this country,’ UGT general secretary Pepe Álvarez said.
The unions are demanding wage rises of 4 to 7 per cent, a minimum wage increase of at least 7 per cent in 2027, shorter working hours and government intervention in the housing market.
Tenants’ unions are demanding indefinite rental contracts, the expropriation of homes held by vulture funds, more social housing and an end to speculative buying.
Spain is short of about 750,000 homes, a deficit set to exceed one million by 2028, according to the central bank.
The average rent of 1,176 euros is equivalent to about 98.7 per cent of a young person’s average monthly salary, according to the Youth Council of Spain.
‘I’m 36 years old and I still can’t move out on my own,’ said Jesus Gonzalez, a hospital IT worker in Madrid.
‘Rents just keep going up, house prices just keep going up, and it’s simply impossible.’
The strike grew out of weeks of protest after the eviction on 23 September of María del Carmen Abascal, 87, from the Madrid flat that had been her home for seven decades.
She died two weeks later. These protests and parliament’s rejection last month of government decrees to curb evictions and rent pressures prompted Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call the snap election.
Police fired pepper spray at pickets at the Mercamadrid wholesale market, arresting one, and 13 people needed medical attention, CCOO said.
The unions will file a criminal complaint over a ‘disproportionate’ police operation using tear gas and batons that injured 20 protesters.
