In Spain, a general strike on Wednesday to defend access to housing and purchasing power

Participation in the first general strike in Spain since 2012 is "very important" in certain sectors, the unions claimed on Wednesday November 11. They intend to defend access to housing and purchasing power, less than three weeks before the legislative elections on November 29. The monitoring of this movement, which the employers on the other hand judged to be "weak", will serve as a barometer of social discontent before this very indecisive election.

Parades are expected at the end of the afternoon, notably in Madrid and Barcelona. Across the country, demonstrators, some of whom wore yellow vests, carried out early morning blockade operations on several roads and set up strike pickets around logistics centers. “Against the rent economy,” they claimed on a banner.

Also read In Spain, the political crisis is increasing, after the new deadly train collision The UGT, a large Spanish union, welcomed a "massive" mobilization, its representative Rafael Espartero however describing as "disparate" the follow-up of the strike according to the regions, and mentioning during a press conference a greater participation in the coastal areas of the north, east and south of Spain, faced with "strong pressure" in real estate. “We observe low follow-up to the strike in most sectors and regions but a little higher in more unionized areas and professions,” said the employers’ organization CEOE. The country's main unions called for this strike as a continuation of the protest movement around the housing crisis, born at the end of September after the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old from Madrid, from her apartment, who died a few days later.

Machine-translated from French