Latest. The strike day closed with mass evening marches in the rain. Spanish authorities put turnout in Madrid at about 120,000, and Barcelona city officials counted 55,000 behind a banner reading “Let’s bring down the rent!”, with tens of thousands more marching in Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Zaragoza, Bilbao, Pamplona, Santander, Valladolid and Burgos, Deutsche Welle reported. Most protests were peaceful; in Barcelona small groups of young men smashed storefront windows, set fire to dumpsters and shot fireworks at police after the march. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was quoted by Spanish media calling housing “a constitutional right that must be defended”, while opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo called the strike “an absurdity, a frivolity and an insult to the millions of workers who lose a day’s wages”.
Spain’s first general strike in 14 years began at midnight on Wednesday, a 24-hour walkout called by the UGT and CCOO unions to demand government action on housing. The unions reported widespread early participation, with stoppages they put at 90 percent in the automotive and port sectors, while public transport was disrupted, some flights in and out of Spain were affected, and businesses, factories and shops scaled back or closed across the eurozone’s fourth largest economy.
The strike was called after the September eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old Madrid woman who died days later, turned a housing shortage into mass protests. Average rents have almost doubled in ten years; a 50 square metre apartment in Madrid cost an average of 1,170 euros a month in October, close to half the average gross monthly salary of about 2,460 euros, and the central bank estimates a deficit of about 750,000 homes.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the November 29 snap election after parliament blocked his housing package, and he has backed the strike as a call for a common response on housing rather than a protest against his government. The opposition Popular Party, which leads in the polls, and the far right Vox have criticised it as an election related protest. Strikers said police used pepper spray outside Madrid’s Mercamadrid wholesale market, where at least 13 people sought medical attention.