Tractorcades of Spanish farmers shut many roads, highways, cities, and ports in more than 20 provinces of the country today, in what is widely recognized as just the first action in a wave of protests that will follow. Today’s action was organized in a matter of weeks by a network of farmers who mobilized outside the established organizations. The number and size of the protests caught many Spaniards by surprise.
Access to the Port of Malaga was cut off, as was the city of Murcia; key highways around the capital, Madrid were blocked. Some protests lasted only a few hours, most all day. Some rode down city streets, most targeted highways. Altogether 7,000 tractors were mobilized in the province of Castille and Leon alone. Continuing actions are planned until the government yields.
The leaders of this wildcat strike issued a Manifesto a few days before the protests, titled “Primary Sector: Platform F-6”, which warns that Spanish agriculture “is in a critical state; the countryside is dying; the abandonment of farms is growing and there is no generational replacement. The prices of many agricultural products are usually below production costs and the law that was amended to prevent this selling at a loss, the `Food Chain Law,’ is just a trick of [Agriculture] Minister Planas.”
The declaration explicitly attacks the EU’s Green Deal and denounces the EU’s unjust free trade treaties which favor cartel interests. The initiative calls for a parity price and a European policy in general for all labor forces of the productive sectors. It blasts the “Green Deal” fraud:
“Europe, in its self-destruction, embracing more than anyone else the globalist agenda 2030 and specifically its misnamed Sustainable Objective ‘Climate Action,’ has designed the `Green Deal’ `Green Pact’ and within it have approved, the `Farm to Table Strategy,’” which is leading to farmland being abandoned and increasing dependence on imports….
“Therefore, in the face of the passivity of our agricultural organizations, farmers, ranchers and fishermen from all over Spain, in a spontaneous way, have united to mobilize peacefully going out with our tractors and vehicles to the roads of Spain next Feb. 6,” they proclaim. The protests are to continue until the Spanish government hears them out and meets their demands that it tell the EU Council to change its policies.
