Are you interested in a country called Spain, that it is much more than bullfighters and flamenco? Do you feel like knowing something more about its culture, people, idiosyncrasy or its current situation? Please, come in

Thanks to these friends for following

Saturday 2 October 2010

GENERAL STRIKE OF (CHINESE?) WORKERS IN SPAIN


Last Wednesday a General Strike took place in Spain, seven years after the last one (*). The two main Workers Unions (CC.OO. and U.G.T.) summoned people to go on strike, trying to flare tempers in the prior days, but the truth is that people in Spain is very disappointed with the main Unions.

People think (very rightly and pertinent)  that Unions have acted very bad and very late and that they should summoned people to go on strike two years ago, when things here were getting from bad to worse and the unemployment started rising dangerously. In this country people feels like not giving a damn about politics and politicians.

And in fact daily life in my city, Madrid, was very quiet and really without incidents (apart from some caused by pickets in the early morning trying to prevent buses to get out from the depots). Where you could really see the effects of the strike were on Chinese bars and shops, all of them were closed!!




(*)   SHORT SUMMARY ABOUT OTHER GENERAL STRIKES IN SPAIN

- 1978 (Adolfo Suarez – U.C.D. in the Government): protesting against the high
   unemployment.
- 1985 (Felipe Gonzalez - P.S.O.E. in the Government): protesting against Pensions Law.
- 1988 (Felipe Gonzalez - P.S.O.E. in the Government): protesting against Youth 
    Employment Law and “rubbish  contracts”.
- 1991 (Felipe Gonzalez - P.S.O.E. in the Government): protesting against Gulf’s war.
- 1992 (Felipe Gonzalez - P.S.O.E. in the Government): protesting against layoffs 
    in unemployment benefits.
- 1994 (Felipe Gonzalez - P.S.O.E. in the Government): protesting against labour reform.
- 2002 (Jose Maria Aznar - P.P. in the Government): protesting against labour reform.
- 2003 (Jose Maria Aznar - P.P. in the Government): protesting against Irak war.
- 2010 (Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero - P.S.O.E. in the Government): protesting against 
   labour reform, which involves dismissing reductions and more precarious employment.

2 comments:

  1. I was very happy that it didn't effect us too much. We were all worried that the school buses wouldn't come, but they arrived right on time...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes Ashleigh, luckily in the end things weren't as difficult as many of us thought they would be! Regards and nice weekend for you and your family!

    ReplyDelete

Welcome and thank you very much for taking the time to leave the gift of your comment. Have a nice day!

Bienvenido y muchas gracias por dejarme el regalo de tu comentario. ¡Que tengas un gran dia!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...