By John Ensor • Published: 12 Feb 2024 • 11:57
Farmers protest near Madrid: Credit: La_COAG/X
As the wave of farmer and rancher mobilisations sweeps across Spain, the situation looks set to intensify as they have now been joined by transport workers.
On Monday, February 12, the leading agricultural associations in Spain, Asaja, UPA, and COAG, kicked off tractor rallies on the seventh day of protests, focusing on Madrid with a convoy setting off from Titulcia at 9:00 am, navigating the M-404 highway towards Torrejon de Velasco.
The tractor rallies in Madrid and Alicante mark just the beginning of a week filled with planned strikes and protests. On Tuesday, actions will move to La Rioja and Zaragoza, coinciding with the International Agricultural Machinery Fair.
Catalonia will witness protests at key locations like Mercabarna, the Port of Tarragona, and along the N-2 near Figueres.
By Wednesday, the focus will shift to the Mercamadrid facilities, initiating a series of protests across seven provinces including Toledo and Sevilla.
Meanwhile, the transport sector’s Platform 6F and the Platform for the Defence of the Transport Sector have initiated an indefinite national strike, aiming to halt activity on highways.
This action began near the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium, drawing around 200 participants and causing disruptions in several cities over the weekend.
The agricultural community is calling for prompt measures from the government to tackle the many challenges faced by rural areas.
These include the impacts of drought and the conflict in Ukraine, fluctuating prices and soaring production costs, and the need for simplification and flexibility within the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, alongside labour and social security concerns.
With a series of mobilisations spanning from Alicante to Algeciras, and a significant transporter strike underway, Spain’s agricultural and transport sectors are united in their call for change.
As the protests continue to unfold, Spanish citizens watch closely as they await the government’s response to these pressing rural issues.
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Originally from Doncaster, Yorkshire, John now lives in Galicia, Northern Spain with his wife Nina. He is passionate about news, music, cycling and animals.
You´re not exactly telling the full story as to what the farmers are protesting about. If you look at the placards that many of the Spanish have on their tractors when they are protesting, they are protesting against the Agenda 30, which is basically seeking to take centralised control of all resources including food production. it is putting heavy restrictions on the way that farmers manage their land and is forcing farmers out of business in many countries. I just received a link to a government initiative from the UK where the UK government is offering farmers a lump sum to leave farming or retire from farming. Doesn´t that seem a little worrying to most people? Think about what that means for the future of food availability and production. I don´t see how it can be anything other than sinister and it needs to be stopped
In a previous job in the UK I was the General Manager of a company which has its head office in rural Surrey and we owned a great deal of land which was recognised as farm land. We rented it out as stables and grazing for the horses and were then able to claim a significant amount of money from the UK Government for ‘set aside’ because it wasn’t being used for agriculture! That was well-pre Brexit.
That´s interesting, but this is slightly different, as basically it´s saying that the land can´t be used for any agricultural purpose other than being planted as woodland. Just the simple idea that they are encouraging farmers to give up farming, I think, is pretty worrying. I don´t go along with the idea that food can be grown in labs or that we should all being eating insect proteins or lab grown “meat”. It smacks of more and more control, as if the governments has control over food production, then we are absolutely at their mercy. People who grown their own food, produce their own electricity , have a private water supply etc are more likely to stand up against a government that is behaving badly…..because they don´t rely on the government to live
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