As Europe slides back into recession, the crisis is far from over. From London to Athens, Moscow to Madrid, millions of ordinary people are paying the price of the bosses’ crisis.  Chris reports on the latest outbreak of mass resistance on the streets of Spain.

Tens of thousands of young people protested in Spain last week. The effects of the crisis have been particularly harsh in spain. With overall unemployment at 20%, youth unemployment has reached 50%. Yet over the past year, the spanish workers and youth movements have shown they have the potential to reverse and stop the punishment inflicted on ordinary working people.

Last week in Valencia, Barcelona, Madrid and Alicante and many other towns, demonstrations of tens of thousands of students marched through the streets occupying buildings, attacking banks and disrupting traffic. These demonstrations had largely been sparked by police attacks in Valencia on a school students’ protest the week before in which 43 were arrested. But the issues that are driving people’s anger range from the high unemployment to the privatisation of education. The youth were joined by tens of thousands of civil servants who rallied in the Basque country and in Barcelona.

Spain has seen dozens of strikes and protests against austerity over the last year, with 8 mass demonstrations in Madrid since September alone. Last summer saw a mass movement of youth, the “Indignados” occupying squares across the country in an attempt to create a popular grass-roots democracy.The dominance of anarchist and autonomist methods of organising was key to the failure of this social movement to unite with the labour movement.

Police brutality in Valencia

The hostility towards trade unions and reformist ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ parties, because of their history of betraying and selling out workers’ struggles, was expressed by a refusal to try and co-ordinate resistance with the official leaders of the working-class movement. As such, the Indignados’ mass assemblies were not decision-making bodies uniting different sections of struggle on the basis of democratic unity but instead were forums for abstract debate. They also refused to elect any kinds of representative or accountable leaderships. The result was that struggles were disorganised and uncoherent.

Nonetheless these assemblies were incredibly inspiring and contained huge potential, the fact that they withered away should not be seen as a major defeat but rather a need to rethink questions of tactics and strategy.

The events of last week show that the militancy and determination of the Spanish working class, and the youth especially, has not been dampened. The election of the conservative Popular Party (PP), the attacks on education and the huge unemployment rate (around 50% for young people) has created an explosive atmosphere. The new PP government of Prime Minister Rajoy hasn’t even proposed its first austerity budget and already it is coming under huge pressure from popular opposition.  This pressure will have no doubt increased on news that Spain’s unions have announced the intention to call a general strike on the 29^th of March or the 19^th of April. Just like the violent reaction of the police to the British student movement, the Spanish government’s response to the student protests exposed their insecurity; they made a great effort to demonise demonstrators as thugs on TV and in the papers whilst at the same time using the police to violently break up the protests.

Fascist legacy

Spain had a fascist dictatorship for over 3 decades and it only ended with the death of Franco in 1975. His regime was not otherthrown by revolutionary means but rather reformed into a constitutional monarchy like Britain by his successors in 1975-8. This has meant that many of those who supported or where in office under Franco not only went unpunished but many are still influential in Spain and they do not tolerate radical protest or industrial action. This explains the brutal attacks on demonstrations and the use of fascist-era trade union laws to break up a strike of air traffic controllers last year. It also explains the recent dismissal of left-wing judge Baltasar Garzon who was made famous for daring to issue a warrant for the arrest of Chile’s brutal ex-dictator Pinochet and for attempting to investigate the murders of hundreds of thousands of Spanish people murdered and dumped in mass graves during the Spanish Civil War.

The recent protests show that the Spanish working class and youth will not sit idly by and watch the government attack its standard of living and dismantle the welfare state. But if the mistakes of last year are to be remedied then it is necessary to apply a different strategy. The union leaders’ decision to call a general strike is promising but like in this country the leaders see it is a token gesture to be used as a bargaining tool for the negotiating table rather than as a weapon against the bosses. They are calling the strike mainly over labour laws that have already been enacted, these laws make it easier to make workers redundant and it is important to fight them.

We think that strikes should be under the control of the grassroots workers who will be losing their pay and risking their jobs. This means making the leaders of unions accountable to elected delegates’ committees representing ordinary union members. Only in this way can workers ensure the strike remains under their control. 

Valencia, February 29

The youth movement can be an important ally in the fight against the government, they can radicalise the workers and encourage them to take militant action, such as defending protests and pickets from the police rather than backing down from the threat of state violence. They can also bring their ideas of popular democracy to the workers movement by encouraging workers to organise in their unions and reinvigorate internal democracy through the creation of grassroots committees to challenge the union bureaucracy.

The youth movements need to break from the libertarians’ sectarian hostility to the unions and recognise their allies in the millions of exploited and angry workers who fill the unions’ ranks. The occupations of the ‘Indignados’ was an inspiration to the world and largely inspired the Occupy movement but its limitations need to be recognised. If the youth are to become a force capable of uniting with workers and stopping the cuts then we cannot make popular democracy an end in itself. There can be no genuine democracy when our demonstrations are attacked by the police, and millions are left to rot with no work.

Only a movement which rests on the common action of the youth, unions, unemployed and women can turn the tide in the struggle against austerity. The democratic principles of the youth must be united with the organised economic power of the working class in order to build a movement capable of victory.

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