The three largest agricultural associations at the state level, Asaja, COAG and UPA, reactivate this week the calendar of protests that already began with small concentrations last Thursday and Friday, and they do so with daily demonstrations in various parts of Castilla y León, Castilla- La Mancha, Euskadi, Extremadura, Aragón, Andalusia and Madrid, where they plan to block access to Mercamadrid on Wednesday.
Their participation in the mobilizations is in addition to those carried out in Catalonia by Unió de Pagesos, whose intention is to block La Jonquera, Mercabarna and the Port of Tarragona this Tuesday. Unión de Uniones maintains its own calendar of protests in Spain and wants to carry out a large demonstration in Madrid on February 21.
In the case of Asaja, COAG and UPTA, the joint demands are broad, but concrete, and include an “ambitious shock plan” of European, state and regional scope to tackle “the growing frustration and unrest” in the countryside. They want to appease the “suffocating bureaucracy” and put an end to “unfair competition” from third countries, in addition to reaching an agreement with the Ministry of Agriculture to address a simplification of the CAP and measures to address the consequences of the drought and cost increases. . They also demand a reinforcement of the food chain law to put an end to “abnormally low prices”, as is the case with lemons.
This week’s protests will be added to the indefinite strike in solidarity with the primary sector called by the National Platform in Defense of Transport, an organization without official dialogue with the Government, but capable of mobilizing many truckers through social networks, as already demonstrated in March 2022. The strikes were approved on Saturday, in a rally next to the newly created 6F platform, linked to the far right.
It remains to be seen how this call will be followed among autonomous transporters. For now, the Catalan association of self-employed workers and transport SMEs AGTC announced yesterday that it will not support this strike because “the circumstances do not exist to call for a limit pressure measure” like this at this time. AGTC belongs to the national federation of Fenadismer transporters.
The protests continued yesterday, although without major incidents. In Catalonia, they coincided with the weekend return to big cities like Barcelona. During the afternoon, farmers carried out tractor drives on the C-16, between Berga and Guardiola de Berguedà, and on the C-53, between Anglesola and Tornabous, as well as on the C-55, between Solsona and Súria. They consisted of slow marches that caused delays. For today there are road closures and slow tractor marches called in Segrià and l’Urgell. The DGT also reported incidents in Huesca, Seville, Teruel and Toledo.