The tractors head towards Madrid. After four days of rallies in various parts of Spain, with road closures that yesterday affected five autonomous communities, the farmers are now threatening to take the heavy agricultural vehicles to the Spanish capital and star in various forms of protest. The first rallies in the city begin today and will continue next week in different locations. Logistics and distribution remain on alert.
The protests left one seriously injured in Valle de Mena, Burgos. The Civil Guard arrested a 60-year-old tractor driver who was participating in the farmers’ protests. The protester placed the vehicle on the road to prevent a car from overtaking him and the car collided with the tractor. The injured, aged around 30, had to be taken to the hospital with a mobile ICU.
The recently formed Plataforma 6-F, linked to the ultra-right, has called on farmers, transporters and workers in general to try to paralyze the center of Madrid on Saturday. Organized by messaging apps and social networks, they have asked farmers to leave the protests in their provinces over the weekend and, if they can, head to the Spanish capital. They want to block the access roads to the city, as they have already done in the last few days on the A-3 or the A-42, and have been summoned at 5 pm in the vicinity of the Civitas Metropolitano stadium to vote “by show of hands” if the protests continue. They have also invited hunters and fishermen. There are rumors that they then considered directing the rally towards the PSOE’s federal headquarters, on Carrer Ferraz.
The alternative carrier platform could also be added, which already managed to paralyze logistics hubs in March 2022 and which today votes on whether to join the stoppages. The representatives of this organization managed to meet with the then Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, two years ago.
Today’s call in Madrid has not been communicated and the Ministry of the Interior has activated a special device to intensify access controls in Madrid. National Police officers will participate, including the police intervention unit (UIP), the Civil Guard, the municipal police and members of Samur, the Fire Brigade and the General Directorate of Traffic. The Spanish Government has assured that it will guarantee free movement on the roads.
The field’s professional organizations, Asaja, COAG and UPA, will also direct their protests to Madrid over the next week, so the protest will grow. On Monday they called a tractor-trailer on the M-404 road, a ring road in the south of the Spanish capital. But yesterday they took a step further and called on farmers to activate “slow marches of tractors on regional roads of the Community of Madrid”.
In addition, the same organizations, which are acting at all times in “unity of action”, announced a new rally on Wednesday, February 14, with the aim of “blocking Mercamadrid”, the main food distribution center of the city, both for supermarkets and for shops and hotels. This same day, the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, has convened the plenary session of the Observatory of the Food Chain. It is one of the movements of the Central Executive to try to respond to the demands of farmers and ranchers: to activate this body, which has the responsibility of evaluating the operation of the Food Chain law, approved during the legislature.
In Catalonia, farmers also plan to “block Mercabarna” on Tuesday, in addition to La Jonquera and the port of Tarragona. According to RAC1, the tractors will make “slow marches” from various points in the Catalan territory to these three points, a strategy similar to the one used when they entered Barcelona.
The large supermarket chains are on the alert for possible more serious problems for the activity due to the protests in the countryside. So far, companies have only reported occasional delays. The most conflicting point for this sector is Antequera, in Malaga, where farmers again blocked a Mercadona logistics center yesterday. The representative organizations of transporters remain, for their part, on the sidelines of the protests, and demand freedom for truck drivers and delivery people to carry out their work.
Since the beginning of the farmers’ protests in Spain, on Tuesday, the security forces have arrested around twenty demonstrators, identified 8,000 to be sanctioned and filed 3,035 administrative complaints, according to the balance sheet of the Ministry of the Interior .
