The crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has aggravated the problem of rising prices for raw materials, energy and fuel. The bad economic situation had been hitting some sectors of the Spanish economy for some time, such as carriers. But now the country is being one of the hardest hit by inflation. Some projections estimate a rate of 6.8% for this year. On average, each Spaniard will pay 2,666 euros more in 2022 as a result of the increase in fuel prices and the shopping basket.
If the war drags on, inflation could shoot up to 10%. This economic situation constitutes the perfect storm for a growing social discontent. But above all it is the fuse of a protest movement: the yellow vests.
The context. The Government is aware of all this, which already shudders just thinking about the magnitude of the explosion that may come upon it. Filling the tank is a feat. The electricity bill makes your hair stand on end. We have an ideal Molotov cocktail to be shaken by those who see populism as its only defenders. In Moncloa they have seen the recent ordeal of Justin Trudeauwho has been able to verify how Canadian truckers spend them.
strikes. There is no doubt that when the logistics sector stops, the world stops. And that is why the government is interested in rooting out a movement that is beginning to look more and more like that of the French yellow vests. Although the main transport associations have not supported the strikes, the truth is that their incidence is affecting the ability of suppliers to meet their deadlines. And if the situation continues, shortages will be a reality.
We have already been able to see strikers wearing yellow vests spotting the protests organized by the strikers of the Transport Platform. Also violent actions and barricades protected, ironically, by the legal reform with which the Government itself promoted the decriminalization of picketing less than a year ago.
Who are we talking about? That Solidarity is the promoter of the protests reveals that the Regime’s unions are totally out of the game. UGT and CCOO have acted with the same pulse as the party in government. They will call demonstrations against the rise in electricity prices on the 23rd. In the wake of Vox. And also from the Popular Party, which supported the representatives of the rural environment this Sunday in Madrid.
The Platform for the Defense of Road Transport has been cutting the chain of food transmission for weeks. The shortage, despite the Interior’s attempts to avoid it, is already being felt in supermarkets. The social machinery is so perfectly interwoven that the spark on a highway in Lugo can set the spirits of consumers in Seville on fire.
The Government’s Response. The Government’s idea is to reach an agreement with the National Road Transport Committee (CNTC), but since this organization does not support the strikes, the hand held out for negotiation will be accompanied by a more forceful action by the police forces and the Civil Guard against the organizers (especially with the pickets).
From Moncloa they describe the strikers as belonging to the “extreme right” in order to win the battle of the story. The economic vice president, Nadia Calviño, is the one who has taken the reins of the negotiations and guarantees the free movement of goods, the safety of carriers who do not support the mobilization and a drop in the price of fuel, something that the president promised but whose application has been postponed until March 29. Meanwhile, in France, a transport aid plan worth 400 million euros has been approved.
Remember Paris. The brutal protests that put Paris in check in November 2018 have come back to us. Tens of thousands of people then took to the streets to denounce the increase in the price of gasoline and to oppose the tax on diesel that the Government of Emmanuel Macron intended to impose. The concentrations, taken over by citizens with reflective vests that earned them the nickname “yellow vests”, ended up extending their demands to more general demands for social justice.
But here rural Spain comes into play. In Spain, this fracture is even more radicalized, if possible, as the electoral translation of the territorial gap between the countryside and the city has shown. The discomforts of rural Spain have already found their loudspeaker in the forces of the Emptied Spain. In these times of serious discontent with skyrocketing energy and fuel prices, it seems that we are once again facing the problem of a Spain that considers itself second-class, aggrieved and abandoned by public authorities.
When in 2020 farmers took to the streets of Spain with their tractors to protest low prices and wages, the gap between the center and the periphery was definitively evident.
There’s a solution? The truth is that the Executive has little room for action because it lacks budgetary and legal capacity. The announcement of the end of the purchase program of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the start of rate hikes in the eurozone they are going to force Spain to make a fiscal adjustment; and in terms of energy, the only option on the table is gas price intervention.
Image: GTRES