Una Huelga General

Yesterday was the 29^th which meant that it was Huelga General (general strike) day in Madrid. It had been advertised for a while. We’d first seen banners and signs about a month ago when we were traveling in Andalusia. Since it was planned for the 29^th, it began on the evening of the 28^th of course, with a lot of noise, marching and massive amounts of stickering of windows and doors. The purpose of the strike was to demonstrate to the government that the people of Spain were none to pleased with the American style, Bush like bank bail outs (it’s come to my attention that a lot of people in the US seem to think this was an Obama choice which seems interesting since it was put in place under the Bush administration). In addition, they are protesting the loss of their benefits and the attempt to raise the retirement age to 67.

Like many things in Spain, it didn’t begin early. We went out around 12:00 to see what was

happening and found that while there were piles of trash and lots of stickers, there was little in the way of impressive striking. Since we live a mere block from where the congress meets, we thought we might check out the protests there. They were meager and seemed rather half hearted, and we were somewhat disappointed since we had thought that in a socialist country during the first Huelga General in 8 years we might see something impressive.

With that in mind we headed in to the Puerta del Sol where there were more protests happening in various places. Most groups of protesters were no more than 50 or so in size and we left rather confused. We spent some time counting businesses and after counting 20 of them found that 6 were closed and 14 open and determined roughly 40% of businesses were observing the strike, a number we found to be fairly anemic.

Unimpressed by the Huelga General, we dubbed it merely a “huelgita” and returned home.

Later in the afternoon around 5:30 we decided to go out for a walk. There wasn’t anything to do and we’d decided that since we were foreigners (albeit with great sympathy for the strikers) we would not be buying anything or going to any stores that were open on the day of a national strike, we could at least go for a paseo. So we struck out and decided to head in a direction unknown to us. Soon enough we had discovered a new part of our neighborhood and the Huelgote.

The strike had metastasized. As we neared one of the main thoroughfares we saw it was completely blocked to cars because on it were literally thousands and thousands of marchers. Banners, bands, something that resembled the hamburgler, families, hippies, people on bicycles, thronged the street. It was stunning. People had balloons, bells, whistles and rattles. They were chanting, yelling and singing. But the entire thing was peaceful as far as we could tell. We were right in it but never felt at all worried or endangered. The police were there, but not in riot gear the way they would be in the US. Of course, since we had not planned to see any more I did not have my camera (this image is a googled one) but it was something to behold.

Amazingly, this morning as I walked The Kid to school, the streets were once again tidy and clean. Trash had been collected. The only signs of the strike were the stickers that still clung to doors and windows. As I was walking home, I found a part of a roll of CCOO stickers and picked them up. I didn’t know what I would do with them, since it wasn’t my strike, but I didn’t think I should leave them there either. I continued on until I cam to a small plaza with a bronze statue of a man sweeping the street. Someone had put a CCOO sticker on his hat and secundaria kids were trying to peel it off to put on their book bags. I stopped them (savoring the irony of a statue of a worker going on strike) and handed them the roll. They were delighted and began to sticker each other’s bags quite artfully. I realized that this would be a formative memory for them. A city shut down. A citizenry in solidarity over their rights as workers and employees. It struck me that in Virginia it would have been illegal what happened yesterday. And I smiled to think I’d been lucky to see it.