Bus drivers in Barcelona have called a strike for 21-24 December and 2-4
January, demanding a second day of leave per week. Currently, bus
drivers have to work six days a week. Workers with the
anarcho-syndicalist union, Confederacion General de Treball (CGT) agreed
to go on strike to press their demands against the owner, TMB, allowing
only minimum services needed to connect neighborhoods without other
transportation options. The CGT linked with squatters and direct action
anarchists to ensure that scabs would not be permitted to keep the buses
running. While CGT workers picketed all the bus depots, anarchists,
independentistas, and squatters throughout the city took action against
buses operated by scabs, splashing paint on the windshields, breaking the
rearview mirrors, or puncturing the tires, so that buses had to return to
the station. Although in the morning a large number of buses were in the
streets, around midday hardly any buses were passing by even on major
streets. 54 buses driven by scabs were attacked and sabotaged the first
day, with tires punctured, rearview mirrors broken, or windshields
splashed with paint, rendering them immobile. One bus was even forcibly
evicted by a rowdy crowd of strike supporters. The city of Barcelona
possesses only two cranes capable of hauling decommissioned buses, and
needless to say the day's attacks went quite beyond their capacity.
Additionally, bus stations all throughout the city were spraypainted with
stencils urging solidarity with the strikers, although reflecting the
dramatic changes caused in Spanish society by mass media and spectacular
consumerism, a distressing number of people were grumbling about the
inconvenience and calling for various forms of repression against
strikers and direct actionists. Major newspapers collaborated with
police to provide a negative headline to the strike, claiming that
someone was injured by one sabotage action, though this has yet to be
verified by independent sources.
Previously, the bus workers had built connections with squatters, sending
a letter of support to the ten-year-old squatted social center Can Vies,
which is on property owned by TMB.
are "independistas" catalan nationalists?