General strikes and the struggle against austerity in Spain

With interesting picture of the direct action:

This ICEM release is also available on the ICEM Web-site [url=(http://www.icem.org/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/5040-Spaina-s-Coal-Minersa-Strike-to-Block-State-Aid-Cuts-to-)][/url]

Antonio Campón, a pensioner and activist of the CCOO from Málaga has been sentenced to one year in prison by a court which followed the allegations of the cops who accused him of having thrown a plastic bottle at them during the last general strike while he was on a picket line

http://syndikalismus.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/spanien-1-jahr-gefangnis-fur-streikbeteiligung/ (in German)

That's rough. Is he serving the sentence or is it suspended?

Miners vs Police:

Photos from the clashes in Madrid

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http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23ResistenciaMinera

More miners vs police

http://videos.lne.es/cuencas/20120604/nuevo-choque-entre-antidisturbios-mineros-34623.shtml

Huelga en la minería del carbón

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2012/05/30/album/1338387578_288308.html#1338387578_288308_1338389112

Heard it off my flatmate last night, Spain has had a bailout. We watched the news in Spanish so I'm not clear about all of it(also I don't understand economics). It's a bailout to a central bank rather than directly to the state, right? I'm assuming this comes with conditions for more austerity, but how does that work if the bailout isn't directly to the state?

The miners protest is getting a lot of popular support as far as I can tell. I'm wondering what will happen regarding this and other popular opposition to austerity. Is the government in a position to give any ground even if it wants to, due to the bailout? Does this mean repression of popular movements could get much more serious? (It's pretty serious already)

Añready there is nothing clear about the conditions of the bail-out.

First of all, it seems that it is not a bail-out as those of Greece, Ireland and Portugal. It is a loan to bail-out "just" the financial system, i.e. the banks with problems (a 30% of the system according to the Economy ministry).

However, it is the Spanish government who receives the money, but trough an instrument called FROB, which was initiated in 2009 to "clean" the banking system. The spanish banking system was not affected by the toxics assets from US subprime mortgages, so it needed not bail-out after the Lehmann Brothers collapse, as other european or US banking systems. However, it is very affected by their own toxic assets from the huge spanish real state bubble (mainly mortgages and credits to buliding firms and real state agencies). They have been trying not to show this in their balances and accounting, but finally, with the nationalization of Bankia (the fourth biggest bank of the country) the cat let out the bag, and the whole system needs to be bailed-out.

It seems that no Troika "technicians" (the Men In Black, as the Budget ministry called them last week, what a moron....) and no austeriry plan is going to be imposed to Spanish Goverment, at least by the moment.

The problem is the Spanish goverment is trying to sell us that it is not exactly a bail-out but a kind of "financial help" so they are being not very clear about which are going to be the consequences in the medium-term. According to some leftist analysts, the European Commision and Germany are going to supervise the whole process and maybe they are going to demand some "structural reforms": increasing the VAT, decrease the retiring pensions, decrease the unemployment benefits (with more than 5 million unemployed in the country) and enlarge the retirement age.

Sorry about the English...

The English is fine as is the analysis. The bourgeoisie admit - to some extent - that it's already imposed enough austerity on the Spanish population and the working class particularly, for the time being. The social question is a consideration for the ruling class. But there's more grief to come for the population of Spain and for Europe generally.
The workers of Europe are being hammered with those of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland suffering the worse blows. This can only widen because there is not even a glimmer of a recovery on the distant horizon. Not even with the massive amounts of funny money printed. There is no foreseeable basis for an economic recovery that will pull capitalism out of the mire.
As the numbers become astronomical, and the financial manipulations become more and more complex and conditional, the capitalist economy shows itself as a tragic farce. Austerity is all it has to offer to the working class.

The terms of the bailout, as I understand it from the patchy details released so far, is that the money will go to the FROB, but it will be put onto the national deficit. The difference between this and the Portugal-Ireland-Greece bailouts, is that the Spanish state will still be trying to fund the rest of it's current spending deficit from the bond market - i.e. it is not a bailout of the state's full funding needs for the next 2-3 years, as was the case with the "3 little pigs" bailouts. I haven't yet put a figure on what the cost of a full state deficit-covering bailout for 2 years (including rolling over existing debt) would be for Spain, but it would be far in excess of 100bn. In fact I'd be surprised if there was much change left of the putative 500 bn in the ESM.

The fact is that the Spanish economy is more than twice the size of Portugal, Ireland & Greece put together. For that reason it's definitely a case of "big boys games, big boys rules" particularly from an Irish perspective where the source of our financial woes is a property bubble and insolvent banks in a close parallel to Spain.

The reasoning on this seems to have flipped around over the last week. Originally the powers that be were desperate to avoid a "bailout-lite" for Spain that could only add to the arguments of SYRIZA, etc in Greece that the terms of the Memorandum were mainifestly unfair. But as the fear gauge went up last week and politicians policy wonks finally got around to reviewing the "worst case scenarios" their economic people had done for them, the priority became to forget Greece and worry about shoring up Spain from the risks of contagion before the Greek election.

The problem is this bailout-lite option relies on Spanish bond yields coming down to more sustainable levels, now that the deal is announced and once we get past next Sunday. Whether than will happen, is not at all clear. This time next Monday we could still potentially looking at another eurocrisis meeting process to try and get a full bailout for Spain, if they end up frozen out of the sovereign capital markets.

Thanks everyone, appreciate it.

What do people think it means for the social struggle?

Dunno. Today for the first time I saw propaganda from a far-right group called "Falange Autentica". Visually it could have been leftist, it was an old woman wearing boxing gloves and talked about defending "social rights" and taking back what was "stolen".

(Well, for a big game between Bilbao and Barcelona a few weeks ago there was some anti-regionalist stickers but :hat wasn't so directly related to the crisis and the bailouts...)

What it means for the social struggle? Given the current direction of Italian bonds (the next domino), I'm tempted to reply "Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think...".

But if only one thing is clear, it's that standing back and gawping at the spectacle of the eurocar-crash is definitely not going to get us anywhere. To get sucked into that, would guarantee defeat.

I wouldn't say "ignore the spectacle of the eurocrisis" exactly. But we should approach it instrumentally, to make use of it only for our own purposes, to delegitimise the local state and boss discourse, even to challenge passivity motivated by "things could be worse" type of thinking.

But the main thing is our power to make a difference is through building our own contestationary movements and struggles. The only response to the crisis (and n.b. I reject the "no es una crisis, es una estafa" - it's not a crisis, it's a scam - line of the M15) is to make sure that the crisis caused by our resistance is the biggest crisis of all. Unlike the autonomist slogan of the 70s, saying "we are the crisis" would be both premature and manifestly incorrect as to origins. Yet it is still often the case that just because you didn't start the fight doesn't mean you aren't going to have to finish it on your terms, if you want to avoid a beating. So if we are not yet it, we must aim to become the crisis.

Report of the Spanish miners night time demo (in Spanish):

http://puertoreal.cnt.es/es/denuncias/2103-todo-leon-se-vuelve-minero.html

Click on the link at the end of the report for some great images.

Well, I think that the bail-out itself will not affect social struggle beyond increasing a little bit more the "indignación" of the people, who are seeing that there is money to save the banks but to expend in health and education.

However, according to some analysts the bail-out could be a new stone in the economy, worsening even more the austerity plans. Altought the EU is not going to count the whole bail-out as deficit, it still not clear what will happen with the interests of the credit. If the EU counts them as budgey deficit, a new cut of 3000 million euros will be needed (or maybe a VAT increase). On the other side, it seems that the lending conditions will be limited to the financial system, but the EuroGroup press release insituated that budget deficit would be controled too. Moreover, it seems that "the markets" are not very confident in the effects of the bail-out, so the interest rate of spanish debt has increase since the bail-out.

I think the point is that the EU is pressing the Spanish goverment to make new structural reforms that the goverment does not want to implement because of future electoral costs. Now, with the bail-out the pressure will be higher.

The M-15 movement showed muscle during its anniversary, but currently it is in a kind of political impasse. They are developing a lot of local initiatives: squatted social centres, banks of time, urban gardens and thinks like that, but their actions and demos on more general issues as the whole Bankia affair are not being very followed.

On the other side, the mainstream trade-unions (CCOO and UGT) have completely dissapeared from the political map since the general strike. The labour reform has been approved in the congress with minor modifications, it has caused a lot of new dismissals, and no new general strike has been called for. CGT decided last week to begin a process to launch a new general strike before the end of the year, but they know perfectly that withouth CCOO-UGT it will be a complete failure, so I think they are going to press the trade-unions grass-roots to put pressure on the union leadership.

It should also be said that one of the reasons the exact meaning of the bailout is hard to assess at the moment, is because the PP and EU heads are deliberately being vague at the moment - this from yesterday's Guardian live blog

The downside of this studied vagueness is that the markets aren't buying it either (there are questions over whether the money will come from EFSF or the new ESM - if the latter, all existing bondholders would be downgraded as ESM funds will have super-seniority). Worse, the contagion factor is now lifting Italian bonds up into the red-zone as well.

Firemen in Spain occupy the stock exchange, facebook photo so can't post it properly

[edit- thanks admins]

video going round of the police in Lavapies the night of July 19th saying "porque no reventamos los bares?" which translates roughly "Why don't we smash up the bars?"

RT report on anti-austerity protests in Spain

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El País: Outrage on the streets of Spain after latest austerity measures

Roarmag: Millions take streets as Spain unites against austerity

[edit] Photos from yesterday's march

Has anyone seen the photos going around that purport to be demonstrators applauding riot police who've removed their helmets, attached to a piece saying that there have also been dessertions from the police? Any comrades in Spain know anything about this?

I don't know of any photos but the RT report from Mark above talks of police fighting police on the Madrid demonstration.

I saw some talk of that after the Madrid demo but not anything really confirmable.

There's loads of stuff going round with photos of the police beating people up in various strikes, tenants' mobilisations etc and saying more or less "now they say they are on our side? Bollocks"

And this one is just gratuitously funny, the fireman's placard says "Rajoy, let me make a cut." And the other fireman says "Now WE'LL make the cuts."

I miss Spain. If that was England you wouldn't see that with a fireman carrying an ACTUAL chainsaw.... bet he wished he wasn't after the first couple of hours though, must weigh a tonne.

Thanks baboon, I find it difficult to watch videos on this machine so haven't checked that out yet.

I've heard other sources claiming that the photo of the police with no helmets on was because their helmets didn't fit very well - apparently they're issued as 'one size fits all' so they spend most of the time wearing their caps which are more comfortable, is what this other source said, and an hour after the photo was taken those same police attacked the demonstrators with tear-gas.

So perhaps not a strong indicator of support for the demonstrators among the police. There do seem to be tensions inside the police force more generally, though perhaps these have more to do with the cops being unhappy that they're not properly equipped to deal with the situation, rather than because there's significant support for the miners and the indignados.

EDIT: thanks for that too, Fingers, it wasn't there when I started posting.

while the police are protesting about their pay cut they have been kicking people's heads in at the same time, so I personally I don't think their protest means they will start to refuse to police the protests. Their union has been telling the government to make the cut to everybody else in the public sector but not to them, which I could imagine happening.

Slothjabber, here is an example of what you were asking about,

Los 546 nuevos agentes de la Policía Nacional que se han incorporado al Cuerpo han dado la espalda a las autoridades al romper filas para aplaudir a una veintena de sindicalistas que protestaban a las puertas del complejo policial de la Zona Franca donde este viernes se ha celebrado el acto de presentación.
Tras los parlamentos de la delegada del Gobierno en Catalunya, Llanos de Luna, y del director general de la Policía Nacional, Ignacio Cosidó, los 546 agentes se han girado y han aplaudido a los sindicalistas de CEP y SUP cuando las autoridades estaban dando la mano a los agentes en un gesto espontáneo e inédito apoyando las reivindicaciones contra los recortes.
El acto, que estaba fijado para las 13.00 horas, no ha empezado hasta las 14.00 horas, con lo que los nuevos agentes han tenido que estar formando y expuestos al sol durante muchos minutos, lo que ha provocado que al menos dos de ellos se hayan desmayado, han explicado fuentes policiales.
Antes de empezar la ceremonia, los sindicalistas han protestado a una distancia prudente del complejo al grito de 'No a la dictadura del PP' y, cuando ha empezado el acto, han incrementado el volumen con silbatos, que han hecho de banda sonora a los discursos de De Luna y Cosidó.
Durante su protesta, también han cargado contra el director general de la Policía y la subdelegada del Gobierno en Catalunya, identificándose con los integrantes del 15M, al manifestar reiteradamente: "Policías indignados, policías indignados".

Can't be bothered to translate it properly (it's not even nine o'clock in the morning yet) but it says the newly joined police, in their graduation ceremony, turned their backs on the authorities and applauded some trade unionists who were having a counter demo. CEP and SUP are the police unions.
I'm highly sceptical that the police will take the side of the protests, the government will probably exempt them from the cuts as they know they are going to need them and they are happily breaking heads at the same time as protesting about their pay cut.

A woman in Spain phoned the radio on Monday to say that her husband had committed suicide 20 days before because he couldn't find a job and the family was in serious financial problems. She asked for everyone to keep on fighting.

http://www.sindicatoandaluz.org/?q=node/1004

That's great Ent.
Very briefly about 1000 people from the SAT fieldworkers union have occupied land in Seville owned by the military, which is mostly wasteland. They say they will stay there, it is not a symbolic occupation. Unemployment in the area is at 40% and that the land has to be used for productive purposes as people are so desperate. There are 1,200 hectares of land and the military only use 20 hectares of it, for rearing foals. The union spokesman says that the empty land should be put into the hands of the workers and used for workers co-operatives.

Supportive reactions to this on a thread on a guardia civil forum (link broken):
http:/ /www.forodelguardiacivil.com/web/viewtopic.php?t=60753

I think in Greece the police got a pay rise while everyone else was facing cuts - though I can't remember the details.