"Without dialogue, there is no solution" say Spanish workers at the Gibraltar checkpoint. Credit: Alberto Pradilla/IPS

By Alberto Pradilla
LA LÍNEA DE LA CONCEPCIÓN, Spain , Aug 12 2013 (IPS)

“The situation is messed up. Spain is on the verge of a civil uprising and the government is trying to divert attention” by tightening border controls to Gibraltar and provoking tension, complained Manuel Márquez, a delegate for the Socio-cultural Association of Spanish Workers in Gibraltar (ASTECG).

Márquez was speaking alongside several of his fellow union members at a protest in front of the police checkpoint on the border between the small southern Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción and the 6.8-sq-km British overseas territory of Gibraltar.

Spain has historically claimed sovereignty over the Rock of Gibraltar, which was conquered by the British in the early 18th century, although Gibraltarians have repeatedly expressed that they want the territory to continue to belong to Britain.

Tensions in the area mounted over recent days when the Spanish government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the rightwing People’s Party stepped up border checks, causing long tailbacks of up to seven hours for people trying to cross the border, and suggested a toll of 50 euros (67.50 dollars) might be introduced.

An international row has erupted, with Britain considering legal action against Spain. A spokesman from the British prime minister’s office said on Monday Aug. 12 that the Spanish border measures were “politically motivated and totally disproportionate,” adding “we are now considering what legal action is open to us.”

The announcement came as four British Royal Navy warships prepared to set sail for the Mediterranean in what defence officials stated was a long-scheduled deployment. One of the warships is due to dock at Gibraltar.

Spain has said it will not back down. The European Commission (the EU executive) plans to send a team of investigators to the border in the next couple of weeks to observe the controls, following complaints from several members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and EU citizens about long waits there.

Spanish media reports suggested that the diplomatic row could escalate to the United Nations, with Spain receiving support from Argentina. The El Pais newspaper reported that Spanish foreign minister Jose Garcia-Margallo is expected to propose that the two countries present a “united front” over Gibraltar and the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, claimed by Argentina from Britain.

The situation is complex. On the one hand is the sovereignty dispute, and on the other, the uneasy coexistence between Spaniards and “llanitos”, as residents of Gibraltar – a tiny peninsula of land mostly occupied by a large rock – are known colloquially.

But many are wondering why the situation has escalated just now.

The Spanish government has said that the problem originated as a fishing conflict in late July when Gibraltarians dropped concrete blocks into the sea, creating an artificial reef.

But there is a general feeling in the area, especially among the trade unionists, that Rajoy is using the crisis to divert attention from the corruption scandal hovering over his government, and from the country’s economic crisis.

Meanwhile, those who are most disadvantaged by the conflict are the people whose livelihood depends on crossing the border in their daily commute.

“This is a complete waste of time. La Línea and Gibraltar have always had good relations; it is up to the government to solve this,” complained José Antonio García, who had been waiting for over an hour and a half to cross the border and fill the tank of his car with petrol when he spoke to IPS.

Prices in Gibraltar are lower than in Spain because no taxes are paid in the territory, which is known as a tax haven because banks also enjoy a special regime.

A man in his seventies, who did not want to be identified, told IPS: “I’m unemployed, I have six grandchildren and I have to feed them. I will wait as long as it takes, because one carton of cigarettes will make my day’s sales.”

Cigarette smuggling is one of the most lucrative illegal businesses here. A 10-pack carton, costing 40 euros (53.57 dollars) in Spain, costs barely half that in Gibraltar.

Customs regulations only allow one carton a day per person, although the groups of people sitting by the border, looking as if they are just whiling away the time, show that there is actually a constant flow of cigarettes.

Ever since Madrid decided to increase the controls on traffic in and out of Gibraltar, cross-border business has collapsed completely, with sharp drops in sales. The additional checks began over a week ago and have created lengthy traffic delays. Temperatures of up to 40 degrees C add to the discomfort.

“I thought I’d be spending the weekend with my family. But when I heard the news, I came here with several of my fellow union members to help those who are waiting in line,” Márquez told IPS.

Government sources in Gibraltar told IPS that 11,000 bottles of water had been distributed for relief from the heat. Several people, many of them elderly, had to be treated in nearby hospitals.

Hardest hit are the Spanish workers who cross the border daily.

“There is a fascist ideology in this country, and patriotism wins votes. That’s why no political party wants to solve the problem,” said Márquez, who has worked all his life in the Gibraltar shipyard.

Miguel Ángel Zoilo, wearing a security guard’s uniform, was insistent that this is “a smoke screen…This is a curtain dyed in patriotic colours, but it is divisive,” he said.

After talking to IPS, Zoilo set out on foot towards the border, avoiding potential traffic jams.

At least 7,000 people out of the 64,000 residents of La Línea de la Concepción go into Gibraltar every day to work in construction and services. The jobs are a lifeline for the town, where 11,000 people are unemployed.

The wages they earn on the Rock are vital for subsistence. Given the circumstances, Gibraltarians like Occa Harris are unable to understand Madrid’s position either. “It is stupid. They are hurting their own citizens,” she said, adding that Gibraltar will “never” belong to Spain.

“Llanitos” are easily identified by their speech, in which they mix Spanish and English.

Even the police forces have taken up the theory that the conflict is a strategy to create distraction. “They are diverting attention, but this has to have a political solution,” José González, organising secretary of the police trade union, SUP, for the province of Cádiz, told IPS.

The SUP held a rally at the border on Wednesday Aug. 7 to protest against pressures brought to bear by Gibraltar, where a web page published photographs of the police officers who work at the border control post.

In contrast, fisherfolk are probably one of the few communities that have closed ranks with the Spanish government.

Leoncio Fernández, a member of the Fishermen’s Guild in La Línea de la Concepción, expressed his support for Madrid’s decisions and called for Gibraltar to remove the concrete blocks.

Meanwhile, the principal victims of the escalating row, like Márquez, are calling for dialogue involving all of the concerned parties.
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Refugees from the Choucha camp in Tunisia are demanding recognition of their legal status. Credit: Alberto Pradilla/IPS

By Alberto Pradilla
TUNIS, Mar 31 2013 (IPS)

“We need a solution. The U.N. has created the problem, and they should do their work and fix it,” says Bright, a young Nigerian stuck in the Choucha refugee camp in Tunisia, a few kilometres from the Libyan border.

Bright and hundreds of other refugees have spent the last two years in a camp that has turned into a no man’s land. They are mainly immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa who were living in Libya but fled the country at the start of the armed clashes that led to the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011).

Of the thousands who originally crossed the border, 250 are left, from different countries. Their refugee status is not recognised, and officially they don’t exist. The United Nations rejected their applications for asylum, and they can’t return to their countries of origin or Libya, where blacks are suspected of being loyalists or mercenaries and face repression.

They are living in extreme conditions, and their plight is ignored by international institutions and the Tunisian government.

During this week’s World Social Forum, held in Tunis, a group of 50 refugees made it to the capital to demand a solution. Thirty-seven of them declared a hunger strike on Friday Mar. 29 outside the office of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR).

The hunger strikers pledged to continue their fast until a solution was found. The situation of the refugees will become even more complex if the camp is closed in June, as the UNHCR has announced.

“In my country I was active in political issues, so I was persecuted. That’s why I went to Libya,” Mousa Ibrahim, from Chad, tells IPS. People from Chad are the largest group in Choucha, numbering around 80.

“I registered in the camp because they promised that they would recognise us as refugees,” he complains. But more than 48 months have gone by; his daughter Jalida was born in Choucha, and his situation has merely gotten worse and worse.

“The Tunisian refugee commission has rejected me. They say I have two options: to go back to my country or return to Libya. In Chad I would be thrown into prison or killed. And in Libya, black people are persecuted. I just want to be recognised as a refugee and allowed to go to a country where I can live in safety,” he says.

Two years ago, the Libyan conflict triggered an exodus that overwhelmed Ras Jdir, the main border crossing into Tunisia from Libya, and led to its temporary closure.

The UNCHR gradually transferred most of the refugees from the Choucha camp. The remaining families, from Chad, Nigeria, the Western Sahara, the Darfur region in Sudan, or Palestine, complain that they were left out of the transfer, for one reason or another.
At first, dozens of organisations were working to address the humanitarian crisis in the camp. But now, hardly any aid is arriving. The refugees continue to sleep in the tents in the camp, but the assistance is drying up.

Food stopped arriving five months ago, and they do what they can to find food. And since their applications for refugee status have been rejected, they don’t have the right to be relocated to another country. In practice, it is as if they didn’t exist.

“We aren’t immigrants and we aren’t trying to go to another country because we’re looking for work. The problem is political: we are refugees,” Bright tells IPS during a sit-in outside of the European Union office in Tunisia on Wednesday Mar. 27.

Frightened by the prospect of the closure of the camp in June, the refugees have begun to mobilise.

But survival itself is difficult, let alone carrying out a campaign to raise awareness of their plight and demand solutions.

On one hand are the economic problems. They hardly scrape by, and need the help of Tunisian and foreign activists who collect funds to pay for their trips. Then there are the obstacles put in place by the Tunisian government, which has sent in police to keep the refugees from moving about.

That happened in January, when around 100 of them managed to reach the capital, where they spent five days informing people about their situation. And it happened again before the World Social Forum. When they were heading out of the camp, the police stopped their buses at Ben Gardane, 443 km south of Tunis.

But half of the refugees who had set out, including Ibrahim and Bright, made it.

Their signs were visible at the entrance to the World Social Forum, held Mar. 26-30 on the El Manar university campus. The placards were also seen outside official buildings like the U.S. and British embassies.

Their demand is clear: a solution to leave behind the limbo in which they are living.

But although the question of the refugees came up in several workshops this week at the WSF – the largest global gathering of organised civil society opposed to the direction globalisation is taking – and many activists expressed solidarity with their cause, no clear statement was issued urging the U.N. to reconsider their status.

“This is a real case, not theory,” Bright complains. His tired eyes show how fed up he is with all the doors being slammed in his face, and reflect his lack of confidence in institutions that have failed to help him and his fellow refugees.

The refugees say official representatives have tried to negotiate in parallel with the different national communities in the camp, while the deadline of closure looms.

The WSF ended Saturday in Tunis with a closing act and a demonstration for the Palestinians’ Land Day. Meanwhile, the unrecognised refugees will stay here, waiting for a solution.

Booths and stands at the World Social Forum on the El Manar campus in Tunis. Credit: Alberto Pradilla/IPS

By Alberto Pradilla
TUNIS, Mar 29 2013 (IPS)

The World Social Forum’s traditional focus on economic, political and social injustice caused by globalisation shifted towards the revolts and unrest of the Arab Spring, in the current edition of the global gathering in Tunisia.

The WSF “contributed in Latin America to the construction of governments that are with the popular classes. We hope that will also happen in the Arab world,” said Tarek Ben Hiba, a human rights activist in Tunisia and France.

He was referring to the Tunisian left’s expectations with respect to the 12th annual WSF taking place Mar. 26-30 in the capital, Tunis, where demonstrations forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power in January 2011.

The WSF got its start in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001, drawing together hundreds of NGOs and movements critical of the direction taken by the globalisation process.

The 2013 WSF was organised in Tunisia, the cradle of the Arab revolts, to express support for the processes of change triggered by the December 2010 self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, an impoverished fruit vendor whose desperate last act sparked the Tunisian revolution and, ultimately, the ongoing Arab Spring.

The first WSF edition hosted by an Arab country has become a reflection of the achievements and pending challenges in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, and of the contradictions and unresolved clashing visions.

On one hand is the broad conflict between secularists and Islamists, especially in Tunisia and Egypt. And on the other is the war raging in Syria and the uncertainty and instability in Libya.

The conflict in Syria has been one of the main sources of tension in the WSF workshops and panels held this week across the Tunis El Manar University campus.

Supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been sharing space on a campus that has been turned into an encampment of heterogeneous global struggles.

On Thursday, for example, while four Syrian communist and two Kurd organisations discussed future action against the regime, supporters of al-Assad held a rally in the central square. The two groups did not cross paths, so no confrontation took place, but the tension was palpable.

Participants in the debate held by the Syrian communists and Kurds told IPS that they had agreed on a document recognising the importance of the individual and collective rights of all ethnic groups in Syria, which is especially significant for the Kurds, the largest minority.

They also agreed to hold a day of solidarity with the Syrian uprising, in the first week of May.

The sources said a congress was being planned for June, to bring together “the Syrian, European and Latin American internationalist left” to coordinate support for the revolt.

The situation in Libya has been another source of tension. On Wednesday, two groups clashed when one of them tried to hold up a sign in support of Muammar Gaddafi (who governed the country from 1969 to October 2011, when he was captured and killed by rebel forces).

That provoked a reaction by supporters of the uprising, who have several stands at the WSF, where the revolution’s tricolour flag and the flag of the nomadic Berber or Amazigh people can be seen.

“We are better off than they are saying,” Fatma, a woman from Tripoli who belongs to an organisation fighting for women’s participation in political life, told IPS. “There are problems, but we are learning from scratch, because there was no civil society before.”

The disputes between Islamists and secularists that are heating up the political processes in Tunisia and Egypt have also been reflected at this week’s WSF.

One of the novel aspects with respect to previous WSF sessions is the presence of organisations with ties to mosques, in booths on campus as well as specific protests.

For example, for over a month, female university students have staged a sit-in on campus to protest university regulations that prohibit the niqab – the full Muslim veil that only shows the eyes. Muslim students argue that the ban violates their freedom of religion.

The protests are occurring in a climate of growing clashes since the assassination of leftist politician Shokri Belaid in February.

“The participants in the Forum are demanding freedom, which is why we’re asking for your support,” said Nabi Wahbi, one of the young demonstrators taking part in the pro-niqab protest.

The integration of these groups in an environment marked by the struggle for women’s rights is a challenge for these gatherings.

Progressive groups in Tunisia accuse Islamists of trying to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, and of undermining the rights of women.

But the Arab revolutionary processes are not the only challenge facing this week’s WSF. There are also deeply-rooted nationalist conflicts.

The central ones involve Palestine and the Western Sahara. But while Palestine is the main cause espoused by several delegations, the Sahrawis are facing off with the enormous delegation from Morocco, who tried to discredit the demands for independence of the inhabitants of the former Spanish colony.

“The Polisario Front is lying,” read a sign referring to the political movement leading the struggle for the independence of Western Sahara, proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in 1976 by the independence fighters.

Moroccan activist Benis Ghitah complained about the Sahrawi refugees, who have been living for decades in remote camps in southwest Algeria.

But the Sahrawis combat the campaign against them. “Morocco tries to confuse people,” Dih Naocha told IPS, who expressed fears because this was the first time representatives of the Sahrawi people had come to Tunisia to defend their rights.

The change of region by the WSF also involved a shift in focus. But it is also true that, as Ben Hiba indicated, the WSF sessions in the first decade of the 21st century served as support for emancipatory processes in Latin America – something that the revolutionary Arab forces hope to repeat with this week’s event.

Bloggers, human rights groups and activists of different stripes have had a chance to meet face to face. Time will reveal the results.

New technologies can transform society, and the role of women in using these tools to promote change was clearly seen at the first ICT Congress for Peace in this city in northern Spain.

The Oct. 23-24 conference, whose theme was “Women, Technology and Democracy for Social Change”, emphasised women’s leading role in social change, based on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The premise of the meeting was that ICTs are tools particularly suited to promoting human rights, especially women’s rights. It was organised by the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, headed by Federico Mayor Zaragoza, and the Cyber Volunteers Foundation.

The organisers of the congress also argued that women have been largely absent from decision-making, democratic processes, and the construction and consolidation of peace, and that ICTs can help overcome this discrimination.

Manal Hassan, a cyberactivist who participated in the Egyptian revolution that overthrew former president Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011), and Jolly Okot, a former girl soldier in Uganda who founded the NGO Invisible Children, were among those taking part in the meeting in this city in the Basque country, one of Spain’s autonomous communities or regions.

The participants also included Judith Torrea, a journalist and blogger who comments on daily life in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, known as the femicide (gender-based murder) capital of the world.

The three women were part of a group of 14 activists from four continents who came to the congress, where they shared their specific experiences with IPS, including their achievements and pending challenges, in which ICTs have been particular allies.

Hassan and her husband worked on the development of new technologies applied to social change, so she was not new to the issues when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took over Tahrir Square in Cairo on Jan. 25, 2011 to force Mubarak to step down.

She had collaborated with NGOs to create databases and documentation centres, and had contributed to building a blogging platform for different political groups to post their contents, far before the Arab Spring arrived in North Africa.

“At first, there were only a few of us,” she said. “But then there was a wave of response and the revolution arrived.”

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter became symbols of the uprising, especially when the regime decided to block access to the internet. Hassan and thousands of other Egyptians used their wits to break through the censorship.

For instance, Hassan was then in South Africa, so she gathered the information she received over her phone and uploaded what was happening in Tahrir on to the blogs.

Servers were connected to one another to get around the blockade, or voicemail would be converted into tweets in order for the demonstrators in the square to report what was happening there in real time.

Now that Mubarak has fallen, there is still much to be done, Hassan said. The military have behaved worse than the dictator, she complained, so activists remain extremely necessary.

She herself was in South Africa when the revolution broke out, and would be given information on what was happening in Tahrir Square by telephone and write it up on blogs.

Hassan highlighted a key element: Women don’t only work on gender issues, but are involved in every political and labour issue.

Jolly Okot’s childhood came to an end in 1986, when she was abducted by a member of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda.

She said she was fortunate to get away. In 2005 she began to make documentaries and founded the organisation Invisible Children, which has documented the horrors suffered by boys and girls forced to fight in different wars. It also promotes education as the way forward for these victims.

One of the campaigns run by the organisation features “Kony 2012”, a short film about the outrages committed by LRA leader Joseph Kony, which went viral on the internet. The aim is to arrest Kony and take him before the International Criminal Court.

The great achievement of the new technologies is that, with one click, thousands of people can receive information, said Okot, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. You can reach leaders and persuade them to take decisions, she said.

But she said that ICTs are a complementary tool for change, and the real tool that will change things in Africa is a different one: education.

“Unfortunately, journalists don’t have so much power to change things; our duty is to report and let others assume their responsibility,” said Torrea, who for the last 14 years has been reporting on the killings of hundreds of young women in Ciudad Juárez, on the border with the United States.

Torrea stressed “the importance of alternative voices who will tell the truth about what is happening on the ground,” even though these voices may be “a nuisance” for those in power, as in her case.

The journalist acknowledged that bloggers are under a great deal of pressure from those in power, because they are special agents of change at the global level.

“When women bloggers – I say women because they tend to be the best-known – manage to get their voices heard, that is when they start receiving the most pressure, threats and smear campaigns,” she said.

“This happens to all of us, whether we are in Tunisia, Ciudad Juárez or Saudi Arabia,” said Torrea, who published her book Juárez, en la sombra del narcotráfico” (Ciudad Juárez, in the Shadow of Drug Trafficking) a year ago, and has received many awards for her work.

She said it was “a global phenomenon” because “when power feels it is under attack, it reacts against the voices that provoke debate.”

The Mexican activist concluded with a concept repeated by many women at the congress in San Sebastián: “If we don’t know what is going on in the world, we will have fewer opportunities for change.”

Jul. 19, 2012 demonstration in Madrid against budget cuts. Credit: Alberto Pradilla/IPS

By Alberto Pradilla
MADRID, Sep 29 2012 (IPS)

One of every three euros that the Spanish government plans to spend in 2013 will go to servicing the public debt.

The draft budget presented by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s centre-right government on Thursday shows that the debt will continue strangling a population already hit hard by the dismantling of public and social services like education and health.

Next year, the interest on the debt will grow by 9.74 billion euros (some 12.5 billion dollars), to 38.6 billion euros (49.7 billion dollars) – nearly 34 percent higher than this year’s costs.

The debt is swallowing everything in its wake. The debt servicing payments are nearly equivalent to the combined budget for all of the cabinet ministries, which totals 39.7 billion euros (some 51 billion dollars).

The drastic austerity measures adopted in the last few months did not even make a dent in the soaring borrowing costs, which have been driven up by the growing lack of confidence in the government’s ability to meet its obligations.

In 2007, Spain’s public debt represented 35.5 percent of GDP; this year it represents
75.9 percent; and by 2013, it will represent more than 80 percent, according to the government’s projections.

Against this backdrop, the question is what will be cut next, as Spain moves towards a sovereign bailout by the so-called “troika” of creditors – the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund – which would bring further restrictions for the people of Spain, whose living conditions have already taken a nosedive.

“This is the troika’s budget, the response to the requirement to control the deficit,” economist Alberto Garzón, a lawmaker representing the United Left opposition party, told IPS. “But that will be impossible to do by means of these measures. It is apparently a paradox, but it is clear that the objective is to impoverish the citizens and change the (economic) model.”

In his view, the current political and economic circumstances in Spain have many points in common with the situation in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, a period marked by a high level of indebtedness which revealed the weaknesses of the economies of that region and led them to blindly follow an agenda of structural adjustments, privatisation, and liberalisation of the economy, with negative social consequences.

Pablo Iglesias, a professor of political science at the Complutense University of Madrid, told IPS that “the 1980s demonstrated the success of the neoliberal policies that triggered the dismantling of the social gains achieved in earlier years, and which created many inequalities.”

He said the situation was repeating itself now in Europe’s “periphery” countries, where austerity measures are putting an end to social rights that had not been called into question until now.

“This is the budget necessary for pulling out of the recession,” Spain’s finance minister, Cristóbal Montoro, said in a press conference Thursday.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáez de Santamaría went a step further, and described the draft budget as “the most austere.”

According to the government’s forecasts, Spain’s GDP will shrink by 0.5 percent and unemployment will hold steady at the current 24 percent – the highest rate in Europe.

But the IMF projects a 1.2 percent drop in GDP. If that projection is accurate – and considering that the 4.5 percent fiscal deficit target imposed by the EU is the absolute ceiling for the Rajoy administration – the only choice that the prime minister has is to adopt further budget cuts.

In less than a year, his cabinet has cut key areas like education and health, with measures that deny public health care to undocumented immigrants and require that patients pay for a number of medicines that until now had been offered free in the national health service.

Until the public finds out the details of the draft budget, to be published Saturday, attention is being trained on the question of pensions.

In July, Rajoy said retirement pensions would be “the last thing” he would touch. The government is now saying it will increase them by one percent – below the three percent rise in the cost of living in September, after the value added tax was raised from 18 to 21 percent.

As an alternative, the government decided to withdraw nearly four billion dollars from a decade-old pension reserve fund.

But if the government ends up freezing pensions, the impact will be felt throughout Spanish society.

With the soaring unemployment and cuts in unemployment benefits, grandpa or grandma’s pension has become the sole means of survival for many families.

“It is inevitable that the citizens will pay,” minister Montoro admitted.

Deputy prime minister Sáez de Santamaría insisted that the priority was “social spending.” But all it takes is a walk down the streets of Madrid to see how living conditions are going downhill: More and more people are digging through garbage dumpsters for food.

The government insists on the formula of “structural reforms, deficit control, and a return to a growth path” – a mantra that it defends thanks to its absolute majority in parliament, but which is generating more and more unrest.

On Tuesday, tens of thousands of people answered the call to surround the Congress building, and police used rubber bullets and batons to disperse the crowd, arresting 35 demonstrators.

The authorities also presented a package of economic reforms, in line with the demands of the “troika”: 43 draft laws to free up different sectors of the economy – a prescription widely applied in Latin America 20 years ago.

But if the experience of that region awakens so many echoes in Spain today, it could also help point the way to possible solutions, some analysts say.

In Iglesias’ view, the question of the debt could help “put politics back at the centre of the economy.” He cited the example of Ecuador, where President Rafael Correa set up a commission in 2008 to audit the country’s foreign debt and determine which portion was “illegitimate.”

In response to the presidential commission’s findings, the government suspended payments on 70 percent of the public debt.

Social movements and political groupings like the United Left are calling for a referendum in Spain, to set a limit on debt payments and budget cuts.

“The unprecedented dismantling of the welfare state is leading to a social crisis,” Iglesias argued.

He also said that what is happening in Europe cannot be compared to what happened in Latin America. He added that the conditions are in place in Spain for “a new political and economic paradigm.”

The sun is shining in Spain as it does every summer. But millions of people in this crisis-stricken country are living in the shadow cast by Europe’s highest unemployment rate.

That is true for José Manuel Martínez, who was taking part in a protest in Madrid holding up a homemade sign reading “I want a job, not charity.”

Martínez, a 45-year-old from the southern city of Sevilla who has been unemployed for three years, told IPS “I have lost hope.”

Like him, nearly 4.6 million of Spain’s 47 million people were without work as of late July, one of the months when the tourism industry tends to generate more jobs in this southern European country.

On Tuesday Aug. 14, the right-wing government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was forced to rectify its plans, and announce the extension of a 400 euro (495 dollar) monthly subsidy for thousands of people whose regular unemployment benefits have run out and whose annual income is less than 75 percent of the minimum wage of 7,700 euros (9,480 dollars) a year.

The extension of the supplementary benefit was announced the day before it expired, in the face of pressure from political and social sectors across the ideological spectrum.

But the government is expected to make the conditions for eligibility for the benefit tougher when the cabinet makes the extension of the measure official on Aug. 24 – which will plunge more families into poverty.

Martínez may soon become one of the beneficiaries of the monthly stipend. “I don’t even visit employment offices anymore,” he said with a heavy heart.

The last job he had with social security coverage was three years ago, when he worked as a bus driver in his hometown, 500 km south of Madrid.

Since then he has only had sporadic short-term jobs, which barely help cover emergency costs. “I’m fed up,” he said. His wife is also unemployed. He said she used to earn some money cleaning houses, but no one calls her anymore.

In Andalusía, the southern region of which Sevilla is the capital, one million people are out of work, giving it an unemployment rate five percentage points higher than the record national rate of 24.6 percent in late July – the highest rate in the European Union, where the average is 10.3 percent.

“Half of the city has my resumé. I have tried everything. But those of us who are getting older aren’t hired anymore,” he complained.

He and his wife scrape by on a 426 euro (525 dollar) a month unemployment benefit, which runs out in October.

If Rajoy had not backed down on the plan to scrap the monthly subsidy, the Martínez family would have become destitute. “I can see myself on the streets,” said the slightly built Martínez, whose anger was focused on the government in office since December.

“They’re doing everything backwards,” he said with a hardened face. “They should generate more jobs, but instead there are more and more unemployed people. They cheated us, because Rajoy promised to fix the unemployment problem if he was elected.”

In Spain, unemployment benefits last for a maximum of two years, for those who have paid into the social security system for at least 12 months. In the first six months, the benefit amounts to 70 percent of the average wage drawn by the worker in the last few months on the job. After six months, it goes down to 60 percent.

But the main target of criticism by the Spanish trade unions are the labour reforms approved by parliament in early March, which triggered the first general strike against Rajoy, on Mar. 29.

The reforms made it easier to dismiss workers and cut wages, limited temporary work contracts to two years, and reduced severance pay from 45 days of pay per year worked to 33 – or 20 if the business has faced losses over three consecutive quarters. It also reduced the cap for severance pay to two years’ wages, from 3.5 years.

And a new measure, approved in July, reduced unemployment benefits after six months from 60 percent of the basic salary to 50 percent.

The reforms have led to an exponential increase in unemployment.

According to the National Statistics Institute, there are now 1.5 million families in Spain in which every single member of working age is unemployed, while more than 50 percent of all young people are jobless.

As a result, one out of four children in Spain is now living below the poverty line, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency.

But the government is not willing to reverse its austerity measures. It says the reforms and drastic cutbacks are necessary to boost economic growth.

However, the economy contracted one percent in the second quarter of the year, compared to the same period in 2011.

The labour reform was also one of the conditions outlined in the memorandum of understanding signed Jul. 20 by Madrid, to receive a 100 billion euro (123 billion dollar) bailout from Brussels for Spain’s banks.

Many people in Spain complain that the government worried about rescuing the financial sector, with a loan whose costs will be paid by taxpayers, while it has failed to obtain funds to guarantee the provision of basic services and revive the economy.

“I draw 426 euros in (unemployment) benefits, but my mortgage payment is 1,500 euros (1,850 dollars). How can I possibly make it?” said Mario Gómez, 41, who lives in Riosa, in the northern region of Asturias.

For years, he ran a rural tourism business in a mountainous area in his province. He asked for a bank loan to keep his business going. But the crisis put an end to his dream, and his company went under.

Now he hopes the bank will allow him to defer his mortgage payments, so he doesn’t lose his home as well.

“This is going to end badly. People are going to die here, if no one comes up with a solution,” he told IPS with desperation in his voice.

Gómez was one of the thousands of unemployed people who reached Madrid on Jul. 21 after a march from different cities around the country, to demand the revocation of the labour reforms, and call for more assistance for the jobless. Many walked long distances to rally in Madrid.

“With so many cutbacks, it’s impossible to create jobs,” said Charo Domínguez, from the town of Langreo, also in Asturias. Her last job, as an administrative assistant, ended in January. Her unemployment benefits have run out, and she now gets by on the 400-euro supplementary subsidy.

Thanks to support from her family, she is able to continue paying rent. “But I’ll go back to my mother’s house if things don’t get better,” she told IPS.

Domínguez said she spends her days trudging around offering her resumé, which no one is interested in.

She feels abandoned. “No one cares about the unemployed. Not even the unions care about us.”

The outlook is not good. The government says unemployment won’t start to go down until 2014 – a long time to wait for people like Martínez, Gómez or Domínguez, who number in the millions in this southern European country.

Demonstrators at Alcalá street, in the heart of the Madrid. Credit: Alberto Pradilla/IPS

By Alberto Pradilla
MADRID, Jul 20 2012 (IPS)

“This is war. Parliament has got to go! They’re trying to make civil servants take the blame for a situation that was caused by the banking sector and which the government has allowed to happen.”

This is how a ministry employee summarised the growing outrage with which the vast majority of the Spanish people have reacted to their government’s fiscal adjustments.

“They want to cheat us out of our bonuses. Most public sector employees like me barely make 1,000 euro (some 1,200 dollars) a month. Last year, they cut five percent off of our salaries and taxes just keep going up. We can’t take any more of this,” Carmen Raduy, an employee at the ministry of foreign affairs and cooperation, complained.

A middle-aged woman, Raduy is not used to going to demonstrations, but this Thursday, Jul. 19, she joined a group of protesters who gathered to block traffic on the Prado avenue, one of the busiest streets in Madrid’s downtown area. Less than 500 m from the demonstrators the building that houses the Spanish congress is visible behind a large contingent of riot police that has been shielding it for the past week.

As she spoke with IPS, Raduy spotted at least 50 fellow government workers who had also taken to the streets to protest.

A new austerity package announced last week by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, of the right-wing Popular Party, triggered a call for a general strike and street protests in some 80 cities across the country on Thursday, when the package was set to be voted in parliament.

The austerity measures, which were passed with the votes of PP legislators, include the elimination of the Christmas bonus salary for civil servants, an increase in the regular value added tax from 18 to 21 percent, and stricter conditions for receiving unemployment aid.

The Rajoy administration had already eliminated other social benefits such as the provision of certain free medicines for pensioners, and had passed a labour reform that, among other things, makes it easier and cheaper to fire workers.

The latest statistics put the number of unemployed Spaniards at 5.6 million, or a quarter of the economically active population.

And the government announced that it plans to further reduce spending and cut other social benefits.

Finance minister Cristóbal Montoro said the money in the state’s coffers is not even enough to pay public sector salaries. Meanwhile, the government awaits the 123 billion dollars approved ten days ago by the European Union as rescue funds to stabilise Spanish banks.

The large majority of the population sees this bailout and the budget cutbacks as proof that the government has chosen to protect bank privileges at the expense of sacrificing public services.

This sentiment was eloquently illustrated by one of the signs in the demonstration that read: “Hands up, this is a stick up!”

Virginia Romero, an 81-year-old pensioner, held up a large placard with the slogan: “No privileges for politicians.” She marched slowly, weighed down by her years. But she made her way easily among the thousands of people who poured into the streets of Madrid Thursday afternoon and night. “I have children and grandchildren” who are suffering this situation, she said.

She claims that at her age she is not worried about her own welfare. But she is concerned about the future of her three sons and their children. Unemployment has shot up and wages are plunging, so that living conditions are deteriorating even for those who manage to hold on to their jobs.

“I have two sons in college. University fees have gone up 20 percent. If they want to stay in school they’re going to have to work. But there are no jobs,” María José Hernández, a development ministry employee, said.

Hernández gathered with another 200 civil servants on Paseo de la Castellana, the broad multi-lane avenue that cuts across Madrid from north to south, to stop traffic at the Nuevos Ministerios, a large government complex that houses the offices of several ministries in downtown Madrid.

Madrid residents have become used to seeing public sector workers stopping traffic to protest against the government, in a form of demonstration modelled on the ‘piquetes’ (road blocks) staged in Argentina during the social unrest that followed the economic and institutional debacle of late 2001.

Hernández told IPS that they would continue with these protests. They have lost a third of their salaries, the prices of basic goods are rising and they want a future for their families, she said.

The road blocks upset some drivers who hurl angry insults at the demonstrators. But many others, like María Isabel Martínez, show their solidarity by getting out their cars and honking their horns in support.

“They’re right in protesting. I’m with them,” she told IPS, as she stood in the middle of Castellana avenue. Her support is not surprising. She came upon the protesters on her way back from a job interview. Her only worry was that she had left her kids with her sister, who is also unemployed. But that did not stop her from shouting words of encouragement to the public employees who blocked her way.

The declining quality of life is one of the reasons why Spaniards have taken to the streets. Another reason is what trade unions and left-wing parties describe as the “dismantling of public services.”

Guti Domínguez, a 28-year-old firefighter, illustrated this graphically for IPS while he walked with a squad of fellow officers who were participating in the huge march.

“We’re sorely understaffed. There are not enough firefighters to cover every shift. It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he warned.

Domínguez said that during their 24-hour shifts one of the firefighters would go out and buy food for everyone. But money is so short now that they cannot afford to do that anymore, and there are so few of them that when they have to leave the station they do so together so that can combat any fire that breaks out better.

Firefighters were among the most cheered by the demonstrators. Similar complaints were voiced by doctors, nurses and teachers.

“The cuts are a threat to public education,” said Mercedes García who works at a high school in Madrid, and took part in one of the many spontaneous demonstrations that have shaken the country’s capital. In this case, some 150 people had gathered near the lower chamber of parliament.

“That’s where the power of the people is supposed to be represented, but they’ve closed it up so we can’t get anywhere near it,” she said, in reference to the heavily armed police forces surrounding the building.

Protests intensified on Thursday night when police and demonstrators clashed, leaving several people wounded and arrested.

This is the second time in a week that incidents occurred at a demonstration. The government, however, has an absolute majority in parliament and is determined to go ahead with the austerity programme. Which means more road blocks, marches and unrest are certain to come.

“They want to drive us into poverty, (so) we’ll take to streets,” María José Torres, an employee of the Spanish trademark and patent office, said.