Millions join Spain’s first general strike in 14 years in protest at rising housing costs

Millions of people across Spain have joined the country’s first general strike in 14 years, setting up picket lines to protest against soaring housing prices before an election in which the far right could be catapulted into power.

At the centre of Wednesday’s nationwide 24-hour stoppage, singularly backed by the country’s largest unions as well as tenants’ associations, is a pushback against Spain’s deepening housing crisis.

Sandra Mora, of the Madrid Tenants’ Union, told the broadcaster RNE: “It’s extremely important to remind people that we, the workers – who are also renters or who also pay mortgages – are the ones with the power to halt production and bring the economy to a standstill.”

While workers’ unions reported high participation in the strike across several sectors, including 90% in the automotive and port sectors and 82% in waste collection, they said participation was uneven across the country. The strongest support was reported in coastal regions, such as Catalonia and Andalusia, where the soaring cost of housing has been particularly acute.

Many schools and universities were reportedly closed or working at minimal capacity. In Madrid, the labour action added to an ongoing strike by teachers that began nearly a month ago to demand better working conditions.

In Barcelona, workers set up roadblocks – some with burning tyres – as public transport came to a near-standstill. In Madrid, scuffles broke out between picketers and police near the country’s main wholesale market, while demonstrators dragged ⁠large recycling bins on to the streets to block traffic. By midday on Wednesday, government officials said 27 people had been arrested over minor incidents across the country.

Stormy weather loomed over the plans for afternoon marches across the country after Spain’s state meteorological agency issued 14 alerts for two storms that were expected to bring strong winds, rough seas and heavy rains.

The long-simmering frustration at soaring housing prices across Spain burst into public view in September after the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the home in which she had lived for more than seven decades.

As protests and encampments sprang up across Spain, it cast a spotlight on a market where properties were increasingly being used as tourist lets, speculative assets and short-term rentals, sending rents rising by 80% within a decade while the cost of homes climbed by 63%.

Before Wednesday’s strike, the tenants’ union of Granada sought to highlight this link, descending on the city’s most touristed areas to vandalise about 300 lockboxes belonging to short-term rentals. “No to capitalists, no to rent-seekers, no to their accomplices,” the organisation wrote on social media, as they posted pictures of lockboxes that had been rendered unusable.

Housing campaigners and unions have called on the government to do more to intervene in the market, with tenants’ unions demanding measures such as limits on the evictions of vulnerable people, rent freezes and a crackdown on short-term rentals.

Unai Sordo, the head of one of the country’s biggest labour unions, the Workers’ Commissions, told Cadena Ser radio: “There is one issue that is dividing the country: the struggle to access housing.”

Spain is holding a general election on 29 November. The snap vote was called by the Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, after rightwing parties torpedoed emergency legislation aimed at tackling the housing crisis.

Polls suggest the most likely outcome will be a rightwing coalition between the People’s party and the far-right, anti-immigration Vox party.

While Sánchez has sought to focus the campaign on social issues, the discussion has shifted to questions over infrastructure after at least 69 people were killed in Spain’s second deadly high-speed rail disaster this year.

This week Sánchez seized on the strike, whose official slogan is “Salaries. Housing. Prices”, as a way to recast the spotlight, posting a video in which he lauded developments such as the eight-hour workday and national health insurance and credited them to the labour movement and the right to strike. “It wasn’t easy, but they changed Spain,” Sánchez said.

His position sharply contrasted with the discourse of parties on the right who, in the lead-up to the strike, said unions were trying to help Sánchez remain in office.

This week the rightwing leader of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, accused striking workers of “holding citizens hostage”. Ayuso, who this year faced questions over her administration’s decision to allegedly spend €6.3m (£5.4m) of public funds on a residential penthouse to use as a temporary office, added: “Everything is chaotic, everything is gridlocked.”

While she acknowledged that union activity is a constitutional right, she also said she had vented her frustrations to the leader of the People’s party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who polls suggest will be the next prime minister. “I’ll confess something,” she told Spanish television. “I spoke to Feijóo and I told him: ‘Promise me this garbage will end.’”