By Alejandro López - 23 May 2013

Last Saturday, the government delegate in Catalonia of Spain’s Popular Party (PP) government...handed a diploma of honour to a representative of the Brotherhood of Combatants of the Blue Division...The Blue Division was a unit of Spanish volunteers that served in the German Army on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. The Brotherhood is composed of veterans of the unit, family members and revisionist historians involved in a project to rehabilitate the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco.

In Marinaleda, he has promoted equal wages policies, scrapped the police force and offered mortgages on previously state-owned properties, which cannot be sold on for profit, of just €15 a month.

By Alejandro López - WSWS

Spanish people have come to dread governmental announcements made on Fridays after the Council of Ministers meeting. The weekly custom is for Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría of the ruling Popular Party (PP) to announce cuts in public spending, tax increases and new attacks on the living standards of workers.

By Vicky Short and Alejandro López - 6 December 2012

Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) government is preparing to impose some €90 billion in budget cuts over the next two years...Aware that these measures will provoke sustained opposition from the working class, the PP has announced it will increase outlays on riot personnel and equipment by 1,780 percent to €3.26 million in 2013 and €10 million by 2017. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the added equipment will include 20,000 bulletproof vests, rubber bullets, shields, tear gas and batons.

From 12 midnight, the general strike has been strongly felt throughout Spain. In Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Córdoba, Galicia, Asturias, Aragón, etc., in each region and every city, the main companies have gone on strike, and transportation has been paralyzed. The strike began with the force of the workers of the big factories, since the night shift workers are the first to go on strike, completely shutting down production.

7th June 2012 - SchNEWS Issue 818

Around 8,000 Spanish miners took to the streets, and blocked them, in chaotic style this week. The actions are in protest against government plans to cut subsidies to the coal industry by 60%...True to their roots – miners are traditionally one of the most militant workers groups in Spain – the strikers show no signs of tiring.

Spain is the latest shoe to drop. It's been deteriorating badly for years. It's the fifth EU country to seek bailout help. On what terms isn't clear. The devil is always in the details. So far they lack clarity.

By Alejandro López - 25 April 2012

Not a day passes in Spain without further cuts at the local, regional or national level being announced, or measures imposed curtailing the right to assembly, to strike and to protest....[I]n addition to the denial of basic social rights, democratic rights are also being drastically curtailed.

By Peter Schwarz - WSWS

Spain now faces the same fate that has befallen Greece. Under pressure from the European Union and the international financial markets, the country is sliding into a downward spiral of austerity and recession...Since the beginning of the year, the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy has adopted budget cuts of €37 billion...For the Spanish population, which is already suffering an unemployment rate of 23 percent and a youth unemployment rate of over 50 percent, this means unbearable hardship.

By Alejandro López - WSWS

Last week’s general strike in Spain displayed the readiness of the working class to resist the austerity measures being imposed by the right-wing Popular Party (PP) government, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund...The fierce repression meted out by the police during the strike and its aftermath is a warning of the ruling elite’s response to this mass outpouring of defiance.

Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Belgium and Spain replicate Greece in slow motion, gain speed, and head toward a similar train wreck. France, the Netherlands, and other troubled European Union economies follow close behind.

By PETER GELDERLOOS - Counterpunch

...[W]hen March 29 arrived, Spain slowed down almost to a halt. At the crack of dawn, cities across the country were paralyzed by barricades of burning tires. Highways and rail lines were also blocked. In the ports they stopped unloading all but the perishable goods. Participation in the strike was calculated at 77% over all...In mining and the construction industry the figure stood at 97-100%, in manufacture over 80%...Throughout the morning, pickets in cities large and small roamed the streets and forced unsolidaristic shops to close...Other pickets blocked major avenues or set up barricades and spray-painted banks.

By Alejandro López - 3 April 2012

On Friday, Spain’s Popular Party government announced €27.3 billion (US$36.4 billion) in cuts to the 2012 budget. With cuts equivalent to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the budget is the most austere since the fascist dictatorship...The latest measures come on top of the €15 billion in cuts pushed through by the social democrat Spanish Socialist Workers Party government of José Zapatero in May 2010.

Millions of Spaniards are walking off their jobs today in a massive general strike and a series of protest marches against the proposed austerity budget and labor reforms of Prime Minister Rajoy’s 4-month old conservative government. As the Spanish debt crisis deepens — at 23 percent, unemployment is the highest in the Western world — financial markets and [European Union] leaders are demanding even more far-reaching reforms and austerity measures than in Greece.

By Alejandro López - 22 March 2012

Under conditions where Spain’s economy is plunging into the same vicious spiral that Greece has experienced, and where spending cuts and tax rises reduce revenues and lead to calls for further spending cuts and tax rises, the living standards of Spanish workers are being dramatically worsened. With the complicity of the [Spanish social democrats] and the wretched response of the unions, the [right-wing Popular Party] is using the economic crisis to drive workers back to the days of the 19th century.