SALON

Saturday, Sep 15, 2012 12:30 PM UTC

Large anti-austerity protests in Spain, Portugal

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Large anti-austerity protests in Spain, PortugalSpanish Finance Minister Luis De Guindos, right, and the Governor of Central Bank of Spain Luis Linde arrive at the ECOFIN meeting in Nicosia, on Saturday, Sept. 15, 2012. The creation of a banking union will top the agenda at an informal meeting of European finance ministers in the Cypriot capital. (AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis)(Credit: AP)

MADRID (AP) — Tens of thousands of people from all over the country converged on Spain’s capital to hold a large anti-austerity demonstration on Saturday.

By mid-morning several major roads had been blocked as buses unloaded protesters at 10 rendezvous points from which marches began.

The main organizer, Social Summit, an association of more than 150 organizations, and the Workers’ Commissions and General Workers trade unions, said the demonstration was called to protest government cuts during the country’s financial crisis.

The Interior Ministry’s regional office said it expects more than half a million people to reach Christopher Columbus Square in the center of Madrid, where union leaders would make speeches.

Some marchers unfurled banners with slogans such as “Let’s go! They are ruining the country and we have to stop them.”

“This government’s policies are causing too much hurt,” said Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, the secretary general of the Workers’ Commissions. “It’s a lie that there isn’t another way to restore the economy.”

Large anti-austerity protests also were planned in neighboring Portugal on Saturday.

The Madrid protest comes four days after another anti-government gathering in the northeastern city of Barcelona which police said included some 1.5 million demonstrators.

“We’ve had our pay cut. We don’t get the firefighting training and equipment we need. There are more students and fewer teachers in our children’s classrooms, and healthcare is also being cut,” said fireman Carlos Melgaves who was marching in a group of about 50 firefighters. “We can’t take it anymore.”

Speaking in Nicosia, Cyprus, where Europe’s finance ministers were meeting Saturday, Spain’s economy minister, Luis de Guindos, said his government is aware it is asking sacrifices of Spanish society. “These sacrifices are absolutely unavoidable if we are to correct the difficult economic climate we are experiencing,” he said. “We are laying the foundations for a recovery.”

Spain, the fourth largest economy of the 17 countries that use the euro as a single currency, is stuck in a double-dip recession and unemployment is close to 25 percent.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has accepted a loan of up to euro100 billion ($127billion) to rescue banks reeling from a collapse of the country’s real estate and construction industries. His government also has faced punishingly high interest rates while raising money on bond markets to keep the economy in liquidity.

The country is widely expected to ask to sell its bonds to the European Central Bank, but the conditions attached have been the subject of ongoing negotiations.

Rajoy’s government has introduced stinging cuts and tax increases in a bid to reduce the deficit and to reassure investors and the euro zone’s financial officials.

In Portugal, another package of recently announced government austerity measures could turn the nation’s sullen acceptance of belt-tightening into an explosion of anger similar to that seen in Greece over the past two years.

Last week Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho announced an increase in workers’ social security contributions to 18 percent of their monthly salary from 11 percent. The cut is equivalent to a net monthly wage.

Portuguese Finance Minister Vitor Gaspar said income taxes will go up next year and public employees will lose either their Christmas or vacation bonus, roughly equivalent to a month’s income. Many pensioners will lose both.

___

Associated Press correspondent Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed to this report.

More Harold Heckle.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
231 points232 points | 14 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
221 points222 points | 172 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
202 points203 points | 30 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
81 points82 points | 16 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
54 points55 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations