“The rural world is dying”: the angry movement of Spanish farmers reached the center of Madrid on Wednesday February 21, where huge columns of tractors demonstrated against the precariousness of the sector, echoing the movements agitating several countries Europeans. Coming from all over Spain, several thousand farmers took to the streets of the capital in a concert of horns, cow bells and drums, at the call of the Union de Uniones (Union of Trade Unions) organization, but also groups of farmers mobilized on social networks.
Among them, 500 managed to reach the city center on tractors, according to the prefecture. Grouped in five columns of around a hundred vehicles, they joined the Ministry of Agriculture behind signs proclaiming in particular “Without the countryside, the city does not eat”.
The culmination of a movement of anger that began three weeks ago, in the wake of demonstrations organized in particular in France and Germany, this demonstration led to numerous traffic jams and sparked some tensions with the police.
Questioned on public television, the national coordinator of Union de Uniones, Luis Cortés, called on the Spanish government to make more efforts to “simplify” administrative procedures and protect farmers, many of whom are forced to “sell at a loss”. .
We need better “import control”, argued the union leader, calling into question unfair competition from products imported from non-European countries. They must be “subject to the same” environmental constraints “as those imposed on Spanish farmers,” he insisted.
In addition to this Madrid gathering, several other demonstrations took place on Wednesday in Spain, notably in Murcia (South-East), Palencia (North) and Malaga (South), this time called by the three professional organizations representing the sector: Asaja, COAG and UPA.
The implementation of “mirror clauses”
In a press release, the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, assured that he was “fully involved” in “providing answers to the concerns of farmers”, recalling that he had unveiled last week a package of support measures for the agricultural sector. resulting from a meeting with the unions.
The minister also once again committed to defending, on Monday in Brussels, the establishment of “mirror clauses”, a mechanism which requires imported products to respect the same rules as those required of European farmers.
This movement of agricultural anger has affected many other European countries since the start of the year. In France, the scene of large demonstrations at the end of January, suspended after a series of government announcements, a highway was again cut by farmers on Wednesday morning.
In Greece, where thousands of farmers and more than a hundred tractors gathered on Tuesday in front of the Parliament in Athens, demonstrators began to leave the city on Wednesday. They must decide in the coming days what action to take on the movement.
Faced with this outbreak of anger, which comes a few months before the European elections at the beginning of June, the European Commission has also made concessions in recent weeks, particularly on the objectives of reducing the use of pesticides in the European Union. .
