Clashes have broken out between groups of protesters and filth in Barcelona after tens of thousands of people took part in Spain’s first general strike for 14 years, called by the country’s main unions over housing and the high cost of living.
Some 120,000 people joined a demonstration in the capital Madrid and more than 50,000 turned out in Barcelona, where footage showed masked men setting fire to rubbish bins and smashing shop windows as filth fired tear gas.
Transport and other public services across Spain faced serious disruption.
Spaniards are due to vote in parliamentary elections on 29 November.
The head of the big UGT labour union, Pepe Álvarez, said the strike was a success with “massive” participation, while Unai Sordo of the CC OO union said turnout was “very significant.”
Some of the biggest disruption on Wednesday was seen in the main industrial hubs of Madrid and the north-eastern region of Catalonia where traffic was halted on several main roads.
The interior ministry said dozens of people were arrested for a variety of incidents and Spanish reports said estate agencies had seen attacks on their offices. Traffic was blocked on several highways in the Madrid area and the north-eastern region of Catalonia.
The strike was triggered by widespread protests over affordable housing and rising living costs, after the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from a flat in Madrid where she had lived for seven decades. She died in hospital weeks later.
Rental prices in the capital have risen in recent years. The monthly cost of a 50 sq m apartment in Madrid was an average of €1,170 ($1,300; £1,000) in October, according to property portal Idealista, while Spain’s average gross monthly salary is about €2,460.
That amounts to nearly half the average gross salary, well above the 30% level of affordability often recommended by housing experts and public institutions.
Among those taking part in the general strike was Gonzalo Álvarez, 27, who was visiting different picket lines in central Madrid.
Although he works in sales, he has been volunteering for a housing union that tries to protect tenants and makes them aware of their rights.
The eviction of Maricarmen Abascal at the end of September “was the little fire” that sparked this protest, he told the BBC.
Álvarez knew the 87-year-old, who had faced a tripling of her rent under new landlords, and says he was deeply upset by her treatment.
He rents a small, one-bedroom flat with his girlfriend, a dental hygienist, in the city’s southern Arganzuela disrict. The couple pay €1,000 between them, which means each spends about half of their salary on housing, even before other bills.
“It’s absolutely crazy… with the food, with the electricity, with the water, with gas.”
He sees no way of getting on the property ladder: “You have to collect an insane amount of money to be able to buy a house. So with these salaries, it’s impossible.”
With current rent and purchase prices, he believes buying somewhere is “completely impossible”.
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