Portuguese and Spanish unions discuss 'Iberian general strike'

Several Spanish trade unions had already called a general strike for 11 November. However, the CCOO leader says extending it to Portugal is now on the table.

Portuguese and Spanish trade unions are in contact with a view to organising a possible "Iberian general strike", Unai Sordo, secretary-general of CCOO (Comisiones Obreras), said on Thursday in an interview with the programme "Los Desayunos" (source in Portuguese) produced by Spanish broadcaster RTVE and the EFE news agency.

According to the Spanish union leader, Portuguese unions are considering calling a general strike on 11 November. A similar stoppage has already been scheduled in the neighbouring country for that date, bringing together, among others, Spain's two main trade union confederations, CCOO and UGT (General Workers' Union).

The aim, Sordo explained, is thus to give shape to an "Iberian general strike". However, he stressed that this will depend on the decision to be taken by trade union organisations in Portugal. "It is up to the Portuguese to decide whether, in the end, we join forces in a mobilisation across the Iberian Peninsula that would also be historic", the CCOO secretary-general said.

Jokingly, he also referred to the only Portuguese writer to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, José Saramago, who not only spent almost two decades of his life living in Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, but also maintained an inseparable link with the progressive movements of his time. "If they hold [the strike] in Portugal, we are going to call it the Saramago strike", Sordo concluded.

The general strike in Spain on 11 November has been a foregone conclusion for several weeks, having been scheduled for 18 days before the snap elections called by the country's prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, after parliament rejected measures proposed by the national government to tackle the housing crisis.

Both countries have, in fact, seen various initiatives to defend that right and to oppose the rising cost of living. Taking inspiration from the protests that began, at the end of September, in Puerta del Sol, one of the most famous squares in the Spanish capital, Madrid, thousands of demonstrators spent several nights camping out in the centres of Portuguese cities such as Porto and Lisbon.

The demands in both cases are the same: protesters are calling for decent housing at affordable prices, with many complaining that having a job is no longer enough to be able to rent a flat in the major urban centres.