Spain’s workers hold a general strike over housing costs ahead of a national election

Detailed summary

Millions of Spanish workers shut down businesses and snarled transport in a massive protest Wednesday over housing costs that the government hopes to leverage ahead of a national election later this month.

BARCELONA, Spain — Millions of Spanish workers shut down businesses and snarled transport in a massive protest Wednesday over housing costs that the government hopes to leverage ahead of a national election later this month.

The walkout — under the slogan “Salaries. Housing. Prices.” — was the first general strike in Spain in 14 years.

Unions hailed the strike as a success, while Spain’s business owners’ groups said that it had fallen flat. But they agreed that worker participation was higher in heavy industry and transportation, while it lagged in other sectors of the economy like retail and restaurants.

In Barcelona, most storefronts on a main shopping boulevard were boarded up in anticipation of violence later in the day. The metro and public buses stopped running. Street traffic was light. Many smaller establishments like coffee shops, however, did open.

Carlos Ferrer, a 45-year-old customer service worker who was trying to get back home to Alicante by train from Barcelona, said that sometimes only “radical measures, such as a general strike” can force a change of course.

“Authorities need to feel pressure from the citizens so they can do something,” he said.

Unions have called for workers to march through Barcelona and Madrid later Wednesday, and protests are also planned in more than 50 cities and towns.

In Spain’s capital, strikers marched down main streets under the pelting rain earlier in the day and blocked off Gran Via, its main thoroughfare, until police in riot gear pushed them to the sidewalks.

Manuel Gómez, a 19-year-old student in Madrid, welcomed the protests, which he said marked a change for the country.

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