The protesters responded on Sunday to the call of the Rural Alliance platform, which affirms to represent some ten million Spanish peasants.
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Spanish flags, banners where you could read “extinction breeders” or “SOS rural world”. Some 150,000 farmers and pastoralists demonstrated Sunday, March 20, in Madrid, forming 4 kilometers a procession leads by tractors, riders and hunting dogs. They responded to the call of the Rural Alliance Platform (Alianza Rural), which affirms representing ten million Spanish peasants.
Protesters demand from the socialist government of Pedro Sanchez Immediate measures to curb prices, including fuels, and lower operating profitability.
“It’s time to look for solutions” to the difficulties of the rural world, “which occupies 80% of the territory,” said Pedro Barato, President of the ASAJA Agricultural Employer Confederation. “That’s enough! That the President of the Spanish government stop traveling abroad and begins to act” in Spain.
“This government ruins”
The agricultural world thus intended to denounce the flight of the prices of fuels and fertilizers, coupled with a reduction of margins, and protest against rural desertification and government measures for animal welfare, which aim in particular to restrict The breeding of dogs of shepherd and hunting. “This government ruins, with more and more expensive fuels,” said Nora Guzmán, from Pozuelo de Alarcón, west of Madrid, driving his tractor.
“Today, the animals are more guarded by men” by “inconsistent and absurd standards that the government wants to impose”, lamented Fernando Sáez, a farmer who had made the trip from Cordoba, with his dog hunting, until the capital.
This great peasant event was organized in the aftermath of that having gathered thousands of people at the call of the Vox far-right party to protest the widespread increase in prices in the agri-food and energy sectors , aggravated by the conflict in Ukraine.
On their side, the country’s main union confederations have called for a general strike on March 23rd.