‘Peace with genociders is a farce’: students and workers strike across Spain
Hundreds of thousands of workers and students across Spain walked out of schools and workplaces on 15 October in opposition to the genocide in Gaza. Organised by the main trade union federations, student organisations and pro-Palestine groups, more than 200 calls for full or partial strikes, pickets, rallies and demonstrations took place throughout the day, rejecting the “peace deal” brokered by US President Donald Trump and demanding the Spanish government sever ties with Israel.
The largest strikes took place in the autonomous northern region of the Basque Country, where 40 percent of public-school teachers and 5.3 percent of healthcare workers went on strike. Due to work stoppages, public transport across the region was paralysed in the early hours of the morning. In Bilbao, an estimated 15,000 people marched through the city, staging mass sit-ins outside companies denounced as complicit with Israel, including clothes retailer Zara and Banco Sabadell. In Vitoria-Gasteiz (the capital), 25,000 people marched out of a population of 250,000.
Significant strikes were also held in other autonomous regions.
In Zaragoza (capital of the northeastern Aragón region), hundreds of healthcare workers joined students who walked out of the University Clinical Hospital, holding a joint worker-student rally in the Plaza de Aragón. In Galicia (north-west), nearly 9 percent of workers in the legal sector and around 2 percent in the general administration, education and healthcare sectors went on strike. The Balearic Islands off the eastern coast reported 563 teachers on strike—around 4 percent of the total.
Protests and pickets took place in more than 40 cities throughout the day, including Léon, Logroño, Vigo, Córdoba, Málaga, Murcia, Valencia, Seville and regional centres with little living memory of struggle. In Pamplona (capital of the northern Navarre region), around 10,000 joined a midday march headed by a tractor draped in the Palestinian flag.
Barcelona saw the most concerted efforts by young people to disrupt economic activity through pickets. In the morning, student-led contingents of thousands blockaded the central square of Plaça Universitat, the Gran Via central business district and key transport hubs, such as the main logistics area in the city, Zona Franca, and the port of Barcelona (where the boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla departed earlier in September).
The Catalan Transport Service reported that road closures and bottlenecks persisted as spontaneous protests of young people broke out throughout the rest of the day. The University of Barcelona suspended all academic activities due to “absenteeism”. In the evening, an estimated 30,000 people took to the streets, with intense clashes breaking out between youth and Catalan riot police.
In Madrid, pickets of students and workers sprouted across the city at strategic locations, such as Metro stations, Airbus factories and the Telefónica headquarters. Huge numbers of university and high school students walked out of their classes. More than 25,000 predominantly young workers and students flooded Puerta del Sol under the slogans “Stop everything to stop the genocide” and “Peace with genociders is a farce”.
Strike action by workers represents a significant step forward for the Palestine movement because it offers a glimpse of the immense potential power that workers can wield—the power to halt production and stop the flow of profits to the capitalist ruling class.
Although these were partial work stoppages by a significant minority of workers rather than a concerted national shutdown, the predominance of students and young workers in the mobilisations reflects deep and ongoing opposition among these social layers to the genocide and the complicity of Spain’s centre-left Socialist Party-Sumar government. Everywhere, students and young workers were at the forefront of the actions: the first in the streets, taking over railways and roads, shutting down schools and universities.
“The Spanish government has tried since the beginning of the genocide to have a pro-Palestine public position, but one that would not have any practical consequences against the rules of capitalism, of which they are organically part of”, Ánxel Testas of Anticapitalistas, the largest Marxist organisation in the Spanish State, told Red Flag.
This has included recognising Palestinian statehood and announcing a largely symbolic arms embargo on Israel, which leaves the bulk of Spain’s military collaboration with the Zionist state untouched, permits ongoing contracts with the Israeli defence industry, and establishes no inspection mechanism for Israeli vessels docking in Spanish ports.
Since October 2023, the Spanish government has purchased more than €1 billion worth of arms from Israel; between June and August this year, the Spanish government sold arms to Israel worth at least €1 million.
The call for a national day of strikes and demonstrations began in early October, when an estimated 2 million people mobilised across the country in four days of unceasing demonstrations. Beginning in response to Israel’s attacks on the Global Sumud Flotilla, the massive pressure from below, combined with the explosive 3 October general strike across Italy, forced the major trade union federations to call for work stoppages.
The Workers Commissions (CCOO) linked to Podemos and Sumar, which govern jointly with the Socialist Party, and the social-democratic General Union of Workers (UGT), with nearly a million members each, called for two-hour work stoppages in each shift, covering morning, afternoon and night.
The anarcho-syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT), with around 100,000 members, called a 24-hour general strike across all sectors and territories. In the Basque Country, the pro-separatist trade unions, including LAB, ELA, Etxalde and HIRU, called for three-hour stoppages and demonstrations in the main cities.
The Student Union (Sindicato de Estudiantes), various youth organisations, pro-Palestine groups and the radical left joined in the calls for a general strike, agitating for a student strike in high schools and universities, alongside joint pickets with striking workers.
“The call for a general strike on 15 October took place at a time of the movement’s rise and reflects both the immense pressure exerted by the movement and, paradoxically, an attempt at demobilisation”, explained Ánxel. “The majority unions [CCOO and UGT] had no intention that the partial stoppages they called would have force because the trade union leaders hoped a ceasefire deal would take the wind out of the sails of the movement. The minority unions, including the CGT, are too weak to achieve a successful general strike alone.
“Although it is true that the rank and file are to the left of their leaderships and eager to mobilise on the Palestinian question, there is no situation of effective overflow from below as in Italy, nor does the fact that the big unions call for an effective mobilisation of the workers. The leaderships of these unions sought to prevent what happened in Italy.”
With the notable exception of the Basque Country, where a more combative left has greater roots in workplaces and unions, Ánxel said, “the low participation in the strikes elsewhere is a clear indication that without strength in the workplaces the movement is very fragile when the peak moments of mobilisation pass”.
Ánxel said that this illustrates the need to build a revolutionary socialist movement with roots among workers and students that can lead people in a radical direction and ultimately overthrow the entire capitalist system.
“Although the ceasefire may slow down the size of the mobilisations, it is necessary to organise and educate the entire activist vanguard that has been born out of these mobilisations with internationalist and socialist politics”, he said. “It must become the engine of growth for both revolutionary and movement organisations to prepare for the coming phases in the ongoing struggle to liberate Palestine.”
