Spain Held Its First General Strike in 14 Years, Over Housing

Spain stopped on Wednesday. In a 24-hour general strike called over the cost of housing, unions say about four million workers walked out, set up picket lines in the rain and marched through the country's cities under a three-word slogan: "Salaries. Housing. Prices."

It was Spain's first general strike since 2012, when workers struck against austerity measures during the euro zone debt crisis. This one was backed by the country's two largest unions, UGT and CCOO, and, unusually, by tenants' associations, which tells you what kind of strike it was. The tenants' union said it expected participation to reach five million by the end of the day. Business organizations countered that fewer than 5 percent of workers took part, and the honest summary is that the size of the walkout is itself part of the argument.

The numbers underneath it are not in dispute. Spain has a deficit of about 750,000 homes, a shortfall the central bank expects to grow past one million by 2028. The average rent is 1,176 euros a month, about $1,315, which the Youth Council of Spain calculates is equivalent to 98.7 percent of a young person's average monthly salary. Spain has around 23 million workers; a generation of them is doing arithmetic that doesn't close.

The anger had a specific spark. In September, an 87-year-old woman, Maricarmen Abascal, was evicted from the Madrid apartment she had rented for more than 70 years, and her case became the symbol of the protests that built through the autumn toward the strike.

On the street, the strike produced the day's defining exchange, reported by Reuters: Jesus Gonzalez, a 36-year-old hospital IT worker in Madrid, explaining that he still cannot afford to move out as rents keep rising. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, meanwhile, hopes to harness the resentment over housing in the snap general election set for November 29, less than three weeks after the strike.

The day wasn't entirely peaceful. Demonstrations in Madrid and Barcelona ended in clashes with police, and officers made arrests, including 18 linked to disturbances in Barcelona. On Thursday, the day after the strike, the lower house of parliament approved part of the government's emergency housing package by a reported single vote, 35 to 34.

Whether the strike moves the housing numbers is a longer question. What it settled is the subject of Spanish politics between now and November 29. It isn't wages in the abstract anymore. It's rent.