Subscriber OnlyEurope

Farming protest highlights Spain’s rural conundrum

Issue a political tightrope for left-wing government that won’t be solved with any future agreement on pro-farming measures in Brussels

Farmers park their tractors outside San Mamés football stadium in Bilbao, as they gather prior to protesting in the city on February 9th. Photograph: Ander Gillenea/Getty Images

Guy Hedgecoe's face
Guy Hedgecoe in Madrid
Sun Feb 11 2024 - 15:03

The Spanish national cinema awards, the Goyas, held in Valladolid on Saturday, are not the obvious arena for debate about the state of the country’s agriculture. But the issue nonetheless managed to make an appearance.

As he handed out an award, fêted film director Pedro Almodóvar made a sarcastic comment, describing himself as one of those “stuck-up gentlemen who receive subsidies only to make very bad films that nobody’s interested in”.

It was a riposte to Juan García-Gallardo, vice-president of the local government of Castilla y León for the far-right Vox party. Ahead of the ceremony, the politician had described the country’s film-makers in those derogatory terms as he called on them to use their fame to talk about the plight of farmers instead of political issues associated with the left, like historical memory.

There were fears that the ceremony might be disrupted by protesting farmers who had threatened to converge on Valladolid in their tractors. They had also planned to do the same in Madrid. However, neither Valladolid nor the Spanish capital saw major disruption as heavy police deployments deterred protesters in both cases.

READ MORE

Farmers make barricades after blocking a highway during a protest near Mollerussa, northeast Spain, on February 6th. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

However, this appears to be a temporary glitch in a wave of protests which, over the last week, has seen angry farmers mobilised across the country’s agricultural heartlands, aping their counterparts in much of Europe. They have driven tractors into towns and cities, including central Barcelona, blocked major roads and clashed with police in some cases, leading to about 20 arrests.

Much has been made of the far right’s involvement in these protests and how Vox has sought to capitalise on them. Several of the leading figures in the so-called 6F Platform, which called Saturday’s failed protests, have strong links to the party and García-Gallardo’s deliberately provocative comments about the cinema industry would appear to confirm that notion.

However, the major farming associations have been distancing themselves from the 6F Platform, underlining how agricultural workers are not one homogenous political entity. Although many of them feel represented by Vox’s nostalgic, rural-tinged nationalism, there are large numbers who are linked to left-leaning unions, or, in the case of Catalonia, ones with a large pro-independence membership.

[ Irish farmers encouraged to show solidarity with EU protests ]

“In the [recent] German and eastern European tractor protests, there were flags from when those countries were communist republics,” wrote Ana Iris Simón, a commentator on rural Spain who is herself from the farming region of Castilla-La Mancha. “Because without a doubt what farmers are yearning for is not fascism or communism, but rather certainty, stability and the possibility of making a living.”

What unites Spain’s farmers, and aligns them with others across much of Europe, are their main grievances. EU farming regulations, they say, are asphyxiating them, generating red tape and pushing up expenses. With the relatively high cost of fertiliser and fuel, this is making their profit margins extremely tight.

[ Video: Police use hoses as protesting farmers throw stones outside of EU Parliament ]

By contrast, Spanish farmers claim that non-EU producers are able to undercut them because they do not face such tight controls, particularly when it comes to meeting environmental standards. Last week, farmers in La Rioja, in northern Spain, bought Moroccan fruit and vegetables from a supermarket and threw them on the ground outside, before driving a tractor over them in protest.

For the coalition government of Pedro Sánchez, this issue is a tightrope. Despite his precarious domestic position, the Socialist has emerged as a prominent, pro-EU voice on the international stage. Yet he knows that being seen as “anti-farmer” would be a mistake.

His agriculture minister, Luis Planas, has insisted he is willing to engage with farmers and understands their complaints, while censoring attempts “to manipulate or use them in a violent way”.

But farmers are part of a broader, longstanding discontent in rural Spain. Waves of migration from these areas to larger urban hubs have meant that 90 per cent of the country’s population now inhabits just 30 per cent of its territory. The rest has become known as España vaciada, or “emptied Spain”, where the sparse population complains about lack of funding, transport links, good internet, schools and young families.

Drought has only intensified the feeling of abandonment in some areas, particularly in the south and the northeastern region of Catalonia, where it has also slashed harvests.

While any future agreement on pro-farming measures in Brussels may encourage protesters to feel they have made gains, it will take much more to solve Spain’s rural conundrum.

  • Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
  • Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
  • Our In The News podcast is now published daily - Find the latest episode here
Spain