Striking truckers jammed the highways leading into Madrid today on the second day of a national strike after rejecting a government plan to mitigate the effects of surging fuel prices.
Traffic was backed up behind slow-driving trucks on all the major entrances to the Spanish capital, with the most severe delays near the exclusive La Moraleja neighbourhood to the north of Madrid, the Interior Ministry said.
The National Federation of Transport Employers yesterday rejected a government offer to cut social security contributions for truckers.
"We're in exactly the same position we started in," federation president Juan Villaexcusa said in an interview. "We've got few expectations that they will make any progress on the fundamentals. We're quite far apart.''
Higher fuel prices have sparked protests across Europe as businesses have seen their profit margins squeezed. Crude prices have more than doubled in the past year, partly due to increasing demand from China and India.
Hundreds of fishermen picketed the European Commission headquarters in Brussels last week to protest soaring fuel costs, while French taxi drivers and truckers blocked a refinery outside Marseille on June 2nd.
In Catalonia, northern Spain, where half the gas stations ran out of fuel yesterday, trucks bringing fresh fuel supplies were given an escort by local police, it was reported.
Police will use "full force if necessary" to guarantee fuel supplies, Regional Interior Minister Joan Boada said.
The truckers' leaders want the government to revise transport tariffs so they automatically reflect increases in the price of diesel and offer tax breaks to transport firms.
Spanish Finance Minister Pedro Solbes last week rejected a call by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to cut fuel taxes to offset the rise in oil prices.
The surge in energy prices prompted the European Central Bank last week to broach the possibility of increasing interest rates to control inflation.