Shouting "Aznar cabrón, trabaja de peon!" ("Aznar bastard, work as labourer!), "el pueblo unido jamás será vencido!", ("the people united will never be defeated!") and "reforma agraria, ahora" ("land reform, now!")… Thousands of workers, men and women and young labourers showed with their voices the enormous strength of the working class when it moves. When the demonstration passed in front of the hotel where the European leaders are going to stay, the two-metre high fence was not enough to stop the people shouting "they hide behind the fence, the people do not hide!"
The anger, restrained for years by the harsh living conditions, exploded. There were not enough busses in the whole of Andalusia, nor in Extremadura and Murcia. There was not a single bus in the south of Spain that wasn't going to the demo. Even busses from Portugal were used by the workers to attend the most important demonstration in the history of Seville, only comparable to the demonstration demanding autonomy during the transition [from Franco].
And that's because the Popular Party's Government has declared their intention to reform the unemployment law even if they have to legislate by decree, and have been threatening to reform the right to strike. This only served to further enraged the workers, and the one who play with fire the end up getting burned.
The unemployment benefit reform is a direct attack to the whole labour movement, but it's especially hard on the poorest areas and layers of society. This law not only makes the sacking of workers cheaper and easier but cuts back on benefits and also makes it very easy to expel people from the social security system. This reform eliminates the agrarian unemployment benefit which is essential for the survival of thousand of families in the South, especially Andalusia.
From now on the youth can not have benefits, a wife whose husband is a truck driver is not allowed it either and if the head of the family has got a piece of land (even a small one) the rest of the family loses its right to any benefit.
The government wants mobility from workers. What else do they want? Every year 150,000 labourers leave their land to collect olives in the rest of Spain, not to mention the ones that go to France and other countries. During the 1960s and 70s more than three million Andalusians had to emigrate to find work. For the majority of the population, the 8 million inhabitants of Andalusia, the end of the agrarian subsidies could mean desertisation of large areas of land. The subsidies for labourers are a historic conquest of the working people in the fight against the dictatorship in which some saw jail, blood and repression when they were taking land from landowners. The workers are not going to allow all these conquests to be taken by the right wing. The mood on the demo was to fight until the end.
The strike law: Another attack against our democratic rights
The success of this demo is an anticipation of the general strike on June 20. That is precisely why the government is worried and scared. Like a caged rat, the right wing is jumping trying to bite the working class. The very afternoon of the demo, the employment minister was talking about a new strike law. The minimum services that the government wants to impose shows what they really understand by a fundamental right like this. For the ruling class there is no right when we are dealing with their interests and money. They understand that this struggle is not the first and is not going to be the last, and that the radicalisation of the working class will grow with the next attempt to carry through their anti-working class policies. They have the Italian example and they are expecting the same. That is why they want to be ready with more restrictive and reactionary laws.
The role of the unions
The working class should prepare itself to respond to these attacks overwhelmingly. The trade union leaders of the CCOO and UGT who previously reached agreements with the government that amounted to a step back in our working and living conditions must break with this policy that handcuffs the working class to the interests of the ruling class. The general strike is a very important step forward, but the government knows what they are playing on and they won't go back with just the first strike. It has to be prepared now, like the SOC (Union of Rural Proletarians) is doing correctly. This union that organises thousands of labourers (jornaleros) of Andalusia, has announced that on June 23, after the general strike and the anti-capitalist demos of Seville, it will hold a general assembly to decide a plan of mobilisations. Since the government announced the reform, the SOC has called hundreds of meetings in the towns, tens of road blocks in which many workers participated, and called walk-outs to explain the real meaning of the reform within the workplaces.
Diego Cañamero, the general secretary of the SOC, has declared that they are not going to stop until the new law is rejected. In fact, thanks to the work of that union and with the resources of the main trade union federations CCOO and UGT, the demonstration proved to be a big success.
That is the only way forward, the way that millions of members of the CCOO, UGT, PSOE and IU are expecting. Not like the leader of the Socialist Party who cowardly doesn't support the general strike. On the contrary, socialist and communist councillors and even mayors are supporting the struggle and have helped financially with the march in Seville.
Aznar and his government have shown their real face. The proximity of the economic recession forces them to cut back again and again. They even allow themselves to insult the workers calling them lazy and claiming that they do not even want to look for a job. A labourer form Cordoba, Baldomero Díaz, said at the demo: "The benefits are ridiculous, very little money, and if I had enough work I wouldn't want the benefits, but I have four children and their only hope is with us working."
Aznar, this "señorito" that has never known what it is like to work under the sun and doesn't know what it is like to have burnt skin, who doesn't have calluses from collecting olives in the freezing winter, who doesn't know what it means to go down to the cesspit where your lungs get filled with toxic fumes, who does not know what it is like to break your back loading a lorry or to see your children going away to be exploited working in a hotel - this "señorito" calls the workers lazy. But the answer to these insults and attacks is now in motion. The answer is the mobilisation. June 20 is when the working class will impose its will - there will not be any landowner, "señorito" or bourgeois laughing at us on this day.