Like a house
"I want a strike where we all go"
Gioconda Belli, 1978
Whenever a general strike is called, one looks back in order to continue looking ahead. Life in common –and that of everyone– binds and intertwines with the general strikes we have lived through. The first one I remember, as a rear-view mirror of an absorbed child, is with my grandfather Saturnino –imprisoned in the immediate post-war period for years and going from strikes against the dictatorship to the stoppages of the eighties for an economic and social democracy that never arrived and that we still do not know–. That 14-D of 1988 with the city at a standstill against a PSOE that took power with the left and touched it with the right, in the restructuring of capitalism in the Spanish state ordered by the EEC after the darkness of Francoism. These were the Solchaga times when the minister said: "España es el país donde se puede ganar más dinero a corto plazo de toda Europa". The next one was the one in 1994 against labor precariousness –and also against the PSOE, and there was already talk of a generation of young people drifting in neoliberalism–. With more clarity I retain the one from 2002 against José María Aznar. And then, to take the leap, the one from 2012 –with the indelible memory of the infinite dignity of Ester Quintana–. The last one was the most overwhelming categorical general strike I have ever seen: that of October 3, 2017, in unanimous protest against a shameful and infamous repression. I remember business sources talking about a 92% turnout and that in the neighborhood there was no need for pickets. It is urgent to add that the last exile will arrive home before Christmas. Nine years later.
If one asks how the world turns today, where exactly we are, it is prescriptive to rummage through the past, because we are also –heritage and legacy– the strikes that have preceded us. There are rights that we still enjoy today that were propped up back then. After all, if we still work eight hours –those who work them, and those who already work many more at a stretch– it is because of the strike of all strikes. The one by La Canadenca in 1919. And the rent strike of 1931. And the tram strike of 1951. And those that were not general, but were there and that they so much want us to forget, lest we relearn from the threat of good examples: from Laforsa in 1975 to Bruguera in 1986, from the general strike in Sabadell in 1976 that ousted the Francoist mayor to the one at Roca that we won in 1977, from the Fàbrica Nova in Manresa in 1946 to the one at Harry Walker in 1970. A dialectical life, of contrasts and contradictions, I must admit that when I heard Garamendi, from the CEOE, asking himself against whom the November 11th strike was exactly being called, I found that he was right. Because strikes, yes, are called against governments and their inactions –although, paradoxically, also against the opposition that struck down the housing decrees and, preventively, against the hyper-realistic probability of the wild involution that may befall us on November 29th.
However, anyone who thinks it is a sudden and improvised strike is mistaken: the powerful movement for the right to housing has been cooking up the idea for some time. And it has had successful partial experiences. For example, the rent strike against La Caixa promoted by the Tenants' Union, starring 112 households over 14 months and which ended in June and was well won: all the affected apartments and many more have passed into public stock for life. In total, 1,900. What is a strike for? Well, for this. To expand democracy in the face of those who want to diminish it. In the midst of all this, a European social crisis without precedent and at the same time more predictable than ever: who the hell didn't know that by devaluing public services, degrading living conditions, making existence precarious, commodifying everything, or speculating with housing, the seams wouldn't be stretched, grievances wouldn't accumulate, and protests wouldn't arise that claim the right for everyone to live with a minimum of dignity? The missed Xosé Manuel Beiras, the most lucid of the irmandiños from Galicia, already said in one of his last interventions that it was necessary to understand –or we would understand nothing at all– that the darkening era we are facing is nothing more than the dire and disastrous epilogue –also predictable– of 50 years of rogue, gambling-addicted, and sociopathic neoliberalism.
For years, economic data has shown that the mythologized economic growth has completely decoupled from social progress. More wealth, more inequality. While I try to concentrate on these lines, I glance at official data that confuses me. The figures of net profits that, just between January and September 2026, the electricity sector—15 billion—or the banking sector—29.2 billion—have already accumulated. In both cases, anthological gains. The chainsaw must be this: 4.45 million per hour in the case of banks, 2.28 million per hour in the case of energy companies. Enough to get a shock—enough to hold a general strike. Especially because we have been sold that energy prices were rising as a result of wars—and then, where do such profits come from? Especially because, unlike the productive fabric and small and medium-sized enterprises, we all know where financial institutions extract so much money from. And then the problem is twofold: that it happens and that we allow it. "We have kept a silence quite similar to stupidity," said an insurrectional proclamation of the Junta Tuitiva of the Junta de La Paz, in Bolivia, in the year 1809.
The strike call also serves to face reality head-on and never accept a pig in a poke. Because this clumsy idea that, regarding housing, there is a conflict that splits Catalan society into two halves –tenants and landlords– is absurd, false, and fallacious. I’m sorry, but no. That the industry association tries to equate so many people living in a property paid for with their wages with those who play the real estate gambling game does not wash and is a fraud. There are no more than 600,000 Catalans who rent out apartments (7% of the country). Companies or owners who rent out more than five apartments, according to the most recent data from the Tax Agency, are an elite, select minority –0.3%– that some are so insistent on defending. A minority that squares exactly with that 1% against the general 99% always proclaimed by our dear retired activist grandparents, now fighting for the lives of their granddaughters and grandsons. That the association now proposes that the consideration of a large property holder should only apply starting from more than 100 apartments is laughable –and it is understandable in part, their spokesperson accumulates 35, mostly for seasonal rental, go figure–. In any case, a song of the suburbs, a lesson of sums and verbs, or a song of the balances –to put it in Ovidian terms–, on Wednesday, yes, a new general strike has been called. To ensure that living does not cost your life, I hope it is a strike as big as a house.
