After almost half a century of life, it seems necessary to remind everyone: the strike is a right recognized by the Spanish Constitution. Specifically, in section two of article 28, the section in which the right to unionization and the existence of trade unions is also recognized. It seems unbelievable, but it feels like there are those who do not remember it. Or perhaps it is that, in the event of winning the elections, they intend to reduce, cut back, or even suppress these rights?

From the air, with drones and helicopters, they could already be distinguished clearly. On Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona, there was a huge crowd. The general strike unions had called for a unified demonstration, which ended up fracturing. To gain visibility and keep their people more grouped together, some unions opted to concentrate a few streets down, resulting in three distinct but nearby demonstrations. Despite the crowd, the Mossos d’Esquadra detected from the air a group of about fifty people, all dressed in black, near Casa Seat, at the Jardinets de Gràcia. In jargon, it is known as a black block, and it was they who initiated the severe unrest on Wednesday. But how did they manage to walk along Passeig de Gràcia without being identified? How did they camouflage themselves among the mass of people?

It is a quarter to twelve on Thursday morning and the vast majority of shops on Carrer Pelai, Plaça Catalunya and the lower part of Passeig de Gràcia are operating at half capacity. The day after the disturbances in the centre of the capital following the general strike demonstration, many businesses remain boarded up, many with a small opening to let customers in through a glass door that in many cases has graffiti or is directly broken or punctured. "They have destroyed everything," comments an elderly couple looking at the completely cracked windows of the Apple store in Plaça Catalunya, which has not opened today. "When they set fire inside, we decided to leave," explains one of the workers who is managing the store's repair. He complains that yesterday at noon they were already working to protect the business and that "it was all for nothing".

These are images from this morning in the city center of Barcelona. Graffiti on Passeig de Gràcia on the facades of shops and banks. At the Apple store, right at the corner of Passeig de Gràcia and Plaça Catalunya, with the main door burned, broken glass with stones still on the ground, a smell of charred remains, displaced workers, graffiti, and the first workers trying to clean up after a violent night that ended up being washed away, because it has rained. There were burned traffic lights, like these at Plaça Universitat, and burning of dumpsters, which have already been removed this morning.

The general strike this Wednesday is having a major impact on the start of the election campaign, which will take place this midnight. The “success” of the mobilization claimed by the PSOE and the parties to its left contrasts with the “failure” attributed to it by the PP and Vox, who speak of “political” and “preventive” mobilization against the opposition. Right and left, however, agreed this Thursday in singling out the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. From the Broad Front to Podemos and ERC, they have asked for his resignation due to the charges against protesters in places like Madrid and Valencia, while the PP has criticized the lack of “order and security” in the face of picket lines and disturbances following the demonstrations and Vox has threatened union action. Marlaska, however, has ruled out resigning: “No, I have no reason for a resignation,” he said in a press briefing this Thursday evening, from the Madrid neighborhood of San Blas. The minister acknowledged that there are images that they did not like and that do not fit “with the principle of proportionality.” The ministry has ordered an “immediate” investigation into police conduct and that agents stop using tear gas in the mobilizations.

"Due to the general strike and for security reasons, connections between lines will be made via the outside," said a voice over the subway public address system this Wednesday afternoon, when minimum services returned to operation. There were nine minutes left until the next subway arrived at La Sagrera station, on line 5, and the platform was already full of passengers. General strikes are like this: the lack of public transport makes it difficult to get to work, but it also complicates going to demonstrate.

This Wednesday, the most transversal general strike since the Transition is being held. Major trade unions –CCOO and UGT–, the organizations of the Trade Union Table –CGT, IAC, Co.bas, CNT, COS, SO– and housing entities –such as the Tenants' Union– have called for mobilization to stop workplaces across the State. The day, which aims to "stop everything," demands strictly labor-related proposals, such as wage increases and halting the loss of workers' purchasing power. And, for the first time, a general strike on a Spanish scale also asks to intervene in the housing market. It has been 14 years since a 24-hour general strike has taken place with the consensus of the major trade unions.

Starting this Tuesday evening, an unprecedented situation will be experienced in the State: a general strike will begin, called by the Tenants' Union and also by the majority unions UGT and Comisiones Obreras against the rising cost of living and, above all, the price of housing. The event, however, is not free of controversy, as it comes after eight years of Pedro Sánchez's government and on the eve of elections that could shift majorities in the State in favor of the PP and Vox. Is the strike against the Spanish government? Or, on the contrary, is it the mobilization lever that the executive is seeking to mobilize the left ahead of the polls?

Last night's interview on TVE's La Revuelta went much better for Abascal than for Broncano. The Vox leader listened, kept quiet, did not interrupt, and responded when it was his turn. And he responded in a reasonably responsible tone. Broncano, on the other hand, made very long interventions with clarifications that no one was asking for and that sounded like excuses, and he managed neither to make an entertaining show (we are talking about an entertainment program) nor to conduct a poignant interview. To put it in sporting terms, Abascal won. And he will gain some votes, thanks to this interview, because many people watched it: it was the most-watched broadcast in the history of the program in terms of viewers, nearly five million people, 428,000 more viewers than the one with Pedro Sánchez.

Actor Eduard Farelo is the star of the spot for the November 11th general strike that the Tenants' Union (Sindicat de Llogateres) released 24 hours after unveiling the song Estimada Valentina, composed specifically for the protest. According to the union, the track has accumulated more than a million and a half views on digital platforms.

The minimum services in Catalonia during Wednesday's general strike will be more restrictive, in general, than those in the rest of the State, according to information provided by the various public administrations that have negotiated with the unions. In this regard, last week the employers' associations Foment del Treball and Pimec expressed “surprise” at minimum services in Catalonia that they described as “extremely low”.

It is a "complex cocktail". This Wednesday's general strike coincides with elections around the corner and many diverse demands on the table, starting with housing –surely the main one–, but also including the demands of the train drivers –and the consequences already seen on the road network– and other mobilized groups such as those in the education sector. There are other elements of the context that do not bode well for a quiet day either, such as student mobilizations across Europe, the ephemeral but surprising and violent arrival of Blocus in Catalonia or the increasingly constant warnings of a hybrid war with cyberattacks on essential structures or bomb alerts on planes. All of this is on the table for the Mossos d'Esquadra to try to anticipate what the general strike will be like.

The general strike on November 11th has served to define the profiles of the country's social agents. While labor and housing unions have used the call to pressure the executive and sharpen their arguments in the sphere of work –from the SMI to the reduction of the working day or the distribution of corporate profits–, employers' associations have acknowledged the residential crisis, but not the tool chosen to respond to it. The president of the Catalan association for small and medium-sized enterprises Pimec, Antoni Cañete (Barcelona, 1963), speaks with ARA about a protest he considers "a mistake" and about a tension in the buying and rental market that appeals to "society in general".

General strikes are a fundamental instrument for the articulation of democratic societies. General strikes, sector-specific strikes, and, of course, the right to strike itself. We have reached a point where perhaps we must start here. This does not prevent many of us from having questioned on occasion the appropriateness of calling one general strike or another. But now we are in another moment in the history of democracy in which what is being called into question is not the content or the meaning of a specific strike, but the very act of the strike and even the right to call for it and to support it. It is a demand of those who wish to arrive at post-democracy, or those who are already living installed within it. Fundamental rights and freedoms must retreat, must be minimized, or must be abolished. Trump may have suffered a defeat in the midterm elections, but the Alex Karps, the Chris Olahs, the Elon Musks, and the Mark Zuckerbergs continue to work on a new order of large digital corporations that dilutes and aspires to replace the mechanisms and institutions of liberal democracies as a form of power organization in our societies.

The 2008 economic crisis ended, at least theoretically, in 2013. It was the last year in which the Spanish economy recorded negative growth. The consequences of the recession still persist today, and are exacerbated by the more recent rise in the price of a very specific group of products in the shopping basket. They are fundamentally two: housing and food, as clarified by the Generalitat in the 2025 Social Report.

Enric Aragonès (Reus, 1991) arrives directly from work—in a job that has nothing to do with activism—at the space in the central headquarters of the University of Barcelona from where the Sindicat de Llogateres (Tenants' Union) is organizing the general strike of November 11. Between photographs, he is grateful that we are conducting an in-depth interview to discuss the call to action on the eve of the elections, in a fast-paced world where current events usually move from one statement to the next.

Anna Puigdevall (Barcelona, 1968) has worked her entire professional life in the business sector, after studying physics, and for less than two years she has been part of the property owners' association Som Habitatge. They claim that they are financed through member dues and donations, and that they do not receive resources from any large real estate management company.

Next Wednesday we are called to a general strike to demand better wages, affordable housing, and measures against the rising cost of living. And this at a time when Catalonia is recording one of the lowest unemployment rates since 2008, the minimum wage has increased by almost 66% since 2018 and monetary poverty has decreased in recent years. And yet, many families continue to have difficulty making ends meet. How is this explained?

Whenever a general strike is called, one looks back in order to continue looking ahead. Life in common—and that of each individual—connects and intertwines with the general strikes we have lived through. The first one I remember, a rearview mirror of an absorbed child, is with my grandfather Saturnino—imprisoned in the immediate postwar period for years and moving from the 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 adrift in neoliberalism—. I remember the one in 2002 against José María Aznar more clearly. And then, to make the jump, the one in 2012—with the indelible memory of the infinite dignity of Ester Quintana—. Without ever forgetting the two feminist general strikes of 2018 and 2019, 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 employers' sources speaking of 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.

At the gates of the general strike called across the State for next November 11th, the number of unemployed people in Catalonia is rising for the fourth consecutive month. Specifically, according to data released this Wednesday by the Ministry of Labor, in the Principality there are 8,174 more unemployed people in October than in September, a figure that represents an increase of 2.48%. In comparison with last October, unemployment is growing even more strongly: it is up by 4.24%, which is equivalent to 13,751 more people without work than a year ago. In total, in Catalonia there are 338,246 people unemployed. This trend contrasts with the rest of the State, where unemployment is decreasing in year-on-year terms.