Spain’s unions, tenants’ groups and, unusually, its own government backed the first general strike in 14 years. The day ended with petrol bombs seized in Barcelona and 115 arrests. The next day, 17 days before a snap election, the interior minister barred national police forces from using tear gas at demonstrations.
Millions of Spaniards were called off work on Wednesday, November 11, in a general strike over rents, evictions and the cost of living, the first such stoppage since 2012. Marches in Madrid and Barcelona were largely peaceful until nightfall, when hooded groups smashed shop windows on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia, set bins alight and fired fireworks at police. By Thursday, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska had ordered that tear gas no longer be used to control demonstrations and opened an inquiry into police conduct. Spain votes on November 29.
The strike matters beyond Spain because of who called it and why. It was not a protest against a conservative austerity government, as in 2012. It was a strike against housing outcomes under a Socialist-led government that has held office since 2018, and that government’s ministers encouraged people to join it.
What most coverage misses
English-language coverage mostly framed the day as tenants against landlords and investment funds. Three points got less attention.
First, the government sided with the strikers. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez praised past general strikes on social media, writing, in the BBC’s translation: “Your eight-hour day. Your pension. Your public healthcare… These were collective conquests.” Labour Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz called it a success and said “we have to put an end to the great factory of inequality that is speculation,” Spain in English reported. A government endorsing a national stoppage over conditions it has presided over for eight years is unusual.
Second, the streets were full but many workplaces kept running, and the turnout figures depend almost entirely on who is counting.
Third, the tear-gas order does not cover the force that handled the worst violence. Spain’s Interior Ministry commands the National Police and the Guardia Civil. Barcelona is policed in public-order situations by the Mossos d’Esquadra, which answers to the Catalan regional government. The petrol bombs, improvised explosives and most of the arrests were in Catalonia.
Background: an eviction, two defeated decrees and a snap election
The trigger was the eviction at the end of September of Maricarmen Abascal, 87, from the Madrid flat where she had lived for about seven decades. She died in hospital weeks later, the BBC reported. A housing volunteer who knew her told the BBC her rent had tripled under new landlords. Protest camps followed, the largest in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol.
Sánchez’s minority government answered with two emergency housing decrees. Congress rejected both in October; the seven deputies of the Catalan party Junts helped defeat them. Sánchez then called an early general election for November 29. The two largest unions, the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) and the General Union of Workers (UGT), joined the tenants’ union, the Sindicato de Inquilinas, in calling the strike.
The underlying shortage is not in dispute. The Bank of Spain has estimated a shortfall of about 750,000 homes and warned it could pass one million by 2028 if current trends hold, El País reported in September. According to the property portal Idealista, cited by the BBC, a 50-square-metre flat in Madrid averaged €1,170 a month in October, against an average gross monthly salary of about €2,460. That is roughly 48 percent of gross pay. The Spanish Youth Council puts the average rent at €1,176, equal to 98.7 percent of a young person’s average monthly wage, Reuters reported.
Spain’s last general strikes came in 2012, during the eurozone debt crisis, when RSN was already tracking how Spain and Italy were “coming apart at the seams”.
How many struck? It depends who you ask
No neutral body has published a national participation rate. The competing figures:
- Tenants’ union: about four million strikers, rising to an expected five million by day’s end, according to Spain in English. Reuters used the four-million figure in its opening line. Spain has about 23 million workers, according to the national statistics institute.
- CCOO: 84 percent participation in Catalonia and about 70 percent in Madrid, Andalusia, Aragón and the Valencia region. CCOO and UGT reported about 90 percent in the car and port sectors, with stoppages at SEAT in Martorell and Volkswagen in Navarre. The two unions gave no single national figure at their pre-march briefing.
- Employers: the business federations CEOE and Cepyme said participation was “inferior al 5% de media” (below 5 percent on average) and called the strike a “fracaso” (failure) in their statement on the afternoon of November 11.
Electricity demand, which falls when factories stop, is the closest thing to an independent gauge. CEOE cited a drop at 5 p.m. of 4.7 percent against the grid operator Red Eléctrica’s forecast and 2.5 percent against Tuesday. Reuters reported a drop of as much as 15.5 percent between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. The BBC reported a 7.5 percent fall in the early hours.
Euronews, comparing each hour with November 10, calculated an average drop of 3.4 percent over the whole day, with a peak of about 9 percent before 9 a.m. During the two 2012 general strikes, by Euronews’s count of Red Eléctrica data, demand fell 11.8 percent and 16.1 percent.
The baselines differ (forecast, previous day, hourly or daily), which explains much of the gap. On Euronews’s like-for-like daily comparison, the 2026 drop was smaller than in either 2012 strike; the BBC’s early-morning comparison with 2012 points the same way. Miguel Cardoso, chief economist at BBVA Research, told Reuters that remote work and the growing weight of services would blunt the impact, and estimated a cost of 0.1 to 0.2 percent of annual gross domestic product.
Crowd sizes split the same way. In Madrid, the central government’s delegation counted 120,000 marchers; the tenants’ union said 400,000. In Barcelona, organisers claimed 400,000. Mossos chief commissioner Sílvia Catà put the crowd at about 57,000, Catalan News reported, and the city’s Guardia Urbana counted 55,000. In Málaga, unions claimed 50,000 and the government delegation 14,000.
The evening: petrol bombs, looting and 115 arrests
Barcelona’s violence began at about 7 p.m., after organisers ended the official march. Hooded groups attacked shops around Plaça de Catalunya, Plaça Universitat, Plaça d’Urquinaona and Passeig de Gràcia. Local media reported looting, including at the Lego store, the BBC said. About 10 premises were damaged, among them Apple, H&M, Desigual and Santander bank branches.
Catà said police seized petrol bombs, high-powered fireworks, balaclavas and improvised explosive devices known locally as “MacGyvers.” Two minors were arrested carrying petrol bombs, and explosive devices were found inside the damaged Apple and H&M stores, according to Catalan News. Catalan Interior Minister Núria Parlon reported 52 arrests in the region, six of them minors, and 36 Mossos officers injured.
Catalan President Salvador Illa, a Socialist, blamed anarchist and anti-establishment groups and promised: “We will identify every single one of them and bring them before the courts.” Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni said some of those arrested had come from outside the city.
In Madrid, after the evening march, people threw stones, burned bins and broke shop windows around Gran Vía and Plaza de España. Police used tear gas. Four people were arrested in those clashes and police reported nine injuries, Spain in English reported.
The Interior Ministry’s provisional tally at 11 p.m. recorded 1,144 strike-related incidents and 47 arrests by the National Police and Guardia Civil, 20 of them in Madrid. That count excludes Catalonia and the Basque Country, which have their own police. Adding Catalonia’s 52 and the Basque Country’s 16 gives 115 arrests nationwide.
The minister’s answer: no more tear gas
At Mercamadrid, the capital’s wholesale food market, CCOO said 13 people were hurt when police intervened at an information picket, and RTVE reported that at least 13 needed medical attention after police used pepper spray. CCOO leader Unai Sordo said officers sprayed picketers in the face and called some episodes “unprecedented in the history of Spain.” UGT’s Pepe Álvarez called the conduct “an unacceptable act in a democratic country.” The unions say they will go to court.
On Thursday the ministry said Grande-Marlaska had told the Directorate-General of Police to open specific investigations into incidents during the strike. He also ordered, in the wording reported by El Correo, that “en lo sucesivo, no se use gas lacrimógeno en los dispositivos de control de manifestaciones” (“from now on, tear gas is not to be used in demonstration-control operations”). RSN could not find a published text of the order.
Its scope is unclear in three respects. It names tear gas only; whether it covers pepper spray was unresolved on Thursday, and the Unified Police Union (SUP) said it would ask the ministry. Rubber bullets were already restricted to exceptional, authorised cases. And because Catalonia’s Mossos and the Basque Ertzaintza answer to regional governments, the order as reported applies to the National Police and Guardia Civil.
The order did not quiet the minister’s critics. Sumar, the Socialists’ coalition partner, and Podemos and the Catalan party ERC called for Grande-Marlaska to resign over what they described as police brutality. The police union Jupol also demanded his resignation, accusing him of “casting suspicion on the police” and warning that withdrawing tear gas “could lead to more injuries.” The SUP backed an inquiry while defending its officers. The government said his job was secure.
One further claim rests on unnamed sources. RTVE reported that unnamed sources in the Socialist Party (PSOE) called the footage “regrettable” and said Grande-Marlaska had not ordered the police charges. No other outlet has independently confirmed that account, and RSN has not seen any on-the-record statement on who ordered the charges.
Deep dive: what the strike changed, and what it did not
The day after the strike, Congress’s Permanent Deputation, the 69-member body that sits while the dissolved 350-seat chamber awaits elections, approved a revised housing decree by 35 votes to 34. It lets eligible tenants extend leases for two years with rises capped at 2 percent, extends protection from eviction for vulnerable tenants to the end of 2030, adds a 10 percent tax on tourist-apartment rentals, and bars property companies from buying homes below 70 percent of appraised value. The Basque Nationalist Party then joined the PP, Vox, UPN and Junts to defeat a second decree that would have let tenants renew leases indefinitely, also 35 to 34.
RSN analysis: a measure the full chamber rejected in October passed in November through a smaller standing body whose make-up gave the government a better chance. The procedure is provided for in Spain’s constitution. It is also the kind of route around a full legislature that RSN has questioned elsewhere, as when a Lords committee found the Home Office restored a deleted rule without Parliament. The PP has pledged to repeal the measures if it wins.
RSN analysis: none of the approved measures builds a home. Rent caps, lease extensions and eviction moratoriums redistribute the existing stock between owners and tenants; the tourist-rental tax and the letting incentive aim to shift existing flats into long-term rental. The Bank of Spain’s estimate is a supply gap. Vox deputy Carlos Hernández Quero argued in Thursday’s debate that government policy had reduced rental supply, leaving more people in shared housing or living with parents. The PP promises one million homes and lower taxes and red tape for builders. Whether either party can deliver that is unproven, but the argument that controls without construction deepen shortages has a long record, one RSN made in principle more than a decade ago in “Private Property Rights and Socialism Do Not Mix.”
The employers’ federation made a related point. CEOE vice-president Miguel Garrido told the BBC: “This is not a strike for labour-related reasons, but rather for political ones, and it is closely linked to the early calling of elections.” CEOE said it could not understand why the government had encouraged the strike while celebrating the economy’s figures (RSN translation). Another CEOE vice-president, Ángela de Miguel, argued on state television that the solution is to build more and cut taxes on construction and purchases.
RSN analysis on the election: Sánchez’s Socialists trail the PP in polls, and his campaign had been weighed down by corruption cases involving people close to him and an October rail crash. A strike that put housing, rather than his record, at the centre of the campaign served him. That does not make the grievance less real. It does explain why PP spokesman Miguel Tellado accused the government of exploiting the strike, and why PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo called it “nonsense” and the unions “mafia” and “trash,” as the BBC reported.
The other side
The strike’s supporters have serious arguments. The housing squeeze is documented by the central bank, not invented by unions. The marches were overwhelmingly peaceful; a Barcelona marcher told the BBC the day was “joyful,” with “a lot of children and old people there.” Illa, Collboni and the Mossos all attributed the violence to small groups, not the march. Complaints about police are backed by video: El País published footage it said showed an officer pepper-spraying a homeless person, and RNE journalist Graciela García said a smoke canister was fired a metre from her face. Social Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy says up to five million tenants could benefit from the lease extension; his ministry estimates a median saving of €4,341.
Weaker electricity figures may also understate participation in an economy that now works partly from home, as BBVA’s Cardoso noted. And employers have their own interest in a low number, just as unions do in a high one.
What is established, disputed and not established
Established (on the record or documented):
- Spain held its first general strike since 2012 on November 11, called by CCOO, UGT and the tenants’ union, 18 days before the November 29 election.
- Catalan authorities reported 52 arrests and 36 injured Mossos officers, and said police seized petrol bombs and improvised devices.
- Reported arrests across Spain totalled 115 (47 national, 52 Catalonia, 16 Basque Country).
- The Interior Ministry opened inquiries into policing and ordered an end to tear-gas use at demonstrations.
- The Permanent Deputation passed one housing decree and rejected another, each 35 to 34.
Disputed:
- Participation: about four million (tenants’ union) against below 5 percent (CEOE and Cepyme).
- Crowd sizes: 400,000 against 55,000 to 57,000 in Barcelona; 400,000 against 120,000 in Madrid.
- Whether police used excessive force at pickets, as unions allege, or acted lawfully and proportionately, as the SUP says.
Not established:
- Whether the tear-gas order covers pepper spray, and its written text.
- Who ordered the police charges in Madrid; the only account so far rests on unnamed PSOE sources quoted by RTVE.
- Whether the strike will move votes on November 29. RSN has not seen polling taken after the strike.
Sources: BBC News; Catalan News; Spain in English (Nov. 11); Spain in English (tear-gas order); Spain in English (housing decrees); Reuters via The Straits Times; CEOE and Cepyme statement; Euronews (Spanish); El Correo; El País on the Bank of Spain estimate.
Featured image: Gran Vía, Madrid, by Fernando Arconada, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
How this article was made: Right Side News researched and drafted this article with the help of AI tools. Sources are linked so readers can check them. Spot an error? Tell us in the comments and we will correct it.
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