11-N: social outbreak for some Islands where working is enough to live

PalmaThe first thing that the media, not to mention public authorities and large business organizations, must learn is that one cannot use the data of people who formally went on strike as equivalent to those who actually mobilized this November 11th. Thousands of people took to the streets this Wednesday, in a historic demonstration, to say enough to living poorly. Far more people did this than those who did not go to their workplace in the morning. Among other things, because wages are so low and the cost of living so high that they cannot even afford to have a day's pay deducted. This Wednesday, one of the most important pages in the social and labor history of the Balearic Islands has been written, where these types of mobilizations usually have a rather small impact.

Therefore, employers' associations and political parties like the PP and Vox would do well to stop demonizing a call that is the result of the exhaustion of people, of the working class, who can no longer bear a life full of deprivation and suffering, unable to even pay the rent. This is the core of the strike, which is supported by far more people than those who were able to afford to stop today. A reality that, in the case of the Islands, becomes dramatic due to housing speculation.

And I think it is time to speak clearly. It is grotesque to hear even people who consider themselves progressive criticizing that the Spanish government is behind the mobilization because it stirs up trouble and sets the people against the right. The mobilization was called by the major unions, pushed by those of tenants, who certainly did nothing more than channel a discontent that is growing at full speed without anyone providing a remedy. Now it turns out that the unions, criticized for a long time for being soft on the state government, now that they are acting, do so to favor one side or the other.

The great problem of many politicians is to think that the world revolves around parties. And their own convenience. People are fed up, very fed up. And if they do not start to propose clear and forceful measures in favor of a better distribution of wealth, a social bomb will explode in our hands. And good luck if it does, because if not, there is the danger of living on our knees while large holders accumulate apartments and multinationals, capital. One of the many figures that ARA Balears has given these last few months portrays it: in the Islands, the number of people who own more than one real estate property is rising, and the number of those who do not have any is also rising. It is called consented social inequality.

And the fact is that four public apartments repeated and announced a thousand times on social networks, as the Prohens Government does, are not enough. It is not enough to push insistently by forcing the existing regulations, as the Mayor of Palma does to promote thousands of apartments that will benefit, above all, large developers. It is necessary to fight against urban planning hits, not to favor them. The measures that Pedro Sánchez has taken in extremis are also not enough. All of them have failed. And what is more serious, it is not clear that any of the proposals currently being thrown into the air by the major parties ahead of the electoral date can clearly improve the situation.

And now they only do nothing but throw things at each other's heads trying to win over a supposed voter who only wants to be able to have a decent life. That said, it is worth not forgetting the role of the employers' association. Large companies make fortunes, the banks that have not returned a single euro of the bailout that Rajoy gave them are announcing billions in profits. And, paradoxically, their representatives are frontally opposed to minimum wage increases, with the invaluable support of the PP and Vox.

These two parties, which aspire to govern Spain, maintain their particular competition to see who is more reactionary. From Vox, no surprise, but I am concerned about the obsession of the Popular Party, once a formation that aspired to be centrist. This Wednesday, on their X account, a photo of unionists eating seafood said it all. A party that has been definitively convicted of irregular financing, for paying for works at its headquarters with off-the-books money and which holds the record for high-ranking officials convicted of prevarication and bribery should respect a little more a fundamental right such as the right to strike and not joke about supposed irregular conduct, given their history.

Anything does not go. If the PP does not want the strike to be against it, the first thing it must do is respect it. To respect the people who cannot make ends meet. Who endure, in the case of the Islands, a model that devours natural resources and the time of their lives. A furnace that burns everything that comes its way, and in return offers saturated public spaces, full of terraces and dehumanized, where locals have little space.

Therefore, the people who this Wednesday gathered by the thousands on the streets of Palma have mobilized against all of this. Against having to work more than one job to pay for an apartment, against sharing housing despite being over 40 years old, and against not being able to have a single joy because the cost of the shopping basket and housing or fuel takes it all.

Asserting that all this is merely a strategy to help Sánchez is simply ridiculous. The protesters this Wednesday have also shouted against the current government, naturally. Because it has not been on the side of the people and has been unable to act until the situation exploded. Measures at the last minute, improvised and absolutely poorly executed.

It would seem logical that the left-wing voter would want to punish this inaction and complicity of Sánchez with housing speculation. But the conservatives, far from wanting to discredit the strike, should ask themselves why many people are afraid of their alternative. To begin with, because it comes hand in hand, no more and no less, with a party that is already talking about mixed pension models, which is nothing other than handing over State reserves to private funds. And that has voted, like them, systematically against social measures.

But what everyone should understand is that the people who took to the streets this Wednesday did not do it to save Sánchez, nor to make Feijóo president, nor to give wings to anyone. They went out because they are exhausted from working and unable to live. This is the lesson of November 11th. And those who do not want to see it have not yet understood to what extent things have reached the limit.