Farmers take their tractors to Madrid to show their anger
Spanish farmers and stockbreeders took their tractors to the centre of Madrid on Wednesday to protest against the sector's difficulties, part of a wave of indignation that has swept through several European countries.
Several thousand farmers, who came from all over Spain at the call of the Unión de Uniones union, marched through the streets of the Spanish capital to the sound of their tractors' horns.
The centre of Madrid was flooded by some 500 tractors, according to the government.
They arrived in five columns of about a hundred vehicles each to the area around the Ministry of Agriculture, carrying banners with slogans such as "The rural world is dying" and "Without the countryside, the city does not eat".
This demonstration, after three weeks of protest actions throughout Spain, caused numerous traffic jams and tensions with the police.
The mobilisation of Spanish farmers and stockbreeders is part of a wave of protests by the countryside in several European countries, particularly in France and Germany.
"Let them listen to us"
"What we want is for them to listen to us, for the authorities to understand that we can't go on like this," selling products at prices that "don't allow us to live," José Ignacio Rojo, a 58-year-old protester from Burgos, north of Madrid, told AFP.
"I work 14 hours a day. And when I finish my days in the fields, I have to do paperwork," because of the sector's bureaucracy, said the man who owns a 330-hectare farm with his daughter, dedicated to cereals and livestock.
Bernardino Hernández, a 70-year-old farmer, carried a banner that read: "Bureaucracy ruins my farm".
"Nothing more for the administration, I would need a full-time person, which is impossible," said this winegrower who owns 40 hectares near Cuenca, in the centre of the country.
He used to have three employees, but now he only has "one, because of grape prices, which have plummeted over the last three years," he said.
Luis Cortés, national coordinator of Unión de Uniones, called on the government to "simplify" administrative procedures and protect farmers, many of whom have to "sell at a loss".
A better "control of imports" is needed, said the union leader, who questioned the unfair competition generated by products imported from non-European countries, which should be subject to "the same conditions with which (...) Spanish farmers are forced to produce".
Farmers also protested on Wednesday in other parts of the country, such as Murcia and Malaga, organised by the three main farmers' unions, Asaja, COAG and UPA.
"Mirror clauses"
The Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, guaranteed in a statement "the firm involvement of the Government in responding to the concerns of farmers and livestock farmers", recalling that last week he presented a package of measures to support the sector after a meeting with the unions.
The minister pledged again to defend on Monday in Brussels the establishment of "mirror clauses", a mechanism that obliges imported products to respect the same standards required of European farmers.
The farmers' movement has been felt in several European countries since the beginning of the year, such as in France, the scene of large demonstrations at the end of January, and in Greece, where more than 100 tractors rallied in front of the Parliament in Athens on Tuesday.
In the face of the demonstrations, which are taking place just a few months before the European elections in June, the European Commission has made concessions in recent weeks, in particular on targets to reduce the use of pesticides in the EU.