This year we celebrate the saddest May Day of all those remembered due to the high unemployment figures, 6,202,700 people unemployed, recently revealed by the Active Population Survey (EPA). A ...
This year we celebrate the saddest May Day of all those remembered due to the high unemployment figures, 6,202,700 people unemployed, recently revealed by the Active Population Survey (EPA). A May Day strained by the situation many families are experiencing, 1,906,000 have all their members unemployed, and also by the situation suffered by many workers who have seen their employment increase in precariousness, decrease in salary and rights, and in too many cases their continuity hangs by a thread. For these reasons and because the Government, which came to power with the promise that it would solve unemployment, is now entrenched in the continuity of a clearly erroneous policy, this May Day must also be the most demanding and massive in the history of this celebration.
Demanding because it must be a cry of Enough! to the pain that this austerity policy is causing to the Spanish people. Demanding because our lives and future are at stake due to the state of shock in which its president finds himself, who is not walking but towards the ravine, also assuring us that it is the only alternative. The Spanish people have in their hands to demonstrate to this disoriented Government that we are more, many more, those who ask for their resignation or a radical change in the direction of their policies than those who, deceived, gave them the keys to La Moncloa in the polls.
Their response will depend on whether they deny or confirm the idea that more and more Spaniards have in mind. Are they really making a mistake with their blind following of the Troika of Merkel and the markets...? If they do not correct, they will be demonstrating to us that, in reality, their policy is a success because they are increasingly closer to the model of state that they want. Of a society made precarious and subjugated to the dictates of a very few powerful people. Of a dismantled welfare state and public companies auctioned off among multinationals. Of a country with very prepared people who serve as a quarry, cheap of course, for Germany and the countries of the North. It must be that it is a success because we are already in a country that suffers everything said. In addition, with a democracy kidnapped in which its president believes that problems are solved by letting them expire, who does not show his face or only does so on a television screen, as in Big Brother, and on top of that does not admit questions.
A model of society in which its citizens are forced to go back decades, renouncing, based on fear, many of their labor rights, decent levels of well-being, a quality education free of ideological and religious indoctrination. A model that saves banks and punishes people, condemning many to social exclusion. A Government that lashes out with unsustainable taxes, above the European average, on workers, small business owners and the self-employed while rewarding tax evaders and corrupt people with general amnesties. A model of nation that, if at one point seemed oriented to become an emerging country, increasingly seems focused on being a neo-medieval state, with all that this would mean for the middle and working class of this country. And on top of that, they ask us for patience... For what exactly, Mr. President?
Joaquín Caraballo, vice president
and Employment Councilor
of the Cabildo de Lanzarote
