La Huelga General

Today there was a general strike in Spain. From what I understand, general strikes are normally pretty short-lived things (24 hours), since it isn't just one union striking but rather, ALL OF THEM. It could be pretty paralyzing. For this particular strike, all of the unions got together and agreed that they were unhappy with a recent law that would cut government wages in order to balance the budget. (At least, I think that is what the law is about, and I think that is why they are mad.)

A general strike is normally a pretty spontaneous thing--the population gets about 48 hours notice and the country just stops for a day. This strike, however, was a little different in that they've been planning it for several months. So it had kind of lost a lot of its oomph. On top of that, the majority of the Spaniards that I have talked to never actually wanted a strike. The economy has affected a lot of people in a really bad way here and a lot of people just wanted to work and keep earning money, even if it was a little less than what they had earned before.

That doesn't mean that strike-y things didn't happen, because they totally did. The police were out in full force and the center of the city was packed. There are some pretty interesting pictures on El País which show the gravity of the situation, but here is one that I took this morning as I was walking to school.

That's an ATM that someone decided to vandalize, and it wasn't the only one that I saw this morning. I guess that someone thought that if people couldn't read the screen, they couldn't take out money and contribute to the capitalist conspiracy today. Of course, I think that most banks got right on it and cleaned the spray paint off pretty quickly, but it's a pretty blatant reminder that things still aren't quite right with the world.