Farmers have maintained their pulse in the streets this Thursday with the official start of the mobilization calendar. There have been road closures in up to eight autonomous communities with the aim of making visible the demands of the primary sector, which involve reducing the bureaucratic burden and greater control of imports of non-EU products free of the requirements demanded for products in the Union. European.

Although the agrarian associations had called on farmers to demonstrate in Ciudad Real, Huesca, Salamanca and Ávila; There have been road closures in Extremadura, Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Andalusia, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Aragón and Navarra. In Logroño and Pamplona there have been tense scenes involving struggles between protesters and the police. A group of farmers have demonstrated with their tractors near the home of the president of Navarra, María Chivite. In addition, a hundred farmers have caused incidents on the Camino A-12 Highway towards Pamplona by trying to move two Civil Guard vehicles that were preventing their passage to the Navarrese capital.

The city of Oviedo has also been the scene of tensions. Hundreds of ranchers and farmers have protested the crisis in the sector and there have been clashes with the Police. The most critical moments occurred when the protesters tried to gather in front of the General Assembly of the Principality around 1:30 p.m.. National Police agents prevented access to the street, which had to be armored on both sides, and some had to use their batons to prevent a group of ranchers from breaking the security cordon and accessing the building, according to reports. The New Spain, from the Prensa Ibérica group. In Burgos (Castilla y León) two farmers have been arrested for preventing the passage of other vehicles on a highway and in El Ejido (Almería) two men have been accused of disobedience and public disorder for blocking highway A. -7. In the case of Badajoz, there have been moments of tension with the security forces, with specific charges on the A-66 highway, near Zafra, which have resulted in a civil guard being injured by the throwing of a stone. .

However, The scenes that were experienced this Thursday in Barcelona were those of meetings between farmers and groups from the Parliament of Catalonia, except PP and Vox. Joan Rui, one of the farmers on platform 6F, explained to the media at a press conference that they have agreed with the Catalan authorities to review the restrictions of the Generalitat’s drought emergency plan, the payment of pending aid from the last two years or the reduction of the bureaucratic burden on farmers.

Next mobilizations

For this Friday’s event, mobilizations in Zamora, Bilbao and Extremadura are officially called by Asaja, COAG and UPA. “Our mobilization may be somewhat more modest than those seen in other places, but we intend to go out with 70 tractors through the streets of Bilbao,” says Íñigo Bilbao, a farmer and one of the spokespersons for Asaja, the province of Biscay. “We want to make a friendly demonstration to convey our problems to the citizens: the bureaucratic burden, the fight for fair prices for producers and a rational application of the green agenda of the European Union,” says Bilbao.

The delegations and subdelegations of the Government have recalled since this Wednesday that they were going to begin processing the sanctions for the road closures and unreported protests that are encouraged by the Platform 6-F and they are spread by social networks, outside the traditional agricultural unions, which for the moment rule out a mobilization in Madrid, according to internal sources of these associations. The intention of the organizers is to protest with tractors this Saturday in Madrid and reach the PSOE headquarters in Ferraz.

The Ministry of the Interior has been monitoring the situation since Tuesday with a Coordination Center (CECOR) in which commanders of the National Police and Civil Guard participate, as well as regional police and representatives of the DGT and the ministries of Agriculture, Territorial Policy and Transportation. The head of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has reiterated these days that the Government’s purpose is to meet the demands of the countryside and guarantee the right to demonstrate, but without this affecting essential services or the mobility of citizens.

For her part, the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saizhas called for agricultural organizations on February 13 to deal with the “labor problem” in the countryside and has estimated 100,000 jobs lost in this sector in ten years.