Spanish police escort truck convoys as strike begins to bite

MADRID (AP) — Greater than 23,000 Spanish police in patrol vehicles and helicopters escorted convoys of vehicles alongside the nation’s highways and held again picketers Friday, as authorities sought to maintain provide chains working amid a truckers’ strike over excessive gas costs and different grievances.

Pickets threw burning tires onto a freeway in northwestern Spain in a single day, nationwide media reported. Police have made a minimum of two arrests.

Police models on Friday deployed at junctions and logistics hubs and escorted convoys, together with considered one of vehicles carrying gasoline and one other, 30 autos lengthy, heading to choose up animal fodder, state-owned information company EFE stated.

As some sectors reported provide issues on the fifth day of the open-ended walkout, the federal government repeated its claims that far-right sympathizers are inciting the strike referred to as by a gaggle of principally self-employed truckers.

Finance Minister María Jesús Montero advised reporters the strike quantities to “extortion which the far-right is exploiting to stop produce and meals being distributed.”

The hanging truckers deny far-right hyperlinks. In a press release late Thursday on their web site, they stated the federal government “is attempting to criminalize and place ideological labels on a sector which solely needs to stay from its work and which feels excluded and disrespected by the nation’s leaders.”

The Platform for the Protection of the Highway Transport Sector, which referred to as the strike, says it appeared spontaneously in 2008. It was created by six truckers in Spain’s northwest Galicia area who had been disaffected with nationwide trucking associations, its web site says.

The group just isn’t affiliated with bigger nationwide trucking associations, nor with highway haulage firms, and doesn’t sit on the sector’s negotiating desk with the federal government. The group didn’t instantly reply to a query about what number of members it has. Most Spanish truckers are nonetheless working.

The self-employed truckers are flexing their financial muscle with the strike, nevertheless, and are utilizing the walkout to stress the federal government into giving in to their calls for on a spread of points. Companies within the cement, mining and dairy sectors are amongst these warning that shares are working low or that they’re having bother distributing their items.

The self-employed truckers say that what they’re being paid for hauling hundreds doesn’t cowl their prices, which have soared with rising gas costs. Additionally they declare that giant distribution firms interact in unfair competitors, forcing down the costs for freight, and demand higher working situations, together with retirement at age 60.

France has additionally seen scattered protests this week towards hovering gas costs. Farmers, highway hauliers and fishing crews have arrange momentary barricades, utilizing their autos and burning palettes to dam roads.

The assaults by roadside picketers this week in Spain have allegedly included throwing rocks at vehicles on the highway, tearing cargo tarps and puncturing truck tires, in addition to threatening working drivers with violence.

“The supply of meals and primary providers just isn’t a trivial matter,” Farm Minister Luis Planas stated. “It’s a constitutional problem which has to do with freedom of motion.”

The Spanish authorities says it plans to introduce measures towards excessive power and gas costs later this month.

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John Leicester in Paris contributed.

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