French farmers light the fuse in Spain: the countryside is already calling protests and pointing fingers at Morocco for unfair competition

Cristina Alonso Madrid

Madrid

Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-02:40

Farmer protests in France and elsewhere in Europe have lit the fuse in Spain. The field has already called for mobilizations for the next few days and plans

a "big tractor rally" in the month of May

like the one that took place in Madrid in the summer of last year. Then, agricultural professionals demanded more aid from the Government to combat the drought and the cost crisis. Now, the demands of the primary sector extend to European regulation and its impact on our food sovereignty and on prices.

If France blames Spain,

Spain points the finger at Morocco

. The French government itself has accused Spanish and Italian farmers of unfair competition. And if until now the south of the continent was spared from the protests, the breeding ground that the altercations have fostered beyond our borders is mobilizing the Spanish countryside, which is already calling for protests.

"It will not be very different from what is happening in all EU countries

," warned the president of Asaja, Pedro Barato, who plans to set the calendar of mobilizations with the national board this Thursday.

For its part, the SOS Rural citizen movement, which brings together hundreds of organizations not only of ranchers or farmers, but also of fishermen and other activities linked to the rural world and to what is known as 'Empty Spain', has already called for mobilizations in almost one twenty cities across the map for next February 6 and are planning to organize

a "big tractor rally" in the capital in May

. "We are seeing how our neighbors have woken up and the situation, of course, is going to be replicated in Spain because fatigue is sovereign, farmers and ranchers can't take it anymore," the spokesperson for the movement, Natalia Corbalán, tells EL MUNDO.

SOS Rural aspires to channel these demands so that they reach the European Parliament and the Congress of Deputies, where yesterday, coinciding with 'Black Monday' in Paris, they registered a Popular Legislative Initiative to promote legislation that protects the primary sector. The association criticizes that current policies "are making the profitability of agricultural and livestock farms impossible, in such a way that their massive closure causes

price increases in food, which are becoming luxury products."

"The alternative of our politicians is an incomprehensible suicide: to encourage massive cultivation by governments in countries like

Morocco, Egypt or Turkey

, from where we must import products such as tomatoes. It is incredible that a country like Spain is about to depend on Morocco to be able to feed ourselves. It's nonsense," they add.

SOS Rural directly warns that

"the food of Spaniards will depend on Morocco in a decade"

and blames the EU and the Spanish Government itself for "stimulating massive expansion of crops" in countries that "compete under unequal conditions." with European products". Meanwhile, they denounce the "alarming collapse of the cultivated area, agricultural production and exports" in our territory and point out as a direct consequence the escalation of prices in the supermarket and the collapse of the consumption of fresh products among Spanish families.

In fact, the price of food accumulated increases of 11.7% in 2023, unaffordable for many families, which were added to the 15.3% increase registered in 2022. And in this context, each

Spaniard has eliminated from their basket the purchase of 2.45 kilos of fresh products

, according to data managed by the Ministry of Agriculture. "It is the beginning of the end of the Mediterranean diet," laments Adolfo García Albadalejo, president of the Ingenio Foundation, which represents dozens of cooperatives and companies in the countryside, and manager of an agricultural company producing organic products.

The president of Europe's main farmers' union, the Committee of Agricultural Professional Organizations (COPA), Christiane Lambert, recently predicted that Italian and Spanish farmers, who until now have been watching the protests in their northern neighbors from the sidelines, would begin to soon organize their own mobilizations. And so it is. In Spain the fuse has already been lit. SOS Rural predicts

a "strong and unitary response from the Spanish countryside"

to avoid its collapse and advances its coordination with the European platforms that are already mobilized in Germany, France, Italy or Romania.