Along with their counterparts in other European nations, Spanish farmers staged a traffic blockade on Tuesday on many of the nation’s major roads to express their disapproval of excessive expenses, red tape, and competition from non-EU countries.
Vice president of ASAJA, one of the biggest agricultural groups in Spain, Donaciano Dujo told national station TVE, “With different shades, in the whole European Union, we have the same problems.”
Although ASAJA and other groups had planned for protests starting on Thursday, traffic officials reported that on Tuesday, a large number of farmers took to the highways with their tractors, causing traffic jams throughout the nation, from Seville and Granada in the south to Girona close to the French border.
“The countryside is fed up,” Dujo said.
In Girona, tractors could be seen gathering ahead of the day of protests, carrying placards with one reading “without farmers there is no food”.
Like colleagues in France, Belgium, Italy and Portugal, Spanish farmers are complaining about the increasing weight of European bureaucracy, low produce prices and rising costs.
They say demanding rules imposed on EU farmers to protect the environment makes them less competitive than peers in other regions, such as Latin America or non-EU Europe.
Over the past few days, blockades in France and Belgium have sometimes escalated into violent clashes with the police.
