...properties have been increasingly used as tourist lets, speculative assets and short-term rentals, sending rents rising by 80% within a decade while the cost of homes climbed by 63%.

“It’s extremely important to remind people that we, the workers – who are also renters or who also pay mortgages – are the ones with the power to halt production and bring the economy to a standstill.”

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[–] 5 points 19 hours ago (1 child)
  • 55 comments in c/world@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 80 points 22 hours ago

    Way to go, Spain!

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  • [–] 70 points 19 hours ago* (11 children)

    Americans, take notes, in case of a hostile dictatorship takeover

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  • [–] 34 points 19 hours ago (10 children)

    Americans ... doing something about a dictatorial government?

    Pfft. Yeah, right.

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  • [–] 43 points 18 hours ago (1 child)

    Typically Americans are the ones going to other countries and installing dictatorships.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

    Well, they do make massive demonstrations when the same technique is applied to their own country by their politicians (and only then, not when their politicians do it abroad), were the ones against it are peaceful and get violently assaulted by the most piggy of pigs, whilst the ones who are violent are those demonstrating in favor of it and get friendly nods by the pigs.

    Only a tiny fraction of Americans seem to genuinelly be against it out of principle (the kind of people who were as much demonstrating against targetted murders abroad under Obama as they are when it's done under Trump) rather than being against it only when it starts affecting them.

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  • [–] 9 points 18 hours ago (6 children)

    The number of people voting blue in the election gives me hope....although I know some probably didn't vote for the right reasons

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  • [–] 7 points 10 hours ago*

    IMHO, outside the ones who voted for modern progressive (the ones who are openly Social Democrats and Socialists and against all kinds of inequality including wealth inequality, not the pure Identity Politics liberals), voting blue in the US is just voting to restrict the more over iron-fist dictatorshiping to foreign countries whilst at home the riff-raff is controlled via a captured media and propaganda.

    In the anti-Democratic voting system in the US the most democratic part isn't the election, it's the primaries, so the real thing that might give one hope is the increase in the number of genuine lefties winning Democrat primaries so that they were there as electable options in the actual election rather than one of the usual hard-right neoliberal in the pocket of the rich vs far-right fascist in the pocket of the rich "choice".

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  • [+] -7 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

    Voting blue isn’t going to help the housing issue. Voting red was supposed to but didn’t. We just need to build more, fuck the little endangered turtle no one cares about and put up so,e condos and apartments, that’s how you fix it

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  • That's not the problem in Spain. Housing in desirable areas, like Madrid and Barcelona, is being bought up by speculators and AirBnb rapidly, meaning that rents doubled while salaries stayed the same.

    Population has not doubled, so blaming a lack of supply doesn't make sense.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 hours ago

    Voting red was supposed to but didn’t.

    If you believed that, I don't know what else to do other than assume you're either too dumb or too young to know better.

    fuck the little endangered turtle

    Nah, fuck you.

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  • [–] 45 points 21 hours ago

    At the centre of Wednesday’s nationwide 24-hour stoppage, singularly called for by tenants’ associations and later backed by workers’ unions, is a pushback against Spain’s deepening housing crisis.

    Sandra Mora, of the Madrid Tenants’ Union, told the broadcaster RNE: “It’s extremely important to remind people that we, the workers – who are also renters or who also pay mortgages – are the ones with the power to halt production and bring the economy to a standstill.”

    While workers’ unions reported high participation in the strike across several sectors, including 90% in the automotive and port sectors and 82% in waste collection, they said participation was uneven across the country. The strongest support was reported in coastal regions, such as Catalonia and Andalucía, where the soaring cost of housing has been particularly acute.

    An aerial shot of a huge crowd of people in a street at dusk

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  • [–] 31 points 11 hours ago (6 children)

    My super conservative in-laws in Spain are all flustered by this! They think these people are being paid and that they are armed and dangerous and out to pillage, kill, and raze the country.

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  • [–] 29 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (5 children)

    Spain is weird in that their Fascist dictatorship wasn't overthrown by a Revolution like next door Portugal but instead those in power decided themselves to let go of power (after making themselves stupidly rich and then passing some laws to make themselves immune from prosecution for all they did), so IMHO the right-wing there has always been pretty Fascist-adjacent because certain things weren't cleaned up.

    The sons and daughters of the Fascist elites too created their own political party in next door Portugal - currently in power - but its ideology was never this weird moralist know-your-place "conservativeness" that you see in traditional Fascism.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 hours ago (4 children)

    instead those in power decided themselves to let go of power (after making themselves stupidly rich and then passing some laws to make themselves immune from prosecution for all they did

    So it wasn't overthrown at all. It changed the paint, but nothing else. Something something, scratch a Liberal.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 hours ago* (2 children)

    Well, the Fascists now have a party (more like two parties, one even more far-right than the other) and have to actually convince enough voters (like the inlaws of the person I replied to) so that they win the election, which doesn't always happen - for example right now the Government is in the hands of the (supposedly) center-left mainstream party (not sure if they're really left of center since nowadays european mainstream "moderate" parties are all neoliberal to at least some extent).

    In the time of the dictatorship they had absolute power and didn't need to convince anybody to have power (but, perhaps, the military leadership).

    So things did change, though the change was indeed not at all started by them being overthrown.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 hours ago (1 child)

    Were they in power for the past years? I understand that they weren't? But people are still striking, their situation has gotten this bad. So does it really matter if their power is not absolute? If the people's conditions are getting worse, if the fascists are still eating with both hands?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 hours ago

    We're at the end stages of Neoliberalism, hence people's situation has got "bad, seriously bad" in all of it to the point that people are now doing mass strikes against things like lack of housing, all over Europe and not just in Spain, including in nations which were never under Fascism in the past.

    (In fact many of the things people are demonstrating against right now - such as housing costs - aren't even a common problem under Fascism whilst they're a 100% natural consequence of the full liberalization and deregulation of Realestate Markets, something beloved by Neoliberals)

    This is because Neoliberalism too is a very rightwing anti-Democratic ideology where power is exercised for the good of a few people, not for the good of the many, the difference between the two being mainly that the top of the power pyramid Neoliberalism has Money above State (i.e. Oligarchy) whilst Fascism has the State above Money (i.e. a command economy, only the policies are very rightwing), whilst The People are at the bottom of the power hierarchy in both. By constrats when under Democracy The People are at the top, then the State (controlled by the representatives of The People), then everything else including Money.

    Fascism now is being pushed as a "solution" of some of the elites in Neoliberalism for the discontent of The People due to the pain they're enduring as a long-term consequence of Neoliberalism. Such members of the elite expect that the Fascist state which they try to have replace the currently flagging Neoliberal state (with a symbolic vote on the side that changes puppets but no puppeteers to make it look Democratic) will be one were they personally as individuals control (rather than it being controlled by an elite selected on the basis of how much Money they have as we have now), which is why you see things like news media owned by billionaires (such as Fox in the US and Politico in Germany) relentlessly blowing Fascist dog-whistles and pushing Fascist perspectives on social ills (most notably that the pains the locals are enduring are the fault of immigrants and that poverty is due to the personal flaws of poor people).

    It's just that in Spain many elements of and believers in Fascism never went away, so those forces are more obvious and such ideas never stopped being held by at least a good fraction of the population whilst in next door Portugal there was a period when they were incredibly uncommon.

    In summary, the pain and related demonstrations you mention are the product of the currently dominant political structure were The People are at the bottom of the power pyramid: Neoliberalism.

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  • [–] 19 points 7 hours ago (1 child)

    Fuck all the greedy landlords. Kudos to all landlords out there who charge rent based on a persons income and don't feel a need to charge what "The Market" dictates.

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  • [–] 9 points 21 hours ago

    Good on them!

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  • [–] 8 points 4 hours ago

    keep striking keep striking!!!

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  • [–] 7 points 11 hours ago

    The strike is weird because it has been done after flash elections were called due to the government not being able to push a (meh-tier) housing affordability law, so, in good spanish fashion, no one will take responsibility for it.

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  • [–] 24 points 20 hours ago (15 children)

    Hey USians, you see this? It CAN be done. It CAN happen.

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  • [–] 10 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

    Taft-Harley act made general strikes illegal, among basically any strike not directly related to your specific employer. Violates union contracts.

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  • [–] 15 points 13 hours ago*

    So it's illegal? Who cares? Do it anyway. What are they going to do, arrest millions of people? Fire all of them? I don't think so.

    Violates union contracts? Unions exist to enable these things, not to stop them. What is the fucking point otherwise?!

    I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Of course the government would love to stop people from protesting/striking/whatever. The whole point is to not let them. Use your numbers against them, together you're strong, that's what they're trying to stop. If striking didn't work, they wouldn't have to outlaw it!

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  • [–] 0 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

    USians voted to change the government. We'll see in two weeks what Spaniards will do in their elections. This strike is mostly meaningless.

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  • [–] -4 points 7 hours ago (4 children)

    USians

    Oh, shut the fuck up. That will never become our demonym. All it does is make you look like a terminally online moron.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

    That will never become our demonym.

    Yeah. The only "correct" one is the one where you steal the whole continent's name for yourselves, right?

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  • [–] -3 points 6 hours ago* (2 children)

    The continent is North America.

    The correct one is the one the entire world uses when speaking English.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago (1 child)

    The continent is North America.

    USA! USA! USA!

    fuck Mexico and Canada, right?

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  • [–] -3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

    No. They're part of the continent of North America, dumbass.

    America (without the North qualifier) refers to the country and has since before Canada and Mexico existed as countries. Canadians and Mexicans don't call themselves Americans. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that a pretty good way to piss a lot of Canadians and probably Mexicans off is to call them Americans. Stop acting like you don't know this shit.

    Edit: Notice how nobody has a good argument against what I'm saying? Y'all really hate when anyone questions your stupid bullshit.

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  • [+] -19 points 14 hours ago (12 children)

    What is their solution? What are they protesting for?

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  • [–] 17 points 13 hours ago (9 children)

    Are we not even reading headlines anymore?

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  • [+] -6 points 12 hours ago (8 children)

    I don't get it are they trying to help the right win the election?

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  • [–] 4 points 12 hours ago (5 children)

    Unfortunately, despite the Spanish ruling party being named the Spanish Socialist Worker's party, they haven't really been socialist. Hence, the housing crisis and the frustration. To be fair, the Spanish prime minister hasn't been directly implicated by corruption, but his family members and those in his party are extremely corrupt.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 hours ago* (3 children)

    Family? Nothing solid on that yet (i.e. no solid sentence, I think there are ongoing yet) honestly stinks a lot of lawfare, certain tribunlas are controlled "from the backdoor" by the opposition, as the same PP said once...

    Addendum: the opposition parties are well served of corruption also

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  • [–] 0 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

    Maybe, but for me, where there is smoke there is fire. I mean, other politicians do not get implicated, even remotely, if they're not totally corrupt. Maybe Sanchez's wife and brother did was nothingburger, but the accusations won't be entertained if there is actually no credibility to it. They say that the most effective propaganda is not peddling falsehoods, but taking a grain of truth and making a mountain out of it.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 hours ago (1 child)

    There is a long tradition of open processes against people of parties opposite to this opposition that controls judges that ended up in nothing, so I would not be surprised that the cases against their family end up in nothing, specially due to the great creativeness of the accusations to start these processes and some deliberate actions to just enlarge them with new weird stuff just to maintain the image of accusation, I think in those cases the principle of innocent until proven the opposite stands out a lot...

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  • [–] 1 point 7 hours ago*

    Of course it's innocent until proven guilty. But a lot of politicians walk the grey line to get a wiggle room to not be put in jail. Although if a politician and his/her cronies are truly honest, then there would be no reason to be implicated even remotely. Think of any popular politicians and tell me if those have been embroiled in a serious scandal.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago

    His brother got a job in Badajoz and his wife is accused of some licensing issues AFAIK. Hardly "extreme" levels of corruption. Things like that happen in other countries in broad daylight. The biggest corruption scandal of this government ended with sentences of like 20 years in prison. I don't think corruption will be a significant issue in those elections.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 hours ago (1 child)

    I haven't seen good justification for the general strike. Strikes are good tool to pressure employers and those have nothing to do with housing costs. I could be seen as a tool to motivate voters before elections but most likely it will work equally on both sides. I think the unions wanted to do something and general strike was the best thing they came up with. That's it.

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  • 1 comment in c/worldnews@sh.itjust.works view that post
    [–] 5 points 1 day ago

    Hey Canadians, you see this?

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