A deep recession that has led to soaring unemployment and austerity cuts has failed to spark popular anger in Spain, where the unions are reluctant to put pressure on the government, analysts say.
Although May Day rallies drew tens of thousands of people protesting the crisis, they were not on a scale or intensity that could alarm the government.
Certainly, they were nothing like the violent demonstrations that erupted in debt-ridden Greece on Saturday.
“The [Spanish] trade unions have been quiet for the past several years, and now it’s difficult to get the engines started,” said Cayo Laro, the secretary general of the United Left coalition.
Spain suddenly found itself in recession in late 2008 after several years of strong economic growth based on its booming property sector.
Since then, possible motives for public anger have grown steadily.
Official data on Friday showed that the jobless rate had soared to more than 20 percent, double the eurozone average; the government this year launched an austerity plan to rein in the public deficit that includes tax rises; labor reforms are being studied and the government plans to raise the legal retirement age.
Unlike in Greece and Portugal, two eurozone countries also under pressure over their public deficits, reaction on the streets has been relatively subdued.
“There have not been any really unpopular measures taken for the moment,” said Gayle Allard, an economist at the IE business school in Madrid.
Unlike Athens and Lisbon, the socialist government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has thus far shied away from freezing salaries.
In addition, “the system of unemployment benefits is much more generous” than in other countries,” sociologist Fermin Bouza said.
“Perhaps when the benefits run out, we are going to see something,” Allard said.
However, there are deeper reasons for the popular apathy.
For one thing, the unions do not want to step up popular pressure on the government.
“They think hard before sending people onto the streets,” Bouza said.
For Allard, it’s because they are “very politicized,” close to the socialist government, subsidized and “not very representative.”
“Spain is a country of small and medium-sized businesses where it is much more difficult to have union representation,” said Cristina Bermejo, secretary general of the youth wing of the CCOO union.
Another factor is family solidarity.
“The family is very strong here, each member helps others” when they are in financial trouble, Allard said.
The underground economy is also extensive, and a large number of the 4.6 million people who are officially unemployed are not in fact jobless, both Bouza and Allard said.
Allard estimated that almost 1.4 million of them work in the underground economy.
However, unions put the government on notice at Saturday’s May Day rally that things could change.
“We don’t know what imposing a restrictive budget for the year 2011 will mean,” UGT leader Candido Mendez said. “If that means reducing the guarantees for unemployment benefits, we will have a major labour conflict.”
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