The tractor units are heading towards Madrid. After four days of concentrations in different parts of the country, with road closures that yesterday affected five autonomous communities, farmers are now threatening to take their heavy farming vehicles to the capital and stage different forms of protest. The first rallies in the city begin today and will continue next week in different locations. Logistics and distribution remain on alert.
The protests yesterday left a seriously injured person in Valle de Mena, Burgos. The Civil Guard arrested a tractor driver in his 60s who was participating in the farmers' protests. The protester crossed his vehicle on the road to prevent a car from overtaking him and the car collided with the tractor. The injured man, aged about 30, had to be transferred to the hospital in a mobile ICU.
In Madrid, the newly formed Platform 6F, linked to the far right, has called on farmers, transporters and workers in general to try to paralyze the city center this Saturday. Organized by messaging applications and social networks, they have asked farmers to abandon protests in their provinces over the weekend and, if they can, head towards the capital. They want to block the access roads to the city, as they already did in recent days on the A-3 or the A-42, and they have met at 5 p.m. around the Civitas Metropolitan state to vote “by show of hands” if They continue with their protests. They have also invited hunters and fishermen. There are voices that propose to direct the concentration towards the federal headquarters of the PSOE on Ferraz Street. They could also be joined by the alternative transport platform that already managed to paralyze logistics nodes in March 2022 and that today votes whether to join the strikes. The representatives of this organization managed to meet with the then Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, two years ago.
Today's call in Madrid has not been communicated and the Ministry of the Interior has activated a special device to intensify access controls to the capital. Agents from the National Police will participate, including the Police Intervention Unit (UIP), the Civil Guard, the Municipal Police and members of the Samur, Firefighters and the General Directorate of Traffic. The Government has assured that it will guarantee free movement on the roads.
The professional organizations of the countryside, Asaja, COAG and UPA, are also going to direct their protests towards Madrid over the next week, so that the protest will escalate. On Monday they called a tractor unit on the M-404 highway, a ring road in the south of the capital. But yesterday they took a step further and called on farmers to activate “slow tractor marches along regional roads in the Community of Madrid.”
In addition, the same organizations, which are acting at all times in "unity of action", announced a new concentration next Wednesday, February 14, with the objective of "blocking Mercamadrid", the main food distribution center in the capital. both for supermarkets, as well as for shops and hospitality. That same day, the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, called the plenary session of the Food Chain Observatory. It is one of the movements of the Executive to try to respond to the demands of farmers and ranchers.
In Catalonia, farmers also plan to “block Mercabarna” next Tuesday, in addition to La Jonquera and the Port of Tarragona. According to RAC1, the tractors will carry out “slow marches” from different points of the Catalan territory to these three points, a strategy similar to the one carried out when they arrived in Barcelona.
The large supermarket chains remain alert to possible more serious problems for their activity due to the rural protests. For now, companies have reported only specific delays. The most conflictive point for this sector is Antequera, in Malaga, where farmers once again blocked a Mercadona logistics center yesterday. The representative organizations of transporters, for their part, remain outside the protests and demand freedom to carry out their work.
Since the start of the farmers' protests in Spain last Tuesday, security forces have arrested around twenty protesters, identified 8,000 for sanctions and filed 3,035 administrative complaints, according to the Ministry of the Interior's balance sheet.
