¡Viva la Huelga!

My entire abroad experience began with a French airline strike that delayed my connecting flight  from Madrid to Geneva. However, it has quickly become clear that Spain has a similar, arguably worse, attraction to this sudden refusal to work. Over the past week and a half there have been a total of 4 new strikes in Madrid.

Ten days ago there was an education strike. Spain recently raised annual college tuition from €1,500 to €1,900 a year, causing a huge uproar among students and faculty. Many professors canceled classes and other university staff took the day off, meaning that even professors who decided not to cancel classes still had difficulty opening offices, printing material, etc.

A few days later, there was an incident with ETA prisoners of war, leading to a diplomatic strike. The next day I opened my laptop to an email detailing a strike on the city trains; I rely on these trains to get to school daily. Apparently, this will continue through the end of the year.

Finally, to top off the huelga chain, when I was walking back from class two days ago I noticed a bunch of trash on the streets. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later that night my host-mom informed me of the indefinite strike on street cleaning. Oh Madrid.

After one day of the street cleaning strike

In all honesty, Spanish strikes never actually result in change, they are just expression of angst. So what will be next? Let’s just hope it’s not a strike on food…I don’t think I could handle that.

I give it 3 days until the next one pops up. ‘Tis the season.