Spain: ‘civic work stoppage’ and general strike planned in Catalonia tomorrow (brief)

On 2 October, the leadership of the regional strands of the CCOO and UGT – Spain’s largest trade union groupings – announced that an agreement had been reached in principle on the previous day to organise a civic work stoppage. It comes after the call from the ‘Taula per la Democracia’ (Catalan for: ‘table for democracy’) and brings together various trade union and employer organisations to defend the “freedoms and fundamental rights of citizens”, following the penal measures used by Madrid to prevent an independence referendum being held in Catalonia. The violent reaction of the Spanish police on 1 October has shifted the opinion of the two main unions in the region, who had up until now had been reluctant to participate in such action. On the same day, a series of union organisations – the CGT, the Intersindical Alternativa de Catalunya, the Coordinadora Obrera Sindical and the Intersindical-CSC – called for a general strike.