General strike over housing brings out hundreds of thousands in Spain

We begin tonight in Spain, where millions of workers shut down businesses and public transport earlier as part of the country's first general strike in 14 years. Following a peaceful march in Barcelona over soaring rents and property prices, as well as the rising cost of living, protesters smashed storefronts, set off small bonfires, burned bins and launched fireworks towards police. The unrest coming just weeks before snap elections called by socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Well, for the very latest, let's cross live now to our Madrid correspondent. Sarah Morris is standing by for us. Sarah, we heard a little earlier clashes had broken out in Barcelona. Protests, as we say, taking place right across the country. What's the very latest there? That's right. We saw live images being streamed on all the Spanish TV channels and people watched with disbelief as that peaceful protest in Barcelona turned violent and we saw people basically burning rubbish bins, smashing windows on Paseo de Gracia. And the police charged as a result. That had been a peaceful protest, and the police had put the turnout at over 50,000. Here in Madrid, we have also seen tens of thousands march through the streets, 120,000 people peacefully marching. And the police have just charged on the last stages of those protests. We couldn't see on images whether there had been any violence there, but it's a sad end to a day which has broadly been peaceful, although there have been, even before tonight's unrest, we've seen 50 arrests by the police and some businesses accusing picketers of being violent and picketers accusing particularly the Madrid police of being violent. In general, we've seen slogans in favor of decent and affordable housing. We've seen people calling for more fairer rental laws and more affordable housing. Marching through the streets, they're saying things like, my boss exploits me, my landlord robs me. General strike against profiteering and bosses. And I should mention that in the early hours of this strike, one of the targets for a spray painting and in some cases the use of acid to penetrate windows were actually the housing, the estate agents. And those scenes there are similar, of course, to some protests we've had here in France in recent weeks. In Spain, this is all coming as voters prepare to head to the polls for snap elections called by Pedro Sánchez. How is all of this likely to affect the vote? It's going to be very interesting to see because Pedro Sánchez... The Socialist Party and his left wing allies are lagging in the polls. If the polls are correct, then the People's Party, the Conservatives and the right wing party Vox will form a comfortable absolute majority. The People's Party, as in 2023, will come out top of the polls, but it won't be able to form a government. On its own, but some of Pedro Sánchez's allies will be hoping that issues like the housing crisis can galvanize people to turn out, particularly to vote for those small left-wing parties, because we've certainly seen in the opinion polls that support for those smaller left-wing parties has collapsed. They could use. could lose a third of their seats, and that's partly because the left is very fragmented. The biggest winner at the moment in the opinion polls is Vox, and they may be doing very well from the. Immigration issue after that crisis in Ceuta, where 80,000 migrants came over the border at Morocco into the Spanish enclave Ceuta. But so many issues, Sarah, it's very difficult to see how this will all play out. The latest, of course, tragic issue to be put on the agenda are those two fatal train crashes after one. Two weeks ago, brought the tally of 115 deaths on the high-speed train network. And yesterday, we saw train drivers striking, saying that they want to guarantee that the infrastructure and the security systems will be upgraded. Sarah, thanks so much for that. Sarah Morris, our correspondent there in Madrid.