Huelga! Huelga! Huelga!

The economy in Spain is not good. The unemployment rate is hovering around 20 percent, 44 percent for people under 25, and now the government needs to tighten its belt. This belt-tightening is coming in the form of new labor reforms; Reforms that will freeze pensions, reduce pay for civil servants and make it easier for firms to fire people.

All of these things, in the workers point of view, affect the worker, during a crisis that, they feel, was stared by bankers and speculators. The ironic thing about all of this is that the labor reforms are characteristically capitalist actions and a socialist government, led by the unpopular president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, is performing them.

In reactions to this, civil servants, the working class, anti-capitalist and just about anyone else with nothing better to do (including me) took to the streets on Wednesday to participate in a one-day general strike, culminating in a massive rally at dusk. The following pictures are from the rally: