By Rubén Tzanoff
Unrest erupted over Ayuso’s emergency plan. Active solidarity with the health care system in struggle is necessary. In the face of the damage to public health and living conditions, a general strike is needed.
Around 300,000 people took to the streets against the emergency plan of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) and in defense of public health. The call was made by neighborhood associations with the support of social organizations, opposition political parties, art and culture personalities. The demonstration started from four different points of the city and converged in Cibeles Square. It was so large that thousands of participants did not make it to the final destination. The population said “Enough is enough!” and once again showed solidarity with health care. This time it did not do so by applauding from the balconies, as during the pandemic, but by mobilizing.
For healthcare and for more
The messages expressed in the slogans and on the posters were clear: “Patients are not clients”. “Madrid stands up, healthcare is holding on”. “I am very pissed off. I fought for the rights that today are being taken away from us. Get a grip, dammit!” “Madrid is much more than bars and beers. Madrid is its people, its health, its education … and that is not achieved by lowering taxes.” It is clear that the unrest, focused on the deterioration of health care, exceeds this area and covers the whole of the social situation being experienced. For this reason, the demand for “Ayuso’s resignation” also hovered in the air.
The ridiculous resource of denying reality
For the spokesman of the PP in the Assembly of Madrid, Pedro Muñoz Abrines, the action was a “failure”. For Ayuso it was “agitation” as a “destabilizing strategy” mounted by the “left” to harm her. The truth is that the spontaneous influx of thousands and thousands of participants expressed a failure, but not that of the mobilization but of the reactionary plan for the reorganization of the out-of-hospital emergency facilities presented by the Madrid government. The demand is not to “disturb” Ayuso, it is the response to distressing situations, to the closure of medical facilities, to emergencies without doctors on site, to on-line patient care, to the lack of professionals and material resources, to waits for specialty and surgical appointments that last for months, to low salaries, precarious working conditions and the mistreatment of residents, to one of the lowest budgetary investments in healthcare in Spain.
A combination of old and new problems exacerbated
The budget cuts in decentralized health and education come from 2012, with the ” trimming cuts” of Mariano Rajoy (PP) when he was president. Since that time, with both PP and PSOE administrations, the public sector has deteriorated due to: disinvestment, new cuts and the advance of privatizations. In the pandemic, the cuts were paid for with human lives. This is a problem that persists over time, which manifests itself in out-of-hospital emergencies and in primary care. Ayuso’s plan was “the straw that broke the camel’s back” of a generalized disaster that goes far back in time.
If healthcare workers win, we all win
In Madrid the unions Satse, CC. OO., CSIT UP and UGT had signed with the regional government the conditions of the new plan for out-of-hospital emergencies, but then, faced with its failure, they broke the agreement. Only the medical union Amyts had refused to sign the agreement and has maintained the call for an indefinite strike since November 7. On Monday 21, primary care physicians and pediatricians will join the strike. No one can remain oblivious to the demands, we must show solidarity with the strike of the health workers and support them so that they triumph. The management in the Community of Madrid represents the reactionary “flagship” of the PP, as a showcase of what they want to do nationally. We must defeat them and close the way for them to extend their reactionary plans to other Communities.
For a unified struggle
Although the PSOE-UP “progressive coalition” government, headed by Pedro Sanchez takes distance from the crisis in Madrid’s healthcare, the problems are national. It is no coincidence that, in the last General State Budgets, the greatest increase has been destined to military items, not to those of public education and health. The deficiencies are repeated with greater or lesser intensity in the systems of each of the Autonomous Communities, which did not recover qualitatively from Rajoy’s cuts. The crises in patient care and working conditions are generally deficient. This critical panorama leads inexorably to one conclusion: a unified health care struggle is needed, with coordinated mobilizations and strikes, with the support of the population and the planning of actions in joint assemblies.
The general strike: an urgent, possible and necessary necessity
The union bureaucrats are not up to the task. They only want to negotiate with the governments and the bosses, always behind the real needs. It is time to demand from the majority leaderships of UGT and CC. OO. a general strike, in support of health care in struggle and with an agenda that includes the most immediate demands of the working people. It is an urgent necessity, possible and necessary to stop the accelerated deterioration of living conditions. In the Spanish State contradictions and tensions continue to accumulate, requiring a strong irruption of the working class and the people, strengthened by the struggle in the health care system. It is also necessary to set up a new political alternative, an far-left front to turn everything around.
Europe, part of the torrent of struggle
The capitalist crisis and the Russian invasion war in Ukraine are making their consequences felt. Inflation shrinks wages, governments destroy the public sector and the high cost of living worsens the daily situation of millions of people. In the face of this, demands are growing, indispensable to make the capitalists pay for the crisis. The strikes in France, Belgium, those of teachers in the United Kingdom, of health care in Madrid and others, are an indicator of the growing will to fight of the European working class, as part of the mobilizing torrent that is growing all over the world.