STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 15 November 2012

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20. Massive anti-government demonstrations cap national strike day

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/11/15/inenglish/1352979140_439108.html

After Spain’s industry and transport systems had been crippled by a 24-hour general strike, which started at midnight on Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in cities across the country on Wednesday evening. The largest march took place in Madrid, where the CCOO and UGT labor unions said that one million people had thronged the streets around Cibeles square to protest against conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s austerity measures.

That number was at extreme variance with the official government delegation’s figure of 35,000 protestors in the capital. Using a standardized formula based on photographs and crowd density, EL PAÍS estimates that some 174,000 people took to the streets in Madrid on Wednesday. In Barcelona the central government’s delegation in the Catalan capital came up with the same 35,000 figure as its counterpart in Madrid, while local police said that 110,000 demonstrators had gathered in Gràcia boulevard.

In a separate Madrid protest, the 15-M and 29-S Surround Congress grassroots organizations gathered hundreds of supporters around the parliament building near Cibeles, leading to sporadic clashes between a number of violent protestors and the police. In all, 21 people were arrested with 29 requiring medical treatment, including nine members of the security forces.

The unions claimed the strike had been a huge success, citing an adhesion rate of around 65 percent of workers. The Popular Party government pointed out that electricity demand had fallen by 12.7 percent compared to a normal weekday in November, while in the previous one-day national strike in March that figure had been 16 percent.