Self-strike against the polls

In 2012, the unions called a general strike against the Government when the PP had been in power for two months. In EL MUNDO we highlighted it on the front page with a headline full of astonishment: "First union order against Rajoy without giving him even 100 days." A few months later, in November, they organized another one. The result of both was, according to the editorial at the time, a "failure", due to its poor follow-up and the "discredit" of the organizers.

The newspaper should not have been misguided because CCOO and UGT did not call for any more. Until now. On this occasion, without even waiting for the change in power to occur. The general strike with an electoral process underway is one more anomaly to the generous list of things that had never happened that Sanchismo will leave behind.

The motto of the call is "wages, housing, prices", but it is not directed against those who have managed such matters for the last eight and a half years. Its promoters, Unai Sordo and Pepe Álvarez, have said without hiding that "it is not a classic general strike" and that we should not expect a "usual follow-up", because that is not what it is about.

Officially, the strike aims to reflect the same unrest that runs through the entire West. "Working has to allow you to live well," says one of the CCOO documents for 9/11. It is the same cry that has been heard in the protests in France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Albania or the United States. Salaries are not enough to cover the cost of living, public services are getting worse, inequalities are growing and the generation gap is widening. But if in Paris the protests have surrounded Macron, in Turin they have been directed against Meloni and in Texas they have beaten Trump at the polls, in Madrid the unions want to call tens of thousands of people to the demonstration on Wednesday... against the opposition.

For Pedro Sánchez it is his penultimate cartridge to come back. The surveys do not move and the one we publish today is revealing. After the drop in the PSOE's voting intention last week due to the accident in Urda, a socialist rebound was expected, but it did not occur. The PP maintains a six-point advantage and the socialists have just over 100 seats.

When the elections were called, there were 54 days left, but we are now only 20 days away from the polls and things are not changing. Sánchez wanted a campaign of social agitation and housing, but there has been no new 15-M and there is no one left in Sol. The dances at the rallies ended with the crash of the trains. Lula, the latest reference, stood up at the Ibero-American Summit. They want to write off corruption but a new sinister character always emerges. And social Tuesdays are being buried by a crucial debate that is making its way: where does public money go.

The last thing has been to bring out Carlos Body, in a look, here we have a manager mode. They have put him where his antagonist, Óscar Puente, used to be, but the efforts to now provide solutions to train safety are too similar to Sánchez's own promises with housing: calm down, let's get to it. Eight years later.