Farmers protesting in Spain since February 6 paralyzed the Canary island of Tenerife, which is popular among tourists, on Saturday with roadblocks. The protest led to traffic chaos on the roads leading to the resorts.
Several hundred individual farmers and representatives of the largest Spanish agricultural organizations take part in the campaign, which is held under the slogan “Canary fields are already planted”.
“We want decent wages!”, “Support farmers!”, “They want to ruin us!” – chanted farmers, including both planters and animal breeders.
Some demonstrators entered the center of the island’s main city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife on Saturday afternoon, paralyzing street traffic. As part of the protest, some farmers started handing out fruit they had brought for the demonstration to passers-by.
Spanish farmers are demanding, among other things: changes in regulations resulting in reduced bureaucracy when applying for EU subsidies, agricultural fuel subsidies, support for field irrigation, as well as tightening phytosanitary requirements for non-EU products.
According to the demonstrators, the European Commission does too little to increase the competitiveness of EU agricultural producers. They claim that the EU authorities are harming European agriculture by implementing the so-called The Green Deal, which is intended to enable the EU to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 through a series of provisions. These changes include, among others: on reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers.
On Thursday, Spain’s Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, announced that on Monday in Brussels he would demand greater EU support for Spanish farmers from the European Commission.
