Basque pensioners celebrate four years of struggle with marches for decent pensions

The Basque Pensioners’ Movement has celebrated the four years after the start of their mobilizations with demonstrations against the pension reform of the Government of PSOE and Podemos, and demanding “decent” benefits that are revalued according to the “real” CPI.

The collective considers that its protests “they are still needed”, and thousands of people have participated in the marches that this Saturday at noon they have traveled in the basque capitals, in addition to Ondarroa Y Lekeitio in Biscay, and Eibar in Gipuzkoa.

The ELA, LAB, ESK, Steilas, Etxalde, HIRU, CGT-LKN and CNT unions had made a call to participate in the demonstrations.

The Euskal Herria Pensioners’ Movement has thanked the support received from unions and social groups. It has also encouraged workers, pensioners and society as a whole to “continue fighting for decent, fair and sufficient public pensions, decent wages and working conditions and quality universal public services”.

Double demonstration in Bilbao

The demonstration in Bilbao It has been developed along the Gran Vía and has ended before the City Council, where the collective began to gather spontaneously on January 15, 2018 and continues to do so every Monday.

Two marches have arrived in the Biscayan capital, one that had started on the Right Bank of the estuary and another on the Left Bank, to end up converging. In addition, about twenty people had been locked up since Friday afternoon in the Franciscan premises in the Irala neighborhood, from where they have left to join the demonstration.

Throughout the march, traditional slogans of this movement have been heard such as “who governs who governs, pensions defend themselves” and “pensioners forward“, behind a banner that remembered the four years of his fight.

In the statement read at the end of the mobilizations, they have reproached promises have not been kept of the parties in government and that the recently approved pension reform “does not repeal the cuts” of the PP laws.

“Most of our demands have been excluded from the reform” and the minimum pensions are “very far from 1,080 euros” that the pensioners’ movement has claimed since its creation.

Criticism of the Spanish Government in Pamplona

For their part, the pensioners of Pamplona have urged the central government to “repeal the most harmful aspects” of previous pension reforms.

Protesters they have walked the main streets of the center of the Navarran capital while chanting slogans such as “repeal of the pension reform”, “money is not lacking, there are plenty of thieves” and “terrorism is not making ends meet”.

The march has ended in the Plaza del Castillo, where a statement has been read in which the pensioners’ movement has asked for a minimum pension of 1080 euros, apply to pensions the real CPI increase and a minimum salary of 1200 euros.

The spokesman in Pamplona for the Euskal Herria Pensioners’ Movement, Benito Uterga, has denounced that the policies of the current Government of Spain “are being more aggressive” than those of the PP, because the cost they are going to have for pensioners “is being much higher”.