Spanish strike loses steam, food shortages abating

Spanish driver, Antonio Morilla, 45, right, prepares his food with other colleagues as they wait on the side of the road in part of a queue over six miles long, of thousands of truck drivers waiting on the road on the third day of the Spanish truck strikers near to the Spanish border with France in Oyarzun, northern Spain, June 11. (Associated Press)

The Associated Press

6/13/2008

MADRID, Spain  —  Spain is recovering from food shortages as a five-day-old truckers' strike loses steam, merchants said Friday.

Officials at Madrid's main wholesale market, Mercamadrid, said supplies are more abundant but still not back to 100 percent.

Luis Alberto Carrillon, president of a fruit wholesalers association, said supplies were at 60 percent of normal, which he called a big improvement. "The strike is winding down," he told Associated Press Television News.

The strike is being waged by self-employed drivers who make up a small sector of the Spanish trucking industry.

They want the government to establish minimum, guaranteed rates for their services, and say otherwise they cannot compete with large trucking companies, which are better able to cope with diesel fuel prices that have risen 36 percent in a year.

The strike had led to shortages and panic-buying of meat, fresh produce and fuel. Truck drivers have also blocked highways and picketed outside markets since the protest started Monday.

But the government, accused of being slow to respond, deployed riot police Wednesday to clear two border crossings with France and highways leading into Madrid. It also strengthened police escorts of truckers who did not back the strike and wanted to work.

The government says highways were completely clear on Thursday but that many truckers were reluctant to work, fearing violence by picketers who slashed tires and smashed windows on the first day of the strike.

"It was normal for many to be afraid of working, even with escorts," Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said Thursday.

On Friday many taxi drivers in the Catalonia region honored a strike call. But in the rest of Spain the stoppage was called off after drivers won concessions on demands for fare hikes.