Spain's "Robin Hood" mayor sets off on a march against austerity

2012-08-16 · first published in marxsite · 147 words

This was not a Socialist Resistance publication. marxsite was Phil Hearse’s own long-form site, run alongside the paper he helped edit. It is kept here with his agreement, recovered from the Internet Archive after the domain lapsed and was taken over by someone else; nothing here links to the address it now points at.

Only a fragment of this survives. It may have been a short link-and-comment post, which marxsite ran many of, or the opening of a longer piece cut off by the capture — from what remains there is no way to tell which.

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New Statesman Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, the mayor of the small Spanish town of Marinaleda (population 2,645) in Andalusia, has begun a three-week march from Jodar, the city with the highest unemployment in the region, in protest against the continued austerity in the region. Sanchez Gordillo has previously hit the headlines for accompanying activists who stole food from supermarkets to give to the poor. The Irish Times has the story: Seven people have been arrested for participating in the two raids, in which labour unionists, cheered on by supporters, piled food into supermarket carts and walked out without paying while Mr Sanchez Gordillo (59) stood outside. He has political immunity as an elected member of Andalusia's regional parliament, but says he would be happy to renounce it and be arrested himself. The International Business Times has video of the raid at which Sanchez Gordillo made his appearance: