“Global Noise” heard in Spain and Portugal

Saucepans in hand, thousands of people demonstrated in Spain and Portugal on Saturday. It was part of the “Global Noise” day, a hoped-for international protest against public spending cuts.

November is increasingly being seen as the moment when Spain goes to the IMF, EU and ECB troika to ask for a full-blown rescue package like ones granted to Ireland, Portugal and Greece.

It is likely the conditions attached will be equally strict, which ordinary Spaniards fear will mean more cuts and more austerity in a country going though its second recession in three years, and with record unemployment.

But only a few thousand people took part in Saturday’s protest.

The rally in Portugal was less noisy, and more musical with dozens of artists uniting in protest against the cuts and throwing a concert in the centre of Lisbon.

Popular protests there have already forced the government into a u-turn for next year, when taxes will be raised rather than more cuts imposed.

In both countries, the banks were roundly blamed for the crisis, and for getting huge sums of public money while cuts were falling everywhere else.

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