As support from Western governments continues to prop up Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, people of conscience continue to mobilize at the grassroots to pressure their political leaders to change course. On Friday, Sept. 27, students, NGO staff, and workers from over 200 unions across Spain waged a 24-hour general strike to demand the Spanish government cut ties with Israel and end all forms of military aid. The Real News reports from the streets of Madrid. Producer, Videographer, Editor: María Artigas Assistant Producer: Sato Díaz Translation, Narrator: Pedro Rubio Transcript Protesters: Resistance! Resistance! Long live the Palestinian people’s fight! Reporter: Tens of thousands of people across Spain took to the streets to protest the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The CGT and Solidaridad Obrera unions called a general strike, backed by hundreds of associations and organizations. The MATS union (Health Workers Assembly Movement) joined the protests with a gathering at the 12 de Octubre Hospital in Madrid, demanding an end to the genocide and the military, commercial, and diplomatic relations between the Spanish government and Israel. Edurne Prado: From the union we have called for this rally because we are seeing a live genocide of the Palestinian people. Now also to the Lebanese people. And we, as health workers, cannot forget not only the thousands of families and children who have died, but also that we have colleagues there risking their lives day by day, without any resources and working out of pure vocation and saving people’s lives. And for us it is also important today to call names, to denounce the complicity of all European governments, of our own government, which claims to be progressive but then does not break commercial or diplomatic relations with the state of Israel. And for us today is also a day to denounce. Reporter: Pickets, marches, and various protests were held throughout the morning. Around 150 towns and cities across the country organized actions in support of the general strike, with notable mobilizations in cities like Barcelona, Granada, Valencia, Zaragoza, and Seville. In Madrid, hundreds of participants gathered at the doors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand action from the Spanish government. Protesters:  Boycott, boycott, boycott Israel! Military budgets for schools and hospitals! Break, break, break with Israel! José Luis Carretero: We called for a general strike and a day of protest because we understand that, in the first place, public services must be defended. In the face of the fact that public money is being used to sustain wars, to sustain a situation of growing warlike confrontation in Europe and the Mediterranean as a whole. And we also raise it in defense of human rights, of children’s rights in Palestine, in Gaza, in Lebanon, especially in Palestine. We raise it because, at the end of the day, we workers have the right to state that our interests are not only limited to wage increases or working conditions, vacations, and leaves, but also in the defense of fundamental rights and what was traditionally known as workers’ internationalism. And in that sense we also defend the right of workers to express their solidarity with all subjugated peoples. We ask the Spanish government  to do everything possible to stop this genocide. We understand the severance of relations with the state of Israel, the severance of diplomatic relations with the state of Israel and also the denunciation of the international trade treaty that it has with the European Union, with the state  of Israel, we understand that it is absolutely necessary, and also to do everything possible to comply with international arrest warrants that are already on the table by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice against those responsible for this genocide. Protesters: It is not a war, it is genocide! No more complicity! Israel murders, Europe sponsors! Carmen Arnaiz: We are here mainly because Palestinian workers sent a call many months ago to all European workers asking us what we were going to do about the genocide that was taking place in their land. So, based on that call, from our organization we initially decided that the biggest response we could give as a union is to call a general strike. But obviously it had to be with other comrades, because otherwise it would not have made sense for us to call a strike. In the end, 218 organizations have adhered to the call. And what we intended with this day of general strike and struggle, because they are organizing rallies, marches, as well as picket lines and other things, is to denounce that the Spanish government is spending enormous amounts of money on arms, much more than on social services, much more than on education, health, aid for dependency, fair pensions, regularization of so many comrades who are in an irregular situation, migrants, and yet it is redirecting all that money to the arms business, to the sale of arms — and, on top of that, with a genocidal state that, according to all international legislation, we should have broken off all diplomatic relations of all kinds with it. The embassy is still open here, arms are still being sold, despite the fact that they say it is not true and they have recognized the state of Palestine. But it has been an act of posturing, because at the moment of truth they continue negotiating with Israel, they continue supporting all that barbarity that is there with our taxes. They are making us accomplices of a genocide. So, as civil society, as many people around the world outraged by this, we have organized ourselves to try to raise our voices and demand, of course, that the genocide ends and for all and that, in the meantime, as a means of pressure, immediately cut off all relations with any government that is committing genocide against a people. Protesters: From the river to the sea, Palestine shall overcome! Reporter: Universities also responded to the strike call. After the sit-ins in May, students and professors organized again for this day of action. Under the slogan “We will no longer study to the sound of bombs,” the Complutense Professors’ Network and the students from the Madrid sit-in took to the streets to condemn the genocide in Gaza. The day featured roundtable discussions, campus walkouts, rallies, and protests. Rub: We have come out to argue against the responsibility of the Spanish government for continuing to send economic and military support to the genocidal state of Israel, and also to denounce the complicity of our university, which continues to maintain relations with Israeli universities. It continues to keep companies that finance Israel’s genocide on the social councils and university boards of directors. Following the internationalist wake that the encampments were having and also picking up the fighting spirit of the students who were already going out to fight directly against governments as in the case of Sri Lanka, we decided to have an encampment also in Madrid, which denounced the complicity of our universities and, again, Spanish imperialism and how our government participates in it. And I think it is important to reemphasize all the struggle against the repression that took place in our encampment, but above all in the United States and in France and in Germany, where the repression was terrible, people were arrested, they tried to charge them as terrorists. And I think it is very important that we recover that spirit of struggle in the student movement and in the Spanish workers’ movement. Eva Aladro: The University cannot stand still in the face of a genocide of the size we are witnessing, which we are also seeing spreading to other countries and which continues with the same line of massacring civilian populations under the excuse of wanting to put an end to terrorism, as more terrorist acts are carried out by Israel. We professors started mobilizations together with the students, and our idea is to continue in the same line, because we believe that both the academics and the students, as well as the whole youth community in our country, which is mobilized, are the social conscience. And they are the ones who really have to make an effort in some way to awaken society, so that they refuse to accept a situation such as we are living, of hundreds of dead human beings, children, women, etc. every week. Unfortunately, the only way to stop the war is to make the war unprofitable. So there are three things to achieve this that are the key. The first is to disinvest in the companies, businesses, and universities that are contributing to a massacre like the one in Gaza. There is another option, which is also to block all the activities that have to do with and whose interest is based on that massacre. And another very important thing is to mobilize society and public sensibility not to accept products, etc. from communities or countries that are carrying out genocide. There is a very important legislative initiative that we, the professors of all the public universities of Madrid, are carrying out, which is a letter that we have sent to the high commissioners of both the European Parliament and the Committee on Research and Innovation, asking them to respect their own Euro-Mediterranean Cooperation Agreement, which states that no treaties or agreements or principles of cooperation can be established with countries that are violating democratic rights and democratic principles. Therefore, the European Union has very specific legislation that must prevent any treaty of friendship and cooperation, with a country that is committing genocide. So we, the professors, have received a response letter in which they tell us that they are going to try to convene a meeting with Israel, but we want to force that, really, if the Euro-Mediterranean agreement itself is not complied with, we are going to take it to the European courts. And from there we will continue, because we believe that this is one of the initiatives that we believe must be developed, because it is at the legislative and court level where perhaps we will achieve the respect for international legality that we do not achieve at the political level or at the level of institutions. Protesters: Gaza, hang on, Madrid rises up! Reporter: Thousands attended the afternoon mass march through the heart of the capital, from Atocha Station to Callao Square. The organizing unions put the number of participants in the afternoon marches nationwide at more than 150,000 people. And more than 200 trade union and social organizations supported the strike call. Deva Mar Escobedo: I came here today with my colleagues from trans in fight quite excited about the strike. I was following the picket lines and the marches in other cities. I think they can be the most powerful things of today and of this new political course, that we can do more pressure, get a real change of positions in the government and stop this genocide. Because I think it is very important as citizens that we come to all protests, all mobilizations that we can, because, after all, we are witnessing a genocide live. I believe we have a duty as individuals to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.