Tractor-driving Portuguese farmers block roads to Spain as protests grow
By Miguel Pereira
CAIA, Portugal (Reuters) - Portuguese farmers used tractors to block at least three roads linking Portugal to Spain on Thursday, joining Europe-wide protests over a range of grievances, from cheaper imports to insufficient state aid and bureaucracy.
The government on Wednesday announced emergency aid worth 500 million euros for farmers to try to avoid the kind of mass protests causing disruption in France and Brussels, but a small group of farmers, feeling under-represented in public discussion on the issue, contacted each other on social media and decided to take action.
Starting at dawn hundreds of farmers with tractors and other vehicles made their way slowly to the four main crossing points to neighbouring Spain.
Road police GNR said that two Portuguese highways had been cut in both directions close to the borders with Spain, in Vilar Formoso in the north and Caia in the south, as well as a smaller national motorway in the region of Alentejo.
A GNR spokesperson said the protests were peaceful and required "no use of force" despite the blockages.
"Farmers have been very badly treated in the last few years in Portugal," said Jose Martins, a farmer protesting in Caia, citing cuts in subsidies. "I don’t think this is the way to deal with people, farmers are a very strong force in this country."
Farmers have been complaining that the government was reducing aid to organic and mixed farming.
"Our movement is civic and non-partisan, and our aim is to draw attention to the sector's problems, not to blockade the country," said Ricardo Estrela, who led the protests in Vilar Formoso.
"The aid package announced yesterday was an unsuccessful attempt to demobilise us," he said.
Still, the country's largest farmers' confederation CAP decided not to take part in any protests.
In France, where farmers have been protesting for weeks, the government has dropped plans to gradually reduce subsidies on agricultural diesel and promised more aid.
The protests have spread to Spain, Italy and Belgium, where farmers threw eggs and stones at the European Parliament.
(Reporting by Patrícia Vicente Rua; Miguel Pereira, Pedro Nunes; Editing by Andrei Khalip, William Maclean)
