Hauliers in Mallorca and the Balearics will not be staging any protest action action on Tuesday. This is in response to a Spanish government promise to lower the price of fuel by between forty and sixty cents per litre.
On Monday, some 140 lorries took part in a protest that caused significant traffic delays in Palma. These were hauliers who backed the the call for an indefinite strike from the Platform for the Defence of the Goods Transport Sector.
The protesters are self-employed and small businesses. They say that if the government fails to fulfil its promise, protests will resume and that this time there will be backing from the Balearic Transport Federation. A future strike, they suggest, would have the necessary permissions, which wasn't the case on Monday.
The federation is, however, continuing to disassociate itself from the strike. Its president, Rafael Roig, says that the federation supports the demands but that action has not been officially called. By this, the federation is referring to there having been no call for action by the national association.
The Balearic government's director-general for transport, Jaume Mateu, has called for calm in the face of the protests. He stresses that, as is the case in the rest of Spain, these are minority protests that are not supported by the employers associations. He adds that supplies are fully guaranteed and that the effects of protests will amount to no more than inconvenience caused by traffic delays.