Bilbao (EFE).- Hundreds of Basque pensioners have demonstrated in Bilbao to reject the pension reform approved this week by the Government and demand a minimum pension of 1,080 euros now, without waiting for 2027, as proposed by the Spanish executive.
The demonstration has been called by the Movement of Pensioners of the Basque Country as the final act of the fasting-enclosure of relays that members of said movement have carried out this week in a Bilbao premises to demand the minimum pension of 1,080 euros.
The demonstrators, who came from the three Basque territories and from some of their municipalities with their own banners and scarves around their necks, chanted slogans such as “1,080, if we can”, “Whoever governs, pensions will defend themselves”, “terrorism is not make ends meet” or “Urkullu, listen, pensioners in struggle”.
The march, which has caused some traffic problems in the center of Bilbao, was opened by a unitary banner with the main demands of the Basque Pensioners Movement “Pension cuts, no. Minimum pension, 1080 euros”.
Objective: 1,080 euros
The Euskadi Pensioners Movement has been demanding a minimum pension of €1,080 in 14 payments for more than five years, considering that it is a basic income so that a pensioner can access a dignified life in their old age, and an effective measure to reduce the gender gap in pensions.
Jon Fano, one of the spokespersons for the Movement, stated in statements to the media before the start of the march that the objective of both the fasting-enclosure and the demonstration this Saturday is for the different public institutions to “assume once and for all , the immediate application of a minimum pension of 1,080 euros”.
“With this mobilization, we also come to demonstrate that for the Pensioners Movement not only today’s pensions are important, but that future pensions are just as important, or more important, so to defend them, we have also requested the support of the union and social organizations.
The demonstration ended in front of the steps of the Bilbao City Council, an emblematic place for the movement since it was where it was born five years ago, where its spokespersons read, in Basque and Spanish, a manifesto in which they stressed that “pensioners, after a lifetime of work, we are seeing how reform after reform reduces our pensions”.
192,342 pensions below 1,080 euros
In the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre, despite the latest increase of 8.5%, 192,342 pensions remain below 1,080 euros, “particularly affecting women”.
“In these moments in which the rise in the prices of basic resources such as energy and food are being used to increase the benefits of financial and energy oligopolies -they have also denounced-, people in general and the elderly and pensioners in particular, we see how our living conditions worsen”.
“Maintaining comfortable conditions in homes, guaranteeing health, healthy food and care and care services is increasingly difficult,” he said.
“Pensions, salaries and public services are the pagans of an unequal distribution of wealth that through public policies makes the rich increasingly rich at the expense of the social majority.”
Rejection of the new reform
The statement has also attacked Minister Escrivá’s latest pension reform because, in his opinion, “it still does not guarantee a minimum pension of 1,080 euros, not even for 2027, and neither have the governments of the BAC and Navarra” .
“This Decree Law, despite the positive aspects it contains, is part of a reform process that is cutting pensions and the rights of pensioners, reforms that, like the one of 2011, should have been repealed and that this perpetual reform”, they have pointed out. .
“This is not the reform that we have been demanding in the streets for more than five years -they have proclaimed-, so we are going to continue our fight as we have done up to here until we achieve the objectives for which we have been fighting for more than 5 years”, they have concluded. EFE