HELL ROADS

Spain promised "zero tolerance" for violence by striking truckers after police cleared picket lines blocking highways during a fuel protest. The government said deliveries of food and other goods were returning to normal on Thursday after an agreement with most of the strikers although food distribution centers reported shortages and car factories remained at a standstill.

"The government is going to have zero tolerance for any act of intimidation or violence," said Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, after incidents including an arson attack on a strike-breaking truck that left the driver with burns to 25 percent of his body.

The government said it had arrested 71 picketers for offences including intimidating non-striking drivers since the stoppage by 75,000 truckers began on Sunday night to call for government help to cope with high fuel prices.

However the scene at Madrid's main food market, Mercamadrid, which supplies the capital's shops and supermarkets, was far from normal on Thursday as the number of deliveries was reduced to a trickle because non-striking truckers were still being stopped by picketers.

Car plants were also at a standstill, due to a shortage of parts caused by the strike, national car makers' association Anfac said.

In one incident, a driver working for a company which is not participating in the strike suffered burns to a quarter of his body after someone set his truck alight as he slept near where he had been trapped by a picket line.

With fishermen already on strike and Madrid taxi drivers due to stop working for 24 hours from Friday, Spain is being hit hard by the protests caused by surging oil prices, which have spread elsewhere in Europe.

Spain's economy is already reeling from the global credit crunch and the collapse of a housing boom. Economic growth fell to 0.3 percent in the first quarter from 0.8 percent in the last three months of 2007, while inflation hit 4.6 percent in May.

Zapatero has been criticized by media and the conservative opposition for failing to do more to confront the strike and the economic slowdown.
On Monday, tens of thousands of Spanish truck-drivers went on strike to protest high fuel prices and by Tuesday the escalating stoppage began severing the nation’s supply lines to supermarkets, gas stations and even small cafeterias.

In many parts of the country, Spaniards felt the pinch in different ways. Nearly half of the gasoline stations in the northern province of Catalonia were out of fuel as of Tuesday morning, and the regional government sent out an emergency convoy of 20 trucks to replenish their tanks.

Around major cities, traffic continued Tuesday to crawl behind the so-called “snail protests” of slow-moving trucks.

Television news reports showed ships in the Balearic Islands marooned in port for lack of fuel and cargo. In the northern province of Galicia and southern ports of Andalucía, the truckers’ strike, coupled with a fishing strike, left docks and fish stalls barren. Wholesale markets were surrounded by protesters. And shoppers were hoarding staples.

So far the administration of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has offered a package of measures to ease the impact of higher fuel prices on small businesses, including lower social security contributions and 55 million euros in subsidies to older truckers who choose to abandon the industry. But Mr. Somoza said the truckers consider these measures insufficient.

They are seeking government regulations guaranteeing a minimum price for their services, above fuel costs.