The Party of the European Left (EL) shows its solidarity with the 8 trade unionist, whom the Attorney General Office of the Government of Spain demands for 64 years of prison, 8 years each, for taking in part in an informative picket at the door of the factory of Airbus, during the dawn of the General Strike on 29^th September 2010. On that day, the majority of the country followed the General Strike against the labour reform of the socialist party government (PSOE) that reduced the compensation of dismissal and weakened collective bargaining.

One of the incidents of that morning, at the beginning of the strike, was the tough police intervention at the door of the aerospace firm EADS-CASA that manufactures civil and military Airbus and Eurofighter European combat aircraft, among others. Riot police invaded the factory and fired some real fire shots into the air, arresting 8 members of the informational picket. Now, three years later, the Attorney General Office demands 8 years in prison to each of the eight workers in a collective accusation. They are awaiting trial, but meanwhile a big campaign of solidarity with "the 8 of Airbus" has been created.

The Party of the European Left joins the campaign of solidarity with the 8 workers of this big European company. The vice-president of the EL, Maite Mola, qualifies the request of the Attorney General Office as a “political trial against the right to strike and the union representatives” within what she considers a policy of criminalization by the Spanish Government against the social and trade union responses, in which the demonstrators are paying with numerous accusations by the police and fines in many civil protests in the whole State. Maite Mola reminds that this is not an isolated case, and stresses that this type of judicial request has not happened in Spain since the Franco dictatorship, with the Process 1001 in 1973, which became a real worldwide scandal.

The EL claims the right to strike as a right conquered by the working people, and defends that its exercise must be protected by the law and the authorities. In the same way, the EL defends the right to demonstrate peacefully and democratically against all economic, social, political and trade union cuts that we suffer in the name of austerity.