Workers in the sector see the situation as “unbearable” due to the rise in fuel prices and the environmental degradation of the Mar Menor
Three days of total closure in the Lo Pagán fish market. Neither the fishermen nor the landscape of the coastal town fit the silence left by the strike, called off last night by the National Federation of Fishermen’s Guilds, due to the increase in fuel prices. “Yesterday I went for a run and today I’m reading a noir novel,” says Antonio Jesús López, a veteran fisherman from the Mar Menor, known as ‘Antonio el del Estacio’.
The true blackness is, however, outside the doors, in the bleak future of the Mar Menor with the entry of more fresh water due to the storm, and in the murky present of the rising cost of diesel that he has to move his boat to go to carry their fixed arts in front of La Manga. And that the fishermen of the lagoon “hold it better”, says the fisherman. “Our boats consume less because they have less powerful engines than those in the Mediterranean and, furthermore, we make shorter journeys,” he explains. Even so, he calculates that spending on diesel from any boat in the lagoon accounts for 10% of income.
With more nerves, Rubén Albaladejo waits for the moment to start the engine of his boat ‘Caricano’. “For those of us who live day to day, three days of unemployment make us dust,” he says. Adding up the days that woke up with a storm, Rubén has not gone out to sea for ten days, which is a lot for those who have “a mortgage, a little girl and the payment terms for the boat,” he makes his mental list. To make matters worse, the mornings without work have given him time to listen to «the analysts who appear on TV. And I do not understand many things, such as the price of industrial diesel being set at the same price as that used by those who go for a walk to eat rice ». Rubén no longer trusts great solutions.
“For those of us who live day to day, three days of unemployment make us dust”, says the shipowner Rubén Albaladejo
Twenty days ago he filled the diesel tanks at 70 cents, but last Monday it was set at 1.20 euros and he is scared that these prices will be maintained when he has to return to sea. If he needs about 500 liters of diesel per month, for which he used to pay 350 euros, now he fears that the cost of fuel alone will be put at 600 euros. “It’s what I pay for one of the self-employment insurances,” says the fisherman.
Everyone recognizes that there has been no better time to strike than now. Because of the storm, which would have also forced them to moor the boat, and because catches are at their lowest during the winter.
“The fish is lethargic in cold water,” explains Antonio ‘El del Estacio’. He fears “all this fresh water that is entering, with all that intensive agriculture that exists especially in the southern area, and that turbidity that it leaves behind is not good for the seabed, because the mud settles and kills life.”
work at a loss
Before this long storm ends, they wait for the solution to restart the boats. “Going out to work at a loss cannot be,” says José Blaya, the senior patron of the Brotherhood of San Pedro del Pinatar, which brings together all the fishermen of the Mar Menor. “When we don’t have Covid-19, it’s the transport strike or the rise in diesel,” the older boss complains. He calculates that a Mediterranean ship, like his, needs about 90 liters an hour. “For a ship that spends a thousand liters a day, paying 1.10 euros for them is unbearable,” says Blaya. Despite the fact that the ships of the Mar Menor are the least affected by the rise in fuel prices, they have shown solidarity in the strike with the national brotherhoods.
“The brotherhoods also have damages, such as the 20% increase in Social Security and in the electricity bill,” he says about the maintenance of the fish market, where the cold chambers and the mechanisms of the rafts work 24 hours a day.
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