The last time Spain’s two biggest unions called a general strike together, in November 2012, the country was deep in an austerity crisis.
Fourteen years later, Spanish workers will try to bring the country to a halt again.
This time, the grievances are about the basics, and they sound much the same in Madrid, Paris, Brussels and Rome: rents people can afford, wages that keep up with prices and public services that work.
The 24-hour walkout called by the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) unions for Wednesday comes 18 days before Spain’s snap general election on 29 November.
Spain is not alone.
France had a national day of strikes and protests over the cost of living on 5 November. Italy’s CGIL union has called a general strike for 20 November, and Belgian unions have threatened one for the week of 23 November.
Last year was already exceptional.
Preliminary data from the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), a Brussels-based research centre, suggest that 2025 was the EU’s biggest year for strikes since 1991.
The question is which economies pay the most.
Germany would pay the biggest bill
The simplest way to compare countries is to apply the same formula to each one.
Take a country’s annual economic output, measured by gross domestic product (GDP), and divide it by 365 to get one day’s output. Then assume one in five workers stops work, and that roughly a fifth of that day’s output is lost with them.
On that basis, Germany, Europe’s largest economy, would lose about €2.5 billion in a single day, according to Eurostat GDP data for 2025.
France comes second at about €1.6 billion, followed by Italy at about €1.2 billion.
Spain would lose about €930 million. Its economy produced €1.69 trillion last year, which works out to about €4.6 billion a day.
Smaller economies have smaller bills. A strike of the same size would cost Belgium about €350 million and Portugal about €170 million.
This is a rough estimate. Strikes are rarely spread evenly: they hit transport, schools and public services hardest, while many factories and offices keep running.
Why much of the bill is never paid
The national accounts tell a calmer story than the cost estimates published before each walkout.
France is the best test case, because its statisticians have measured the effect of strikes several times. The Banque de France estimated that the pension reform strikes of March and April 2023 cut French growth by about 0.1 percentage points in the first quarter of that year.
It then found a catch-up of about 0.1 points in the second quarter. In other words, most of the lost activity came back within three months.
The Banque de France noted that this was in line with France’s statistics office, INSEE, which estimated that the social movements of spring 2018 had reduced GDP by about 0.1 points.
The reason is simple: a strike is not like a fire that destroys stock. The cargo is still shipped, the hospital appointment is rescheduled and the factory works an extra shift the following week.
Some losses are permanent, though, and they fall on specific people. Strikers lose a day’s pay. Governments lose the tax on activity that never happens. Airlines and hotels cannot get back a cancelled flight or an empty room.
Belgium shows the real risk is repetition
Belgium shows what happens when strikes stop being one-off events.
According to the ETUI, the country lost 1,354,845 working days to strikes in 2025, or 313 days for every 1,000 employees. That broke the previous record of 299, set in 1993.
The gap with its neighbours is large.
In the Netherlands, 23 strikes cost almost 60,000 working days in 2025, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS).
In Germany, the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) estimates that about 645,000 days were lost in 2025, below the long-term trend, in an economy almost seven times the size of Belgium’s.
This is what one-off cost estimates miss. A single strike day is quickly recovered, but strikes every month leave a lasting mark on the economy.
The power grid will give the first count
Spain has an unusual way of measuring how many people strike: electricity use.
During the November 2012 general strike, the Interior Ministry said that early in the morning, electricity demand was 11.4% below normal for that time of day, using data from grid operator Red Eléctrica. During the March 2012 strike, the drop at the same hour had been 15.4%.
The grid data is likely to give the first estimate of turnout again on Wednesday, before unions and the government put out their own, usually very different, numbers.
Air travel is still uncertain. As of Monday, the government had not published the minimum flight services for the strike, even though airport and airline staff are covered by the call.
Investors have barely reacted
So far, markets don’t seem worried. Spain’s IBEX 35 index closed Monday at 19,742.5 points, up 14.1% this year and about 3% below its all-time high of 20,356.5.
The companies most exposed to a strike day have done better than that.
Shares of Meliá Hotels International, one of Spain’s largest hotel chains, are up 38% this year. Aena, which runs most of Spain’s airports, is up 21%.
For investors, one strike day is like a storm that delays flights for a day. Belgium shows the other possibility: strikes that become so frequent they are a permanent feature of the economy.
For Spain, the cost of Wednesday’s strike will be measured in lost hours. Whether the wider protest wave changes anything will be decided at the ballot box on 29 November.