WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE SPAIN - news journal UPDATE - (en) Spain, Regeneracion: Let Capitalism Not Turn Off Our Lives By Angel Malatesta (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In these last five years, we've experienced too many events that we

classify as near-collapse experiences. A pandemic, a genocide in
Palestine and the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis, and now, a power
outage in Spain and Portugal. Some of us think that, despite the memes
and psychotherapy, this phase of capitalism's crisis is already feeling
embarrassingly long. And that's precisely what it's about: properly
analyzing capitalism's breaches, and the deeper the crisis, the more
reactionary and imperialist its solutions are. Defeating capitalism
doesn't mean allowing it to implode, because as it slowly disintegrates,
it is imposing its class interests, and that means it will end up
annihilating a large part of the working class. We are not at the point
where we should celebrate the fact that the death of capitalism in this
way is, in the long run, a victory, and is not even guaranteed at all.
We must emancipate ourselves by overcoming this system. Otherwise,
neoliberalism will mutate in ways possibly still unimaginable,
perpetuating violence and domination over our class.

The Spanish Electricity Grid is part of an international holding company
that operates the electricity system and whose main shareholder is the
publicly owned Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (SEPI).
However, it manages only 20% of the total shares, as the other 80% is
free float. Other shareholders include Amancio Ortega, through
Pontegadea Inversiones S.L., with 5% of the shares, and Blackrock, the
New York investment fund, with 3%. Norges Bank, Vanguard Group, and
Qatar Investment Authority also have interests in this energy
distribution corporation, which also has subsidiaries in Latin American
countries. Added to this is the fact that the three main energy
generating companies in Spain-Naturgy, Iberdrola, and Endesa-control 90%
of a market whose objective is profit, not quality service.

Since the massive blackout on the morning of April 28, speculation
quickly began to swirl that it was an attack by Vladimir Putin to
further weaken Europe, revenge by Donald Trump for Spain's rapprochement
with China, or even a Mossad response to the cancellation of an arms
deal for Israel. The Spanish Electricity Grid itself has ruled out a
cyberattack as the cause of the sudden, five-second loss of 15
gigawatts, equivalent to 60% of the country's total consumption at the
time. We don't currently know what happened from official data, although
our hypothesis, knowing that the management of services and
infrastructure in private hands always points to failures and a series
of errors resulting from underfunding and precariousness as symptoms, is
that it stems from technological issues within the corporation
itself-which will try to avoid taking responsibility. We already know
that hoaxes tend to be quick, visceral responses fueled by the
irrationalism of the far right. Conspiracies fueled by disinformation
will emerge, which is the perfect terrain for advancing their
reactionary positions. They will surely point to some enemy world power,
supporting in the process NATO's policies of militarizing European
countries, a policy the progressive government has already happily
played along with. They will also blame social democratic measures
regarding climate change and renewable energy as weakening the
electrical system. However, a study published this week claims that the
energy demand of AI data centers will quadruple by 2030. This means that
capitalism is moving toward unaffordable energy consumption, and the
limits of resources are already being highlighted. Current global
conflicts are directly related to the control of the energy production
necessary to maintain their system, not our lives. There is no possible
green solution, only the end of capitalism before it ends us. What is
clear is that none of the hypotheses about the origins of the blackout
that come from the far right-or the conspiracy theories-will ever point
to capitalism and the large energy lobbies as directly responsible for
the causes and consequences. All of this, moreover, favors this latent
state of shock doctrine, which, along with US financial pressure through
tariffs, is proving to lead societies to accept measures that go
directly against our interests as working people.

Every government, likewise, will prioritize capitalist interests above
all other community issues. This has been seen in moments like the
COVID-19 crisis, or the Valencia Dana last year, where the priority was
to keep production and consumption centers active to safeguard
capitalist profits and not put resources at the service of the common
good. Once again, workers were urged to take individual responsibility
for going to work, instead of suspending activity after hundreds of
transport emergencies, people trapped in elevators, or traffic hazards.
Unions should pressure the government to strike in these social
emergencies. Furthermore, hundreds of people have had to spend the night
in stations like Atocha and Sants, instead of forcing dozens of hotels
and tourist accommodation to accommodate those affected and isolated for
free. We don't want to forget that the government consciously abandons
those it expels to the margins of survival, because what was experienced
for hours as an exceptional event has been going on for four years in
the Cañada Real neighborhood in Madrid-or the Distrito Norte in
Granada-when the power company and the government cut off their
electricity, and up until now. Our lives are always at risk in these
emergency situations, when chaotic situations caused by the system
erupt, it is we, the working class, who save ourselves. We are the ones
who extend networks of solidarity, we are the ones who foster mutual
support; the only tensions of competitiveness come from the system. If
we, the working class, demonstrate that our self-organization puts the
common good at the center, we must wrest direct control of our lives
from the ruling class, so that capitalism does not repel us into
darkness any longer.

Angel Malatesta, Liza activist.

https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/05/02/que-el-capitalismo-no-apague-nuestras-vidas/
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