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 fault lines. 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, which means it will end up
annihilating a large part of the working class. We are not at the point
of celebrating that the death of capitalism in this way is in the long
run a victory, and it is not even assured at all. We must emancipate
ourselves by imposing ourselves upon this system. Otherwise,
neoliberalism will mutate in ways possibly still unimaginable,
perpetuating violence and domination over our class.

Red Eléctrica de España is part of an international holding company that
acts as the operator of the electrical system, 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. Among other shareholders, we must highlight Amancio
Ortega, through Pontegadea Inversiones S.L., with 5% of 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, theories quickly
began to circulate 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 package
to Israel. The Spanish Electricity Grid itself has ruled out a
cyberattack as the cause of a 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/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca