CNT snubs “those who want a docile, institutionalised, and conflict-free unionism”
~ Cristina Sykes ~
The Spanish government has pardoned the Suiza 6 syndicalists, jailed since July 2025. The six members of the CNT union in Gijón, Asturias, were sentenced to three and a half years in prison and fined 125,000 euros, in a case that has threatened to criminalise workers’ solidarity.
The sentence followed an extended legal campaign by the owner of La Suiza bakery, after a worker joined the union in 2017 and levelled allegations of harassment and withholding of wages against him. The owner refused to engage, and the workers peacefully rallied outside the business. The judge characterised this as ‘coercion’ and the sentence was upheld by the Spanish Supreme Court in 2024.
Spanish labour minister Yolanda Diaz, a Communist party member from Galicia, met with the Suiza 6 in July and informed them that she would take up the case for their partial pardon (the financial penalties remain in place). The ministry argued that the behaviour occurred in a work context, in the exercise of trade union freedom and without the intention of committing crimes.
“What we really need to defend our rights are not pardons, but to exercise them“, said the Suiza 6 support group, who said the released workers would “resume their fight and do what they were condemned for a thousand times over. All of us, united, can turn the repression around”.
The CNT-AIT stressed that the pardon is “not a gesture of generosity from those in power” but “the direct result of struggle” of “hundreds of thousands of people who filled the streets, maintained strike funds, publicised the case” and placed “constant political pressure for months“. The union declared that “faced with those who want a docile, institutionalised, and conflict-free unionism, the experience of La Suiza reaffirms the opposite: anarcho-syndicalism, based on direct action, mutual aid, and solidarity, not only remains relevant, but is more useful than ever”.
The Dublin IWW expressed their love and solidarity to the Suiza 6 and “the family, friends and comrades who relentlessly campaigned over the past number of years throughout the Spanish State and internationally”.
Image: David Sabadell, El Salto CC BY-SA 3.0 ES
