Spanish coal miners angered by huge cuts in government subsidies for their industry converged on Madrid Tuesday for protest rallies after walking nearly three weeks under a blazing sun from the pits where they eke out a living.

Two columns of miners met up in a Madrid suburb in the evening. They marched downtown at night, trudging along major avenues to the Puerta del Sol, the Spanish capital's most emblematic square, where tens of thousands of mostly young demonstrators opposed to austerity cuts prompted by the financial crisis in Spain and Europe camped out last year in defiance of a government ban.

The miners, wearing hard hats with lights turned on like they use them to see underground, were joined by thousands of sympathizers in the city. Some lit flares above highway overpasses and erected banners comparing the miners' plight to Spain's increasingly pressured working class hit by higher taxes, new regulations making it cheaper to fire workers and funding cuts for education and national health care.

One group of about 160 miners walked all the way from the northern Asturias and Leon regions, as many as 400 kilometers away from Madrid, and about 40 made an almost equally long trek from the northeastern Aragon region. A much bigger rally of miners and their supporters traveling to Madrid aboard hundreds of chartered buses is scheduled for Wednesday.

Source - AP

(www.coalguru.com)