One strike follows the next in Portugal and there is no end in sight. After the Union of Public Administration Workers and the National Union of Railway Workers, the tax officials have also announced that they will stop work at the end of February. For more than a week, many trains of the state railway company have been cancelled throughout the country. On February 8, it was 99 percent, according to union figures.

Hans-Christian Rößler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb, based in Madrid.

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Doctors, police officers, employees of the judicial administration and transport workers also want to go on strike. The health workers had already done this in recent months, and there were also numerous layoffs. Only at the last moment in January did the government manage to prevent employees of the airline TAP from suspending air traffic. The government had previously saved TAP from collapse.

Teachers, on the other hand, do not agree with the government's latest offers. They have been on strike since the end of last year. On some days, hundreds of schools remained closed. Teachers are demanding permanent positions, higher salary grades and more investment in schools. In the lowest salary bracket they earn around 1100 euros, in higher salary levels it is often less than 2000 euros. Junior employees who only receive fixed-term contracts receive little more than the statutory minimum wage.

Many teachers complain that they are transferred to a different school every school year – all over the country. Last weekend, more than 150,000 teachers and school employees demonstrated in the capital Lisbon. It was the third and so far largest protest within a few weeks. Never since the end of the dictatorship had so many teachers taken to the streets.

The government of Socialist Prime Minister António Costa, who has ruled with an absolute majority for almost a year, tried unsuccessfully last autumn to alleviate the consequences of inflation and inflation for about half of the inhabitants with state support payments. The new demands for higher wages run counter to Costa's policy of fiscal consolidation, which he has pursued since the end of the Great Financial Crisis. His own government did not get off to a good start. A dozen cabinet members have already had to resign; allegations of corruption had been raised against several of them.