The march set off at 8.30 am from the Torre de Jaume I and went on until almost midday, according to Metrópoli, which put the number of participants at around 200. At the entrance to the bridge, according to the same outlet, a bonfire was lit with branches and other objects, blocking the way for buses, taxis and coaches, and riot police were sent to the area. According to betevé, protesters also blocked the roundabout leading onto the Ronda del Port, causing tailbacks on the Ronda del Litoral heading into Barcelona.
The workers say the stoppage caused traffic jams and congestion and disrupted the taxi services operating in the port. Four cruise ships were at the Adossat Wharf, according to Crónica Global and the specialist website Cruise Hive, which named them: Odyssey of the Seas, Mein Schiff 7 and AIDAmar, which were calling at the city, and Norwegian Escape, which was embarking passengers to begin a cruise. Together they carried more than 13,000 passengers, according to the website, which added that there were no injuries and that none of the ships left significantly late.
Staff are announcing further protests in December and warn that they will have an increasingly noticeable effect on traffic, both inside the port and beyond it. According to Metrópoli, the works council, made up of UGT, CCOO and the Coordinadora d'Autoritats Portuàries, does not rule out calling strikes involving the whole port community if the pay freeze and the cuts remain in place.
The dispute stems from a report by Spain's General State Comptroller (IGAE), which found a gap between the authorised wage bill and the amounts actually paid under certain pay items. According to the workers, quoted by betevé, correcting it could mean an 8% cut in salaries. Staff had already taken action on 22 July and 30 September, when around 250 people blocked Plaça de les Drassanes and the Ronda del Litoral.
The general secretary of the UGT union branch at the APB, Jordi Giner, told Metrópoli that management has blocked this year's 0.5% pay rise set by law and halved the 2027 rise, from an initial 4.5% to 2.25%. The works council is demanding that the agreed pay rises be restored and that staff should not bear the budget shortfall. Giner also voiced the workers' discontent because, according to the union official, the Port Authority has unilaterally decided to compensate the months this year in which they worked 37.5 hours a week, when they were entitled to the reduction to 35, with just an hour and a half added to their annual hours balance.
The workers say management is offering no way out of the dispute other than the cuts. The APB, for its part, attributes the shortfall to "technical" causes dating from past management, some of them decades old, and maintains that its priority is to balance the books again, according to Crónica Global. When the dispute began, the Port said it was obliged to "correct the deviation detected", denied any malpractice and said it remained open to dialogue with workers' representatives.
According to Crónica Global, the APB's president, José Alberto Carbonell, has complained in an internal email that a "minority" of staff have crossed "red lines", with graffiti and insults aimed at members of the board of directors. Workers' representatives do not accept this account and say that, after blocking access to the Adossat Wharf, the protesters went to the Port's offices, where the protest ended.
