The numbers speak for themselves. In the first half of 2026, the number of days on strike from ordinary strikes, excluding general strikes, was higher than the number accumulated in a 12-month period for any year since at least 2012. A total of 354,172 strikers who accounted for 903,396 days of ordinary strikes across the entire Spanish state. If we add the 76,494 people who participated in a general strike in 2026—practically all of them due to the general strike in Euskal Herria for the Basque Minimum Wage—the total reaches 430,666 strikers in just six months, while the combined number of strike days from both sources nears one million. By the end of 2026, any homogeneous annual comparison data will have been shattered. We will probably have to go back to the last century to find similar levels of conflict. All Autonomous Communities saw an increase in strikers compared to the previous year, except for Cantabria, a difficult benchmark to surpass given that its metal sector typically holds a massive strike in 2025. The number of strikers nationwide has increased by 344.5% compared to the first half of the previous year. Anyone who follows current labor and social affairs can guess the explanation behind this massive surge. The outburst of indignation behind the educational strikes in Aragon, but especially in the Valencian Country and Catalonia, were real earthquakes of struggle with an intensity and mobilizations that were, in many cases, historic and unprecedented since the late 1980s. Strike calls for strike, and there are already other communities where the spark that will ignite the dry tinder is being prepared for this fall. It is also the second consecutive year in which various healthcare strikes have brought out more than one hundred thousand strikers in 2026. If we add other minor local conflicts in the Public Administration, the total public sector has accounted for nearly 69% of all people who have gone on strike in 2026. We will return later to this percentage and its implications. As I write these lines, the forest firefighters of Aragon are beginning an indefinite strike, the libraries and other services of the Barcelona City Council are holding their own, or in the defense sector, Airbus is facing more than a month of strikes, decided by its workforce against the agreement signed by CCOO. Meanwhile, the united assembly of teachers in the Community of Madrid is calling for an indefinite strike, through the unions, starting October 14. The causes of this deep-seated discontent in the public services sector are profound and long-standing. It's like when you don't perform proper maintenance or invest in a building to meet new needs; for a while, the structure holds up, but one day it collapses. Workers are fed up with overexertion, frustration, and a lack of resources. We are living through a "We've had enough," unfolding in stages and with an obvious contagion effect. Some unions have failed to read this context and are being left out of the game due to their proximity to the institutional framework. Beyond this historic 2026 in recent strike records, there is a persistent measure year after year: the dysfunction between strikes in the public and private sectors. If, as we mentioned before, 69% of strikers in this first half of the year are from the public sector, this proportion remains, with minor ups and downs, when reviewing official statistics from other years. During the period from 2022 to June 2026, 56% of the 1.7 million strikers tracked came from the public sector. It should be noted that 16% of the state's salaried population is part of this sector, either directly or indirectly through publicly owned companies. This percentage includes non-striking personnel such as military personnel or local, regional, and national police. Once they are excluded, the public sector population with the right to strike amounts to 13.8% of all salaried employees. How can it be explained that such a small percentage of people are repeatedly causing the majority of the strikes in their country? This article could get lost in a tangle of clichés, prejudices, and a long list of other things that need to be contextualized, but I think it's more appropriate to go straight to the main thesis that could explain this large difference. I believe it is widely agreed that, while public sector workforces have many problems, working and pay conditions in the private sector are much worse, sometimes with subsistence wages and many categories paid the minimum wage. 43% of the Spanish salaried population earns less than €20,000 a year. If strikes are tools for improving conditions, the question is all the more necessary. How, then, can there be so little struggle in the private sector when it is the vast majority of workers and they are much worse off? Let's look at 2025, for example. Last year there were 93 company-level strikes (very low numbers) and eight sector-wide ones. The statistics do not differentiate between sectoral strikes in the private or public sector. In the Spanish State, there are approximately 1,000 sectoral agreements in the private sector, depending on whether they are national, regional, or provincial, in addition to about 3,500 company-level agreements with economic scope. But how many sectoral strikes take place in the private sector? They can be counted on one hand per year, being optimistic, and it is very rare for any to move from symbolic strikes to decisive ones, such as the metalworkers' strike in Cádiz, the Residencias in Euskadi, or the building cleaning strike in Biscay. The absence of sector-wide strikes in the private sector is the main reason why it is almost impossible to match the mobilizations of struggling public sectors, due to the inequality in the number of mobilized staff. This anomaly places direct responsibility on the two unions with the greatest presence in private sector workplaces for not activating the coordination mechanisms that would allow for mobilizations on the same level as in the public sector. Only in crisis situations could unions with a small critical mass generate these kinds of movements. This absence of sectoral mobilization, a vicious cycle, is also the cause of the decline in material and working conditions that we are seeing in every collective bargaining agreement. People are struggling, but they don't even have the option to fight for improvement. In contrast, the public sector is more unionized and it is much more common for some unions to form temporary alliances with real power, which end up dragging along those who champion social peace for its own sake or achieving success without their participation. Sectoral strikes are a top-tier weapon for the comprehensive improvement of an entire productive sector, establishing bonds of solidarity that go beyond the individual company, and that win improvements. A substantial change is needed in the balance of power between counter-power unions and those who continue to bet on negotiating without mobilizing. Otherwise, we will be condemned to see these same statistics year after year, to continue seeing the loss of rights and purchasing power, and to remain chained to a peace that is nothing more than shackles.