Last week Barcelona was brought to a standstill, as endless queues of taxis blocked the city’s main thoroughfares. The taxi drivers camped out on the central Gran Vía de Les Corts, demanding that the government block the spread of Uber and Cabify. They want an end to the so-called “VTC licenses” on which these companies rely. Not only did the drivers paralyze Barcelona, but they also had a contagious effect on their cohorts elsewhere in Spain, who demanded similar measures.

Following Barcelona’s example, in Madrid thousands of taxi drivers blocked the Paseo de la Castellana (one of the most important roads through the capital). Taxi drivers from the Basque Country came to Barcelona to show their support, and there were also protest actions, strikes, and demonstrations in other towns and cities, backing these same demands. This taxi drivers’ mobilization has been the biggest labor protest in Spain in the last year.

But it is hard to see this as a workers’ mobilization, in traditional class terms. The taxi drivers do not simply have common interests, and nor could all of them be described as working-class. Some forces opposed to these mobilizations characterized them as a shutdown imposed by the taxi employers in order to undermine the competition, and in some cases, this was indeed true.