As a massive taxi strike in Spain spread from Barcelona to other cities across the country this July, the Spanish right had no doubt where the blame lay. According to the populist center-right party Ciudadanos, it was Barcelona’s left-wing mayor Ada Colau who had irresponsibly detonated the conflict. Conservative daily El Mundo newspaper decried her “opportunism and demagoguery.”

The strike began after Colau’s municipal government introduced regulations to crack down on digital platforms such as Uber, which were then suspended by the Catalan Supreme Court. Its judgement deemed the city had overstepped its formal powers. As thousands of taxi drivers blocked some of Barcelona’s main thoroughfares in protest, their counterparts in Madrid, Malaga, and Valencia flooded the streets demanding similar regulations be introduced nationally.

Meanwhile Colau took to the airwaves challenging the new Socialist Party (PSOE) national government “not to look the other way — to be tough on the powerful.” After five days of urban gridlock, a tentative deal was reached, with the government led by PSOE man Pedro Sánchez agreeing to introduce a new law in the fall to make regulation of the sector easier.