Barcelona - (AFP) - "RainAir" canceled about 10 flights to and from Spain on Monday, and 111 other flights were delayed on the first day of a new strike for air crews in the country, which is scheduled to continue until January 2023.

Eight low-cost Irish flights were canceled as of 13:00 (1100 GMT) due to take off or land at Barcelona airport, according to the trade union union, which organized the strike in cooperation with the independent union of aircrews.

"Unfortunately, there is a (compulsory) minimum service of 80% imposed by the Ministry of Transport," said Pau Ibarzabal, a spokesman for the Confederation of Trade Unions, considering that this measure is "unclassified" and "weakens the employees' right to strike."

The Irish airline, which operates more than 650 flights with Spain, believes that this outage has "had a very limited impact", according to a statement published Monday.

Ryanair employees in Spain started the strike on June 24 and then extended it until July 28 to demand better working conditions and the signing of a collective agreement.

After the unions considered that the dispute had reached a dead end, they organized wider strikes that start on Monday and continue until January 7, 2023, at a rate of four days a week (from Monday to Thursday).
Ryanair, the only global airline that does not have a collective agreement in Spain according to the unions, recently reached an agreement with the CCOO (workers' committees) union, which is a minority within the cabin crew.
But the agreement was rejected by the Confederation of Trade Unions and the Independent Aircrews' Union, which deemed it insufficient and demanded, in addition, that 11 strikers who were laid off last month be rehired.