There is a popular joke among Spaniards these days, it says: “In what do you think Bolivia and Spain are similar? The answer is that Bolivia has a Department of the Navy but does not have coastline. Spain has a Department of Justice but not justice! In itself and in view of what is going on in the Spanish courts at the moment it is not so funny, but could be considered realistic. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday 13 means in many countries bad luck. France, Austria and seven other countries in Europe are probably agreeing with that now as yesterday, January the 13, the US based ratings agency Standard & Poor’s cut France and Austria triple -A rating by one notch to AA+, and downgraded the other seven countries -Spain, Italy, Portugal, Malta, Cyprus, Slovakia and Slovenia two notches. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Sunday, Spain held national elections. It was a rainy day in most of the country, almost everyone seemed to know in advance what the results were to be, which after almost eight years of the Socialists (PSOE) in power it was to be expected. Expected in our days of crisis and unemployment. Read the rest of this entry »

More than four decades of violence are hopefully going to end in Spain after the Basque separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatsuna or Basque Country and Freedom) announces the expected end to violence in the negotiations that are beginning today. Read the rest of this entry »

After the last weeks when most of the articles in newspapers and blogs were about the financial crisis or the sensational trials in the US and Italy and the freakish wedding of an 85 year old Spanish aristocrat with a 61 year old civil servant, the press today brought us finally some news worthy of being published. Read the rest of this entry »

It was not necessary to be an economist to know that this financial debacle was about to happen. In both sides of the Atlantic politicians have left the banks rule and have been too timorous to face them. In the process, we have had the housing bubble -the US and Spain are two good examples of it-, unemployment at levels that are intolerable and an always growing difference between the haves and the have-nots. Read the rest of this entry »

July 18, 1936 was a very hot Saturday… That is how many of those who were In Spain that year remember what in fact became the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, which would last until April 1, 1939. Read the rest of this entry »