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Spain

Thursday

Mats Persson

Cameron’s €4 billion Portuguese challenge

As if the budget and Libya weren’t enough, the UK Government woke up today with another major challenge on its hands – yet another flare-up in the eurozone debt crisis, which has been continuing to bubble away under the radar.   Yesterday, Portugal’s Prime Minister José Sócrates literally walked out of Parliament, during a debate on EU-backed austerity measures. The austerity package was subsequently voted down and shortly afterwards Sócrates announced his resignation. Portugal is now facing the prospect of being without a government for months, as its electoral rules require a 55 day break between the dissolution of Parliament and new elections.   The episode has increased the already

Monday

Alex Massie

Oliver Goldsmith Refashioned for the 21st Century

A stunt on Spanish TV goes horribly wrong and ends in tragedy as the innocent party here bites off more than it can chew and perishes in short order. The snake makes the mistake of feasting upon one of Israeli model Orit Fox’s improbable breasts only to discover that where once lurked flesh there’s now a super-sized bag of silicone. Silicone is not good for snakes.Not good at all. End of snake. It is, as Kieran Healy says, yet another example of Everything New Being Very Old. Recall, as you will, Oliver Goldsmith’s* Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog: Good people all, of every sort, Give ear unto

Friday

Daniel Korski

Iberian blues

I’m finishing a two-day trip to Spain and am about to board a plane, just as the bond markets turn their attention to the Iberian Peninsula. As James wrote yesterday, the gap between Spanish 10-year government bonds and those of Germany has widened to as much as 2.59 percentage points – the biggest gap since the introduction of the euro. For its part, the Portuguese government said it was under no pressure from the European Central Bank or other Eurozone member-states to accept financial aid to ease its debt and deficit problems. That sounds like the noise before the defeat. Portugal was brought to a halt yesterday by a strike

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why Spain matters to Britain

So far Ireland and Greece have been bailed out with relative ease. If Portugal required external assistance, Europe could run to that too. But bailing out Spain would be another matter entirely. As The New York Times points out today, the Spanish economy is twice as big as the Irish, Greek and Portuguese ones combined. Spain’s situation is not yet critical. But as the NYT piece sets out very clearly, there are some extremely worrying signs. The gap between Spanish and German gilt yields is now at the biggest point it has been since the introduction of the euro. Spanish banks are also heavily exposed to Portuguese debt. Compounding these

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

The death knell for the Euro?

Are we witnessing the start of a very long death scene for the Euro? Asked if the Euro will survive, William Hague replied simply: “who knows?”. The new president, Herman Von Rompuy, has said that the Euro faces an “existential test”. We are looking at the very real prospect of the Euro’s collapse. And that “if we don’t survive with the eurozone, we will not survive with the European Union”. This would, by necessity, require a new treaty – and give Britain an unprecedented opportunity to renegotiate its membership on terms the public regard as acceptable. In my News of the World column today, I say (£) that this presents Cameron

Saturday

Raymond Carr

Built for eternity

The Escorial, as a monastery and a royal palace, was the brain child of Philip II of Spain. Built in the latter half of the 16th century, about 30 miles north-west of Madrid, the huge granite complex with 4,000 rooms, 16 courtyards, a basilica, a library and picture gallery as well as the king’s private apartments, came to be regarded as the creation of a cold-hearted despot cut off from the outside world. For Richard Ford, whose 1850 Handbook for Travellers in Spain is the most learned guidebook ever written, the Escorial ‘was as cold as the grey eye and granite heart of its founder’. For the 19th-century conservative Spanish

Sunday

Alex Massie

Great Moments in Sub-Editing

Am cricketing today, so talk amongst yourselves. Or stay silent if you prefer. Meanwhile, here’s a reminder that the Murdoch press reaches parts their competitors can’t…

Wednesday

Jane Ridley

From Madrid with love

In June 1943 the film star Leslie Howard was mysteriously killed when his plane was shot down by the Luftwaffe on a return flight from Spain. This was an unprovoked attack on a commercial airliner, and there seemed to be no motive for it. British intelligence circulated rumours that the Germans had hoped to kill Churchill, whom they mistakenly thought was travelling on the plane. In fact, it now seems that the Germans’ target was Leslie Howard himself. He was returning from a celebrity tour of Spain, following the success of Gone with the Wind, in which he starred as Ashley Wilkes. Howard had been sent to Spain as part

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Zapatero & His Banshees

Remiss of me not to note that this photograph of the Obamas and the Zapateros has caused quite a stir in Spain. That’s because the Spanish people were not generally aware that the Prime Minister’s daughters, Laura and Alba*, are goths. There’s a law that protects their privacy, you see and so, until the State Department released this photo, no Spanish paper had printed photographs of the girls. Like Marbury, I think they look pretty fine and think the world would be a better place if more politicians’ kids explored entertaining sub-cultures and the like. *Is this a common name in Spain? I mean, sure, it’s derived from the latin