Francoist Fascism: You might have thought this would be dead by now. Or that no one would admit to being an admirer of it. If so you'd be very wrong. As this article shows. As does the appalling monument and vast Nazi-like basilica in the Valley of the Fallen, where Franco's bones lie. Nowt as queer as folk, as they say.
Corruption: HT to Lenox of Business Over Tapas for this article on the tale of the AVE high-speed train down south.
Spain's Constitutional Fabric: This – never very soundly stitched together – is
stressing and straining and may well come apart at some of the seams.
Essentially, corruption and extravagances are easier to live with when
times are good than when times are as bad as they now are at the micro level in Spain. For one thing, people who pay for other people's extravagances
(think Cataluña and Andalucia) find it hard to stomach this
situation when they're having their pips squeezed until they squeak.
It's enough to make anyone a nationalist. Anyway, as the Spanish state struggles to get a government in place, Cataluña is spending €9m on preparing Catalan passports for when the region/nation secedes 'next year'. Mark my words, it will end in tears.
SPANISH POLITICS
Here in Galicia, we're facing regional elections next week. One party which has emerged over the last couple of years is En Marea. Asking my Galician friends about this at dinner on Friday night, I discovered this was an amalgamation of Podemos, Izquierda Unida and 6 or 7 other leftish parties. Needless to say, they're falling out with each other and schism appears to be imminent. An age-old story of the Left. Meawnhile, the expectation is that the right-wing PP party will be returned to power, with an absolute majority.
THE EU
Imminent Death???: As I've been predicting its collapse under the weight of its internal incongruities for more than 20 years, I was interested in this article. Though not in any self-justificatory way, I stress. It's all rather sad, if inevitable. See also the article at the end of this post.
Immigration: Hard to say the EU's strategy has been successful so far, I guess. But maybe there's time to get it right. If not the political will.
ELSEWHERE
Russian Propaganda: It's hard not to be shocked by this, even after months of watching RT TV.
LOCAL STUFF
John Brierley: I spent a very enjoyable few hours with this chap yesterday, the writer of excellent guides on the Camino. He was passing through Pontevedra in preparation for the next edition of his guides to the Portuguese and Espiritual caminos. He was duly horrified by our ugly new museum-cum-art gallery. But impressed by a bottle of godello white wine we shared over zamburiñas al ajillo. I was pleased to find we shared a disdain for percebes, or goose barnacles. Inter alia.
DOMESTIC STUFF
Movemento Up!: Here's the brochure for an event taking place at the moment in front of our town hall. It's in gallego - naturally - but its text contains at least 20 English words in addition to the obvious one of UP. Including stands and speed-dating. The latter seems to be something to do with companies meeting each other in this case.
THE GALLERY
More examples of
Finnish/British nightmares:-
ARTICLES
Juncker is fiddling
while EU economy burns. The Times.
Saint-Georges-de-Mons
is one of those French towns you barely notice on your way to the
more scenic parts of the Auvergne. There is a small church, a few
bars, an unappetising restaurant and a brutalist town hall.
The only interesting
thing about it is a nearby building site — not because of what is
being built there (a factory to recycle aviation-grade titanium) but
because of who is paying for it. For the EcoTitanium plant is one of
the only visible signs of the project which was supposed to save
Europe.
Last year, shortly
after taking charge of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker
trumpeted an unprecedented £268 billion investment programme to
kick-start the EU economy. The Juncker plan made all the right
noises: Europe needs more investment in infrastructure, more shared
spending and more economic growth. But as with all infrastructure
splurges (Philip Hammond take note) those big promises have proved
difficult to deliver.
The whole point was to
go beyond Europe’s existing infrastructure plans but the vast
majority of the projects are small schemes that qualified mainly
because they were too boring to feature in European finance
ministers’ own budget speeches. So there are obscure road widening
projects near Stuttgart, home insulation schemes in France and a
proposal to roll out smart electricity meters in the UK.
Indeed, according to
the Bruegel think tank, of the 55 projects approved by the EC, only
EcoTitanium would have struggled to get funding from existing
investors such as the European Investment Bank.
In other words, the
great legacy of the Juncker plan might be a factory you’ve never
heard of doing a job you’ve never heard of in a town you’ve never
heard of.
Still, while other
cultures would see this as evidence of failure, that’s not the
European way. So today, Mr Juncker will propose an extension of his
scheme at the EU summit in Bratislava. It is worth dwelling on this
for a moment, because the failings of the Juncker plan are a useful
shorthand for the deeper economic malaise affecting Europe.
After all, on the
surface, things seemed to have improved across the Channel. For a
brief period before the Brexit vote, growth in the euro area exceeded
that of the UK. Most economists were forecasting decent growth this
year and next, thanks to the European Central Bank’s quantitative
easing programme, and to the fact that Germany has pledged to spend a
bit more on investment. Berlin even hinted that it might help Greece
by writing off some of its debt.
But a closer look
reveals the cracks. For one thing, economic growth has started to
peter out. Economists now expect the euro area to grow at a slower
rate than the UK this year. The same is true of the Continent’s
supposed engine room, Germany, where recent surveys of industrial
activity suggest the economy is flatlining.
One explanation is that
for all his promises — to the IMF, to the G7 and to every other
international body — that he would spend more on investment, the
German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has reverted to type. His
obsession has always been what Germans call the “schwarze null” —
getting a big “black zero” on the fiscal balance sheet. Mr
Schäuble has actually gone further, posting a comfortable surplus in
the first half of the year.
While a fiscal surplus
would be good news for most countries, for Germany it is damaging.
Weak government spending means weaker growth, not just at home but
throughout the eurozone, which depends on its leading economy to lift
everyone else. It also prevents the kind of rebalancing needed to
allow Greece and its fellow Mediterranean economies to survive within
the single currency.
Economists now expect
the euro area to grow at a slower rate than the UK this year.
Already there are some
worrying echoes of the euro crisis: the ECB’s so-called Target2
accounts which measure how reliant the troubled southern economies
are on the north show imbalances are rising again, in Italy’s case
to the highest level on record. Inflation is still barely in positive
territory. Investment spending across the continent is now actually
lower than when the Juncker plan was launched. In short, Europe is
deeply vulnerable.
Most worryingly, this
time around, Mario Draghi, the central bank president who in 2012
promised to do “whatever it takes” to safeguard the euro, seems
to be running out of ammunition. The ECB’s massive programme of
quantitative easing is struggling to find new eligible bonds to buy.
The question of whether it will continue beyond next March was not
even discussed at the bank’s policy meeting last week.
All this before one
considers the two main issues under discussion at today’s summit:
Brexit and the refugee crisis. Leaders arriving in Bratislava have
been given a dossier by the commission showing that immigration and
terrorism are now the biggest concern for EU citizens.
The optimistic take is
that these two crises finally force the leaders to resolve their
problems, to create a true monetary and fiscal union for the euro and
an arm’s-length outer doughnut with migration controls that even
tempt Britain. Moreover, while he seems deaf to economic reason and
the struggling economies of the Mediterranean, the German elections
next year may at last force Mr Schäuble to loosen his purse strings.
Then again, Europe’s
history of doing the wrong thing and then doing it all over again
suggests the road ahead might be even bumpier.
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