MADRID – There is not a crisis in Spain today. Well, not just one. The country is beset by a series of crises, which makes the task of merely enumerating them a challenging exercise. Financial analyst Nicholas Spiro tried last week, telling the New York Times, "Spain is the only country in the world that must contend with a banking, economic, sovereign debt, political, and constitutional crisis all occurring simultaneously." Off hand, it is hard to think of any other country able to match that.
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But, of course, these five problems are interconnected, as the presence of thousands of disgruntled protesters around Madrid's Congress building most evenings last week served to demonstrate. Taking up the messages of the 15-M protesters -- who in the spring of 2011 (beginning on May 15, hence the name) sparked a wave of similar anti-capitalist demonstrations in many Western countries-- the "indignant ones" (or indignados, as they are known here) outside parliament last week were not demanding jobs or handouts. With unemployment at 25 percent of the workforce (and double that for those under age 25), many might be in need of such things, but they chose to join in a collective finger-pointing at Spain's politicians, making no exception between the ruling Popular Party (PP) and the Socialist opposition.
The political crisis resonating outside is less apparent inside Madrid's parliament, where the rightist PP of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy can simply deploy its absolute majority to reel off austerity measures aimed at reassuring the markets that Spain's debt load is sustainable. What's more, the European Union, which has already approved a 100-billion-euro bailout for Spain's stricken financial sector, has conditioned its support on budget-deficit targets being met -- orders that Madrid passes on to the Spanish regions, which are responsible for spending on basic services such as health care and education.
But the malaise can be clearly seen in the street protests -- which harness a growing sense of disenfranchisement on the part of the citizenry -- and in local authorities across Spain who are questioning the harsh medicine they are being asked to swallow. The extreme example is Catalonia, where the traditional party of power has felt the need to move in sync with a popular groundswell of separatist sentiment and call for a referendum on self-determination. Never mind that in the months preceding Sept. 11's massive march for independence, the same center-right nationalist government in Catalonia had caused the streets of Barcelona to seethe with angry teachers, health workers, and others as it slashed at the public sector with a gusto that smacked of ideological zeal. But now the region's budgetary problems cannot be explained away by the crisis and the need for belt-tightening, and deep-seated inequity in the state financing model is roiling tensions.
And it is not just Catalonia and its quest for greater independence that is challenging Rajoy's dictates. This summer, five of Spain's 17 regions, including Catalonia and the Basque Country, declared themselves in rebellion against the central government's instructions that illegal immigrants were no longer to be given health care unless they paid for it. Andalusia is resisting Madrid-imposed cutbacks in public education, and PP-run Extremadura recently attempted to make its own stand by not applying across the board a recent hike in the value-added tax.
More colorful, no doubt, is the campaign of resistance being waged by the leftist mayor of Marinaleda, in Andalusia. Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo has led his band of farm laborers to occupy large estates owned by the government and rich landowners, as well as launch "subsistence theft" raids on supermarkets to feed his followers.
In effect, these local administrations are taking a cue from some of the civil disobedience tactics that have proliferated among protest groups since the initial 15-M coalescence last year. Activists in several cities now use mobile social networks to gather quickly at protest sites before police or authorities can evict them. And they have a lot to protest. Rising unemployment and the bursting of the property bubble have combined to leave hundreds of thousands unable to finance their homes, while the banks have sucked up billions of euros of bailout funds from the government. There is a kind of vacuum, with central government on the one hand enacting policies to meet the external demands of financial markets, while, on the other hand, individuals on the ground and local institutions try to provide solutions to the grave social ills arising from a prolonged recession.
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