Spain

Is it any wonder Spain and the UK are in the state they’re in right now economically? Zapatero, in Spain, and Brown, in the UK – two socialist prime ministers in the middle of a recession – have been accused by their political colleagues of making things up as they go along.

Britain’s financial press – with the FT and the Economist leading the way – has achieved something Spanish politicians haven’t managed since the start of the recession: to bring the Spanish media almost together in defence of Zapatero.

The socialist mayor in the northern Spanish town of Logroño has decided to publish the town’s official 2010 calendar and celebrate the birth of Mohammed and Pakistan’s Independence day, but not Christmas or Spain’s national holiday.

Shocking unemployment figure for 2009 in Spain – 3,923,603 officially unemployed people. This follows the New York Times’s exposé of Spanish youth unemployment last week, which now stands at 42.9% of young people between the ages of 16 and 24.

Have European leaders not been reading the news for the last two or three years? Have they not seen what Zapatero has done to the Spanish economy? Maybe they have no choice about it. Nor do the people of Europe.

Is Catalonia a nation or is Spain the only nation in, well, Spain? The Spanish right has a clear idea of the right answer; some Catalans and Spanish socialists think they have a different one. Spain’s Constitutional Court will soon tell us what it thinks and attempt to set the rules for the ‘what is Spain’ debate.

The New York Times has published an article on Spain’s soaring youth unemployment rate, which it says has increased from 17.5% three years ago to 42.9% this year. That would means that the recession has more than doubled the number of young people on the dole in Spain.

So the Royal Navy shot up a buoy which was or wasn’t flying a red and yellow Spanish flag five miles off the coast of Gibraltar a couple of weeks ago. Who cares?

Have you got your head around how the BA-Iberia merger will benefit passengers yet? The FT has profiled chief executive Willie Walsh, who more or less seems a little bit clearer, perhaps, about all the confusion.

If you were a doctor, what medication would you prescribe for the Spanish economy? Zapatero has a springlike dream but almost everyone else in Spain faces a menacing reality. The Economist offers a harsh diagnosis.