The Catalan regional government’s determination to push ahead with a referendum on independence on 1st October that has been ruled illegal by the conservative government of the Spanish state has put the two authorities on collision course. With no sign of negotiated agreement or climb-down by either side, things look set to polarise very quickly. How did it come to this in a modern western European democracy?
Tagged with Spain
In Spain, election results are good news
Spains indignados made the move from city squares to the halls of power on Sunday in municipal and regional elections that saw an anti-poverty activist elected as mayor of Barcelona and the ruling Peoples Party (PP) battered at the ballot box, reports the Guardian.
Elections in thirteen regions and more than 8,000 municipalities saw sweeping gains for new left-wing alliances, as voters delivered their verdict on rampant corruption, a stagnant economy and vicious austerity. The two traditional parties, the ruling conservative PP and the opposition social democratic PSOE were reduced to just 52 percent of the vote.
The biggest victory of the night was for Ada Colau, an anti-eviction activist and leader of Barcelona en Comú (Barcelona in Common), who was elected mayor of Barcelona. Barcelona en Comú is a grassroots coalition of several parties and thousands of activists. It includes Podemos, the new radical left party, which was founded just over a year ago and won 5 MEPs in last years European elections. Continue reading
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Podemos is 3rd force Spanish elections – radical left triumphs in Barcelona
The upstart left party Podemos has claimed it is a “lever for change”, as it broke through in eight regions of Spain to become the third force in eight of the 13 regional parliaments contested.
“We would have liked to see a more rapid erosion of the large parties“, according to Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, who described this day as “magical” and “historic“. Continue reading
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The great Spanish corporate tax dodge
Spain’s biggest companies have greatly increased their presence in tax havens, with the number of subsidiaries established in these tax-lite territories up 44% during 2013, the worst year in the country’s economic crisis.
The IBEX35 companies upped the number of branches in tax havens from 561 to 810 during that year, new research finds.
Financial flows to tax havens – from Delaware and Jersey in the US The Netherlands and Ireland, to Luxembourg, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands – account for 24% of total Spanish foreign investment, through a transfer of capital between subsidiaries ( activity that amounts to about a quarter of overseas investments by Spanish companies. ) Continue reading
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Spain’s jobs crisis will last as long as it is in the euro
By Juan Torres López and translated from the original Spanish by Tom Gill
A crucial question for the Spanish economy is why it suffers a level of unemployment that is much higher than the rest of the economies that surround it. Obviously, it is a question with no simple unequivocal answer, for surely there are many factors that make its unemployment so high and permanent that it remains high even in periods of high growth. Continue reading