by Soeren Kern, July 10, 2008 Commentary nº 1000
Spain has been reeling from the collapse of a housing bubble that for the last 15 years has enabled the notoriously uncompetitive economy to post some of the highest growth rates in the European Union. The Spanish Banking Association says that Spanish growth will probably be negative in 2008. By comparison, the Spanish economy grew by 3.8 percent in 2007.
by Oscar Elía Mañú, July 10, 2008 Analysis nº 288
Engaging in the battle of ideas is something that not because one repeats it over and over, becomes real; it is more a common idea than an idea with content. Neocons, classical liberals, conservatives demand to wage it, but the fact is that they are not waging it. The Right gets stuck in too generic ideas; individual freedom, dignity of man, free market.   Download PDF
Commentary nº 999
Abdicating does not suppose winning the affection of the Socialist Party or its allies in the media – that will only earn their scorn. How are those media outlets going to reject this new turn imposed by Rajoy when it is precisely what they have been after for years? They will cheer wholeheartedly for the Right’s dereliction of its own creed just when it was about to overcome and its opponents were being left impotent to face the debacle. Download PDF
by Soeren Kern, June 30, 2008 Commentary nº 993
While Spanish Socialists have, according to critics, been busy reducing individual freedoms, disdaining life and attacking the family, the Spanish parliament on 25 June voted to extend human rights to apes. In yet another indication of the death of common sense in post-modern Spain, the new resolutions have cross-party majority support and are expected to become law within a year. The only remaining questions are: Will monkeys be allowed to vote in the 2012 general elections? And if so, will they vote for Zapatero or for Rajoy?
by Soeren Kern, June 25, 2008 Analysis nº 275
So far Zapatero’s post-modern approach to Spain’s economic crisis seems based on three reality-evading pillars: denial, passing the blame, and more denial. His Plan A has involved a pop psychology campaign advising Spaniards that “pessimism does not create jobs.” Plan B blamed “radical liberalism” which in euro-speak means the free market. Zapatero now wants to implement Plan C, a global advertising campaign in the world financial press designed to highlight his economic non-crisis management skills.
In Libertad Digital nº 1437
Zapatero is doing through his policy of re-education and social pedagogics. He is establishing a set of beliefs that involves a scheme of a religious kind: The belief that euthanasia is a human right; the belief that man is guilty of a sort of original sin just for being male; the image of homosexuals as prophets, martyrs or liberation symbols; his determining what is evil on earth – call it Bush, neoliberalism or Israel.
In Libertad Digital nº 1499
During his last visit to our country, he took the art of being wrong and of ideological kowtowing to new, unsuspected, and unseemly heights for a Nobel Prize laureate. He attributed Zapatero an economic surplus that should actually be credited to José María Aznar. In fact, if there is something that characterizes Zapatero’s policy, it is his squandering that surplus. Naturally, if Stiglitz ignores that Zapatero’s surplus is inherited, he must surely ignore that our President has in his cabinet one of the architects of Spain’s impoverishment during the 1990s as his Minister of Economy and Finance.  Descargar PDF
by Soeren Kern, June 2, 2008 Analysis nº 274
So far, Zapatero and his cabinet are locked (smugly) in a state of denial, willfully blinded to the fact that immigration in Spain is spiraling out of control. (The former Minister for Labor and Immigration, Jesús Caldera, says that runaway immigration simply proves that Spain is “the envy of Europe.”) Much easier, it seems, for Zapatero to lecture other countries than to acknowledge his own shortcomings. Download PDF
by Ángel Pérez, May 31, 2008 Collaborations nº 2281
There are three hard- to-surmount factors: strategic indigence, historical complex and inadequate ideologization. They vastly explain Spain’s failure as a middle power; its inability to accept global challenges and its persistent inefficiency to solve bordering conflicts that affect its territorial integrity and security.
Analysis nº 273
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