Hi all again!
I know It’s been a long time since my last post, but my new Job and some trips I’ve made in the last months (I’d three weddings, two funerals, some days of holidays in Morocco, more holidays in Switzerland and France, …) had make myself a busy man.
For this reason I’ve lived the #SpanisRevolution much more in the distance than my desires, in part because I’ve been part of a similar movement in Cordoba, the last city where I lived before Madrid, and in the other part because I’ve been waiting for this revolution since the begining of the economical crisis.
This is the first post of several where I pretend to explain a little bit the origin of this movement, the actual situation and some (from MY point of view) important things that have originated this movement.
In this first post, specially for the outsiders that doesn’t know the political and economical environment of Spain, I’m going to explain a little bit the situation here and from where it comes.
In the years before the global (economical) crisis maybe you’ve heard that Spain was economically growing, that it was equating with the rest of Europe, .. All bullshit. The truth is that the spanish growing was based in bricks (speculation over new buildings) and tourism. This kind of economy have at least two main problems:
- If you speculate with buildings you make a bubble that, in any moment, has to deflate, by natural or artificial mechanisms.
- If your economy depends highly on tourism you are exposed to external AND internal crisis.
Casualities of live, in Spain we’ve seen both problems at the same time, when the global crisis began. Personally, I’m convinced the actual Government didn’t do it on purpose, that they want to deflate the construction bubble artificially in their second legislature, but, again casualities of live, the global crisis began in the election campaign and they didn’t have time to make this artificial deflate, the bubble explote on their hands.
Thankfully, both the banks and the public coffers were healthy, because we could be as bad as Ireland or Greece. Now, after two years of crisis, our situation is bad (really bad), but not as bad as Italy. Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Island and even UK, specially in terms of national debts.
Our actual problem (since the begining of the crisis) is that our economy is paralyzed. first because one of the main activities of the country, construction, has gone away as soon as everybody (even the banks) has realized that the constructions were overpayed, so the banks stopped to mortgage houses (even for solvent people) and noone (including companies) is buying now any property.
This has caused a great unemployment over the construction workers and over all the workers that depend over construction (wood, tiling, furniture, …). This make descend the local demands and the tourism (the other main activity of the country). If you join this with the global crisis (less external demands and tourism) you can imagine the situation of Spain.
The problem is that the longer is the crisis the situation is going to be worst. Since some time ago (more than a year) there are a lot of families which none of their members have incomes, and this is a very dramatical situation for a country that, at least theoretically, is part of the first world since 30 years. Indeed, if (as expected) neither internal nor external incomes grows significantly, the spanish crisis is going to perpetuate in the time.
In my point of view we have two choices. The first one is to try to prolong this economical model, in which, if we are lucky, we can find a new economical sector in which we can grow (probably technologies and renewable energies).
The second one (my preferred) is to change the economical model, not based on the amount of properties and things we own but on cover our basic needs. It can seems like going to the past (and in some kind of mode it’s like that), but is essentially being more fair with our neighbours and with our environment.
I know this is not easy to reach, but I think the #SpanishRevolution is on the way. First because they want to change the spanish political class, the main cancer of the spanish society, and second because the movement include both political (in the good sense) and unemployed people.
Will be continued…