Dawn

Dawn

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Demonstrating the Spanish government’s failure to understand how things work these days, you can already find the censored two minute section from the documentary I mentioned yesterday on the internet. Courtesy of El País.

Talking of El País, the paper has three excellent pieces today.

The first addresses the reasons given by the Spanish government for its act of censorship as follows:- The official reason looks puerile – “The ruination of the coast must be due to poor urban development planning and an excess of building approvals”. Aren’t these symptoms of corruption? If your answer is No, you need to show where bad planning has led to a reduction in building approvals.Quite.

The second article is on immigration and in it the writer avers that the Spanish have always liked to think of themselves as less racist than they actually are. He quotes Jaume Perich Escala as saying “Spanish gypsies would love to be black so as to enjoy the advantages of living in a non-racist country.” However, the writer is optimistic that a xenophobic far-right party won’t emerge in Spain. Though for different reasons to those which explain why this hasn’t happened in Britain. Let’s hope he’s right.

The third article is an impressively realistic piece on the Spanish economy, in which the writer insists that Spain – if you will forgive this – must grab the bull by the horns (poner el cascabel al gato) and act to substantiate claims of a serious intention to deal with her economic problems. Absent other actions by third parties, the writer envisages a painful period of ‘draconian’ adjustment, during which there would be reductions in civil servants salaries, a freezing of pensions and, among other things, a tighter accord on salary increases generally. This, he recognises, will mean heightened social and political tensions. But, without it, the question won’t be of reducing or freezing the salaries and pensions of civil servants but suspending their payment altogether And even of leaving the eurozone. Needless to say, this calls for a greater degree of unity and statesmanship between the two main political parties than is currently observable. So the jury must remain out for a while yet.

Finally . . . Did you know there are 700 varieties of cheese made in Britain? Which is 100 more than in France. Not being a cheese-eater, I can’t say how many of the former are edible. Or the latter even. Which some will see as an even bigger shame.

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