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OPINIÓN

Weekly Report: (27.05.11)  

By Per Svensson

miércoles 22 de octubre de 2014, 11:21h

PSOE lost elections

PP picks up most of the disgruntled votes

The government party PSOE, led by flimsy Zapatero, lost Sunday's local and regional elections. The elections amounted to a referendum on the economy and on Zapatero; he lost one and a half million votes.  Partido Popular managed to increase its votes by half a million.

With 99.94% of the votes counted, PP has obtained 37.54% and PSOE 27.79, a difference of almost 10%.  Leftist Izquerda Unida won 6.32% (up from 5.48 in the 2007 elections).

 

PSOE looses big cities

The socialists lost again in Madrid, but this time also in Barcelona, Sevilla, Cordoba, Valencia, Alicante, Malaga, Murcia, Almeria…. They were routed in the traditionally red regions, like Andalusia (where PP got 40% of the votes against the Socialists 32) and Castilla – La Mancha.  On Monday morning, as I am writing this, it seems the only region not blue is Extremadura, but only because of a coalition between PSOE and Izquerda Unida.

The only provincial capitals where PSOE won more votes than any other party were Lleida and Tarragona in Catalonia, Soria, Cuenca and Toledo.  There are 52 provinces in Spain……

 

The Basque country

In the Basque country, the ETA-infested new 'Bildu' party with 25% of the votes, won more municipal seats than any other party. The moderate nationalists PNV got 30%.  In Bilbao, of the two national parties, PP won 17% and PSOE a meagre 13.

 

The tourist areas

There were no regional elections in Andalusia, otherwise PSOE would have lost the Junta.  In the province of Malaga, PP have more than 53% of the vote, PSOE less than 25, IU 11 and the new party UP&D 3.50%.   In Marbella PP have 50%, PSOE 25;  Fuengirola voted 64% to PP, only 20 to PSOE;   Estepona: 19% for PSOE, 49 to PP;  Mijas: 50% PP, 25 PSOE;  Torrox: 31% PSOE, 26  PP;  Nerja: 51% PP  PSOE 26.

Murcia municipality elected 19 PP councillors, 6  PSOE, 2 IU and  2 for UP&D.    Lorca, the earthquake town, gave 60% of its votes to PP.  In the regional elections in Murcia, PP collected 58.49%.

In the Valencia Region PP attracted less votes than in the last election, but with 49% have a majority of seats in the regional parliament. The party also won in most of the municipalities.

In the Canary regional elections, PSOE lost 11 seats in the parliament, remaining with 15 seats.  PP conquered 21 and the Coalition Canaria 21.

We shall return to the results of the independent lists in our report next week.

 

Spain under pressure for further social cuts

The European Commission expects the economy of Spain to grow by only 0.8% this year, far below the average in the Euro Zone (1.6) and in the advanced economies like Germany (2.6).  The Government had predicted a growth of 1.3%.

The weak economy undermines tax income, needed to reduce the public deficit and the international economic organisations are putting pressure on the Spanish Government to make further social cuts.

 

Anticipated national elections?

PP leader Rajoy demanded today anticipated national elections, as the logical result of the great loss of voter’s confidence in PSOE. The Catalan moderate nationalist party, CiU has declared they may support in parliament a vote of no confidence in the government. That would mean new elections.

 

Indignation

By Per Svensson

 

For more than a week tens of thousands of people have gathered in the central square, Puerta del Sol, in Madrid. The protests, which we have seen in Egypt and other Arab countries, have now also arrived in Barcelona and other Spanish cities, and Spaniards are following the events on the Internet.  The demonstration is not a meeting but more a series of meetings, even commissions, highlighting various issues.  They are not for or against any specific political party, but are confronting the political and electoral system, which the protesters feel has become a corrupt and unfair farce. They were urging voters not to vote for either of the two main parties, branding them guilty of widespread corruption.

 

The protesters, mainly young people, are representative of the group, of which almost 50% have been denied access to the labour market, some of them for two years, without any unemployment assistance and without any real hopes for the future.   Elderly people have also joined, bringing the, now permanent, protesters food and helping them clean up and get rid of the rubbish. The protesters are now camping in tents and sleeping bags, as protestors did on Tahrir square in Cairo, refusing police orders to leave the square and even a dictate from the Supreme Court last Saturday to abandon the demonstration,  “the day of reflection” before the elections. They have decided to continue the protests.

 

The police and Guardia Civil surrounded Puerta del Sol, and other places in Spain where demonstrations are taken place, telling the protesters their action is illegal and that they risk detention and fines.  However, the threats have made no impression and the police officers 'unions' have recommended that no action be taken against the peaceful demonstrators. The government has prudently not enforced the evacuation.  The Cuban ex-president Fidel Castro has ironically asked if NATO intends to bomb Spain.

 

As my silent protest, and as a message against the political parties and the way they have been dealing with the just demands of foreign property buyers and owners; the European citizens in Spain,  I did not vote for any of the corrupt big parties in Spain. In my thoughts, I am camping on Puerta del sol.

 

Buyers of illegal houses

A post on Almanzora Forum repeats Spain's regular cries of,  'how those pesky
Brits bought homes here knowing them to be illegal... but cheap!'
Can they name these people who knowingly bought an illegal house with no
respect for the country and culture?  After all since 2008 they have
supposedly been reviewing each house on a case by case basis.  Who are
these people?  I haven't met one yet.  If my other half had said to me, "We are
going to buy this house, its illegal but keep stumm, we can build wherever we
want and ignore the planning laws" I would have had him certified and committed
to an asylum for the insane.  I came from a beautiful 4 bed detached house in England, I had financial and legal security, full professional employment, pension and  healthcare, why would I throw it up to buy an illegal,  legally irregular or any
other insecure type of house?
Spain's not that good !   Ok it has sunshine but so has France, Italy, Greece, even Cornwall on occasions!  These people are corrupt, ignorant, racist, bigots.  They have bankrupted their country.  We have spent hundreds of thousands here on property, cars, furniture, day to day living,  earnt honestly by working in industry for 30 years each.  If they want to knock our houses down or criminalise respectable retired self sufficient people, why not get on with it, go ahead, and see how it improves their economy and their children's employment prospects. I will make sure no one I can influence will ever buy a property here until the whole sorry mess has been sorted out.

 

No sufficient economic growth

On http://www.the-mamblings.blogspot.com could be found the following:

The government may have to make an additional two billion euros in cuts if its forecasts for growth aren't met, according to Economy Ministry officials.

"These figures are far from the government's growth target, and are clearly insufficient to create jobs"

Analysts believe that Spain's budget deficit will grow by two-tenths- from the current 6 percent of GDP to 6.2 percent - if growth doesn't meet the Zapatero administration's projected goal, of 1.3 percent. Market indicators have shown that Spain will only experience 0.8 percent growth, which will also bring on the cuts, say officials.

"Cuts will begin in public investment - first, infrastructure, and then research and education," said Manuel Balmaseda, an analyst with the transnational cement supplier Cemex.

The Bank of Spain last week announced that the Spanish economy had started the year with "weak" growth driven by the export sector, while domestic demand remained negative.

In its monthly economic bulletin for April released Friday, the central bank calculated GDP posted quarter-on-quarter growth of 0.2 percent in the first quarter, the same rate as in the previous three months. Annual growth, however, accelerated slightly to 0.7 percent from 0.6 percent.

"In the opening months of 2011, the Spanish economy continued growing at a weak rate against the background of the progressive recovery in the world economy," the report said.

The National Statistics Institute (INE) is due to release a flash estimate of first-quarter output on May 13, with a breakdown of the figures on May 18.

The bank said national demand contracted by about the same amount as in the first three months, while the contribution of net trade- exports minus imports- to overall growth was 1.4 percentage points.

The report also noted a moderate pick-up in consumer spending and increased investment in equipment, which went some way toward offsetting the drop in public spending as a result of the government's austerity drive to rein in the public deficit and an ongoing contraction in residential investment.

However, household spending remains overall subdued due to weak sentiment about the domestic economy, a drop in wealth and real income because of high inflation and high unemployment. The INE last Friday reported that the number of people out of work hit a record 4.9 million in the first quarter as the jobless rate rose by almost a full percentage point to 21.3 percent.

"Domestic demand is still largely negative and the only positive contribution comes from exports," Bloomberg quoted, Giada Giani, an economist at Citigroup in London, as saying. "There's been a mix of data recently that suggests the second quarter could be weaker than the first."

The government is targeting GDP growth this year of 1.3 percent, but other experts, including the Bank of Spain, believe the actual figure could be around half of that.

"These figures [from the central bank] are far from the government's growth target, and are clearly insufficient to create jobs," Reuters quoted Emilio Ontiveros, the chairman of the Analistas Financieros Internacionales (AFI) think-tank, as saying.

Courtesy of the Costa Almeria News:  http://www.costa-news.com

Cantoria promoters found guilty
But home owners frustrated by lenient sentences

By Matthew Pritchard
A DUTCH woman and a Spanish man were last week found guilty of building unauthorised houses in the El Fas area of the municipality of Cantoria.
The three-year court case finally came to an end last week when a judge in an Almería city court passed sentence. The 11-page document said there was proof beyond any doubt that Karen Smit and Julio Piñero, as directors of Southern Spain Consultants, had built 19 houses on non-urban land. Both Karen Smit and Julio Piñero were handed a six-month prison sentence and a 2,190-euro fine.
They have also been banned for two years from having anything to do with construction projects and will have to pay court costs.
A legal expert contacted by this paper said he considered it unlikely that Smit and Piñero would actually serve time behind bars as it was a first offence for both of them and it was usual to suspend the sentences in that case.

 

Report in US press:

Spaniards Take to Streets Before Vote

By RAPHAEL MINDER


MADRID — With elections set for Sunday in Spain in more than 8,000 municipalities and 13 of its 17 regions, thousands of people, most of them young, have taken to the streets in Madrid, Barcelona and other large cities this week, calling for an end to suspected longstanding corruption among established parties. Fueling the demonstrators’ anger is the perceived failure by politicians to alleviate the hardships imposed on a struggling population by a jobless rate of 21 percent.   At sit-ins, street protests and on social media networks, the protesters’ message is that of an alternative campaign that could eclipse that of the established parties and result in a decline in voter turnout on Sunday, from 63 percent four years ago.  Some of the youth groups have made the fight against corruption their battle cry, like NoLesVotes, or “Don’t vote for them,” whose manifesto starts with the warning that “corruption in Spain has reached alarming levels.” The group recently published a Web site map pinpointing localities where more than 100 politicians seeking election were also under judicial investigation.


Other protesters are fielding alternative candidates, like the Pirate Party in Catalonia, founded 18 months ago, which is hoping to win about 7,000 votes across Catalan municipalities. One of its candidates in Barcelona, the 27-year-old Francesc Parelleda, said political corruption was a consequence of a “political system in which there is simply zero transparency and democracy within the main parties.”
José M. de Areilza, dean of the IE Law School in Madrid, said, “I don’t think that political corruption is necessarily worse in Spain than in other European countries, but I do think that the economic crisis is now generating a lot more anger and resentment here toward politicians.”

 

On Sunday, Francisco Camps is expected to be re-elected as head of the regional government of Valencia, which includes the third-largest city in Spain and some of the most popular Spanish resorts.
By the end of the year, however, Mr. Camps is also likely to be in court facing bribery charges, as part of a vast corruption investigation, dubbed the Gürtel case, that has also targeted several other politicians from the main center-right political force, the Popular Party.
Mr. Camps was charged in February for allegedly receiving tailor-made suits in return for granting public contracts, with further possible financial irregularities still under investigation. Nine other politicians standing for the Popular Party on Sunday in Valencia are being investigated or have been charged with fraud. Mr. Camps and his fellow candidates deny any wrongdoing.
For now, the corruption allegations have not hindered Mr. Camps’s re-election bid, according to the latest opinion polls. Like Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister who is engulfed in scandal, Mr. Camps has portrayed himself as the victim of a witch hunt by political opponents, judges and left-leaning media. Asked in December to comment on some of the allegations, he said that “nobody should believe Soviet-style propaganda against everything that has been achieved in Valencia.”    In fact, “many people in Valencia now talk about the Berlusconization of our society,” said Ferrán Bono, a Socialist lawmaker who represents Valencia in the national Parliament in Madrid. “Some people have seen so many political scandals that they just treat them as banal, but I think many also genuinely believe the conspiracy theory that Camps has been so actively promoting.”

The Gürtel investigation, which also targets some Popular Party politicians in Madrid, involves more than €120 million, or about $170 million, of public funds misspent by politicians in return for alleged kickbacks, according to a summary of the charges presented by the prosecution this year. Its alleged ringleader, Francisco Correa, is in jail awaiting trial.
With tents, mattresses, a kitchen, a workshop and even a pharmacy, a protest camp in Madrid has grown into a real 'urban village' for thousands of young people. Under blue plastic tarpaulins, demonstrators have gathered in the landmark Puerta del Sol square in the centre of the Spanish capital. Many of them have spent several days and nights there, to decry politicians who left Spain with a 21 per cent unemployment rate. Calling for "Real Democracy Now," the protests popularly known as M-15 began on May 15, lamenting Spain's economic crisis, politicians in general, and corruption.

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