Spain: Two realities, one problem

Finally, last Saturday the Eurogroup decided to rescue Spanish banks with up to 100,000 million euros, in what will be the fourth European rescue since the crisis erupted in 2008. The news was announced on Saturday by Luis de Guindos, Spanish Minister of Finance. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose attendance was required from the four corners of twitter since the moment the news broke, did not attend. He would not appear until following day, Sunday morning, to announce that in fact Spain had not been rescued, but granted with a special credit line for the battered Spanish banking system, and would not have any compensation at macroeconomic level, that is loan conditionality was limited to bank restructuring. He also added that at no time felt pressured by the other partners of the Union and that if someone had pressed, that was himself.

The Spanish political establishment is used since 1978, when democratic Constitution was approved, to construct a tailored reality when they don't like the real one. So they did by building a whole mythic discourse on the role of the monarchy in the advent of democracy in the country and the vital role of King Juan Carlos to abort the coup of February 23, 1981. Gradually, Spaniards are finding out by foreign media as Der Spiegel, that the end of President Suárez government did not seem such a bad idea for the King, and thus coincided with the coup objectives. Similarly, after the attacks of March 11, 2004 in Madrid, the country's government maintained an official speech in which he stated these attacks were committed by the terrorist group ETA, sending communications to the Spanish embassies abroad in order to corroborate this version and while the vast majority of foreign media pointed to Islamist from the same afternoon of March 11.

It's nothing new, then, that in Spain reality is blatantly manipulated by political class, mainly monopolized by PP and PSOE (and their servile media), at all costs to stay in power. It is an established practice to which enormous public budget funds are allocated if necessary, as they have an important target: keeping the alternance between these two parties ad eternum. What is new in Spain is that we have suffered a bailout by the EU and the IMF for the first time in our history. Rajoy's appearance, denying the obvious, shows a whole way of understanding politics rooted in the nineteenth century. Today, Spanish president thinks that what he says will stay here in Spain and it will not be spread to the rest of Europe. This is the level Spanish politics moves on. Consequence of all that: today, German Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, has denied the Spanish president by stating that indeed there will be offsets for Spain, and European Commission has warned that credit will stop if objectives are breached.

After the press conference of Sunday, President Rajoy flew to Poland to watch the game between Spain and Italy of European Championships. Yo can see him below enjoying the moment.  

The same night, and meanwhile Time magazine published this article on its website mocking the "Rajoy's nominalismos", right-wing newspaper La Razon announced its front page for the next day, in which a goalkeeper defends Spanish shield by "clearing" bailout:

These are the journalistic standards of "official" press in Spain. Currently there are no left oriented newspapers, not even center-left. El Pais, the "Transition newspaper", is lately busy extolling the virtues of the King, even excusing his hunting trip to Botswana, and Sunday it published an editorial by selling the rescue as "a triumph of the EU".

If I would have to imagine a parallel reality for Mr. Rajoy, why not tell the citizens that our beaches will be soon visited by Mitch Buchannon or C.J. Parker, which finally will rescue us with an eternal mouth-to-mouth without asking anything in return? It would be the same farce, but much more summery.

Let me say goodbye with this old 50's Spanish film. It seems it's a long time, but for me it seems like yesterday!