RSS Feed
June 9th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda “All I know is that it is not the fault of the workers.”
Mrs Rivadulla spoke as Spain looked on the point of swallowing its pride and
joining Greece, Portugal and Ireland in seeking a billion bail-out for its
banks, a move that seemed all but certain on Saturday when Eurozone finance
ministers held a conference call to discuss such a deal.
Spain’s centre-Right government has so far publicly denied making such a
request, fearing it will involve a humiliating hand-over of control of its
national purse-strings to anonymous Brussels and IMF apparatchiks.
Only last Tuesday, the country’s finance minister, Cristobal Montoro,
insisted: “The men in black will not be coming to Spain.”
However, in places like La Linea, a town of 65,000 where roughly one in three
people of working age is jobless, nobody is interested in sparing the
blushes of the political elite. All they care about is when they will be
paid.
On Thursday, The Sunday Telegraph watched as workers on the protest in
La Linea tried to storm a council meeting, demanding to be given their
salaries. Regional police in body armour were brought in to quell the unrest
– the local police, like the demonstrators, had not been paid for nine
months and so were not on hand.
The town hall employees have kept working despite being unpaid because they
fear that if they resign, they will forfeit any wages they are owed.
But for the past nine months they have been burning tyres, going on strike,
and writing letters to the Socialist lady mayor, Gemma Araujo, whose
administration is milliones in debt.
“Our town is bankrupt, what are you laughing about mayor?” read one
banner last week.
The workers allege that unlike the bosses of more heavily indebted towns such
as Marbella and Jerez, Ms Araujo has failed to negotiated decent repayment
terms for La Linea’s debts.
Instead, the majority of the taxation paid by La Linea’s residents goes
straight to Madrid, with not enough returned to fund the running of the
municipality and to pay its workers.
In a sense, their gripe is a microcosm of the complaints voiced by disgruntled
Greeks, Portuguese and Irish, who claim their governments should likewise
have negotiated far more generous terms for their bail-outs.
“Our mayor is not supporting us,” said Ricardo Fernandez de Vera,
53, a town hall lawyer. “She should have gone to Madrid and told them
that we would pay off our debts slowly, so we could all get paid. We don’t
need to hand over every penny to the government, while we go hungry.”
Unlike in Greece and Ireland, the prospect of a bail-out in Spain has not led
to a rise in feeling against Germany, whose Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has
been accused of trying to impose excessively harsh austerity measures.
The Spanish government has not dithered in belt-tightening programmes, and
among many of the demonstrators in La Linea, there is an acceptance that
Spain is the author of its own misfortunes.
Mr Fernandez, the lawyer, conceded Spain’s 8,700 municipalities were part of
the problem: the country, he said, should halve the number of local
government offices to save money. Massive over-reliance on the construction
sector was also weakness, he added.
“It started off as a small problem with excess spending in the late
1970s, but now the issue has rolled and rolled,” he said. “It is a
small stone that has become a giant rock.”
Certainly the Spanish problems, which started with overspending in regional
governments, have become very big mountains indeed. On Thursday, credit
agency Fitch slashed Spain’s rating by three notches, from A to BBB.
Worse still, Fitch said Spain would likely remain slumped in recession this
year and next, rather than stage a mild recovery in 2013, denting hopes of
reducing the 25 per cent national unemployment rate.
Eurozone officials have signalled that they are willing to offer Spain a
bail-out if requested, amid fears that the government’s already
over-stretched public finances will be unable to rescue its troubled banking
sector, which was wrecked by the bursting of the country’s property bubble.
Spain’s most stricken bank, Bankia S.A., needs €18.9 billion in government
aid, but Spain only has €5 billion left of a bail-out fund set up in 2009 to
help banks.
A report by the IMF estimates that the banks need at least €40 billion to stay
afloat.
Iif it does accept outside help, Spain will attempt to portray the package as
a “bailout-lite”, which will focus purely on helping the banks
rather than filling Spanish government coffers.
As such, it will minimise the imposition of extra austerity measures – which
are already biting hard – and structural reforms imposed from outside.
That, Madrid hopes, will mean the “Men in Black” keep their
distance, as least in the eyes of the residents of towns like La Linea,
anyway. Not that they will probably be watching.
“We are desperate here, all we ask for is to be paid. ” said
protester Eduardo Izaguirre, 56. “It is not much. But we need them to
give us that.”
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
