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Spanish dream evaporates as suburbs turn into ghost towns
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
May 25th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
May 25th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
Spain, in spite of being Europe's fifth largest economy, has suffered greatly during the ongoing European economic crisis. Unemployment there is by far the highest in the entire European Union, hovering over 21 percent. Spain's youth, those aged less than 25 years, nearly half -- 46.4 percent -- are without a job. More than half a million households had no one earning an income in 2011. As an example of the hobbled economy are a dozen luxury suburban developments that have been rendered into unoccupied ghost towns.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - A recent report warned that in Spain, "over half the population reports experiencing a heavy financial burden due to housing costs." The number of foreclosure proceedings rose from 25,953 in 2007 to 93,319 in 2009, an increase of nearly 260 percent.The Spanish people have a message for the leaders meeting in Brussels -- stop cutting and start promoting growth. The Spanish government decision to recapitalize Bankia, the country's fourth largest lender, while reducing education spending by 20 per cent, was for many the last straw.
"This was the Spanish dream: new developments, luxury apartments, and the good life. But it was all on borrowed money. Now the developers have lost their investments, the banks are in crisis, and increasing numbers of Spaniards are homeless," one journalist says.
"We are going to end up with no home and in debt forever," Munoz Alcaza, an unemployed construction worker, told reporters. "We'll have to keep paying for this apartment, but we won't be able to live in it.
"At first they [bank officials] were nice and said 'Don't worry, you can pay at the end of the month to avoid interest,'" Cano Munoz added. "But when you cannot pay at all, suddenly you are a bad person and 'there's the door... go!'"
Spanish politicians are looking to economic powerhouse Germany for help. "Germany has got a lot of profit from the euro [currency]. Because Spain was rich, we bought many things that were made in Germany," an independent deputy in Spain's congress, Irene Lozano Domingo says.
"We are all linked, so if we are going to hell, they are coming with us. This is what they have to see," she added.
Following the lead of Greece, Spain has bailed out its banks and slashed government spending. But the economy is now so bad that some are thinking of quitting the country altogether.
"I don't know. Latin America somewhere? Brazil, Mexico ... somewhere where it's going up, you know?" a protester at a recent demonstration against education cuts said.
One problem has been the need to get agreement between either the 17 EU countries that use the euro as their currency or all 27 member states.
"I think about my one Congress, then I start thinking about 17 congresses and I start getting a little bit of a headache," Barack Obama said following the recent NATO summit in Chicago.
It's a headache that President Obama can't ignore. According to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, while the U.S. and Japan were leading a fragile economic recovery among developed countries, they could be blown off course by the European debt crisis.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.