The Economic Pain in Spain

A survey taken a few weeks ago found that 60 percent of young people in Spain want to work for the government. You wouldn’t think this was possible. A decade and a half ago, the country’s conservative prime minister, José María Aznar, began to deregulate the system he inherited from the socialist Felipe González and tightened the country’s budget to allow it to join the new European currency. The Spanish economy took off like a rocket, achieving rates of growth that were almost Chinese. Aside from Ireland, no place in the Western world could match it. Unemployment, which had been as high as 25 percent, quickly fell into the mid-single digits. The country’s debt fell just as fast. Aznar does not deserve all the credit. It was González who negotiated the tens of billions of dollars in “structural funds” from the European Union, which were invested wisely in highways, bridges, electrical grids, and high-speed trains. Spain gave the impression of a country that was not just dynamic but competently managed, no matter what party was in power. Such countries tend to produce young people whose ambitions go a bit further than whiling the days away behind a counter in the ayuntamiento.