The failure of socialism in Spain

Times:

Spain’s credit rating downgrade, towering public deficit and debt crisis do not mean that much to Santos Yubero. All this 55-year-old from Madrid cares about is getting a job, after two years on the dole.

With his unemployment benefits about to end, Mr Yubero — like many others in Spain — is desperate.

“Today like every day in the last months, I woke up with the economic news and it does not impress me,” he wrote in a letter to El Mundo newspaper today.

“I know that we are going to have more poor and I will never have a job which sustains me. For two months I have had no interview. I could write more but I almost shout — ‘I want to be French’.”

For Mr Yubero this desire to live in richer country such as France is not some flight of fancy. Instead, like perhaps the 4 million others out of work in Spain, he sees little future in his own country.

With 20 per cent of the workforce scrambling for fewer and fewer jobs and the country mired in the deepest recession for decades, many are running out of hope.

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Spain has been going downhill ever since it elected a socialist government and over invested in the green energy business, which caused them to actually lose jobs. They need to get rid of their socialist leaders and find ways to help people create jobs rather than looking to the government to do so.

Another mistake made by Spain was a finding that caused several foreigners to lose ownership of homes they had bought in Spanish developments. Several from the UK have complained about the losses and I am sure it depressed the market for homes there.