How Postmodern Socialism Destroyed Spain
By taking Spain into a war with Libya, Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was calculating that he could defy fate by diverting media headlines away from the fact that he has also led Spain to the brink of economic catastrophe. But like the haughty Babylonian King Belshazzar, drunk on the wine of narcissism, a dazed Zapatero has been forced to read the writing on the wall: He has been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
After a recent opinion poll showed that more than 80 percent of Spanish voters have lost their trust in Zapatero, making him Spain’s least popular prime minister since the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in 1975, Zapatero announced on April 2 that he will not be seeking a third term in the 2012 elections. “I thought it would be best for the country,” he said.
The irony is that while many Spanish voters will be breathing a sigh of relief, Zapatero’s exit is likely to create even more problems for Spain than it resolves. Spain is hopelessly mired in the worst economic recession in its modern history, and Zapatero’s withdrawal from 2012 race has opened a power struggle within the Socialist Party. Analysts fear that any power vacuum may spook the markets and endanger Spain’s fiscal future by increasing its borrowing costs.
The political uncertainty in Spain comes as Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Spain’s sovereign debt rating by one notch on March 10 and warned of further cuts to come as it expects bank restructuring will cost far more than what the government expects. Moody’s says Spain may need up to €120 billion ($165 billion) to recapitalize its failing banks, even though the Spanish government and central bank insist they need no more than €20 billion ($30 billion).
At the same time, Spain announced on March 2 that its jobless rate surged to a 15-year record to above 20 percent at the end of February, the highest level in the industrialized world. The jobless rate among the young in Spain has soared to well above 40 percent, a figure that exceeds youth unemployment rates in Egypt and Tunisia. Overall, more than 4.7 million Spaniards are now out of work, and unemployment benefits constitute the largest single component of government expenditures.
As if that were not enough, the Spanish government on March 7 imposed a series of extraordinary measures to combat an increase in fuel prices caused by popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, major suppliers of crude oil and natural gas to Spain. Among other measures, the government has reduced the speed limit on Spanish highways. Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said “the objective is to lower the growth of our energy bill.”
Meanwhile, the government announced that the Spanish economy contracted by 0.2 percent over the whole of 2010, after falling 3.7 percent in 2009. The economy is expected to stagnate in 2011.
The steady flow of bad news in recent weeks — coupled with the dramatic developments in neighbouring Portugal, where the resignation of Prime Minister José Sócrates has sparked early elections and pushed that country to ask for a bailout — implies that Spain’s economic crisis is far from over. Not only does it cast further doubt on the sustainability of Spain’s debt, it also increases the chances that Spain, like Greece and Ireland, will need to ask for a financial bailout. A bailout of Spain would have major implications for Europe as well as for the United States.
How did Spain end up in such a mess? Spain’s economic meltdown largely stems from the collapse of the country’s housing and construction sectors, which accounted (directly and indirectly) for nearly one quarter of Spanish GDP before a speculative real estate bubble began to burst in 2007. The ensuing spike in unemployment, coupled with a sharp drop in domestic consumption and a steep decline in tax revenues, among myriad other woes, have all combined to leave Spain on the edge of an economic abyss.
But other factors have contributed to Spain’s economic crisis: incompetent politicians, reckless government spending, and voter apathy.
Incompetent Politicians: Economists both inside and outside of Spain had been warning for many years that the country’s construction boom was unsustainable, and that urgent measures needed to be taken to diversify the economy and to make it more competitive.
Instead, Zapatero wasted valuable time and energy denying that there actually was a problem. Spanish Socialists, like many postmodern relativists, believe that all problems are by definition imaginary and can be wished away by avoiding negative thoughts. In an effort to downplay the scale of Spain’s economic troubles, the Socialist government has established a seven-year track record of using an arsenal of postmodern euphemisms to avoid unpleasantries and to create a virtual Spanish reality.
In an interview with the Socialist mouthpiece El País, for example, Zapatero famously asserted that the idea that Spain was actually in trouble was “opinionable” and said that “it all depends upon what we mean by crisis.” He said that those warning about an impending economic crisis were being “unpatriotic” and that such talk was a “fallacy, pure catastrophism.” Zapatero also warned: “Let’s not turn economic forecasting into a fetish.” Think positive, he said: “To be optimistic is something more than a rational act. It is a moral requirement, an act of decency and, if I may say so, elegance.”
Makes you think that Franco may not have been so bad after all.
Expat: Franco should have been shot for high treason. I am not talking about 1936 since IMHO he saved Spain of something much worse (Margarita Nelken told a bout “making a revolution but not one like the Rusiian one, one who would taint with blood the oceabns of teh whole world”. And she was not alone. I am also pretty sure that Spain would have done worse as well under the leadership of the Spanish Lenin, aka Largo Caballero the leader of the socialists who had made well clear he would not allow to be ousted from power through elections) than under Stalin’s men.
But after WWII eh should have ben asking himself every year “Haven’t I become a liability for Spain? Isn’t it time to relinquish power and prepare democracy”. Had he done it during the 60s when memories of the civil war were still fresh and Spain was in an economic boom” the socialist party would have remained a fringe party, noty to mention that he could have done a better job than present constitution who created not democracy but party dictatorship and whose electoral system has allowed regional nationalist parties to blackmail the national ones, given them an influence out of proportion to their numbers and through access to education and state-owned MSM sow hate. Spain is dying and it is Franco’s fault.
lol it can’t be “Franco’s fault”, it’s as ridiculous as latin american people saying “it’s all Spain’s fault”. Come on, Franco is long dead, and his ghost is not forcing spanish people to make bad choices.
If Obama can say “It’s Bush’s fault” why can’t JFM say it’s Franco’s fault. Good scapegoats are hard to find. Especially if they are not Socialist.
Both you and X are mistaken. I am not scapegoating Franco and present situation isn’t his fault. It is Zapatero’s. But not preparing return to democracy, by clinging to power until his last breath and trying to have his regime survive him he set the time bomb who allowed a Spain hater like Zapatero to become prime minister.
I don’t think you know much about medieval Spanish history, or how autonomies work in Spain. Although there’s much corruption in many of them and they’re in huge deficit problems, precisely the “historical” ones (Basque Country and Spain) are the ones in better shape and doing the biggest efforts towards fiscal solvency, and are also the ones that will eventually pull Spain out of this huge mess.
SEñor Sefrot M, while they have a rough parity in GRP (gross regional product) the region of Madrid pays about twice more taxes to the state than Catalonia and receives far less. Also both “el cupo vasco”‘ and el”estatut” have given huge fiscal privileges to Vascongadas and Catalonia. For instance ek Esatut allows Catalonia to reduce what it pays to the sate in case it grows less than Spain’s average and in case it grows more it keeps the surplus. KIt aldo forces the state to heavily invest in Catalonia. For reducing deficit Catalonia is on the verge of collapse. Sure the are doing better about theior deficits than Andalucia (Spain’s banana region) but Madrid, again, is in black numbers. Anad catalonia squanders hundreds of millions in “”embassies in foreign countries, on TV and radio brodcasts towards alencia and Baleares aimed at making them want to join the Catalonian Reich, in emabassies in foreign countries and in its language police (children have been told to report about teachers speaking in Spanish).
For the regional languages, to begin with Basque is largely an artificial language created by Sabino Arana at the end of XIXthe century: he didn’t like that people of different villages spokle one another in Spanish. Fior Catalan it is true that its roots could be older than Castilian (not hundreds of years, sorry) but modern catalan was created by Pompeu Fabra, removing hundreds of words who sounded Castlian. Anyway when I spoke of forgottebn languahges recreated artificially I was thinking in Leon (the first kingdom to unite with Castilia and who has spoken Castilian for centuriesà or Aragon who had adopted the Castilian lingua franca well before political unification.
Don’t forget that “regionalism” is a EU diktat. If Spain wanted to get EU subsidies, it had to conform the EU rules, like we had to create “Regions” in France too according to the device: divide for reigning !
I find it odd while crossing our Basque Region to go to spain, no French radio can be captured anymore, but boring folklore basque songs, whereas in spanish basque country, we still can get the national spanish ones.
Marie Claude
You better be on alert. The catalan government is funding schools in the Roussillon and I doubt that they limit themselves to teaach bout Ramon Luul’s poetry.
uh JFM, we have our Napoleon, he will not let that France will get partitioned, as these days, it seems that he passed the EU policy under the bus, and that the old alliances are renewed, France with UK, Germany with Russia !
Breaking news: Francisco Franco still dead.
Ni mencione al dictador. Debería darle verguenza. Spain es una democracia y las dictaduras nos repugnan.
Soy español (para mi desgracia), . It is the stupidness of spanish people and the long years of living in a poor cultural country that makes this country what it is.
You say “Don’t mention the dictator. Spain is a democracy”.. FALSE, Spain is a one of the best dictatorships in the world. It is so good, that people don’t even know it, we still belive we can choose and we think voting makes it all. People like you, that hates Franco above all, and go mad when hear his name is what today dictatorships need to rule spain with people thinking of them as a freedom heroes. Remember, give your vote or franco will revive.
Yo also have said “Pues en Spain pensamos que es culpa de los poderes económicos y su ansia de enriquecerse por cualquier medio”. I’ll try to relate this to my previous parragraph. HAve you ever heard a politician saying we are stupid? Have they admitted they have been anytime? Politicians need to put the culprit in someone not you, not them. The “economic powers” are to blame (by the way, who are the “economic power”? Individual investors taking care of their money?…. what evils they are!!!). It’s we who have ruined this country. If I became now german I would ask my government to get all the money they lend us back without mercy.
Please, stand up, and begin thinking by yourself. We, spanish are worse even that this article describes, and I would suggest europeans to whip us until we face our reality.
Hey europeans. You have to know one thing for sure. The day you bail out us, people won’t be grateful, instead we will think “these stupid europeans keep givin us money, they are sooo easy to cheat. ” And politicians will sell this doomed failure as a great victory of their… and not only people will belive them, but will keep saying Franco was a tyrant
The previous, conservative, administration under Asnar was pretty good from what I hear, and would probably have been re-elected except that the socialists made hay of the Madrid bombings – which of course were designed to affect the election.
Fortunately, spaniards are better informed than you
If interested in Ansar’s economic politics, read something about our real estate boom, how he undersold our profitable public companies, and how the families debt grew from 30% to almost 70% of yearly income. He also used a large part of the European Union funds from his predecessor president. We are no longer receiving this funds since 2007. Yeah, it looked “pretty good” while he was incumbent. Now, we can see the results.
IIRC, in the early 2000′s, Spain was the most robust economy in Europe along with Ireland (the Celtic Tiger).
Didn’t take Zapatero long to run Spain into the ditch, did it? OTOH, it’ll take his peer, Obama, a bit longer to devastate the US, even with Republican help.
One more thought: It’s “hard” to feel any sympathy for the Spaniards that voted for this malignant weasel, any more than it’s a fluff to feel sorry for the US that shoved it’s collective head up it’s rearend and elected Obama.
Then again they could always return to the Lord and He would heal their land. Because if anyone thinks it can’t get worse; then they are 100% wrong. It can always get worse.
AND IT WILL! Also, anyone who thinks Obama WILL run the US into the ground is wrong. He already has.
You forgot to mention the government pumping billions into green energy which was wasted and now has caused energy costs in addition to food to sky rocket. Lets see! Is there a pattern here with Spain and the EU in general? Liberal, socialists, leftists, and greens have acted to drag these countries backward in almost every way. Time to turn out the lights and give it to the muslims.
tommygunn, absofreakinlutely on the ‘green jobs’ precipice Spain gladly stepped in.
The same ‘green initiative’ Uhbama touts as a ‘success’ and wanted to implement in the U.S., though is allowing the EPA knuckleheads so his draconian-like dirty work for him.
uburoisc, the wife and I are going to Barcelona next week. The ‘Gothic’ area is always pleasant. We always stay away from the beach area. The area’s more trashy than Long Beach, Santa Cruz, CA.. which I didn’t think was possible!
Just left Barcelona after 7 days. I observed aggressive bums and vagrant panhandlers everywhere, openly offering drugs, like NYC in the Dinkins years. Regularly encountered atrocious, indifferent service. I eventually found a great family-owned restaurant and repeatedly ate there.
Still a beautiful city, Barcelona, and felt quite safe, and a merciful absence of hip-hop culture, but my contacts in the city tell me the housing bubble is still monstrously out of proportion to real wages, and there will be much suffering as the housing market slides back down along with delinquencies and defaults. Spanish banks are pretending those notes are good at par, and they are not.
Spain is not going to make it, and when Spain teeters, the EU will go with it.
uburoisc, I was there (Barcelona) last summer. There certainly were aggressive bums and pickpockets (everyone warns you against the pickpockets), and it’s not hard to imagine how that might develop with further economic bad news and an incredible youth-unemployment rate. It’s a terrible shame, as it’s a lovely, lovely, city, but the stupid insistence on “Catalonia,” on speaking Catalan rather than Spanish, when no one outside Catalonia gives a damn about their dialect, will I think ruin the city and the region.
I was there in the summer, and not surprisingly it was PACKED with tourists, especially young ones. (At times it was like being in the middle of a reality show.) I’d love to know how it is in terms of tourists at this time of year, if you can tell me.
Lastly, GREAT INFORMATIVE ARTICLE.
Well boo hoo for Spain. They are nothing but a bunch of selfish, infantile, little socialists that stamp their feet when they don’t get their way. Sure, they don’t like Zapatero now, but where were they when he was dishing out all of those generous social-welfare programs the Spanish people still do not want to give up? Yes, now they are angy, but they would rather die than give up all of the goodies the government gives them. And they’re a bunch of cowards, too. Zapatero pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq after the Madrid bombings, stabbing this country in the back when it needed international support the most. They got themselves into this mess and now they can figure a way out. It couldn’t happen to a “nicer” bunch of people.
I see a pattern here. Anyone care to guess to which country I refer?
Let’s see if we can’t flesh this out. Let’s substitute U.S. everywhere Spain occurs in a couple of paragraphs and….lo and behold what DO we have here. People the time to wake up is now, you may not like what you wake up to if you hit the snooze for another four years.
How did the U.S. end up in such a mess? The U.S.’s economic meltdown largely stems from the collapse of the country’s housing and construction sectors, which accounted (directly and indirectly) for nearly one quarter of U.S. GDP before a speculative real estate bubble began to burst in 2007. The ensuing spike in unemployment, coupled with a sharp drop in domestic consumption and a steep decline in tax revenues, among myriad other woes, have all combined to leave the U.S. on the edge of an economic abyss.
But other factors have contributed to the U.S.’s economic crisis: incompetent politicians, reckless government spending, and voter apathy.
Spain wanted a magician who would wave a wand of cash and plant trees, “equalize” women, green the economy etc. There being no such thing as magic, they elected the next best thing: a stage magician. Zapatero is a paradigmatic EUropean politician. He will retire, I imagine, to a secure and higher-paying position in the EU bureacracy. As long as EUrope exists, his policies will continue.
This is also a good explanation of why the U.S.A. does not need Socialism or any more clones of the big spender and utopian ruler/idiot Zapatero. Euro-Socialism is the holy grail of the current administration, and it’s a real testament to the character and spirit of the American people that this agenda is being pushed back in their faces. Some of the richest and most ‘powerful’ people in the world are at work trying to undermine U.S. sovereignty and the will of the American people….and they’re are failing miserably. Thank you Soeren Kern
Wow! the same could be said for our politicans. Housing crisis? Barney, Chris, Nancy, and Maxine all said there was no housing crisis looming, just before the crash.
George Bush accelerated the spending, but the Demons under Miss Nancy ratcheted it up to the stratosphere.
And, we have the President still pursuing the Don Quixote theory of energy independence. He shut down domestic drilling in the Gulf and SUBSIDIZES other governments to pursue their energy production. We as a nation, are committing suicide with our own sword.
Unfortunately, the opposition is lead by Rajoy, a total appease-the-left-and-compromise-for-the-sake-of-peace kind of politician. The strong Capitalist Right (Aznar, Aguirre, San Gil, etc) has been eclipsed by the spanish equivalent of Rino. That’s the only reason for apathy. So, my bet is: spanish people will chose the Rino (the lesser of two evils), that will crush their economy even more. Then, not having a clue, there will be a comeback of the Left in the next elections and so on and on. Sad.
It may happen that the left manages to keep the power. They announced primaries, something the Right doesn’t have(!) and with the media help (the media are leftist there too, mind you) they will eclipse the boring unprincipled Rajoy.
I think that Spanish cultures are particularly susceptible to the socialist political trap because they’ve never really had either a free-market nor long term, decentralized democracy.
Traditionally, economic success in Spanish cultures has always been a matter of being plugged into the right patron-client network i.e. it’s about who you know, not what you can do. When someone losses wealth, it is because they lost their position in their patronage network or because their patronage network lost a struggle with another network.
Ordinary people just assume, often correctly, that the rich got rich by manipulation of such networks and not through economic productivity. In such an environment, socialism just seems like a way to expand the patron-client model to the whole of society. It appears to be a means in which ordinary people can get fairly plugged into the patronage network that distributes the wealth of society.
The trouble for socialist is that patronage networks are actually largely economically parasitic. They don’t create wealth but merely force a redistribution of it from the productive to the powerful (and their clients.) It is a pre-industrial system that assumes that wealth, in the form of land, is a fixed constant. Patronage networks can manage the economic price signals necessary to create, run and expand a modern industrial economy. Creating a socialist replacement for patronage networks simply creates another economic parasite that will eventually kill the host leaving the entire society more poor.
We’ve seen this pattern over and over again in the Spanish speaking world. Worse, socialism usually just gets added to the existing patronage network system instead of completely displacing it as the socialist theorist imagined. The country ends up with the worst of both systems.
I think these cultures will have a hard time escaping this trap. Nobody can just ignore the patronage networks and expect to get anything done but by playing the patronage game, they get co-opted into the system. True reform, such as real rule of law, is very hard to implement because you have to use the tools of the old system in order to get the power needed to change the system.
Manipulation of their networks. I like it. So, this is how Washington works.
When you say “Spanish cultures” do you mean Catholicism? Look at any majority Catholic country…Mexico, Philippines, all of South America, Italy, France, Portugal, Haiti, Cuba, Ireland….socialist or corrupt basket cases all. Majority Protestant countries however…
Just sayin
The nations with Catholic pluralities — Switzerland, Germany, the United States, Canada, Australia — seem to do the best.
The labor minister blamed “the neo-conservative thinking preached by U.S. President George W Bush
I just knew George Bush had something to do with this.
Spain needs urgently a Tea Party movement, or equivalent… a Calimocho Fiesta, lol.
The spaniards are good for partying all around, you don’t know what’s the concept of fiesta till you go to a spanish fiesta. But they are also, under capitalistic conditions, a very hard working people. That’s what I observed during the Aznar years, everybody was speaking about their good future, the projects, the jobs their bussiness and production. Aznar made one error: he designed Rajoy as sucessor (the Right doesn’t have primaries). The feeble Rajoy just made everybody go and vote to the charismatic left fool Zapatero.
Now with a Socialist economy (higher taxes and regulations than Aznar period) is normal for a spanish to turn off the working side and keep the partying side on. That’s how a spanish Atlas shrugs.
Are you serious? Do you know what a socialist economy is? Please, stop kidding or take some book about economics. Zapatero hasn’t increased regulation nor taxes. It’s just the opposite thing: among other reforms, he removed direct taxes such as the wealth tax. He decreased dismissal cost. He privatized profitable public companies. And he also raised the age for retirement.
Spain has been in a pure capitalist economy for the last 60 years. We can now see the result. And it’s not bolsheviks’ fault.
The comparison to Obama and the Democrats is obvious – equally promising everything to everyone. And blaming ‘others’ – whether it’s the GOP or the amorphous rich (who are actually, Democrats) for crises in money. Focusing on ‘no work’ (unions seek higher returns for less work). Focusing on the ambiguities of ‘rights’ for everything without any work or responsibilities.
Thankfully, Spain can rely on taxes from workers with all those high paying “green jobs”…..just as soon as they return from their Post Vacation Syndrome disabilities.
If it works there, Obama said it will work here.
Problem is, nobody WORKS there! 40%+ unemployment among the young???
My god, they’ll have a bigger problem on their hands shortly than their
mounting debt crisis!
Unless they keep them all with just enough money to keep partying!!!
Carolannie:
I bet they miss the days when they could repair the “imperialist” fleet and all those “imperialist” tourists spent millions vacationing in Spain. Ha!
Looks like the Chinese and the Arabs are not that prone to spending their money there. Like they say there: “que con su pan se lo coman” (fits them right!)
A vert important point: most of public spenduing isn’t under control of the central government, it is in the hands of regional governements (the state still collects the tawes so it is the state who is seen as the entity who deprives citizens of their money). These are hugely corrupt, even bv Spanish criteria, anad they aren’t going to reduce their huge deficits any time soon. In addition in order to buy the support of the nationalists against the opposition Zapatero has given huge privileges both in power and financial to Catalonia and Basque country. Furthermore “since being nationalist pays” even the right wing party, who in times of Azbnar was pro Spain’s unity has been funding regionalist movements in those regions it controls. From instancde it is creating out of thin air a regional language in regions who have spoken Castilian since well before America’s discovery, and having history rewritten in such way it encourages hate towards Spain. Thos goes still farther in reguions controlled by the socialists.
“……and having history rewritten in such way it encourages hate towards Spain.”
What? Spaniards hating Spaniards? That’s as bad as Americans hating America. Thank God, that could never happen here.
Envision a Texas where childrena re teached in the school they are not Americans but Texans. That Texeas was united to the United States after an invasion win which the Yanks killed a gazillion Texan civilaisn. And that Texas has a different language in which “you” is written “ya”.
SWEET!
Or wait: he might be trying to make us consider that a BAD thing. Ah, well.
I think culture need to be respected to the extent it doesn’t bring harm to humanity. This case of Spanish culture of bulls and people trying to do their thing is a bit risky but i will not talk about it.Let me say that a government failure to manage economic issues should not be blamed on culture. For example here in my country(check my IP) many people are rich, corruption is up and lots of money go untaxed. Should you blame our culture, i don’t think so.
The moral of the story:
Stop electing weak pseudo-conservative Republicans – they always are followed by even worse Democrat/Socialists. Hoover>FDR Nixon/Ford>Carter W>Obama. Arguably the three most damaging presidencies in our Republic’s history made problems under weak-kneed Repubs much worse.
@JFM
I don’t think you know much about medieval Spanish history, or how autonomies work in Spain. Although there’s much corruption in many of them and they’re in huge deficit problems, precisely the “historical” ones (Basque Country and Spain) are the ones in better shape and doing the biggest efforts towards fiscal solvency, and are also the ones that will eventually pull Spain out of this huge mess.
Also, both Basque language and Catalan language are several hundred years older than Castilian (or “Spanish” as it is known nowadays). So get your facts straight before writing about that.
Sir Sefirot: there was no such thing as a Basque language until the 20th century. Basque language differs from village to village just like Italian dialects do. The current “language” taught as Basque is an arbitrary mix that nearly no one speaks at home. Same goes for the Catalan language. Which one do you refer to? There are different dialects in Valencia, Andorra, Catalonia, and the Islands. Should this seniority system be applied across the board then Spaniards should speak Bable or –Heavens forbid– Arabic. The Roman settlers already spoke a Hispanic kind of Latin mixed with Carthaginian and then came the Celtic tribes, the Goths, the Normans, the Arabs… All of them added their bit. Save for a few documents saved from the Middle Ages NO ONE knows which variety started first. The Carmen Campidoctoris was written at the edge when Latin and Arabic were still in use. No one disputes that it is written in Castillian. Are there any surviving literary works of comparable age in Catalan? NO, just a few homilies and poems, something common to many minor dialects across Europe, like Occitan of which Catalan is a close cousin. The truth is Castillian is spoken by 600+ million people and Catalan by a lot less. Linguists in Spain are mostly leftovers from a Socialist past that want to stick it to Franco. In my opinion Franco did a good job except when he chose that clown Juan Carlos to be king in place of Don Juan de Borbón.
Catino – Small historical correction to your post; the Celts were in Spain long before any Roman legions arrived there. And, if the current crop of jihadists have their way Spain will be speaking Arabic and worshiping in mosques.The Al Qaida bunch is serious when they say that Spain must be returned to Islam and the Saudis, who have the money to get the job done, are sponsoring mosque building in Spain. In fact there is a return to Islam going on in Spain amongst the native Spanish population, many of whom are descended from the Moriscos. When I was in Granada in ’03 I was amazed to see a mosque there. Ferdinand must be turning over in his grave.
My dear JFM and Catimo: please don’t give up your day jobs to practice linguistics.
Before 1600, the English language was just as varied and decentralized as pre-20th century Basque. However, no one would dream of arguing that there was no such language as English before that time! Also, Modern Hebrew was undeniably “constructed” by Eliezer ben-Yehuda, in a more far-reaching manner than Sabino Arana managed: is modern Hebrew ipso facto not a language, then?
MOST “standard dialects” are something less than organic replications of household speech. However, there is nothing spurious about devising such a standard. Not just Basque and Italian, as you mentioned, but MANY modern European languages (especially in eastern Europe) have a literary standard that was established in hopes of compromising between heterogeneous local variants. Czech, Ukrainian, Rumanian, the list goes on. Each could be considered “an arbitrary mix that nearly no one speaks at home” … but only by a linguistically ignorant speaker who had an axe to grind against the speakers of that language, or their autonomy.
What’s more, every reputable linguist on the planet agrees that Catalan and Occitan are languages in their own right–in fact, the two are more closely related to each other than Catalan is to Castilian, or Occitan to French. They are generally regarded as a separate Romance sub-family, much like Rumanian/Vlach, Portuguese/Galician, and the Rhaeto-Romance languages (Switzerland & N. Italy).
I swear I am not exaggerating: the only people on planet Earth who question the independent nature of these languages are Spanish and French chauvinists, brothers in spirit to the imperial Russians and Soviets who would periodically deny the existence/validity of Ukrainian, Belarussian, the Baltic languages, etc (many of which were first written down far later than Catalan and Basque!).
Spain’s got plenty of problems, but let’s kindly refrain from language crankery in diagnosing them.
Mr La Craquere
I suppose it is me who has axes to grind and not the people who tell children t report about professors who speak spanish (doesn’t remind you about Pavlik Morozov?), who punish children for apseking Spanish, who teach them maths in catalan or Basue thus placing those of castilian-speaking at heavy disadavantage, who fine 200,00$ (two hundred thousand dollars) to the shop oweners whose shops advertise ion Spanish, who yell at tourists who happen to ask for their directions in Spanish, who beat either through the reguialr police or through SA-like groups people whop were celebrating Spain’s victory at soccer’s world cup, who ban theaters of dsiaplayiong movies in Spanish (when people have choice the version in Spanish gets about 30, that is thirty times more spectators) or who squander millions of dolalrs (dollars stolen to the astiian speakers to promote hate.
But you are rioght I have an axe to grind against fascist. For my day job, unlike you I have agood one and unlike you don’t need to sell my soul to some Propaganda Staffel.
Spoken like a stable chap, with no axes to grind whatsoever!
But seriously, JFM, even if your illustrations are 100% accurate (I couldn’t say), nothing you said changes the linguistic facts one iota, or alters the status of Catalan, Occitan, etc., as languages. The Catalonians could eat babies for breakfast, and it wouldn’t alter the structure, history, and nature of the Catalan language. I can’t imagine what it is about your post that you believe qualifies it as some sort of response to mine.
And I’ve never heard of a “Propaganda Staffel,” but are you implying that they have some sort of goods-for-souls racket? What are the exchange rates? I’d at least like to be on their mailing list.
Seńtilde;or Sefrot I mistakenly posted my reply to your post in thread #1
@22
The fourth line should read “the “historical” ones (Basque country and Catalonia)”.
In a fit of post-modern hysteria,Spain voted itself a clueless,freedom-hating Obama clone.Now Spain’s unemployment rate exceeds that of third world countries,as their economy dies,and their culture is destroyed by pc multiculturalism.Does this sound familiar? Adios Espana;Adios USA.
It’s important to note that both the USA and Spain were both destroyed by fraudulent economic booms fueled by real estate speculation , energized by statist subsidies.In the US, the feckless fools and greedy speculators voted in a latent stalinist dictator, in the hope that he would pay off their mortgages and rescue them from their greed.By the time he’s through, unemployed squatters will reclaim the hundreds of thousands of abandoned,unsold homes in a replay of the Hoovervilles of the thirties.The moral squalor of the average Obama voter,will be remembered by historians as the factor which destroyed the republic.
ISLAM AND SPAIN: THE LEGACY OF INCOMPETENCE
=====================
Actually, Spain’s current trouble can all be traced back to the time when Islam “ruled” in Spain.
The same year that Spain expelled all Moslems, C C discovered America ushering in The Golden Era for Hispania. That must mean and say something.
Zapatero (whose name, by the way, means “cobbler” or “shoe repairman”) should take some lessons from the Caliphs of Andalucia.
“Hombre, there is nothing wrong with spain, man (hic), damn, i’m trippin, where’s the train to ibiza amigo???”
the earthquake took out the causeway.
LOL ‘socialists’ my a$$; they’re hard core trotskyite commies, look at the guy who’s about to take over for the shoefixingboy (zapatero) with his fine family of goths, the ‘minister’ ot interior Rubacalba. Socialist doesn’t even come close to describing that moron.
Socialism did to Spain, what socialism does everywhere where moronic fools and delusionists tried it: decadence and decay.
I don’t find a difference between the two …socialism and communism is the same thing to me. maybe different levels of maturity but still just government control.
and both bad.
Socialists tend to accept to step down when they lose elections. Notice that just because a party has “socialist” in its name doesn’t mean it accepts democracy. For instance Spain’s socialist party before Spanish Civil War defintely didn’t and only differnce with Commnist Party was teh fact it didn’t accept to be ruled from Moscow. Spain’s socialst didn’t rally to democacrcy until the early seventies.
socialist tend to step down. …only if they don’t have the thugs in place to stay on. ..maybe I could have worded it differently.
I don’t doubt that socialist would go as far as Stalin did if they could get away with it.
Look at Wisconsin. how far down the road the socialist have taken the west.
the USA is damn close to the tipping point.
Which country is next after Spain? My money (pun intended) is on New Zealand – very similar situation, what’s left of the middle class population invested heavily in finance companies, and real estate over the last decades. The finance companies have gone bust, real estate stagnant and all signs pointing to an imminent crash.
Manufacturing has mostly been outsourced to overseas, and the best and the brightest have left for Australia (which by contrast with New Zealand is performing very well) so there is little innovation, again, as in Spain.
As soon as “the international investment community” will notice, that will be it… Well you read it here first folks…
The next is Portugal (failing already) then NZ (good call)
I guess this is why my cousin likes being a missionary in Spain. The people are now begining to realize that there is more to church than the catholic church. Their government is a disaster as is the rest of Europe.
And the “old time religion”( a variant of the lie that is christianty) is going to save them? Please!
I lived and worked in Spain 4 years – from 1982-86. What the article describes is all too true. Even the name of their ruling party reminds one of Hitler’s party: PSOE = Partido Socialista de Obreros Espanol versus German National-Socialist Workers Party. The article does not mention the “green energy” debacle caused by the eco-nazis in the socialist government. Thousands of wind turbines whine through the night producing little electricity that costs enormously more at unnecessary times. Just like in the times of Don Quijote.
Give me thirty experienced treeplanters from British Columbia and we will average 30K trees a day in the varied terrain of Spain. Zap needs to gear up the nurseries, then call Dirk in New Westminster.
Paja(ma) mental is what you have… I’m so sorry for you… what a bunch of bullshit you wrote.
Pues en Spain pensamos que es culpa de los poderes económicos y su ansia de enriquecerse por cualquier medio.
really misinformated on the laboral market, and poor researched. In Spain jobs are paid less than 1000 euro/month for the 80% of people who have a job. There are many non paid extra hours and 40 years mortgages. Madrid 40-60 meters flat rent may cost around 800 euro/month, and house prices around 200.000-300.000 euro in a “standard class” zone. And with real salary decreasing and work condition getting much worse because people have fear to lose their jobs. 85% of people here are flat buyers and have to pay their mortgage without the possibility to cancel it by returning the house to the bank like in USA. There are no expectative for a worker to have perspective to achieve a better job or position inside the company. But the opposite. Gasoline is 3 times the price of USA. Universitary workers earn less money than non qualified workers. A BSc engineering earn 800 euro. A MD in a private geriatry clinic 1700 euro. A BSc in nurse or physiotherapy 1100 euro. The rest of university titulations have almost no expectative of achive a job, because this is a country without qualified industry.
So the only benefit here is to get a month of peace with your family before back to the reality and laboral and economic position is really poor without any expectative. Some good points on your text, but really misinformated on laboral market.
PJ Media » How Postmodern Socialism Destroyed Spain I was recommended this blog by my cousin. I am not sure whether this post is written by him as no one else know such detailed about my trouble. You’re wonderful! Thanks! your article about PJ Media » How Postmodern Socialism Destroyed SpainBest Regards SchaadAndy