Spain: A Hairy Situation

But is everything solved for España, the fourth Eurozone economy, after being urgently bailed out in 2012?

Verbal buzz is the best publicity anyone can get, even in politics. But the negative version also exists. And that Dark Side of the Force, so to say, can be uncontrollable. As Greece approaches Grexit by the hour, an off-putting grumble steers investors away, making Spain emerge by comparison as a tantalizing possibility. Tsipras and Varoufakis have now become, unknowingly, Spain’s best marketing managers.

But, is everything solved for España, the fourth Eurozone economy, after being urgently bailed out in 2012? To begin with, President Rajoy has never admitted the rescue and insists on calling it a “loan”. From the start of the Eurozone debt crisis, Spain ?its whopping unemployment rate eased from 27% to just below 24%? has been among EU’s most painful headaches. Still pegged in financiers’ minds as a peripheral failure, it is now said to be growing faster than ever since its downfall, outranking even UK. Consumer spending increased by more than 2% last year. Department stores reported the best Christmas in recent times and car sales were 18% higher than the previous year.

Spanish economy is resurfacing at a rate of 3%, but that alone cannot ensure Rajoy’s victory at the local elections slotted for the end of May, nor at the general elections due at year’s end. Polls are now evenly spread between conservatives in power, socialists, liberal maverick Ciudadanos and near-communist Podemos. The latest corruption scandal has gone international: Rodrigo Rato, former IMF director and previous deputy PM and finance minister, was briefly arrested on charges of tax evasion and money-laundering. At this hectic pace, reality is unpredictable from one day to the next. And what are Spaniards chattering about on Twitter? Well, Queen Letizia’s new bob haircut. She, at least, is applying austerity measures.