Though Spain’s economic forecasts often make international headlines, its political forecasts rarely do. When the outgoing President, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, brought the general election forward from March next year to November this year, he placed Spain at the beginning of a long year of elections, to be followed by the French Presidentials in May [...]

The President of the Government of Spain, aka Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero today announced that Spain would hold the legislative elections on November 20th.These elections were originally going to take place in March 2012. The Socialist (PSOE) candidate is Alfredo Rubalcaba (left) and Conservative (PP) candidate is Mariano Rajoy. I’m going to write [...]

Don’t be fooled by those that say the Spanish Government was a disaster. Over at the El País newspaper, we have an excellent analysis of the 20 most important (and sometimes controversial) pieces of legislation that has been introduced by Zapatero as President of the Government of Spain since 2004. Off you go! FacebookTwitter Wikio [...]

In response to the news that the government is to cede control of key airports in Spain, Controllers of the airports of Madrid-Barajas, Palma de Mallorca-Son Sant Joan and Canary Islands abandon their workplaces at 5PM, completely paralysing Spanish Civil aviation. The Ministry of Defence, taking emergency responsibilities awarded by the Government, is to replace [...]

As predicted, the conservative CiU (Convergence and Union) won the elections in Catalunya, with the worst bofetada (literally meaning a slap in the face) ever for the PSC (Catalan Socialist Party). Mas, leader of the CiU,  is just 6 short of a majority in the Parliament of Catalunya. Probably the best option for him is [...]

This is without doubt a new era in politics. The end of a Labour decade, the Liberals are back in government, and of course the start of a coalition. The Education Secretary’s disastrous mishandling over the Building Schools for the Future program posed the question of how long the government’s honeymoon will last and there [...]

I’m typing this from a hostel in Lisbon, so allow me to be brief. As I mentioned in my previous post on the Spanish economy, the President of the Government Zapatero canceled all his appointments, meetings and visits in order to present himself to the Congress of Deputies (the Parliament). Congress met specifically to debate [...]

While the new Lib Tory (others prefer to call it Con Dem) government settles in and blames the outgoing government with ambiguous comparisons to Greece, I think I should draw attention to Spain. Over the last few months living in Madrid, I’ve been in the thick of Spanish economic news and though I’m not an economist, I [...]

The government is in trouble, its President is struggling with a huge crisis, so the Spanish conservative party, El Partido Popular is getting excited. However, its leader, Mariano Rajoy, has hardly been seen in public over the past few weeks, since the government announced its policy to reform pensions. Though his PP followers are putting [...]

Zapatero, President of the Government of Spain was on top form last night in Malaga, where he made a surprisingly powerful speech to party members. Play it through, even if you don’t understand Spanish. ZP has been the centre-left President of the Government since 2004, and has been fiercely criticised over the fact that Spain has been [...]