As Spain has moved closer to what looks increasingly like economic disaster, there have been a couple of surprising - even heartening - moves by the country’s senior politicians lately. One was the announcement made by Socialist leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba that his party offered its full support to the conservative government going into the key European summit in Brussels on June 28. This rare instance of political unity was accompanied by an unusual show of stark public honesty by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. “We can’t finance ourselves at these levels of interest much longer,” said the man who had denied that Spain would request a bank bailout days before it did so, and who said he … [Read more...] about Spain’s true crisis isn’t economic, it’s institutional
judiciary
Payback time for Spain’s top judge Carlos Dívar
Carlos Dívar, the president of Spain’s Supreme Court, finally resigned on June 21 after allegations last month that he used public money to pay for up to 32 private trips to Marbella and other destinations. But the 70-year-old has refused to accept the misconduct accusations, simply telling the 20 members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), the judicial oversight board of which he was appointed president in 2008 — and from which he will also be standing down — that he was “unaware of any wrongdoing”, acknowledging instead that the situation had become “unbearable”. Fellow judge José Manuel Gómez Benítez accused Divar on May 8 of spending €5,000 from his expenses account on … [Read more...] about Payback time for Spain’s top judge Carlos Dívar
Garzón, the PP, and a Byzantine justice system
As growing numbers of people around the world will know by now, investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón is in hot water. The man best-known for having ordered the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in 1998 is being investigated by his colleagues in the Supreme Court on three counts. If found guilty, his career will be over. There is something of a whiff of conspiracy about this sudden fall from grace. The first investigation is into accusations that he dropped tax fraud charges against executives of Banco Santander in return for $302,000-worth of sponsorship by the bank for a series of lectures on human rights he gave at New York University in 2003. This hearing is currently underway. The … [Read more...] about Garzón, the PP, and a Byzantine justice system