It’s not easy for any politician to be told he is a “political corpse.” But when the person saying this has just saved your skin it’s particularly hard to digest. So when Spain’s prime minister now looks at Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida, spokesman for the centre-right Catalan CiU grouping, it is with mixed feelings. CiU ensured José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s €15-billion austerity package went through Congress on May 27 by abstaining during the vote. The abstention meant the governing Socialists’ 169 deputies scraped the measures through, with 168 voting against. The Catalan conservatives justified their abstention by insisting that while they did not agree with all the measures, the … [Read more...] about Zapatero’s summer of discontent