Posted on 04/27/2012 7:46:52 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
The number of unemployed people reached 5,639,500 at the end of March, with the unemployment rate hitting 24.4%, the national statistics agency said. The figures came hours after rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Spanish sovereign debt. Official figures due out on Monday are expected to confirm that Spain has fallen back into recession. Earlier this week, the Bank of Spain said the economy contracted by 0.4% in first three months of this year, after shrinking by 0.3% in the final quarter of last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Looks like Spain is a great place to be FROM!
I remember a few years ago when they said it was a great place to retire...
I guess the Spanish just don’t know how to spin the numbers like our American socialist overlords.
Wow......if you can get 5.64 million hits, you’d better be in the big leagues making some serious scratch.
Viva Franco!
They had some tough economic times under him (the West isolated him until Cold War needs required we reach out to him), but they were certainly better off than now. Spain was Spanish under him, now it is inundated with foreign “guest workers” as the post-Christian Spaniards have stopped breeding.
From 1959 until his death, only Japan had higher economic growth than Spain....like Pinochet, Franco eventually listened to the free market economists, and instituted reforms.
“Can someone who’s an expert in Spanish history educate me on how the Spaniards are better off now than they were under Francisco Franco?”
They aren’t, and they know it; their brief flirtation with socialism was caused by anti-war resentment, and it has taken quite a toll.
Franco saved Spain. He also saved 200,000 Jews from the Gas Chambers during WWII....but the lefties who work overtime to besmirch his good name will never tell you that.
I have family that left in the early 1960s for financial reasons; it was difficult to make a living in the countryside. They supported his ideas, and do to this day, but farm life was tough (as it was in many countries - the parcels of land often shrink as each generation further divides up the family lands). They came from large families, and left their land in the hands of a few family members (who could prosper with them when combined with their own). They still own property there.
Franco knew the war had origins in the large disparity between the upper and lower class (the working class of the cities supported the socialists, anarchists, and communists, though the countryside supported the generals), and he ensured that there was more opportunity. He also was happy to let those who disagreed with him simply leave.
He was also our ally in the Cold War against the Soviets. He agreed to let Eisenhower put American military bases in Spain. How did he treat his dissidents? Did he kill them or did he allow them to leave Spain? Did he treat them any worse than the Soviet government treated their dissidents? I know of no “iron curtain” that prevented anti-Francoists from escaping to either Portugal or France.
Krugman, Maher etc want the US to be just like the EU.
A glimpse at our future.
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