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Spain is a country with huge problems. But it is not a failed state. You should try Venezuela if you want to get the flavour of failure. In any case, Spain is v

• Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  > Spain is a country with huge problems Any sources or further reading?
  • arcturus17 6y ago
    Start with The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas. It provides good context on what led the country to civil war in 1936, and many of the problems unfortunately prevail nowadays. EDIT: I see I'm being downvoted, but I stand by my words. I'll provide more context though. The Spanish Civil War is the pivotal moment in Spanish history in the 20th century and explains a lot of what Spain is nowadays - from the state of autonomías (autonomous regions), to the bitter divide between Left and Right, or the total inability to reach national agreements on education and other strategic matters. Aside from that it's an authoritative and engrossing read.
  • Arkhaine_kupo 6y ago
    Sadly anywhere you look. But if you want something interesting I will name 3 interesting cases that have shown up in the last few years. ERE case andalucia, essentially EREs are just the spanish name for furlough but it also includes things like early retirement. Well in Andalucia since 2001 until 2009 a case of local politicians managed to corruptly send up to 680 million to themselves and family members. This is the largest corruption case in Spanish history in terms of money. Equally news worthy, the opposite political party (we mostly have two) had a case themselves where the tresurer Luis Barcenas was found to have 40 million on a Swiss account which he claimed he used to pay political leaders in Spain bonuses and that the money came from big companies that would bride them to give them public contracts. Essentially the american lobbying but in a country were its illegal. And lastly there is the case of the Cajas. Cajas are a spanish version of savings banks. They are meant to be small, local, have low risk accounts for worker savings etc. Problem was many had politicians in their boards who would make the requirements for credit much lower, so they could finance public pharaonic architecture that would get them reelected. (Due to this Spain has several unused, someone built them and no plane every landed or took off from them). This opened the gates not only for those politicians but for everyone to get credit incredibly easy which is one of the reasons Spain was incredibly hardly hit in 2008, and one of the reasons it's one of the few countries that has not recovered the loans given to banks.
    • pqs 6y ago
      You can also add al the Pujol family scandals too. Unfortunately, there are corruption cases all over the political spectrum in Spain.
  • nhnhhnl 6y ago
    It's not, really, I've been living through most of Europe and Spain's quality of life is way above average, there's literally no homeless (except for people with mental health issues or foreigners) low/middle class people buy properties, there's development in every industry, etc. Edit: Downvoter care to explain? Please check this [1] NUTS 2 official data, half of Spain is above half of Germany [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/GDP_per_capita_in_NUTS_2_EU_regions.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/GDP_per_...
    • Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
      Maybe because those things don't directly have anything to do with country being corrupt, which was the question? There could be some indirect connection, but corruption and quality of life are not exactly the same things.
      • melenaboija 6y ago
        A corrupt enough country would not be able to protect people as Spain does. Public services are paid with public money, if there is no money there are no services and as far as I know there is still public health and education and equal opportunitieas for (almost) everybody. A lot of corruption there anyway.
  • joncrane 6y ago
    Start with the links at the bottom of OP's article and go from there!