…of course, not counting the first 11 years of my life, spent in Communist Poland.
But since coming to Denmark in 1972 I have lived only in Western democracies, and of those, the current Spanish government led by Zapatero is even more incompetent than the Danish government of Anker Jørgensen, like Zapatero a well-meaning Social Democrat who simply was not up to the job and gave up power in 1982. However, Jørgensen had the redeeming feature of being a genuinely nice and modest man who refused to move to the Prime Minister’s residence, preferring to remain in his modest apartment in a working-class area of Copenhagen.
Zapatero, on the other hand, has pretentions. Right now he is in Davos, trying to be an important statesman. Tonight, he will discuss alternative models of world government which such great thinkers as the heads of government of Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico and South Africa (notice the absence of the leaders of any serious countries?).
Meanwhile, Spain has the highest unemployment in the EU at 20%, its savings banks (which have lent 375 billion Euro to the people who have built all those empty beachfront apartments) are about to collapse, even the most optimistic predictions still have GDP shrinking in 2010 while the rest of the world recovers from recession, and Zapatero is the laughing stock of Europe for trying to lecture other countries how they should manage the crisis (in case you’re curious, it involves more talks and consensus seeking with unions, employers and other “social partners”; what it does not involve is bold policies of any kind).
I love living in Spain. The people, the culture, the lifestyle, the weather, the landscape–all are wonderful. But I despair over the low quality of the political life in this country. Because the sad truth is that while Zapatero is incompetent, the behaviour of the conservative opposition and its leader Mariano Rajoy does not exactly inspire confidence either.
Eventually Spain will exit recession, but not through its own efforts. It will happen when the Brits, Germans, Dutch and other northern Europeans again have enough spare cash to come and spend it here. In that way, we are like a third world country, utterly dependent on selling its commodities to richer nations. In Spain’s case, besides some winter vegetables, those commodities are the sea and the sunshine. Sad.