Spain in Agony

[C. Flower]

Richard Fitzpatrick reports from Barcelona - the type of event that we have heard about happening in Greece - but unemployment in Spain is even higher and cuts are hitting people who have nothing to fall back on.

Spain is slipping into despair as unemployment rates in the under 25s reach 52%. Overall unemployment is twice that of Ireland’s.

A FEW WEEKS ago in the northern part of Barcelona, a 74-year-old man killed his son in the Sant Andreu graveyard. It was 11.30am. The sun had already announced that it was another hot day in the city. The graveyard was quiet, with only a few people in attendance, none of whom witnessed the murder.

The man’s son, who was aged 46 and confined to a wheelchair, was severely mentally disabled. After he shot him, the man turned the gun on himself. They were by the vault of his wife, the mother of his disabled son. She had died a week beforehand.

The family, according to El País and other Spanish press reports, was in severe financial straits. The man left a note explaining the reasons for the murder and his suicide. In it, he wrote that he could no longer take care of his son who was in such a debilitating condition.

A few months earlier, a 56-year-old disabled woman in Malaga, who was facing eviction, threw herself to her death off the eleventh-floor balcony of her apartment building while over 100 onlookers, including police and the fire brigade, looked on in vain.

The article describes the shocking effects of the crisis on vulnerable people and also the beginning of resistance - food raid, and break in to absentee estates by trade unionists.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifesty...in-209209.html

[Dr. FIVE]

The scenes are just remarkable at the moment. We're so far away from this

[C. Flower]

The scenes are just remarkable at the moment. We're so far away from this

Not on the same scale yet. The people here who are desperate are self-employed without income and immigrants not eligible for benefits. They are invisible people.

[Dr. FIVE]

A long way off I think. Spain, Greece etc will provide useful examples and outcomes for us to study but I dont think Ireland will be joining any European wide struggle like we're seeing. It will be an Irish solution in the end. It will continue to bubble away but will take some event knowing our history and I dread to think what moment that will be if Im honest.

Could be another generation at the rate we are going

[Newsy]

Richard Fitzpatrick reports from Barcelona - the type of event that we have heard about happening in Greece - but unemployment in Spain is even higher and cuts are hitting people who have nothing to fall back on.



The article describes the shocking effects of the crisis on vulnerable people and also the beginning of resistance - food raid, and break in to absentee estates by trade unionists.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifesty...in-209209.html

It truly is shocking what is happening. The agony of these people, feeling that there is no other out......

[The Moth]

Not on the same scale yet. The people here who are desperate are self-employed without income and immigrants not eligible for benefits. They are invisible people.

There are a lot of suicides amongst small business owners that go unreported. I have been at three suicide funerals recently . All good people trying their best but seeing no way forward. People blaming themselves, not seeing the bigger picture which is that their failed business is a causalty of poor or no government policies. There is a sense of despair out there but a proud people prefer a private death to protest. I think it will change when there is a critical mass of people affected. Probably the eruption will come from the mortgage/negative equity people who are about to be crucified by more tax. Either way protest will come because this debt can never be paid. The government will need protests to give them the muscle to default. They are in denial at present.

[Saoirse go Deo]

How far off scenes like this are we?

It will take a major event to wake the Irish people up, something to light the spark.

[C. Flower]

There are a lot of suicides amongst small business owners that go unreported. I have been at three suicide funerals recently . All good people trying their best but seeing no way forward. People blaming themselves, not seeing the bigger picture which is that their failed business is a causalty of poor or no government policies. There is a sense of despair out there but a proud people prefer a private death to protest. I think it will change when there is a critical mass of people affected. Probably the eruption will come from the mortgage/negative equity people who are about to be crucified by more tax. Either way protest will come because this debt can never be paid. The government will need protests to give them the muscle to default. They are in denial at present.

I know that is the case and recently heard of the sad death of an old friend, a very capable, highly qualified woman, who it seems had reached the end of the road, financially, and couldn't find any way of continuing.
In the Famine, deaths were kept out of sight: the stigma of poverty here is particularly acute I think. People are referred to as scum and cut off from society very readily.

[Saoirse go Deo]

There are a lot of suicides amongst small business owners that go unreported. I have been at three suicide funerals recently . All good people trying their best but seeing no way forward. People blaming themselves, not seeing the bigger picture which is that their failed business is a causalty of poor or no government policies. There is a sense of despair out there but a proud people prefer a private death to protest. I think it will change when there is a critical mass of people affected. Probably the eruption will come from the mortgage/negative equity people who are about to be crucified by more tax. Either way protest will come because this debt can never be paid. The government will need protests to give them the muscle to default. They are in denial at present.

A couple of hundred years ago in Ireland, less even, foreign absentee landlords would charge tenants rents for land which far exceeded the value of any crops they could possibly grow. This forced the native Irish to live lives of absolute destitution, with no security or stability - everyone was in arrears so liable to be evicted without notice - where emigration was the only escape if you could somehow afford it. They spent their lives in debt. Exploited for the benefit of a foreign elite (and a domestic one which collaborated with the system, and indeed did much to impose and protect it, for monetary gain), forced to bear debts they should never have had to bear.

I often say this to people and ask would they stand for it today - the response is a universal "no". When I say that they would probably acquiesce to such treatment the response is sometimes heated - they'd burn the landlords out, they'd get a pike out of the thatch and revolt en masse against such cruelty. They'd be out on streets, they'd be agitators, revolutionaries. They wouldn't do nothing.

But isn't what is happening today very similar? The same cruelty and injustice of centuries past but with a kinder face and a less obvious human cost.

[Holly]

The Spanish people should have known what they were doing when they removed the socialists from power and replaced them with a right-wing free market party at their last election not long ago. They have no right to complain at what they brought on themselves by voting for the Popular Party. Quite similar to the Irish electing a right-wing free market Finne Gwael-led government and then complaining about lack of state investment in jobs and cut-backs in social services as well as taxing the poor.

[Apjp]

A long way off I think. Spain, Greece etc will provide useful examples and outcomes for us to study but I dont think Ireland will be joining any European wide struggle like we're seeing. It will be an Irish solution in the end. It will continue to bubble away but will take some event knowing our history and I dread to think what moment that will be if Im honest.

Could be another generation at the rate we are going

Maybe everyone will just leave like the last time out of economic need and the same thing will happen again in 30 years?

[fluffybiscuits]

There are a lot of suicides amongst small business owners that go unreported. I have been at three suicide funerals recently . All good people trying their best but seeing no way forward. People blaming themselves, not seeing the bigger picture which is that their failed business is a causalty of poor or no government policies. There is a sense of despair out there but a proud people prefer a private death to protest. I think it will change when there is a critical mass of people affected. Probably the eruption will come from the mortgage/negative equity people who are about to be crucified by more tax. Either way protest will come because this debt can never be paid. The government will need protests to give them the muscle to default. They are in denial at present.

The next budget will be the start of things. We will see a huge cut in income all around a spike in suicides. Anecdotally already there is a lot of people speaking about others they know of who committed suicide. Its unbelievable. I can see Spain becoming the next Greece and Ireland following. All the more reason we need a revolution now..

[PaddyJoe]

The Spanish people should have known what they were doing when they removed the socialists from power and replaced them with a right-wing free market party at their last election not long ago. They have no right to complain at what they brought on themselves by voting for the Popular Party. Quite similar to the Irish electing a right-wing free market Finne Gwael-led government and then complaining about lack of state investment in jobs and cut-backs in social services as well as taxing the poor.

Barking up the wrong tree there, Holly. Just like Ireland and so many other places the PSOE and the PP aren't hugely different.
A lot of Spanish people conflate the letters to make a one size fits all right of centre party.

[C. Flower]

After 350,000 evictions, and some tragic suicides, the Spanish Government is giving out confusing promises that things will change.

They don't seem to quite know how.

Surely time for Trade Unions to organise disciplined mass squatting of vacant property ?

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

No one is ever given sovereignty. It has to be taken. Then defended. And re-taken if removed. The only other default is a form of slavery of one kind or another.

The Icelandic poster who commented here on the Iceland threads; 'I'd rather be hungry and free than a fat slave'.