Spain looks north for a bailout.

The Spanish congresswoman Andrea Fabra Fernández had some words of encouragement for her prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, last week. Rajoy, of the conservative Popular party, managed in June to negotiate a $123 billion rescue package for Spain’s troubled banks. Unlike his Greek, Irish, and Portuguese predecessors in search of bailouts, Rajoy does not have to place his government under the tutelage of European Union authorities.

NEWSCOM

He is in a delicate position, nonetheless. Other European countries had to vote this week on the Spanish rescue, and they wanted some evidence that Spain was serious about fiscal discipline. Rajoy therefore passed $80 billion in austerity measures with the votes of only his own party. He raised sales taxes. He cut perquisites won by Spain’s trade unions, including the extra de Navidad, a Christmas bonus for state employees. He cut the maximum duration of unemployment benefits. It was when the catcalls from the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) grew the loudest that Fabra Fernández leapt to his defense. “Way to go, señor, way to go!” she was seen to shout from her seat in the Congress of Deputies. “F— ’em!”
It is possible that viewers misread Fabra’s lips. If not, then it is likely that she was referring only to her howling opposition colleagues, not to the vast legions of Spanish unemployed. But, really, it was too good to double-check, and when millions of protesting leftists poured into the streets of 80 Spanish cities on Thursday, a lot of them had Fabra’s words on their T-shirts and placards. The anger and composition of these Spanish mobs adds a fresh complication to Europe’s debt crisis.

Read more: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/forgive-us-our-debts_648835.html