Collateral Damage

The look on María Teresa Fernández de la Vega's face says it all. After all, she is going to have to quickly convert all that skill at emitting platitudes and spouting good news that she has developed as President Zapatero's official spokesperson for the last six years to the task of explaining fiscal reality to a socialist polity that continues to think nobody has to pay for Spain's share of this decade's debt paradise.

The reader might take a moment to imagine the government's position. Faced with the bond market's visceral reaction to a preposterous rumour that a 280 billion euro bailout package was being prepared for Spain (carried by Le Figaro, leading us to believe it was placed by someone in a high place wishing to give this country a test ride in the new world order), the Spanish contingent returned from the weekend's Ecofin get-together knowing that the days of diálogo social and consenso were over.

Blind-sided by the possibility that Mr. Zapatero was actually doing something - thus killing their plan to allow him to self-immolate in the approach to 2012 elections - the right-wing opposition PP's first reaction to the president's announcement that civil service salaries are to be cut an average of five percent was to close ranks with the trade unions and IU (no bother that this party is the living vestige of the Spanish communists) and declare that ZP was trampling on the 'social rights' of Spaniards.

The two pictures on the left will help the reader imagine a barricade of burning tires manned by UGT leader Cándido Méndez and ex-PP minister, Eduardo Zaplana.

This morning, Zapatero was meeting with the above Mr. Méndez and the head of the other big national syndicate, Ignacio Fernández Toxo. The president is not seeking consensus and will not be backing down. If, however, he feels like he's losing ground in the fight that's sure to ensue, he can always threaten to sic Leire Pajín on them.

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