THE FIRST anniversary of the 15th May (15-M) movement in Spain, one of the spontaneous progenitors of “Occupy” groupings across the developed world, has coincided with yet another deepening of the country’s multiple crises. The significance of the 15-M “indignation” movement remains elusive. The big political parties of both left and right dismiss it as incoherent, demagogic and directionless.
Nevertheless, it has survived a year of political turmoil and last weekend’s demonstrations have shown that it is still capable of bringing many thousands of supporters peacefully on to the streets, right across the country.
Recent events have only exacerbated the protesters’ sense of grievance at a political system that facilitated a massive property bubble, then slashed public services to the bone, and now seems helpless to address a jobs crisis that leaves half Spain’s young people out of work. The conservative Partido Popular (PP) government, elected only last November, had assumed that its intensification of an already severe austerity programme would bring Spain’s economy under control and eventually lead to growth. The prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, had insisted that, in at least one respect, Spain was in a much stronger position than other troubled EU states: the banking sector was securely funded, and no public money would be needed to shore up its debts.
That position already looked shaky last February, when the government told the banks to set aside €54 billion against toxic property assets. It crumbled when Rajoy sanctioned the nationalisation of Bankia, Spain’s third-largest bank, last week. On Friday, his government instructed banks to set aside a further €30 billion against toxic assets. Predictably, these moves triggered interest rates on Spain’s 10-year bonds to rise to new levels, and the Ibex stock market to plummet.
It must be hoped that Spain’s two biggest banks, Banco Santander and BBVA, with their profitable interests in Latin America, and Spain’s strong export sector generally, will be sufficiently strong to stabilise the situation. But this is not Spain’s only crisis. The monarchy, long regarded as the glue of Spanish democracy, has recently lost much of its prestige. Meanwhile the Basque Country and Catalonia, two of Spain’s economic powerhouses, are expressing renewed demands for “sovereignty”, even independence.
If things were bad when the 15-M movement took to the streets in 2011, the intervening year has not improved them.