Spain: We don’t owe, we won’t pay...

The impact on the Spanish people of the financial crisis and austerity gets steadily worse. Social and economic rights are systematically violated to prioritise debt repayments. As banks are bailed out, public debt increases, and in order to meet deficit limits imposed by the EU social spending is cut. The 2013 budget provides for a 34 per cent increase in debt interest payments, more than £32 billion, at the same time that health expenditure is being cut by 22 per cent, education by 18 per cent and the women’s equality budget by 35 per cent. The consequence is greatly increasing poverty and inequality.

Almost 1.4 million people received food aid in Spain during 2012. There has been an unprecedented increase in child poverty, with 27 per cent of children living in households below the poverty line (up from 13 per cent in 2010). Unemployment has reached 25 per cent (5.7 million people), rising to 50 per cent among the young. About 1.7 million families have no one in work, leading to huge difficulties in paying bills, especially mortgages. There are now more than 500 evictions a day, leading to an epidemic of eviction-related suicides.

These are some of the realities that can help us picture the human disaster behind the economic crisis and austerity. Beyond this foreground of despair and vulnerability, though, there lies an increasingly combative civil society that refuses meekly to accept what is being inflicted upon it. Full story...

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