Cortesía de la suscripción a
The Economist, con la que me agraciaron estas navidades:
La biblia del liberalismo, esa doctrina que dicen seguri a pies juntillas J. Lo y Jose María Aznar, dice que ZP es el líder europeo mejor valorado en su país, y que sus medidas son una bendición para el liberalismo. Tres grandes meritos le reconoce:
No estropear la marcha de la economía, desatascar las relaciones Gobierno central-regiones y modernizar la sociedad española plantando cara a la Iglesia.
Además augura que un PP en discordia no es un amenaza para la reelección.
Luego hace una lista de las amenazas y los problemas que quedan por resolver, sin dejar de notar que España es el miembro de la UE más activo a la hora de enfrentar los problemas de competitividad o inmigración.
Les casco el editorial y el artículo en profundidad:
Viva, Zapatero!
Jul 27th 2006
From The Economist print edition
An unexpected tale of success in Madrid
SELDOM can a European prime minister have had a less auspicious start. It was only days after al-Qaeda's Madrid train bombings on March 11th 2004 that the Socialists unexpectedly won an election in Spain, propelling their leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, into the top job. Mr Zapatero was inexperienced, ill-prepared and unprepossessing; he was nicknamed “Bambi”, as he often looked like a startled fawn caught in the headlights. His very first action was to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq, infuriating the Americans and provoking charges of appeasing terrorism.
How different it all looks today. No other European leader is as popular or as entrenched at home as Mr Zapatero. It is true that, under his predecessors, the European Union has for many years seen post-Franco Spain, like Ireland, as one of its great success stories: modern, democratic and increasingly prosperous. The Spaniards are masters at extracting money from Brussels. And they have carefully and gradually freed up an economy that was (and to an extent still is) unduly mired in red tape.
Mr Zapatero has added three achievements to this list. The first, and perhaps most important, was not to muck it all up. His experienced finance minister, Pedro Solbes, has kept the public accounts in order. The government has not succumbed to leftists' usual fondness for too much new regulation or interference in the labour market—indeed, unemployment, albeit still over 8%, is at its lowest for 25 years. Within the EU, Spain under Mr Zapatero has usually, if not always, been on the side of the liberalisers and in favour of the Lisbon Agenda to promote competitiveness—more so than the three other big euro members, France, Germany and Italy.
The prime minister's second achievement has been to tackle Spain's restive regions. His People's Party predecessor, José María Aznar, was positively Castilian in his determination to maintain Madrid's grip and refuse to negotiate. Yet Mr Zapatero quickly began to discuss a new deal with Catalonia. He also reached out to the Basques, even offering to talk to ETA if the terrorist group declared a permanent ceasefire. The People's Party pilloried him for giving in to the gun and, more generally, risking the break-up of Spain. Yet Mr Zapatero has now delivered a new statute for Catalonia that uses the word “nation” but stops short of self-determination, let alone independence. After securing his permanent ceasefire, he is also going to talk to ETA. The prospect of a settlement in the Basque country looks the best in a generation.
In all this, Mr Zapatero has faced relentless opposition from the People's Party, as he has in his third area of achievement: the modernisation of Spanish society. Before he arrived, the Catholic Church still held great sway in such matters as attitudes to sex or religious instruction in schools; and open debate about the Spanish civil war remained taboo. Mr Zapatero's government has passed some of the most liberal laws in Europe, including legalising gay marriage. He has also opened up debate about the civil war, in which his own grandfather was shot dead by nationalists. If it can come to terms with its past, Spain will surely be better able to face its future.
The economy, stupid
There are some causes for concern. As British experience in Northern Ireland suggests, talks with ETA may be long, painful and perhaps unsuccessful. Other regions may now insist on more autonomy. The church's hostility could damage the Socialists. Most worrying of all, Spain's prosperity is precarious: the current-account deficit is gaping, the economy is far too dependent on a boom in property and construction, inflation is rising and, locked inside the euro, Spanish industry is fast losing its competitiveness (see article).
The economy clearly needs more deregulation, not the fostering of national champions that Mr Zapatero has espoused. Yet overall he has proved a better prime minister than critics expected. The opposition People's Party is in disarray, so his party is well placed to win re-election in 2008. Other leaders, not least George Bush, with whom Mr Zapatero's relations remain frosty, should take note: this prime minister, presiding over the world's ninth-biggest economy, will be around for a while. He should be treated with due seriousness—despite that “appeasement” over Iraq.
Spain
Zappy happy on the beach
Jul 27th 2006 | MADRID
From The Economist print edition
Spain's much-maligned prime minister has reason for quiet satisfaction
SUMMER is not what it was in Madrid. Only a few years ago the Spanish capital ground to a halt every August, as offices, shops and bars closed for the entire month. This year, most of the city is planning to remain open. It is yet another sign that one of Europe's best-performing economies, with a decade of continuous growth under its belt, has ditched its old “siesta-and-fiesta” reputation.
One man who will be leaving Madrid is Spain's Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The political year is over and, as he hits the beaches in the Canary island of Lanzarote, he may reflect on several triumphs. The economy is powering on—GDP is expected to grow by almost 3.5% this year. The ticklish Catalan question appears to have been answered, with a bit of fudging, through a new autonomy statute. The Basque terrorist group, ETA, is sticking to its permanent ceasefire declared in the spring. A slew of socially liberal legislation, from gay marriage to fast-track divorce, has gone through parliament. To crown it all, Mr Zapatero's Socialist Party (PSOE) has a comfortable, if not huge, lead in the opinion polls.
In short, halfway through his first term in office, Mr Zapatero looks to be a man in control—and one who is increasingly likely to be re-elected in 2008. The leader once jokingly known as “Bambi” may thus be around for a long time to come. Yet he cannot afford to rest on his laurels. His political future may seem promising, but Spain's long-running economic boom is not quite so healthy.
Inflation is close to 4%, almost 1.5 points above the average for the euro area. Spain boasts one of the world's biggest current-account deficits, heading for over 9% of GDP. Cheap credit, a construction boom and domestic consumption, not investment, have been the main motors of growth. House prices, says a recent Goldman Sachs report, may be overvalued by as much as 25-35%. With euro interest rates rising, the housing bubble could well burst, pulling the rug out from under a construction sector that accounts for 16% of GDP and 12% of employment.
“If we weren't in the euro zone, our inflation and external deficit would already have produced recession and devaluation,” says Miguel Arias Cañete, economics spokesman for the opposition People's Party (PP). Economists are divided. Several are just as gloomy as Mr Arias Cañete. “We are not on a good path,” says Rafael Pampillón, of Madrid's Instituto de Empresa business school. “It has to come to an end, because we cannot keep building homes at this rate.” When the building stops, he says, the cycle by which construction fuels consumption, and vice versa, could be inverted: “the virtuous cycle becomes a vicious one.”
The trouble with warnings about an overheated Spanish economy is that they are starting to sound stale. Predictions of collapse in the housing market are at least three years old. Some economists now think that prices will simply flatten out, as they have elsewhere. “A soft landing similar to that experienced in the United Kingdom and in the United States seems the most probable scenario,” argues José Carlos Díez, chief economist at Intermoney, a stockbroker. Mortgage-holders have plenty of wiggle-room, he says, to extend payment periods. Spain's banks are robust enough to handle a rise in defaulters. Inflation may eat away at competitiveness, but immigrants have kept wages down, boosted social-security receipts and provided new, eager consumers. Another 650,000 immigrants arrived last year.
All the same, Mr Zapatero has little room for manoeuvre. He cannot devalue a currency, the euro, that is shared with 11 other countries. He cannot look to a sharp rise in interest rates to curb inflation, because rates are set by the European Central Bank, which must take into account the larger, more sluggish, economies of Germany and France. A tighter rein on public spending is another possible response, but the budget is already in surplus. “We are very aware of the importance of budget policy,” says David Vegara Figueras, deputy finance minister. “It is important that we do not throw on more gasoline.”
Does Spain have much time? Mr Pampillón predicts that the housing bubble, if it bursts, will do so in 2008. “We expect the slowdown to be quite mild,” says Javier Pérez de Azpillaga, at Goldman Sachs, who says that GDP growth will remain over 2.5% in 2007. “That is not a disaster. In fact it is very good compared with the rest of euroland.” Spaniards may be fretting about high house prices but, apart from that, they show little concern about their consumption- and credit-driven economy.
In politics, meanwhile, the PP has made little effort to return to the centre ground from where it was able to govern Spain for eight years until 2004. Vitriolic opposition to such relatively popular moves as gay marriage or peace talks with ETA plays well to a hard-core conservative audience, but not to the centre. Mr Zapatero has been quick to spot the gap. Indeed, his latest move is a bold attempt to dress the PSOE in the clothes of liberalism.
“In its social and political side, the values of liberalism are better represented by the PSOE than the PP,” Mr Zapatero's chief economic adviser, Miguel Sebastián, declared in a recent speech. “In the economy the PSOE also better represents the principles of stimulating the private sector, less intervention and a reasonable-sized public sector.”
This is clever, if not entirely convincing. The PSOE can certainly claim to be social liberals. They have also tended to be more liberal economically than, say, their French counterparts. The government even has plans, not yet set in concrete, to cut corporate tax by five points, to 30%, over the next few years. The finance minister, Pedro Solbes, has a well-earned reputation for balancing his budget.
But the PSOE is no free-market party. The government's attempts to obstruct a takeover by Germany's E.ON of a Spanish electricity giant, Endesa, regardless of EU rules, are proof of that. A mild reform of employment law this year made firing workers cheaper, but it still costs a lot more than in other countries.
Yet Mr Sebastián's analysis is intriguing. Spain introduced the word “liberal” to world politics early in the 19th century. But it has no liberal party of its own. Some polls suggest that 18% of Spaniards would define themselves as liberals, rather than conservatives, socialists or any of Spain's other political brands. Whichever of the two big parties can win this floating vote in the centre tends to win an election.
Mr Sebastián is one of Mr Zapatero's closest advisers. Perhaps, as he rests this August, Mr Zapatero might conclude that further liberalisation could kill two birds with one stone—not only warding off an economic slowdown, but also ensuring that he gets a second term.
