Articles by Fernando Gonzalez Urbaneja

About the Author

Fernando Gonzalez Urbaneja
Over 30 years working in economic journalism. Fernando was founder and chief-editor at El País, general editor at the business daily Cinco Días, and now teaches at Universidad Carlos III. He's been president of the Madrid Press Association and the Spanish Federation of Press Associations. He's also member of the Spanish press complaints commission.
spanish airports

Barajas As A Grievance

Fernando González Urbaneja | In its day, the Barcelona Fair was the most important in Spain, while Madrid’s IFEMA languished in the Casa de Campo. A visionary president of the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, Adrián Piera, imagined an ambitious IFEMA and the socialist mayor at the time, Tierno Galván, had faith in him (“if you say so, Piera, you’ll be right”). There was more support and competitions, but the Feria…


PabloCasado

All-Or-Nothing Politics

Fernando González Urbaneja | Politics is the art of the possible; democracy requires mediation, containment, explanation, persuasion, convincing… None of this characterises Spanish politics, which are sliding towards the opposite, towards the impossible, towards exaggeration, simplification and polarisation. Politics based on brinkmanship (all or nothing) instead of pragmatic possibilism, gradualism, is heading for failure. The PP requires the PSOE (Casado to Sánchez) with non-negotiable demands to renew the institutions. And…


CGPJ

A Mediator For The General Council Of The Judiciary

Fernando González Urbaneja | In Europe we know of cases where governments have been blocked for up to a year or more and states have continued to function reasonably normally. The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and even Germany have maintained deadlocks to form coalition governments for many months. The same happened in Spain during the electoral agony/anomaly of 2019, so we already have experience. But these difficulties being transferred from the…


Employment November

Minimum Wage: A Debate For The Gallery

Fernando González Urbaneja | Prime Minister Sánchez made another celebrity appearance for what they call the opening of the political year (yet more posturing nonsense) with economic content centred on the SMI (Minimum Interprofessional Wage). One of the news items of the event was the absence of the CEOE (Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations) from the session, which highlights how trivial and insignficant the session was. What difference does the…


ElectricityTC

How Much Will The Electricity “Carajal” Cost The State?

Fernando González Urbaneja | In colloquial language, the word “carajal” is understood as a synthesis of a mess, a tangle, confusion: all in one. And there is no better definition for the issue of electricity prices. This is occupying the media so much that they are unable to explain the reality. In turn, this is worrying the government so much that it is afraid it has stepped on a mine…


Congreso

Interim Workers Deserve More Respect

Fernando González Urbaneja | The government narrowly (by one vote and in a second vote) passed the decree law (which will be processed as a bill subject to amendments) opening the door for up to 800,000 temporary public workers to consolidate their employment with stable contracts. Governments (state, regional and local) have been using and abusing interim workers for decades. To such an extent that the European Commission and the…


PilarLlop

The Judiciary In The Pillory

Fernando González Urbaneja | Pablo Iglesias is not in government, but his objectives are still on course. As he himself explained, his immediate political action should focus on weakening two powers: the Crown and “los togados”, the judiciary. In his opinion the latter is in the hands of Francoist reactionaries who must be subjugated. His thesis is that the judiciary should be subordinated to the executive, to the will of…


emerging pedro

The Government, Suspended In Legality

Fernando G. Urbaneja | The Constitutional Court has declared unconstitutional the Government’s implementation of the State of Alarm to decree the confinements… An old principle of good government (and of journalism) dictates that when in doubt it is advisable to abstain. In other words, to behave prudently, because there is no better solution to a problem than to avoid it. There was a risk of unconstitutionality in the alarm decrees, warned of from the outset; opinions were divided amongst constitutionalists, but there were well-founded expectations that it was not the right rule. It was not, narrowly, by 6 votes to 5. But the majority decided the chosen rule was not constitutional and that there was no appeal and no way back.


PabloCasado

Casado Needs An Advisor

Fernando G. Urbaneja | The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, is floundering as head of the opposition between the harsh discourse (with one eye on VOX) and the responsible one, with the other eye on Moncloa. He wants to appear as a reliable leader to govern, but also as a tough guy in the face of his adversaries. And little by little, he is sliding more towards the latter…


The Spanish government quells investors’ worries

Sánchez: 38 Ministers In 37 Months

Fernando González Urbaneja | Pedro Sánchez has completed three years at the head of the government after success in a no confidence vote and two general elections, with sufficient majorities following coalitions of varying intensity with other groups on the left. Over the course of 37 months he has appointed 38 people to ministerial portfolios, some with long and novel names. He has had ministers for days, months and just over a year. Of the initial seven he has seven left, and tomorrow he receives another seven newly appointed. There is no precedent for such ministerial combustion.