Fernando González Urbaneja | The conflict over the escalating price of electricity goes from bad to worse, from threat to threat and from one brag to another. The latest is the Nuclear Forum warning (perhaps threatening) to shut down the nuclear power plants that today provide almost a third of the electricity fed into the grid. A boastful threat, highly improbable, if not impossible. Nuclear management is too important for…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Two economic and labour issues are occupying the public debate: how to sustain employment and how to increase wages. These are seemingly incompatible goals, but labour markets are so complex they cannot be locked into simple equations. Claiming that lowering wages will increase employment is as unfounded as claiming that raising wages will reduce employment. There are other, more complex factors involved in order to achieve…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The deadlock to renew the institutions (more than a thousand days of delay in the CGPJ) indicates that the quality of Spanish democracy is mediocre. And it is not because of the regulated procedures, but because of the application of those procedures by the responsible (or rather irresponsible) politicians. Those in government (socialists and partners) accuse the opposition of being unconstitutional. Meanwhile, the latter’s response is…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…