Live News From Spain As It Happens

David H said:
Saturday, April 28, 2012 @ 1:10 PM

Acceptance of corruption, acceptance of petty bureaucracy, acceptance of minimum standards of customer care, mañana, mañana, mañana.
Spanish friends think their country has conspired to ruin itself, hence the 25% overall unemployment. The young people are the seed corn, but the ground is barren, hence 50% unemployment in their ranks.
Family unity, a good climate, and foreign money are just about holding things together.

JR said:
Saturday, April 28, 2012 @ 3:21 PM

I am Canadian. I had spent 4 years in Europe a few years ago , lived in Spain for 6 months. One day I had taken my Renault to a Renault service center near Malaga for an oil change a day before Easter. There were three young men in the shop, listening to music, eating sandwiches, there were no cars in the shop, they were not busy. It was 09:30 in the morning. I asked if they would do an oil change: the young men looked at each other and laughed. They said it is a holiday. I replied that the holiday starts next day, they are officially open. They just laughed at me and did not bother to answer. This is the Spain I encountered in my 6 months stay there. In Canada, most service garages are open and they accept work during holidays, Saturdays and Sundays as well. With attitude like that, they would get fired from their job over here. It seems that some European countries want to have the North American standard of living, but they do not want to work for it. The PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) countries will learn a serious lesson in the coming years. So be it.

Caris said:
Monday, April 30, 2012 @ 1:09 PM

Please, please, please take your comments somewhere else as most PIGS countries are fed up from the silly critics coming especially from northem Europeans and American obese pigs.
Unemployment figures are increasing all over the place in the world, people wages are decreasing, people are getting poorer and poorer, the human way of thinking are deteriorating day by day, there is less respect about each other and the only daily think we are doing is talking and criticizing about the suffering of people instead than helping or giving them some courage to get by day by day.
In our world are only small percentage of us that are having the a so called good living and they are only getting it by taking advantages from people and countries worst of and from the suffering of having high unemployment figures and not a foreseeable prospect of getting a job in the near future.
These problems in Spain are actually quite common and in general have been caused by having useless, monarchy, politicians and uncontrollable misuses of handling public funds, and the lending of rubbish loans that have left many families struggling to survive and many of those been left without a roof to live on and no one is doing nothing about it to solve the problem.
The Canadian should not make comments about one single experience in Spain, as living for 6 months in an area of Spain with a very high percentage of foreign people around you cannot give a basic idea about what really Spanish or Spain really likes.
In general the real Spaniards (from Spain) are not as you described them. Spanish people are not different from other European northem countries or the rest of the world, some people are more dedicated at a job than others, some other people cannot be bother to do anything and other people are fantastic as person and at their job. Each country has got a bad cliché including Canada but if you are intelligent enough you should not make idiotic comments about things that you do not even know just by having a bad day with your car.