LA
CORRUPCIÓN EN ESPAÑA: UN CARGAMENTO DE MANZANAS PODRIDAS
UN
ARTÍCULO EL THE ECONOMIST.
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21631126-wave-arrests-upends-political-establishment-lot-bad-apples
JOSÉ ANGEL FERNANDEZ VILLA led the biggest
miners’ union in northern Asturias. Francisco Granados was a key minister in
the Madrid region. Jordi Pujol was president of Catalonia for 23 years. The
three men have one thing in common: they all allegedly hid large sums of money
in secret foreign bank accounts. The accounts, unveiled during a rash of recent
arrests and investigations, are the tip of an iceberg of corruption that now
threatens to sink the Spanish political establishment. Until this week the
prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, and other mainstream Spanish politicians were
sailing blithely towards it. Now they are scrambling for the lifeboats.
Mr Granados was one of 51 people arrested on
charges of bribery and embezzlement on October 27th, including six sitting
mayors. Most, like Mr Granados, belong to Mr Rajoy’s centre-right Popular Party
(PP). But the main opposition party, the Socialists, faces corruption scandals
too. So do the governing coalition in the region of Catalonia and the country’s
two largest trade unions, the Unión General de Trubajadores and the Comisiones
Obreras.
The PP is the worst sinner. A former interior
minister, Angel Acebes, is being probed for his role in a funding scandal that
has already sent the party’s treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, to jail. Rodrigo Rato, a
former finance minister and head of the IMF, allegedly used company credit
cards to top up his salary tax-free while he was running a savings bank,
Bankia, which the state later bailed out in 2012 at a cost of €22 billion ($27
billion). Dozens of other officials used Bankia cards too, including not only
PP but also Socialist politicians and union bosses. Mr Villa allegedly amassed
€1.4m in Swiss bank accounts even as his union’s members lost their jobs. Mr
Pujol kept his money hidden from the tax authorities while presiding over a
foundation that specialised in ethics.
Mr Rajoy has sometimes downplayed Spanish
corruption as a matter of a few bad apples, but the wave of arrests has forced
him to promise action. “I apologise in the PP’s name to all Spaniards,” he said
in a speech on October 28th. Other parties suddenly sound equally serious.
Polls find that Spaniards rank corruption as their second-highest concern,
after unemployment. Some also show both the PP and the Socialists falling
behind Podemos, a grassroots leftist party that has taken Spanish politics by
storm since it was founded in March. Full of enthusiasm but light on policy
prescriptions, Podemos condemns the entire political establishment as a
self-serving elite which it terms “the caste”. It pledges to throw out the lot.
In private, some ministers insist there is no
more corruption in Spain than elsewhere. Things are better than in the 1990s,
says one, when even the chief of the Civil Guard was on the take. The scandals
at least show that the police and the courts take corruption seriously. But on
the perceived-corruption index of Transparency International, Spain last year
slipped from 30th to 40th place. A civic group based in Madrid, Access Info,
claims Spain has been far behind other EU countries in introducing legislation
concerning transparency. The country’s Public Accounts Tribunal, which audits
spending, is plagued by nepotism. The real problem, says Fernando Jiménez of
Murcia University, is patronage: regulatory agencies and town halls are staffed
by political appointees. Spain will hold municipal, regional and general
elections in 2015. Either the political establishment reforms itself, says Mr
Jiménez, or voters will be driven to wilder options such as Podemos. It is not
clear that this message has got through yet.
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