A well-manicured Spanish ghost town
Francisco Hernando Village is neat and well-manicured for a ghost town. The complex near , should be home to around 40,000 people, but as I wander around I hardly see a soul.
Will places like this be the key to ?
The climbing-frames and swings in the playground are in bright primary colours, their shine unscuffed by children鈥檚 feet. 
No one disturbs the unbroken views across the park, with its neat line of spring flowers, shaded areas and rows of palm trees.
No one stares across the large crescent-shaped lake at the 100-foot high fountain.
Three sides of a large, new and modern block of flats, brown brick and big balconies, curve round a wide-open space complete with a court of ball games and a large swimming pool.
Not a splash, not the bounce of a ball disturbs the peace of the late morning.
Science fiction movie
In fact it鈥檚 rather like some science fiction movie about a happy town where the whole population has been spirited away by some unknown alien force.
I am not, however, investigating anything quite so melodramatic, but how the economy is playing in Spain鈥檚 general election which takes place on 9th March.
I鈥檓 told that until now both Spanish politicians and voters alike treated the economy like a force of nature but now 鈥渋t鈥檚 the economy stupid鈥 is true here too.
So the population of this town has not disappeared but simply never arrived, or at least has yet to do so.
The development of 13,500 flats is one of the largest in Spain. On one of the well laid-out roundabouts is a statue of a man and a woman, looking a little like Prince Charles with his arm around a younger Mrs Thatcher.
This is Francisco Hernando and his wife. His is an amazing story.
Richest man
He is said to be Spain鈥檚 richest man from very humble beginnings. According to Spanish financial papers, he can鈥檛 write and can barely read, yet has made a fortune, originally building sewerage systems.
This project is his brainchild, a plan to provide relatively low-cost housing in a country where many people cannot afford to take out a mortgage in the first place.
From a distance, in the smoggy air, this could be mistaken for a boom town. 
Tall cranes loom over half-built apartments marching across the plain.
But look for a little while and none of the cranes moves an inch. No ant-like workers are scurrying around their base. Work has stopped on the latest stage of this project.
Although there are some local political problems the same is true all over Spain. It is not just at siesta time that the machines stand idle.
'For Sale'
Eventually I catch sight of a man hanging out a 鈥淔or Sale鈥 sign out on the balcony of his fourth floor flat.
We have a shouted conversation until he comes down to talk. He seems happy to do an interview until he learns we're British: he wants publicity in Spain.
He bought the flat as an investment but hasn鈥檛 been able to sell it as yet. He tells us the economy has definitely slowed down, but he is confident that he will sell in the end, it鈥檒l just take more time..
, tells me the problems here are typical.
For many, Spanish property means not a home but an investment. There has been a huge, continuing building boom for years. Some of the statistics are staggering.
More new homes were built in Spain in the last five years than in France, Germany and Britain put together.
Half the cement made in Europe ended up in Spain. But Dr Seisdedos says builders used their profits to reinvest and build more. Because of the worsening economy, including rocketing food prices, people aren鈥檛 buying.
So there鈥檚 no money to invest and the banks aren鈥檛 lending because of the world crisis. , he says.
And it matters because so much of the Spanish economy is tied up with construction. When the cranes stand idle it means unemployment is going up.
Investment property
Back at the flats, I finally spot a really live resident. Eugine Nicholov, who鈥檚 originally from Ukraine, is out kicking a ball around with his curly-haired little girl and his wife.
It would make a good picture for an advert. He bought their flat six years ago and moved into it as soon as it was ready last September.
He says of the 290 apartments in this block only about 50 have been bought. He says very few people actually live here, for most it鈥檚 an investment.
There are a few more people around at the weekends, but there are only a handful of cars in the underground garage and you need a car to get around here.
I say that it must be very odd living in a place like this. Eugine replies that it鈥檚 not as bad as you鈥檇 think, it鈥檚 very peaceful and you don鈥檛 get disturbed by noisy neighbours.
Burst bubble
But he says the and if he had to sell up now he鈥檇 lose money.
There鈥檚 an advert taped to a lamppost. The man at the other end of the phone, who lives in Madrid, says he鈥檚 got 12 flats and is selling at less than cost price.
He is in this for the money and would, of course, sell for more if he could. But he thinks they will shift in the end.
I hope you know I always welcome your comments: but more than ever on this story, which I won鈥檛 be broadcasting until next week just before the elections.
Am I right that the economy is the big issue in this election? Is property the key? What about unemployment and food prices? If you live in Spain, or know it well, how does it feel to you?
I鈥檓 Mark Mardell, the 91热爆's North America editor. These are my reflections on American politics, some thoughts on being a Brit living in the USA, and who knows what else? My 
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I have lived in Spain for several years now and am no closer to getting on the property ladder, houses are so overvalued here that it is impossible to get a mortgage. The only way the situation can improve is if there is a massive fall in the price of houses to allow young people to buy.
It is obvious wherever you go that far more flats have been built than can be filled. I live in a town (I'm a bookseller in Huesca) with large numbers of empty flats, with building sites on every corner despite prices starting to plummet. One hears amazing figures about the number on occupied properties in Spain and even assuming they're exaggerations, it's a classic boom-leading-to-a-bust.
It's possible that government will be blamed for this, although in justice it's hard to see why: neither of the leading parties has had any objection to the mania for construction and indeed the opposition PP, at a municipal level, has been involved in several scandals involving urbanismo and corruption.
But in truth house prices are not (yet) remotely so central to Spanish thinking as to British. I suspect (and hope) that PSOE will retain the confidence of the electorate and beat the immigrant-bashing Rajoy.
You add an even more unreal feel to it by interviewing Dr. Seisdedos....
which translates as Dr. Sixfingers....
The use of housing as investment is insidious and is making a mess of many places. I live near Monte Carlo and at the time of last year's Grand Prix walked with a friend & her dog down to the sea-front; we looked back at toy town - Las Vegas without the humour - and there were hardly any lights on in the flats, in any of the many tall dreary high-rise buildings. What does that tell us?
My mate moved to Spain and runs an Internet Cafe as well as doing IT installation and servicing etc. He says that outside of the tourist industry, there is a noticeable downturn. People are spending less and seeming to have less to spend. He reckons it started about 2 years ago but is now accelerating
I live near Barcelona in Spain, but prior to September last year, i lived for 6 years in the south between Estapona and Gibraltar. Over those years ive seen most of the land around the coast dissappear under huge apartment blocks developed for the UK, german and Dutch markets mainly, but now most of these blocks stand empty, unsold and yet they continue to build more. People I know who have bought flats for investments are losing money hand over fist, and with the increasing mortgage rate, and the cost of food rocketing, many are finding it hard to make ends meet. For those lucky enough to work for UK companies, it is less so because they can earn a normal salary - but working for a Spanish company means earning significantly less money, but still having to pay UK prices for food. Even renting apartments here is on a par with UK prices, so few people can even afford to do that.
I worked in the UK for some years until I decided to move back to Spain. I moved with my parents as renting would have depleted seriously my hard-worked savings. For me, the changes in life-style and profesional expectatives could not have been more radical. In the UK, I had a 1660 pounds net monthly wage as a postdoctoral researcher. Yesterday I signed here a 1100 euros net monthly contract for 10 months. It's so difficult to find a decent job. It seems the whole country lives only from construction, tourism and burocracy (lawyers, funcionaries). In spanish there is a saying "vivir del cuento" -"living from the tale" which could be applied to many people. When I take a coffee, the waiter is south american or asian, never spanish. There is a general feeling that immigrants have slowed down any salary increase. Anyway, I stopped going to coffee shops to save money. When I see property ads on the street, it really is just depressing. I only dream of being able to move to a 30m2 rented studio with my girlfriend. Food & clothes are 50% more expensive since the euro. There is no sign that things are going to improve in the future. I am 28 and none of my friends have kids. If I am lucky, maybe when I am 32 I will be able to support one child. Thanks for letting me comment.
I'm a 27yr old female with Spanish parents, whole family in Spain, visit up to 4 times a yr, am Spanish speaking, have Spanish passport even though was born & have lived my whole life in London. I have realised how much the economy has changed & not for the good. My mum has a flat in La Coruna, Galicia & what I earn, even on benefits as a disabled person & get paid fortnightly, is the same amount as what they earn a month. With my monthly wage, I would live like a queen! In La Coruna, over the past 4 yrs, flats have gone up everywhere. My mum's flat is in a suburb of La Coruna called Santa Cruz & there, houses have been knocked down even though the plot of land is only big enough to build studio flats only! It's beyond a joke. My family have also had problems with there jobs. They have to take whatever is available even though it's a mundane low job but it's a job! My grandparents live in a town with 3 houses in the countryside & there bills have rocketed! They have a minimal pension but seems it doesn't seem to ever be enough! Spain is getting worse! The economy is going to be a very key issue! It's too close to home to be able to ignore. I am registered to vote for the elections. Am going to have to speak to my cousin Javier (he's 2 months older than me) who will know more about the situation. He will help me make my final decision. He's coming over for a visit so we'll have a chance to talk. I'm very happy that you bought this issue up & your article about 'the ghost-town' is extremely interesting. Like keeping up to date with what goes on in the place where my heart truly Lies & makes my smile shine!
I have lived in Southern Spain for 15 years and moved to the Sierra Nevadas in Granada 2 years ago to escape the ugly coastal developments. However the construction boom has spread to Granada where thousands of flats and houses are being built but few are atually selling. Even my village of Lanjaron has a half dozen developments in progress but apparently no buyers,the boom is bust for the moment. And the guilty party for all this,mostly corrupt,greedy mayors who have destroyed the environment to make a quick buck.
It is obvious wherever you go that far more flats have been built than can be filled. I live in a town (I'm a bookseller in Huesca) with large numbers of empty flats, with building sites on every corner despite prices starting to plummet. One hears amazing figures about the number on occupied properties in Spain and even assuming they're exaggerations, it's a classic boom-leading-to-a-bust.
It's possible that government will be blamed for this, although in justice it's hard to see why: neither of the leading parties has had any objection to the mania for construction and indeed the opposition PP, at a municipal level, has been involved in several scandals involving urbanismo and corruption.
But in truth house prices are not (yet) remotely so central to Spanish thinking as to British. I suspect (and hope) that PSOE will retain the confidence of the electorate and beat the immigrant-bashing Rajoy.
I moved to Spain to live and work here in 1999.
I bought my property at a very reasonable price for the time, considerably less than for a similar property in the UK or Germany.
The reality of buying a property here is salaries are so low that my in-laws had to live at home until they were 30 just to save enough to afford the deposit. All prices have hyper-spiralled since we had the Euro inflicted on us. I lived in the UK, and I lived in Germany. At ground-level (i.e. empirically rather than based upon official figures) we have the same day to day living costs here in Spain as in those countries, yet nowhere near the average wage.
In the last 5 years I have seen the prices rise dramatically. My brothers-in-law have bought similar sized and quality apartments for more than 3 times what I paid. And as we are all on the same salary, you can guess who foots the bill when we go out on Friday nights.
Everybody wanted a slice of the pie. Friends bought property to speculate, constructors bought swathes of agricultural land and built apartment complexes in anticipation of easy sales.
300% increases in property prices are not sustainable, it is as simple as that.
I now have 2 brothers in law as debt slaves to apartments currently "worth less" than they are mortgaged for, friends with speculation properties which they cannot sell at a fraction of the price they paid, and empty complexes on the outskirts of our town with "For Sale" signs in every window.
Yet the construction companies persist on their building projects. Cranes keep swinging and workers scurry around. Their motivation is, I suppose, Hung for a lamb as a sheep! The problem with depending on growth for survival with continued investment in a single industry is like depending on a chicken to lay more eggs every day - there are certain limits you just cannot surpass. It might lay one more each day for a week, but I challenge it to keep going for a year.
I think that Chicken Little just cannot squeeze any more out, and the Sky seems to be moving ever closer.
For over a year now I have been looking, from the saddle of my bicycle, for a house to buy in Asturias - that impoverished very different Spain in the far north. Even there, where EU funds continue to pour in, the abrupt end in the housing boom has been clear.
From what I understand of my halting conversations in bars as I cycle the full length of the country to visit friends in Malaga, I think the end of the boom has made the economy the largest single issue in the forth-coming election. It is not however, the only issue. Accusations of lying leveled at Zapatero and of inexperience leveled at Rajoy (leader of the conservative opposition) also figure in the debates. Many ordinary folk, who are not heavily invested in property, still feel that a bust will not follow the boom because there are many infra-structure constructions still in progress. New sections of the motorway into Extramadura from Madrid will open in a matter of weeks, and the new north coast motorway continues to blast it's way west. There is still a lot going on in Spain but with its economy so dependent on a seriously faltering construction sector, I wonder if the ordinary folk in the bars are expecting too much.
Yes, I think you are right. If the elections had been held in October the Govt would have won pretty easily. Now, people are more aware of the burst property bubble, rising mortgages, rising prices and unemployment. The problem for the opposition 麓麓Popular Party麓麓 is they only started to talk about the economy after Christmas! Up to that they had directed their fire at the failed negotiations with ETA and fomenting the idea that handing slightly more power to the regions would lead to the breakup of Spain.
The big danger for the Govt is they keep saying things are fine but the mood on the street has turned much more sombre in the last couple of months.The polls still make the Socialist party the winner and although the leader of the opposition did better than expected in the tv debate the polls still gave the Spanish prime minister as the winner.
They say the elections are lost by the Govt rather than won by the opposition. I feel the Govt has done just enough to win but there have been 麓麓surprises麓麓 in Spanish elections before.
Just a correction: The man and woman in the monument are Hernando's parents.
For the rest it is basically true.
While the economic situation in Spain certainly is a factor in the empty state of Francisco Hernando, I can't help but wonder whether more people would have bought and moved in if the designers had created a place in which you did not need a car to get around.
The economy has not become the major election issue that everyone predicted, for two reasons. Firstly, the Minister for the Economy, Pedro Solbes, is well respected, and the opposition are struggling to appear the more economically competent alternative. Secondly, the crisis has yet to hit hard, and the property slowdown will principally affect South American and Rumanian construction workers who, of course, don't have the vote.
I haven't quite followed this article. Is the development all housing, or has business infrastructure also been developed. People will always want to live where there are jobs, and if there are none in this area then wouldn't this be the primary reason people aren't living here? When overflow towns (like Harlow) where developed in the UK, there was considerable effort made to attract industry too. If there hadn't been, Harlow would have been an empty housing estate too.
I have lived in Spain for 6 years now and own a Spanish business based in Malaga (NO, it麓s NOT an estate agency...).We have been operating for about 3 years. All our clients are Spanish and range throughout the whole of Spain; the property bubble has definitely burst here although any fool could have seen that coming a mile off.Unemployment in the Malaga region is now the highest for 20 years, prices of property are stagnant or falling; many estate agents and building companies have gone into liquidation. The Spanish are extremely nervous about the forthcoming election with no seemingly clear favourite. The PP appear even more far right than ever and the Church is also dabbling in matters political. The PSOE are in power with rising interest rates and unemployment increasing; frankly, it麓s anybody麓s guess what will happen.All our clients reported a reduced turnover for the Xmas period, (average 20 to 25% compared with the previous year). Personally, I feel there is still some way to go before the economy begins to recover although we are in no way as bad as the USA. The strong Euro is a great advantage for my business as we operate with 2 other currencies (US dollars & pounds sterling). The outcome of the election will be interesting, to say the least.
Steve Hunter,Director
Aloha Quest s.l.
Malaga
Living in Spain and watching the news, reading the papers and talking to the people around etc - I dont think the economy will be a key issues. Yes it has slowed down, housing here is probably more expensive than in the UK relative to average salaries and food prices have gone up.
But I can't imagine many people switching elegence between the political parties because of the economy. The PP and PSOE are based on ideological principles - very right and very left. The key thing will be if the young people who voted in PSOE after the Madrid bombings, return and vote for them again, or stay at home like they usually do.
While the economic situation in Spain certainly is a factor in the empty state of Francisco Hernando, I can't help but wonder whether more people would have bought and moved in if the designers had created a place in which you did not need a car to get around.
Mark,
Sounds like you麓re flabergasted by what you麓ve seen. Did you also see Madrid麓s old tyre dump just across from this "new town", if ever there was a fire somewhere in among all that rubber.....
You can see similar numbers of cranes all over Spain, North to South , interior as well as coasts.
This particular place is also controversial as the developer bought some of the land (classified as rural) and then next day got the townhall to declare it urban! Spain has a lot of that kind of thing at a local level.
Don麓t want to be seen talking my own book. I麓m a Brit. with a Spanish wife, who happily rents year after year, and remembers from 1st hand experience London in the early 90麓s. Negative equity.
My point is, as you correctly state, it麓s a mindset, it麓s very deep in Spain. Whilst I tell you that I麓m happy about renting, my wife is always biting my head about it!
Financial & economic events are barely mentioned and hardly ever interpreted or even less argued upon in the Spanish media. So you tend to get a population that doesn麓t, in the case of housing, measure the house price against it麓s likely worth in terms of rental income.
On both sides of the political divide there麓s a kind of false pride in Spain麓s rise in economic terms. Maybe they麓re right to be proud, but it麓s very narrowly based, and to my eyes they麓re standing on very thin ice.
I麓ll spare you... But just leave you with the thought that I really like living here. Yes the weather. But the Spanish are generally very welcoming of foreigners. Holidays, food, and friends are also very important, and they devote much time to all of them . Viva Espa帽a !
I returned to Spain last year for a visit, five years after I had lived in Madrid. The fragility of the economic situation are evident everywhere. The jump in prices since 2002 has been shocking, and when I asked Spanish friends about the state of the economy, I was quickly informed that the "boom" had been, above all, macroeconomic and that the average Spaniard was feeling very little of the benefits of the country's new-found economic prominence. Young Spaniards especially seem disillusioned with real estate prices that put property ownership far out of their reach. I was told that fewer people are saving money, more people are using credit cards, and my friends are talking about voting for emerging, small parties as a protest against each side for their failure to adequately deal with things. So yes, the economy is an issue. It'll be interesting to see how the voters address it.
The Spanish real estate market at the end of 2006 was at 13 times average earnings (compared with 7 in the UK), making it the most extended property bubble in the western hemisphere since the 1920鈥檚 Florida boom. More than a third of Spanish GDP comes from construction or businesses which serve it. In the meantime, Spanish exports (including tourism) have gone from being very competitive in 1999 to uncompetitive now. Without the ability to devalue its currency, the only way that Spain can become competitive is through a long protracted period of unemployment and deflation. While this scenario (the only realistic one for the future) has yet to begin properly to play out, members of the financial community in Madrid are beginning to speculate in private about whether the current batch of politicians have the political nerve to go through with it.
The alternative, of course, is to remove Spain from the euro, re-create its own currency and devalue. By doing this, Spain will have defaulted on its government bonds (because the denomination into euros was 鈥渋rrevocable鈥, therefore a redenomination into anything else is an event of default), as will have any corporate bond issuers who redenominated their bonds, which will likely be all of them.
An exit from the euro is still not being talked about as a most probable outcome, but many of us see it as a much more probable outcome than is believed by most. The consequences of it are potentially horrible (not least for the euro experiment itself, as the politicians will inevitably, and correctly, be blaming design flaws in the euro), but they may be better for the Spanish economy than those of doing nothing
This is a pick-n-mix election, both using stats to show what they want. Neither give a true picture on economy or immigration.The economic situation of the average person in Spain is not good, most people I know have trouble reaching the end of the month and a lot still rely on input from parents.Access to affordable property is the issue, or an increase in wages to make it more affordable. Salary leves are very low compared to the (ever increasing)costs of living. Not only is unemployment rising, but the contracts in Spain are biased very much in favor of the employer. The result is a population afraid of adding to the unemployment numbers, low productivity, low competitivity and very low moral. When things were going well, people were worried about the creeping death of immigration, now the economy. So what has changed? The immigrants still arrive and stay but the weight of the lack of Euros in the wallet has taken away the weight of the other concerns.
How does it feel to me? The economy stupid.The younger generations cannot afford housing, the salary levels are very low, the employment outlook gloomy and most live at home. Not good and not going to look good for some time.
I do live in Spain where people think that it is an incontestable truth that real state price only goes up.
I'm not a believer though. And I have been able to see other people abandoning such belief recently.
I think the government is trying to keep it quite: The more the word is out about a property bubble, they sooner trouble will start to rain.
Unemployment figures in the two first months of 2008 have been awful and banks seem to have certain problems too. However they try the word not to spread.
I, like many of my coworkers, could not afford the property I live in (at current prices).
It is not only that more property has been built in Spain during the last years than in France, the UK and Germany together. It is also we've got also an immigration larger that these countries figures.
Schools and hospitals have not grown at the same time though Tax revenue has reached record figures.
Now that we are heading down it seems it is not going to be pretty.
Maybe the rest of the EU could fund the building project (including a perimeter wall) and make an international prison for the rehabilitation of every European criminal that fancies sunshine and tennis courts??!
ZP lives in the past and is only interested in historical events. He fears talking about now or the future as he knows that it is all bad news. He is aiding 2 major construction companies but will let them crash after the election. Less jobs and more homes less.
As for Rajoy he lacks personality and fight. He should be attacking ZP on all fronts. The main problem is Water or the lack of it. ZP promised solutions but has yet to deliver after 4 years. This is where Rajoy should be winning votes, especially here in Andalucia.
The Economy is a mess "REAL" figures are in 4 years the cost of living has quadrupled. Not just 2.7% that the government claims.
I have a villa in Spain and a beachside apartment. The market is dead as a dodo and many friends' houses have been for sale for over 18 months and nothing is selling. Yet still the building goes on with borrowed money, but new homes are not selling.
In order to get a sale it seems you have to drop prices by 15-20%, and then on the coast there are SOME buyers.
The overbuilding in Spain is truly insane and not only are there 1m houses for sale right now, but the sheer number of estates has ruined the attraction of what was picturesque peaceful countryside. Spain makes a huge proportion of its tax revenues from property sales and resales and Capital Gains Tax. These revenues are going to slump.
Spain has never contributed a 鈧 to the EU budget, and has received about 鈧50bn FROM the EU. No wonder they are so keen on the EU.
That is suddenly about to stop at the same time that the tax revenues from property dry up too. Spain is obviously about to be hit HARD and far harder than any other economy like France UK or Germany.
I am trying to sell to get out.
Not only in Francisco Hernando Village are flats lying empty and half-finished but the dismal situation is repeated across Spain. It appears that the Spanish economy has had its eggs in one basket for too long. Construction accounts for an extraordinarily high proportion of jobs. Government at both local and national level have failed to diversify and as a result ordinary Spaniards will feel the pinch of a global slow down more then most. House prices are exhorbitant whilst wages remain paltry. As a result the goverment, in a desperate attempt to fill homes, will subsidise rent by up to 200Euros a month for people under 30. The economy should be the major issue in the Spanish elections but it is being deliberately overshadowed by the ongoing situation with Basque seperatism. This country is heading for a major fall whilst the people in charge have their heads buried in the sands of the costas.
2 years ago I moved from the Southern Spanish coast to the Sierra Nevada mountains of Granada to escape the ugly developments on the coast. But no,the town of Granada is ringed with new urban developments which nobody now wants to buy. Even in my village of Lanjaron there are a half dozen developments which are actually being completed even though sales are poor. The bubble has burst now but too late to save so many formally picturesque areas and with few exceptions,the guilt lies with greedy and corrupt mayors who even when voted out of power leave a damaging legacy for years to come.
Spain has finally ended a boom that really began in the mid 1990s, that in effect reflected the EU membership of the 1980s. It has never shrugged off massive youth unemployment, a restricted labour market and now has problems of debt and repayment that would make a UK estate agent blush. We should watch it carefully our banks, airports and other key sectors are other owned by, or badly exposed to, Spain's struggling economy. This could be the start of a wider "Mediterranean Europe" slowdown.
The economy is indeed the big issue. A big property bubble that was already slowing down is being brought to earth dramatically due to the credit crunch; and building has been the engine behind both Spain's GDP growth and its immigration-fuelled job creation record in the last few years. That means unemployment is growing (the january numbers were shocking, and the employment minister has warned that the february ones, out on tuesday, will be be bad as well) and many people heavily in debt are feeling the chill. Yet the elephant in the room is that the economic model based on house building and cheap credit has clearly come to an end. Construction accounts for 18% of GDP, and it is crashing down; but the government blame the international financial crisis and say it will all be fine in a few months; and the opposition says it is due to the government's mismanagement of the boom bequeathed by the previous government, and they would fix it in a few months. They both propose different flavours of state aid to prop up the ailing property market. Meanwhile, rumours abound of big building companies and the banks that have financed them being in serious trouble but being kept on life support until after the election.
Good luck, and watch what you say. Banks and ministers blame the rumours on an anglo-saxon campaign motivated by (wait for it) envy of the solidity of spanish banks compared to Northern Rock.
PS-the big statues in the residential francisco hernando are of mr hernando's parents, not of himself & wife.
They should turn it into a holiday resort at least they'd get some income
Hello Mark,
the housing bubble has definitely burst in Spain,and unemployment is rising because of it.
91热爆 prices in Spain have soared around 400% in the last 10 years due to pure speculation, making very much and very easy money for many people.More than 3 million flats are empty, while young people can not leave home due to the high prices.
Rents are frightfully expensive now as well, since we have to pay the mortages of the people that invested and are unable to sell right now..
The medium wage is 1.000 Euros, mortgages have been given very very freely during these years at an adjustable rate (Euribor), morosity is going up, foreclosures are on the rise. But officially we do not have sub primes (!)We have an inflation of officially 4,3%, but in reality nearer to 8%.
We are in a similar situation as the USA, although, because of the elections, all this is silenced, and
bankruptcies of diferent large construction companies are being held up until after the 9th of March.In the meantime, the government is adopting emergency measures in housing that only maintain the bubble.
The official version is that there is no crisis, just a slow down, caused by the USA..
We know it is a lie, we feel that after the elections the sh.. will hit the fan.
But the key of the elections is not who will solve our problems,since officially we have no problems (!), it is more a matter of going back to the extreme right, or stick to the "left"..but many people will abstain from voting at all.
With kind regards,
Ana, Barcelona, Spain
I隆ve lived in Spain since I was 8, and have mainly Spanish friends in Almeria, Andalucia. They and their family have always been staunchly pro PSOE, but the current destruction of their countryside, rampant overdevelopment and now the stagnation of the economy means that they are worried. Worried enough to break the habit of a lifetime and vote PP in the Andalucia elections? Could be!
That was a very long article with an awful lot of waffle and very little of actual substance.
You spent a long time describing what this town looks like, but you've given very little in the way of actual information about why this is happening, what could happen in the future and what is being done about it.
You are right yet wrong. Here in Spain, the land market has been confused with, and has now become the economy. Much fault lies within the greedy estate agents who have inflated prices to the point of explosion due to the difference in spending power between Spain and the rest of Europe and who then packed their bags, closed shop, and hot footted it to Turkey or Lithuania, where the grass is greener,,,, until they ruin the local economy yet again. A plague on you Mr Estate agent.
Hi Mark,
Here is my take on the situation. I must stress that my opinion is based on observation of the Spanish economy and not affiliated to any political party in Spain.
The issue here is not simply the economy but more precisely that here in Spain - speaking as an Expat - people are suffering from political amnesia. The economy has been growing steadily and surely for the last 4 years 鈥 above the EU average 鈥 and house prices have been booming for over a decade. Such sustained growth and property inflation cannot continue indefinitely. What is happening today is not that house prices are coming down 鈥 in real terms (except major hotspots and in select locations) but merely that they are not rising at the same rate as before. Hence there has been a deceleration in the market 鈥 but it continues to rise. You are absolutely right when you say that most people in Spain are in the property market for investment reasons. What is surprising is that the same people did not complain when house prices where rising and rising and they made massive profits selling properties on the black market and speculating in the sector. Today, we have more than 33% of estate agents 鈥 whose office were mushrooming all over Spain 鈥 closing. In some respects, crocodile tears!
From a macro economic perspective, Spain has a budget surplus 鈥 contrary to most other EU countries 鈥 and is in a good position to weather this worldwide economic slow down. Add to that, the creation of more than 3M jobs with unemployment rates at an historical low then it is sometimes challenging to understand some 鈥渆xperts鈥 insinuating a recession in Spain.
Regarding food price increases. Which country in world is not suffering these today? Due to droughts in China and major population growth there and in India as well as an increase in per capita spending of such countries this is more a supply and demand issue. Add to this that countries such as Mexico are now in the bio-fuel crop market instead of wheat production as this gives better margins this only aggravates the problem. Oil prices are at record highs 鈥 in the last 15 days the price of diesel has gone up by 10% and we pay 1.10 Euros per litre.
Your comments 鈥 and those of your readers 鈥 are most welcomed.
JQ
The situation you describe is not unique to the Madrid region,as many of our members will testify.As common as this sort of "off plan-get rich quick" scheme are urbanizations that are never completed and thus never accepted as part of a town , which might be kilometers away from th eurban core. The builder/ promoter often set up as a front company , once sufficient money has been extracted from the former (under the land grab laws-they pay for infrastructure up front) or new property owners, simply declares bankruptcy thus avoiding builders' guarantees, or any financial liability whatsoever. Happy to discuss this further. I'm founder and now VP of Abusos Urbanisticos No-see website.
Hi,
My name is David, I am a Spaniard living in Madrid. As many other, I have to share a flat. I cannot afford to buy my own flat but even if I could, I would have to pay a mortgage for the next 40 or 50 years spending almost my whole salary.
First to say, no one of our politicians do seriously care about the housing problem. On the contrary, they have used it to finance themselves and the councils they rule. We have probably the most corrupt and less prepared politicians in Europe.
On the other hand, you are right about speculation: many people have bought a property with the sole intention of earning a lot of money without working, at the expenses of other people who just needed a place to live. As a result, in some neightbourhods you can see literally dozens of signs with the words 'Se vende' (For Sale) and a telephone number. If you see them carefully, you will notice that many of them are faded and old.
I only know for sure that unemployment is increasing, mainly in construction, and food prices raising. The Government appears to be concealing the true seriousness of the situation, but the problem is that the oppositions is neither more honest nor better prepared.
Thank you for allowing me to give my opinion, and a last advice for British and other foreign people: avoid buying a property in Spain in this moment, you are likely to lose money.
The use of housing as investment is insidious and is making a mess of many places. I live near Monte Carlo and at the time of last year's Grand Prix walked with a friend & her dog down to the sea-front; we looked back at toy town - Las Vegas without the humour - and there were hardly any lights on in the flats, in any of the many tall dreary high-rise buildings. What does that tell us?
You're right that neither party has never really talked economic theory to the public and that this time the economy is becoming an issue (witness the recent TV debate between the two leaders where they spent half their time whipping out charts showing how well/badly the economy was doing), but I don't think it'll make any impact on the vicious partisan nature of Spanish politics. Their respective supporters really do despise each other and it wouldn't matter to them if the two parties swapped policies entirely, they'd still vote for their own side. The parties are still basically feeding off the pre-democratic past and don't really need any policies to secure their votes.
Hi, I have lived in Spain for over 30 years, the place still drives me mad with its corruption, Telefonica and seeing the terrible things going on in the property market,but I still love it here and it would take wild horses to drag me back to Gordon Broon and his Scottish mafia.
Ruining the country by the day.
With regard to the election , my slant on it is that the average Spaniard does not know just how bad the economy is. Ok people are finding it difficult to reach the end of the month, their mortgage has gone up a lot but unemployment still is nt an issue.
The opposition party the Partido Popular seems reticent to go into great detail about the economy. I am beginning to wonder if they really want to win the election as they know that there will be a hell of a mess to clear up, which will probably take the life of a four year parliament to sort out. I think they will be quite happy to stay in opposition then win a Blairlike majority in four years time which will keep the PP in power for 15-20 years. In Britain , Black Wednesday still haunts the Tories after 15 years.
I am sure the cobbler (my name for Zapatero) is putting lots of pressure on the banks to hide how bad the situation is in construction a big group in Catalu帽a(Barcelona)was rescued at the 11th hour by support from Barclays and Deutsch Bank. Many people will fall behind with their mortgage payments and bank repossessions will increase at an alarming rate.
"It麓s the economy stupid" may affect America and UK, but I think has less of an effect in Spain.
The Spanish press is n麓t giving a lot of publicity to the demolitions, they go on about the costs of mortgages and that is about it.
The Euro is n麓t helping much either ,this is storing up future inflation for Spain and they are helpless to do anything about it, OK the banks have all but closed the credit tap but that is all the government can do.
There is a massive supply of property with Spain having built more new properties than Britain, Italy , France and Germany combined.
I also forsee another problem which again had not been discussed , when the cobbler gave an amnesty to illegal immigrants, one of the requirements was that they subcribe to the Spanish Social Security either by self employment or working for a company. Fine, figures vary between 700.000 and 1 million but they went into the system overnight, a wonderful windfall for the Social Security Department. Now with unemployment going up and most of the legalised workers being very low skilled, many are now going on the dole the situation could arise where more of these immigrants are on the dole than contributing to the SS coffers.
I am pessimistic, but it is still a good place to live crime in the big cities is a problem but in and around Benidorm where I live it is about half of that in most areas of the UK.
There are lots of problems but knowing Spain they will battle through, I suppose if a people can survive a Civil War of only 70 years ago it can survive most things.
You're right that neither party has never really talked economic theory to the public and that this time the economy is becoming an issue (witness the recent TV debate between the two leaders where they spent half their time whipping out charts showing how well/badly the economy was doing), but I don't think it'll make any impact on the vicious partisan nature of Spanish politics. Their respective supporters really do despise each other and it wouldn't matter to them if the two parties swapped policies entirely, they'd still vote for their own side. The parties are still basically feeding off the pre-democratic past and don't really need any policies to secure their votes.
I'm not an economist, but I've lived in Spain for a number of years, and have written several books on the country. The sense you get here about these elections is that, yes, the economy is important, but perhaps more so is the fact that the spirit of compromise and moderation that marked the transition to democracy in the late 70 and early 80s has finally come to an end. Spain has entered a new phase of adversarial politics, with a sharp, often bitter divide between left and right, liberals and conservatives. The buzz word over the past four years has been 'crispaci贸n' - a heightened tension between the two main parties, where the usual cooperation pacts - for instance with regard to the Basque question - have fallen apart. We're a long way from the edginess of the 1930s and the run-up to the Civil War, but Spaniards are having to get used to a kind of mud-slinging in politics more reminiscent of Westminster. People here talk about 'the Two Spains', an epic struggle between the forces of progress and conservatism that has been going on for centuries, either one or the other gaining the upper hand, often through violence. After a brief lull, it seems this essential dualism has returned. And Spain is a country relatively new to democracy - these are unchartered waters it is sailing through.
An interesting story. I live in Madrid and have never heard of this place but I can vouch that it i true as the same has been happening all over the city. We have megaparks,leisure centres and gigantic sparkling new shopping malls that langush as they await the throngs of busy shoppers. During Aznar's govt the housing policy was to allow prices to continue to rise while there wre people who could still afford to buy them. Itstotally immoral.
Education, healthcare and housing are basic rights that every country should protect from the speculators.
I enjoyed reading this story, which is so rarely presented in Spanish media. I am a Spanish economist myself, and believe this turn in the building sector was long coming. Most Spaniards preferred to look elsewhere and keep on partying, and the country as a whole is now paying the price (not only those invited to the party).
Unsurprisingly, economics is now a hot topic for the upcoming election. However I have yet to see the two main political parties come out clear on the building sector, and what they are going to do to restructure it in the future. But it鈥檚 too late anyway; the underground economy, corruption at local levels of government, tighter control of the banking sector鈥 all that should have been tackled before.
We left London 6 years ago and moved to Andalucia Southern Spain near Antequera which is 40mins from Malaga. In the past 6 years Antequera has changed dramatically from a sleepy county town and has grown into a sprawl of ugly flats, an uninspiring shopping centre where most of the shops trade for about 6 months then close down. We put our house up for sale 3 years ago and its still up for sale. When you go to the Costa de sol there are mile upon mile of developments, many empty, and a lot of the estate agents have closed down.
Many things in spain are just a big bubble. Except for a few regions, there has never been an important industrial tissue. We missed the industrial revolution, and we have missed the technological revolution too. We do not create technology: we import it.
The few big spanish corporations were public companies managed by the government until they underwent privatization, they didn't flourish our reached their status in a free market. We had agriculture, but now a big chunck of it is not profitable and lives out of the EU fundings.
Take these things out of the economy of a country and you end up relying on a few things, real state, consumers and tourism to name a few.
And all of them have something in common: they are shallow resources that work only when there is economic growth, and are not good launching pads to recover in times of recession.
Until now, Spain has been living on borrowed time, and the problem is that it is not prepared for the hard times.
Where is the economy not a big electoral issue?
Although I live in California I am from Spain, and have a property there.
I am not concerned about my property value in the long-run.
Properties have more than double in value, and I don't see the market coming down to pre-1994 prices anytime soon, if ever.
I can only repeat what is by now common knowledge, worldwide "housing-fatigue".
Also known to all, is the impact this is having on all sectors of the global economy.
In Spain the economic situation and economic prospects are as important as they are in say, the UK, or USA, or just about anywhere else in the planet for that matter.
Therefore, whichever Spanish candidate can champion the latest-cycle of economic statistics in their parties's favor will get a lot of votes.
However, the Spanish elections are also about issues like health, education, autonomous regions, the EU, Kosovo, and culture, and religion, and art, etc., etc.
In fact, I would even say elections in Spain look fairly similar to a UK or US elections, both in terms of issues and political process - if not in style, but even that gap is narrowing.
Cheers,
Juan Santana
Hi Mark,
How interesting your feature on Francisco Hernando Village was however the development of "Ghost Towns" is not a recent phenomenon. It may seam strange to the foreigner but certain areas of the Costas are even more deserted during the off season. Spaniards especially Madrilanas have a history of investing in a second property to get away from the opressing heat of Madrid in the summer months.
It is a little strange that Francisco Hernando Village is situated just 40 miles from Madrid and maybe not far enough away from Madrid to encourage those investors to commit vast sums of money to the area. Don't forget that with the customary "Siesta" 40 miles is too far to commute twice a day and it is too near to Madrid for a second home.
My mother lived on a playa to the South of Gandia and is was deserted during the winter months and the Se Vende Signs were everywhere.
Too true that pure supply and demand have stifled price growth in Spain. Foreign investors are also suffering due to the International pressures of Credit Availability, Low exchange rates in the UK and by a general downturn in trade with negative growth and inflationary pressures in their home markets. Couple that with inflationary pressure here in Spain, I can not see a sudden turnaround in the Spanish housing market.
I don't see a price crash although there are bargains to be had, I think in the long run Spanish house prices will recover after all Spain is the leading Holiday destination and most popular Expat retirement country and that is due to continue for the forseable future due to the lifestyle and that big yellow thing in the sky.
Damian Munz
Orihuela Costa
Costa Blanca
I'm not an economist, but I've lived in Spain for a number of years, and have written several books on the country. The sense you get here about these elections is that, yes, the economy is important, but perhaps more so is the fact that the spirit of compromise and moderation that marked the transition to democracy in the late 70 and early 80s has finally come to an end. Spain has entered a new phase of adversarial politics, with a sharp, often bitter divide between left and right, liberals and conservatives. The buzz word over the past four years has been 'crispaci贸n' - a heightened tension between the two main parties, where the usual cooperation pacts - for instance with regard to the Basque question - have fallen apart. We're a long way from the edginess of the 1930s and the run-up to the Civil War, but Spaniards are having to get used to a kind of mud-slinging in politics more reminiscent of Westminster. People here talk about 'the Two Spains', an epic struggle between the forces of progress and conservatism that has been going on for centuries, either one or the other gaining the upper hand, often through violence. After a brief lull, it seems this essential dualism has returned. And Spain is a country relatively new to democracy - these are unchartered waters it is sailing through.
Hi Mark,
Here is my take on the situation. I must stress that my opinion is based on observation of the Spanish economy and not affiliated to any political party in Spain.
The issue here is not simply the economy but more precisely that here in Spain - speaking as an Expat - people are suffering from political amnesia. The economy has been growing steadily and surely for the last 4 years 鈥 above the EU average 鈥 and house prices have been booming for over a decade. Such sustained growth and property inflation cannot continue indefinitely. What is happening today is not that house prices are coming down 鈥 in real terms (except major hotspots and in select locations) but merely that they are not rising at the same rate as before. Hence there has been a deceleration in the market 鈥 but it continues to rise. You are absolutely right when you say that most people in Spain are in the property market for investment reasons. What is surprising is that the same people did not complain when house prices where rising and rising and they made massive profits selling properties on the black market and speculating in the sector. Today, we have more than 33% of estate agents 鈥 whose office were mushrooming all over Spain 鈥 closing. In some respects, crocodile tears!
From a macro economic perspective, Spain has a budget surplus 鈥 contrary to most other EU countries 鈥 and is in a good position to weather this worldwide economic slow down. Add to that, the creation of more than 3M jobs with unemployment rates at an historical low then it is sometimes challenging to understand some 鈥渆xperts鈥 insinuating a recession in Spain.
Regarding food price increases. Which country in world is not suffering these today? Due to droughts in China and major population growth there and in India as well as an increase in per capita spending of such countries this is more a supply and demand issue. Add to this that countries such as Mexico are now in the bio-fuel crop market instead of wheat production as this gives better margins this only aggravates the problem. Oil prices are at record highs 鈥 in the last 15 days the price of diesel has gone up by 10% and we pay 1.10 Euros per litre.
Your comments 鈥 and those of your readers 鈥 are most welcomed.
JQ
The economy is indeed the big issue. A big property bubble that was already slowing down is being brought to earth dramatically due to the credit crunch; and building has been the engine behind both Spain's GDP growth and its immigration-fuelled job creation record in the last few years. That means unemployment is growing (the january numbers were shocking, and the employment minister has warned that the february ones, out on tuesday, will be be bad as well) and many people heavily in debt are feeling the chill. Yet the elephant in the room is that the economic model based on house building and cheap credit has clearly come to an end. Construction accounts for 18% of GDP, and it is crashing down; but the government blame the international financial crisis and say it will all be fine in a few months; and the opposition says it is due to the government's mismanagement of the boom bequeathed by the previous government, and they would fix it in a few months. They both propose different flavours of state aid to prop up the ailing property market. Meanwhile, rumours abound of big building companies and the banks that have financed them being in serious trouble but being kept on life support until after the election.
Good luck, and watch what you say. Banks and ministers blame the rumours on an anglo-saxon campaign motivated by (wait for it) envy of the solidity of spanish banks compared to Northern Rock.
PS-the big statues in the residential francisco hernando are of mr hernando's parents, not of himself & wife.
All you have to do is listen to the radio, read the papers and watch TV to know the economy will cause the government problems right until the last minute. But to sum up the election on one issue is to ignore the others that will also count.
Immigration and terrorism are two such issues, with the latter being a constant, if questionable, battering ram throughout this legislature. Immigration is also seen by the Right as being a potential weak point of Zapatero鈥檚 government as the shock of absorbing 4 million 'extranjeros' over 5 years has made many fear Spain is no longer for the Spanish.
The government has and will continue to sing from another song sheet as one would expect. It will keep trying to make this election about its progressive, more 鈥楨uropean鈥 social policy measures and the unpopularity of the meddling far from forgotten Jos茅 Mar铆a Aznar.
So what will the election be about? They will try and make it about terrorism, the economy, social policy and immigration.
I live in Barcelona, and though I'm English all of my friends are Spanish/Catalan. The rising cost of living is a constant source of conversation for Spaniards at all levels - if you want to start a conversation in Spain, complain about having to pay more than a Euro for a coffee. For me, though I read La Vanguardia daily, the Spanish economy is a mystery, with so many people in theory earning so little (though there is a lot of 'black' money in circulation), and yet buying ridiculously expensive properties. And now, inevitably it's ended. In one local town we saw the number of estate agents rise from four to about twenty over the period of five years. Everybody knows that they're now going to begin closing - an architect friend, who was doing very nicely three or four years ago, claims that he noticed things drying up about two years ago.
The major problem is Spain is the reliance on construction and tourism. While tourism revenue is sort of going up (though the quality of tourism isn't necessarily), construction has definitively dried up. For the past four months we've been trying to sell some land in Barcelona - excellently placed, and with permission to build flats. Two years ago we were inundated with offers at crazy prices; now, not one. Why? Because the banks won't lend any more, and the cycle of 'promoci贸n' relies on banks and low interest rates. With properties being built now almost unsaleable, many 'promotores' are quitting. Inevitably this will lead to unemployment, much of it in immigrant communities - which touches on the other Spanish obsession at the moment.
The other problems in Spain are the shocking state of infrastructure (see the fiasco over getting the AVE to Barcelona), lack of investment in R+D, obsession with regional differences (and I speak as someone largely sympathetic to the Catalan cause!), and the lack of a functioning middle class who regularly save money and can help the country in more difficult times.... but that's another story...
In October 2007 I was walking the Camino Francais to Santiago de Compostela. Just past Leon we were heading for a typical small village which the guide book said had one filling station and a bar.
Just outside the supposedly 鈥渢ypical small Spanish village鈥 we walked past the brand new golf course, admired the new luxury club house and around the corner walked through the housing estates of very nice flats and houses (including terraces of mock Tudor style houses) together with shops and a primary school.
There were however, no people, apart from five workmen painting some flats.
We managed to find the bar by the main road and enquired where all the people had gone.
The explanation was that there were no people.
A Spanish developer/builder had decided to build a "new" village in the middle of nowhere in the hope that if it was built, someone would buy. When nobody had bought, the banks foreclosed about three months previously leaving just the grass to grow.
Presumably the development now sits in the European Central Banks vaults as part of the 75bn euro in emergency funding drawn down from the ECB by Spanish banks using their property loans as collateral.
I was born and I live in Barcelona. There is no possibilty, at all, of young people to access to a flat there. Even renting.
The average new ones has a 600.000鈧 price, just recall that the minimum wage is arround 600鈧. Impossible. Average rents are 800-900鈧. Do the maths.
With the housing, and now food, in wealthy european countries prices but with our salaries freezed there is no choice, no way, to have a family.
Check spanish birth rate, check spanish suicide rate, check % of 30s people still living in his parents house.
And then no one could wonder why Spain will be the oldest state in earth in 2050.
Just two mottos cheered there:
-European mortgages, african wages, no way.
-No flats today, no kids tomorrow.
Whilst walking the Camino refered to in post 58, it was amazing the number of medium to large villages I came across where there were developments being put up, mainly flats, which would represent a substantial increase in the housing stock for the village. This applied on a larger scale to the towns and one wondered where the buyers for these flats were to come from.
The flats were 2 or 3 bed modern design and spec, but the real surprise was the price of the flats.
In very rural northern Spain, 拢120,000 - 拢150,000 was a lot of money to pay, even with generous mortgages.
There did not appear to be much in the way of employment outside agriculture, and there the wages are poor, so who was going to be able to afford to buy in these developments?
The young leave the villages to work in the cities where wages are better, but even the locals I talked to wondered just who was going to buy.
In Oct07 there were a lot of buildings and developments where the cranes were silent and nobody was working.
Rural Spain has prospered under the EC Agri policy, but most of that money has now been switched to the new EC countries such as Bulgaria, so Spain has been hit by a double dose of financial problems.
Sadly with the onset of the global credit crunch, the only way is down for the next three years, and there will be a lot of pain before it starts to recover.
We bought a property near Villamartin in the Costa Blanca. There are thousands of unsold houses around us and our estate has not been finished because half the houses remain unsold and the builder has ready money (he has huge assets). We recently had elections and the councillors pledged a moratorium on building once they were elected. Within weeks of the election they passed plans for 3,000 more houses to be built. We approached them about forcing the builder to finish the site and at the very least to enforce the law and make the builder pay his bills for electricity and water (we are on builders supply so when he doesn't pay we get cut off). They said we'd have to finish off the site ourselves and if we wanted to stop the power cuts would have to pay the builder's bills ourselves i.e. they refused to enforce the law. No wonder the property business is in trouble, not only are property hunters scarce but the local authorities are scaring away what potential investment there is.
What is so amazing from the point of view a non-Spanish resident is the fact, that since about two years it has been clear that far too many houses and flats were being built, but nobody seemed to care. And in my little town in Northern Tenerife (Tacoronte), though there are hundreds of unsold houses and apartments, builders are still starting new projects. I guess it also has to do with the huge amounts of black money in the Spanish economy (about one third of all existing 500 鈧 notes are in circulation in Spain). Spaniards were accustomed to very high inflation-rates and have been behaving as if they still had the peseta (in particular prices for real estate are often still calculated in pesetas). For many people here the only way to invest money has been to invest in 麓ladrillo麓, brick.
My experience in Cadiz for the past 3 1/2 years has led me to inform officials and newspapers of difficulties arising here for all.
The basic problem of the situation is that Business and Commerce of Spain are just not aware of the true status of the time which has been on their clocks for 90 years (as far as Summer is concerned) and more for winter (around 100). They might just as well have been reading a recent review in the Cadiz newspaper by a historian here (that I copied and criticised to many) - he conveniently ended the story at the point 100 years ago for the Spanish clocks - when - then - eventually TWO hours were added to provide more than "double summertime" for the majority of Spain!
That full history is surely not taught at any time in the Education System here - especially not during the Franco Regime, anyway - so even teachers are not aware of the facts. If someone questions the strange morning darkness - that does not occur in Portugal, a short ride away, - then the Government says it is for the good of Business and Industry, Commerce, etc to have the time of Berlin on its clocks - which means further than that in effect for Summer.
Everyone seems to believe, I suspect, that the Spanish clocks tell a true time and that it makes no difference at all that the clocks here show the time which they might believe holds in Berlin and Rome . . . but, in Summer, Berlin uses Summertime - which is the true sunclock time in Istambul, Turkey (on the clocks of most of the OLD European Union countries) and has to be 2 1/2 hours extra added to the time in Cadiz.
Another seemingly unknown to experts here (especially dermatologists away from Cadiz) is the added effect of the time that appears officially based in obscurity on the Greenwich 0潞 meridian and is thus valid for the East Coast of Valencia on the other side of Spain - which produces that extra 1/2 hour just mentioned for Cadiz.
At this time of year I am trying to tell everyone that 鈥淪ummertime鈥 of more than one hour on the Spanish clocks will finish at the end of March, and then will produce the very unexpected darker mornings of 鈥淒ouble Summertime of more than two hours on the clocks鈥 for a Mediterranean country during weeks in April (always noting that Portugal again does not suffer the dark mornings - and children travel more safely to school).
Other problems arise from the clock time in Spain - such problems have grown gradually more evident as more of the population (and foreign residents) are increasingly involved in rush hours, being on the beach, still not aware how late in the afternoon the Sun is most powerful, and at work having an incredibly early lunch - so that they gain much weight by eating more later in the afternoon.
This is the result:
a) Melanomas and Skin Cancer in the Costa del Sol
b) Very high traffic accident statistics for the abnormal dark mornings in Spain (but NOT in Portugal because clocks are on GMT there)
c) Children in Cadiz Province being more overweight (& the Adults!) than others in Spain - Commerce wants lunches to be very early in the morning in real time.
d) Energy is NO Longer saved by Double Summertime because of so much lighting on the 1000麓s of kilometres of main roads - to prevent commuters from falling to sleep while driving to work (SCHOOL Buses also go to the schools before sunrise for too much of the year). (Direccion General de Trafico has just been showing on TV a driver nodding drowsily - but in daylight!).
A school bus last week was in collision in Toledo at 08:00 am as reported - said to be a result of FOG - but 08:00 am in Toledo last week was at least 1/2 an hour before sunrise - with virtually NO twilight to be worth mentioning. The newspaper principally involved above has reported a full breakdown of a day with 37 deaths on the roads last year and it reported that ALL the deaths occurred in the period of midnight to 7:00 am - at the time was before sunrise in most of Spain. ( There are not many such full breakdown reports to be found ). I gave a copy of the report to the local society which "debates" current and historic affairs in Cadiz (The Ateneo de Cadiz).
Actually, I can't help wondering just how "Spanish" this problem is. So much property bought for speculative purposes, so much empty property, such high rent....
Isn't this all very much reminicent of the "property development" boom that destroyed much of London (Center Point?) and Brussels several decades ago?
Then there was a lot of "circular trading" -rapidly selling property around within a circle of companies with the same owner. Rather like Robert Maxwell apparently did with his publishing companies (according to Tim Bower's 1992 book on Maxwell).
Presumably, "circular trading" or not -it is the investors who created their own "bubble" which then feeds on itself -until it bursts (for some reason).... Isn't this exactly what is happening with the current "gloabl" economy? I keep reading reports that suggest that the only thing keeping the world economy going is (American) consumer belief in the consumer economy.... That sounds like a speculative "bubble" to me.... something that only exists as long as enough people believe in it.
So it might not be "The economy, stupid" -but "the stupid economy" that is the real problem. However, trully questioning the nature of our (global) economy often seems to get left out of the (political) debate somehow....
I'd like to raise another topic, which has not been discussed yet.
I have been vacationing in Spain every year for many years now, because I love the culture, the people - and the nature. In recent years though, where ever I go I find myself "discovering" new towns. I used to enjoy this, however lately I discover these towns only because they are in places which used to be pristine forests or plain open countryside. Most of these towns are deserted, generic ghost towns with no life and no spirit.
I'd like to say I am not a "typical" tourist in the sense that I prefer to stay at small, owner-run properties with emphasis on cultural immersion rather than staying at hotels, type "alien outpost" with no connection to the country or its people - or - even worse - vacation homes destined to be empty shells rear-round serving no one, except perhaps the owners' ego.
My message to Spain is this: Come back to your (rural) roots, embrace your naturally grown, unique beauty rather than your short-lived obese wallet; oust your corrupt majors and politicians, who sell out your beautiful country at your expense and preserve the spirit of Spain! If not for yourself, at the very least you owe it to your children! Because money comes and goes, but once you've destroyed a country's spirit, it will never come back. And the beautiful, unique spirit of Spain is dying, drowning in ugly ulcers of generic buildings, which no one needs and no one wants.
Not only in Francisco Hernando Village are flats lying empty and half-finished but the dismal situation is repeated across Spain. It appears that the Spanish economy has had its eggs in one basket for too long. Construction accounts for an extraordinarily high proportion of jobs with government at both local and national level failing to diversify. As a result ordinary Spaniards will feel the pinch of a global slow down more then most. House prices are exhorbitant whilst wages remain paltry. The goverment, in a desperate attempt to fill homes, will subsidise rent by up to 200Euros a month for people under 30. The economy should be the major issue in the Spanish elections but it is being deliberately overshadowed by the ongoing situation with Basque seperatism. This country is heading for a major fall whilst the people in charge have their heads buried in the sands of the costas
Buenas tardes!
The problems in Spain are essentially as described above, but one additional factor in my experience is that so many Spanish property-owners refuse to rent, fearing that immigrant or student tenants will trash the place. This has put them under severe financial pressure, since average family incomes are pretty low (about 17-1800 euro net nationally per month). I bought two apartments 4 years ago (as city centre residence & holiday home respectively) and subsequently found myself having to rent both of them out - much against my will, but I couldn't find work that paid enough to cover the mortgages. I rent them to immigrants and have been criticised by my neighbours as a result. But the rent pays 90% of the mortgage, so to me it's a no-brainer.
I am a 38 year old spaniard. I think housing prices is one of the most serious problems of this country. The situation looks pretty ridiculous, if you consider that an appartment in a Spanish small town is
supposingly worth 1,5 times the same appartment in Stuttgard, for instance.
However, I do not think that this is being treated as a key issue in this election. Neither of the leading parties have made any proposal to solve the problem. In fact, in the candidates TV debate last week the issue was not even mentioned.
I would say that the problem is so serious that spanish politicians do not want even to mention it.
Your article, Mark, was very thought-provoking. I'm British and I moved to Valencia after graduating last year. The cost of living and renting flats in particular has risen by at least 25% in the last 2 years since I studied here. I'm sure I'm not the only one questioning how long Spain's higher quality of life will continue to attract people from northern Europe who come here to spend their holidays or to live whilst the cost of living continues to rise.
With regards to the general election I think last week's TV debate (the first of two) was indeed lively but also a bit childish too with both producing silly graphs on bits of paper to try and illustrate their points. It's difficult to find a Spanish person/newspaper/TV channel who will give you a balanced view of the political situation in this country with political interests so deeply rooted inside media organisations and the memory of Franco's dictatorship still fresh in many people's minds.
Being Spaniard, I've recently come to live in Madrid after spending the last six years in London. The purchasing power here for most citizens is shockingly low. Salaries have stayed put for the last 10 years, yet prices of goods and services have gone through the roof since the Euro. "Young" people (in their 30's) can hardly afford to rent, so they live with their parents, and try to forget about buying. Can you imagine that in the UK? This is in my eyes the complete opposite to progress and wealth creation. The rare few who decide to take a 40 o 50 years mortgage don't realize that they end up paying 9 times what they borrowed over such a long period if current rates stay the same. And even with such crazy credit terms, the average couple struggles to meet their monthly payments. The majority of people in Spain have literally got poorer, while a minority of them has got a lot richer. It's sad and it has many negative implications, like one of the lowest birth rate in Europe, which means Spain has come to depend on immigration to keep afloat. I believe things will get worse before they get better. Madrid is full of flats for sale which remain unsold for a year and a half or more. You do find second hand properties at lower prices than they were 1-2 years ago though, so you can tell the bubble has started to burst, but there鈥檚 room for more adjustment. However, if you do find a decent job here, and property prices hit rock bottom 鈥 presumably end 2008 and 2009, you鈥檒l live like a prince and will be laughing all the way.
"(and I speak as someone largely sympathetic to the Catalan cause!)" Now there is someone who knows nothing about Spain. How the Catalans want and get everything at the expense of everybody else in Spain. No sympathy for all the disasters that will befall that region of Spain, YES it is still SPAIN.
JJ, Catalonia has a fiscal deficit of abouty 12-15%, as all infrastructure investment is directed to Madrid. Can you justify your off the cuff remark, or are you a Spanish nationalist?
Plenty of university studies have shown that Catalonia is short-changed, get your facts right or perhaps just deal with your own anti-Catalan prejudice...
I am 22 year old student from Madrid, and to my foreign friends' astonishment, there's no alternative for me than living with my parents yet. Being student in Spain means you can hardly work on a part-time job which of course is only a traineeship. That implies you earn no more than 500鈧 if your employer is that generous. If you want to move to your own house, you either pay at least 300 euros for renting a single room on a shared flat with a couple of people far from the downtown, or if a bank allows you (extremely unlikely without a collateral), you get a mortgage for 35 years of 900 euros a month to buy a house. So obviously you have to stay by your parents until you've worked at least 5 years, that implies in loads of cases you move being over 30 years old!! crazy? I know, I've lived in Munich for a year and in Germany, having salaries that almost double on average ours, they have rather similar house pricing. So that's how it works, German students are independent on their early twenties whereas Spaniards have to wait ten years for that!
You've chosen a cobbler (Zapatero) as your premier and you've got a Pinocchio.
Now you'll have to wait for another shoe to drop.
"Socialists! What have they ever done for us?!"
[Haven't even built aqueducts in water-thirsty Spain]
The economic situation in Spain can be very well described in a sentence I read a few days ago, saying that "Spain is a rich country made up of poor families."
I read it on Jan., 19th, from Juan Francisco Mart铆n Seco in "Estrella Digital", but apparently this had been going around since, at least, Jan., 14th, but I am not able to find who said it first.
[I posted some more lines on Thursday, but finally did not appear.
I regret that I have not the time to write that long today, explaining the sentence above...]
remember the election and the rail bombs...
pull the troops out.....you got it....ed
It is not only the fact that these apartments are overpriced and that there is a massive oversupply - they are minuscule! The average size of a flat has decreased over the last 20 years. I have been looking for a flat for my family and have a choice of 2 - 3 bedrooms, and around 100 sqms. All this for over E600.000, and the opportunity to argue endlessly with your neighbours about swimming pool opening times at residents committee meetings. I also think that the issue of not linking housing developments to industrial or commercial areas is a key one. Look at how successful Boadilla del Monte (outside Madrid) is - all Banco Santander employees live there. Sadly I do not intend to return to Spain to live and work anytime soon, even though I crave jamon serrano. Oh, and Bill - great ramble!
I love all these comments!
I am from Spain, happily enjoying my life in London. I have no intention of ever returning to Spain, maybe to retire, but that's about it.
I am losing touch with my friends in Spain. Yes, we email and all that, but don't ever think about making holiday plans, go to fancy restaurants, etc.
They just simply cannot afford anything. It's pathetic! I don't understand why they don't do anything about it. Why are people so submissive?
Spain keeps losing all its young talent and nothing is being done about it. All good doctors, economists, engineers, etc. are living overseas... which is great for me! I can have great Spanish friends now living in London who can afford all the fun stuff and have a family. Overall, more interesting people.
By the way, all those comments talking about properties not being sold, etc.. so are properties being auction? Any advice as to how to find a cheap property from a desperate seller? Can you recommend any websites?
Thanks!
I am a Spaniard living in the UK. Madrid is not representative of Spanish situation in terms of house prices. If you look in Andalucia, Valencia, Extremadura etc, the prices are lower and people could have better quality of life.Madrid is very expensive but this is because senior exec and business owners have the cash and they invest in property so prices go up. Young people will normally get help from the parents in getting into the ladder and loads of them get almost "free housing" meaning 10m of the old currency in pesetas (around 50,000 pounds) will get them a 3 bedroom flat in some areas - I am not specifically talking about Madrid though. PSOE has done nothing but living out of the good economic policy from the popular party and now issues have arised as there have not tackled or done anything on economic policy; in fact I do not think they can as they do not know how. I hope people get smart and vote for the right candidate.
I've been trying to post a comment, but so far this has failed.
I suggest you look at www.abusos-no.org which is highly relevant to your line of thinking.
Interesting debate. Reading these comments it seems we are discussing the British economy, not the Spanish. The vast majority of commentators have English names and their only concern is the property slump. No doubt they invested in Spanish property and are now worried that maybe it was not such a wise investment.
I am also British, but came here to study and work in an entirely different industry: Media and public relations. In Madrid btw. The industry continues to recruit. The main issue is that there are currently a lot of mergers between clients and this creates a certain amount of instability. But clients keep coming in and we continue to make money.
The property slump clearly will have a knock on effect but this forum really is dramatising the whole thing. For Spanish people the main issue at stake is the need to refocus the economy away from property and towards more specialist, value added industries. The government has gone some way in this direction however one could argue that not far enough.
The property boom and Spain's immigration boom go hand in hand. Once the immigrant builders are out of their jobs, they will either have to leave or look for something else. Spain has its first ever budget surplus, and the government has promised if reelected to invest some of that money in infrastructure (roads, railways, etc.) in order to react to the job shortage. It also needs to invest much more in advanced technology so that high tech hubs in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia can compete with their counterparts more effectively.
At the same time, the next generation of immigrants will need to be more highly educated, and Spain's education system, which is already improving, will need to improve more.
But honestly, the future of British and German property speculators is not as high up the electoral agenda as some people here appear to think. Currently nobody I know here has been unemployed for more than 4 or 5 months. Not so 5 years ago when Spain was supposedly booming.
Laura H (77) is mostly right, but her comment is in my opinion excessively dismissive, as many others in this forum. I think this backlash is partly coming from the fact that, a couple of decades ago, Spain was considered very underdeveloped (Africa starts at the Pyrenees) and they started doing very well for those standards.
But these days, Spain has started to be compared against the fully developed economies of Europe, and Spain is just not quite there yet, in salaries and other indicators.
Still, in my opinion as a Spaniard that left 2 years ago to the US, there is some evidence (both statistical and anecdotal) that Spain is becoming more entrepreneurial and innovative, and a better place to live in general.
The downturn might hit hard, but if the fundamentals are as solid as some people seem to think, Spain will be able to continue its transformation, as a minister put it, from the Florida of Europe, to the European California. I think that's a bit of a stretch, but I also believe that the picture is less grim than the one you draw from these comments.
PS Check the 28 pages of the French newspaper Liberation on Spain. Biased, but optimistic :oD
Mark Mardell: another good blog about gardening and well-groom ghost-town......
First of all I want to say I am not going to vote next Sunday 9th March.
It is a long time ago since I have not believed in Spanish politics, which reflex the purest face of an extreme bipartisanship since the end of the dictatorship.
Nowadays, as we can see in these debates, the main lines of discussion are based on general issues, with the exception of ETA, as for instance immigration and economy. However, these issues are not treated in a concrete way with specifics cases to resolve, but generalizing these topics in order to avoid committed positions.
From my point of view, a state will never carry out an appropriate development without focusing on real and daily problems of the people. Therefore, the debates shall be based on concrete public policies, through which these general issues like immigration or economy shall be resolved.
Someone could wonder why these politicians' uncommitted attitudes. The answer is found in the theoretical roots of bipartisanship system. The aim of both leaders of a bipartisan state is to achieve the conservative vote of the opposition party. Thus you will never appreciate radical proposals within this party system.
In conclusion I would summarize that a bipartisan system always tends toward the center, politically speaking.
Finally, I would finish clarifying that, unless Spanish politics get more political participants, with a major significance, we will never see any political, social or economic change.
Has any of the people in this debate gone out at night time in Madrid? Restaurants are all booked out, bars are full and no one seems to reduce their consumption (maybe they can麓t pay their houses tomorrow, I doubt it).
Might it be that the "wealth effect" link between wealth (materialised in assets such as houses) and consumption is just not the same here as in the USA or the UK?. I mean we all know that no spanish bank has been giving mortgages for more than 80% of the house麓s market price so there is a bit of a cushion until people see their houses under their market value and stop paying their debts.
Do we have an economic problem? Certainly, but it seems like the global economy is readjusting at the moment after a long period of irrationaly illimited liquidity, so I wouldn麓t call it a local problem.
Why do english papers like the FT portrait such a gloomy picture of the spanish economy? I wonder if Aznar麓s relationship with Murdoch is got something to do with it. The fact that your own problems seem less worrying when others have them could be relevant as well. You won麓t definitely be helping english investors with their bets placed in Spain by feeding a self-fullfilling prophecy environment.
Things weren麓t as booming as we were informed before and they are not as negative as we are informed now. But, hey隆隆 we have to sell news, who cares?
Laura H. (77). If there is something pathetic here, with all due respect, it is your comment. I am also a Spaniard living abroad with no intention to return to Spain (in the short term).
You find pathetic that your friends "cannot afford anything" and you wonder why they do not do anything. They could perhaps do better if you suggested what. I would like to hear it too and surely millions of Spaniards who are in the same situation as your friends.
To say that "all good doctors, economist, engineers, etc are living overseas" is completely false. Perhaps because you like to think of yourself as one of these? There are reasons other than money that determine where an individual wants to live. I left colleagues back in Spain who where top class professionals but who simply preferred to live with less money but enjoying the weather and the company of their families and friends. They did not seem to be able to change friends as easily as you do.
You say: "I can have great Spanish friends now living in London who can afford all the fun stuff and have a family. Overall, more interesting people." So you measure how good a friend is by how much he/she can spend in "fun stuff". I guess buying a house is not "fun stuff" for you. So people are interesting if they can spend money. Pretty revealing of the bottomless pit of selfishness and shallowness you dwell in.
OTHER COMMENTS:
Food prices (plus the value of the barrel of crude) have not surprised me at all. The expansion of AVE fast trains obviously have boosted the cost of travel. But I am surprised that bus fares have been restrained so far in Cadiz, anyway.
The climate change has caused a number of instances around the country, where massive local rain and excessive hailstone falls have severely damaged crops - so more expensive food prices are not surprising.
The major SALES in big stores seem NOT to have been very successful this year - they seem to have been excessively extended! Nevertheless, the local main newspaper complained about the population spending too much - having a need for compulsive buying - but my suspicion is that it was trying to suggest that gains in weight are caused by compulsive eating habits of the populace.
For this, I berated the paper by sending in the following comment:
Nunca, en la historia del Reino de Espa帽a, tanta gente han tenido tantas ganas de comer - por tan poco de esfuerzo! - Winston Spencer Churchill.
Of course, while a perfect accompaniment to viscious quips, it is mis-attributed!
Cheers.
I am writing from Granada and I am Spanish. My English is not good, but I would try to say one comment. I have been reading many of the comments posted here, and I agree with the fact that along the Spanish coastline there are many and many buildings destroying beaches. But you can see that in many places, such as Andaluc铆a, Valencia, there are many building for foreign people (german, british,french,...) The pressure to live in Spain, for old people, the last days of the life, has implied the construction of many houses, flats near the beach. For example, in Almeria, there are villages where the most people are not Spanish. Therefore, one cause of the problem of the speculation has its origin in the massive purchase of houses by foreign people. On the other hand, this occurs in many places, for instance, in the Alpujarras (far the sea, at the mountains). There are small beautiful villages that many foreign people decide to rest or to live for many years. This causes that the prices of houses grow quickly. Moreover, these villages transform with big buildings, golf fields, etc to give pleasure for that kind of people. There are villages whose plans to grow is to multiply by eight or ten times the initial population because some companies have the idea to build housing developments, with many hotels, golf... And at these places the tourists are not Spanish, they arrive from Sweden, Germany or UK.
I have to admit that I have only scanned most of the replies to this post, but from what I can see there is one big factor that has been overlooked and that I'm sure many of the non-Spanish residents can attest to.
Many have mentioned corruption, and indeed it is so endemic and ingrained here that it is often overlooked, mostly because it is actually sanctioned and legal.
Legal in the sense that all "ayuntamientos" or town halls live from the re-zoning of land. Property taxes are so ridiculously low here that town halls make very little revenue from them and need this constant re-zoning in order to pay for the army of street sweepers that clean the streets and the occasional local police officer.
Out here in Extremadura, a country away from the concrete coasts, the town hall of Caceres is broke, bankrupt. Years of swindling have left the town hall in such debt that they have literally created a shadow city. Sure these places have been bought by average people dreaming of making a good investment, but the real crime lies with the corrupt system that allows for such re-zoning. Add to that a rather politically dependent and weak judiciary and you have the current situation.
I have written in my blog about the actual process of buying a house here, where 60 to 70% of the actual purchase price is paid on paper and while the rest is actually handed over in cash under the eyes of notaries and banks. With so much under the table money, real figures regarding the actual state of the housing market are impossible. I'm sure that most of the posters here can tell a story of handing over large sums of cash.
I have lived in Spain for over 10 years, and bought my villa over 20 odd years ago.
Since the PSOE have come into power corruption has increased, but not just from PSOE members but across the political spectrum, at least when the PP where in this had started to decline. Spain is now more divided than ever. The economy is in a terrible state. I have a friend who is a district manager for Banco Santander and he says the country is heading for a huge financial crisis.
I don麓t want the PSOE in as historically they seem to worsen Spain's economy. At least the PP managed to bring Spain into the 20th century. The PSOE have taken it back to the late 19th.
Unfortunately I think the PSOE will get in again, but I think this may be a good thing as Spain will finally see just how bad they have messed things up. Plus it will give the PP time to get their act together, as at the moment they seem to be a bit unfocused and Rajoy isn't the best person to have as leader of your party. If I could vote I wouldn't vote for either the PSOE or PP.
On a side note has anyone noticed that Zapatero looks abit like Mr. Bean.
Also why are some of the posts posted more than once is this a website problem