Overcrowded Prisons in Spain

Interesting article in Qorreo about Spain’s overpopulated prisons. I was surprised that Spain actually has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe, but has one of the highest per-capital prison populations (166 per 100,000).

About half of the people in prison in Spain are on some kind of drug related charge.

Spain’s crazily inefficient judicial system doesn’t help, with many people waiting in prison for years until their trial (many are foreigners, who rarely get granted bail unless you are a big shot Mafioso).

Of course, this is still nothing compared to the US with a rate of 754 per 100,000.

Fusion of Spanish Cajas

I’m not sure what to make of the crazy mergers of every and any Caja in Spain.

The rather opaque involvement of Spain’s bank restructuring pool suggests that some of the cajas were actually insolvent prior to the forced mergers.

Of course, since the government guarantees apply to the combined entity, no blame needs to be assigned, which is perhaps the point of the exercise.

The actual mergers themselves are being done in a way that seems to invite future abuse by creating entities that don’t have clearly defined management hierarchies.

Where is Germany’s housing bubble?

Those thrifty Teutonic realists would never be stupid enough to have a housing bubble, would they?

Well, actually they did following reunification in 1990, with the usual terrible results. Since 1994, housing prices have dropped as much as 30% in places like Berlin. The main reason it didn’t turn into a catastrophe was that the rest of the world wasn’t having a global economic crisis.

It was only around 2005 (Germany’s own lost decade) that things finally started to improve in Germany, but the memories of the housing bust kept things under control.

I don’t really buy Edward Hugh’s argument that it must have been demographics, (in addition to the other rather obvious point that young Spaniards don’t make anywhere near enough money to have been responsible for pushing up the real estate in Spain). Black money and massive over-investment by stupid British and Irish pensioners (and the property developers who scammed them) are more likely to blame.

Strangely enough, the Germans, who were one of the first foreign buyers of Spanish real estate mostly sat out 2005-2008, and are now back, bottom-fishing for deals.

There’s a fair amount of research showing how an economic depression can turn people into savers for the rest of their lives, which is probably what happened in Germany. There’s a similar pattern among people that grew up during the great depression, who saved much more money than their baby boom children.

The overall lesson is that if you are going to have a real estate bubble, try not to have it pop just as the world goes into a massive economic crisis.

Spain’s culture of comparison

Something that drives me nuts here is constant drive to compare everyone and everything to figure out who is smarter, richer, better looking, etc. It’s done in reverse though, so usually people talk about who is dumber, poorer or uglier.

Lately the pressure from the Spanish side of my family has gotten too much, especially around the kids. If our kids start piano lessons, the other grandchildren start getting pressure. Our kids speak English well? Time to send the cousins to English school. Then there’s the comparisons of where we went on vacation, what kind of clothes we wear (too shabby by Spanish standards apparently), whether our children are better looking than some other random kid they saw in the park, and on and on.

We haven’t had much luck promoting the idea that people can have different talents and be good at different things (and there’s nothing wrong with it!)

Squeezing the small guys

The government continues its policy of trying to soak the middle class to pay for decreasing the deficit. Now they want to raise the regulated portion of electric rates by 10%:

The Ministry of Industry has prepared a draft Ministerial Order on the proposed increase from July 1 the regulated electricity tariffs (so-called access tolls) by 10% for homes and small businesses, 5% for medium voltage customers and 0% for large consumers (mainly industry).

This is on top of the increase in VAT for July.

Meanwhile, the story about raising the taxes on the rich has pretty much disappeared (other than Catalunya’s rather symbolic 1% raise).

Perhaps people just need to get more creative, like this builder (who also incapable of building a vertical wall, as demonstrated on left with a level and a piece of cheese) in Mira-sol, who decided to run a hose from the municipal park next door to water the garden:

CiU tries to appeal to dumb voters

These signs are plastered all over Sant Cugat:

Their slogans are all about that things are going to change for the better once they are in power.

What is this plan of theirs?

Apparently most of it involves the right to chose. Which apparently is dog-whistle talk for having a referendum and has nothing to do with abortion.

For CiU it’s not about Catalunya being independent (which about 80% of the population agree is probably never going to happen and CiU is generally against), but about the unalienable right for Catalunya to choose to be independent.

Sort of like “Loretta’s” unalienable right to have babies despite not actually being biologically able to do so:

Everyone-hates-me week

The in-laws left in a huff … apparently I had forgotten to say hello when they first arrived (probably due to the fact that I was running around like crazy picking up kids, shopping, finding a place for my parents to stay and trying to actually do my job). They sent a very kind email to us detailing the full extent of the outrages that we (mostly me) had (apparently with malicious intent) perpetrated against them.

Then my parents came to stay in Sant Cugat, which was going great until we found out the hard way that they expected dinner to be prepared for them every time they came over. Yesterday, after my older son threw a fit and decided he hated me and wanted to kill me (first with a heavy book, then with a fork, then with a screwdriver), we kinda forgot to make dinner for them. They left without saying goodbye. I finally managed to reach them by phone and tried to patch things up. We’ll see how that worked out today.

Then I also managed to piss off my partner by doing something (or not doing something, I’m not sure), so we weren’t talking much yesterday either.

My youngest son told me that he still likes me.

Hungary accidentally blows up Europe

Hungary recently had an election where the opposition party ran on a platform of promising everyone a pony.

After they won, they realized that this would be unaffordable, but didn’t really want to take the blame for making stupid campaign promises.

So they came up with a cunning plan where they tried to blame their inability to deliver ponies on the previous government’s “cooking the books”, and said that Hungary was in danger of becoming the next Greece.

Unfortunately the world markets heard “Hungary == Greece” and flipped** out.

Hungary shows how small currencies are unsustainable in a common economic area. Due to the high interest rates for mortgages in the local currencies, European banks offered Euro and Swiss Franc denominated mortgages to vast numbers of people.

Now Hungary is stuck and unable to devalue the Forint without bankrupting a large percentage of its own population.

Their only salvation is that the banks that lent the Euros and Swiss Francs are foreign big name European banks.

**Spangish word of the day:

flipar

a vt

1. (=gustar)
   esto me flipa I really love this
2. (=pasmar)
   me flipó lo que pasó I was gobsmacked at what happened **

b vi

1. (=pasmarse)
   yo flipaba al ver tanta cosa I was gobsmacked at all the things I saw **
   ¡este tío flipa! this guy must be kidding! *
2. (=pasarlo bien) to have a great time
   flipar con algo (=disfrutar) to really love sth
   yo flipo con esa canción I really love that song
3. (=drogarse) to get stoned *

c fliparse vpr

1. fliparse por algo to be mad keen on sth
2. (=drogarse) to get stoned *