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Spain: Few ideas and no excuses
Spain’s forward Fernando Torres after Spain lost their Group B World Cup football match against Chile Credit: Getty By now, the FT’s award for worst team of the World Cup is possibly as prestigious as...
View ArticleSmart Reads 14 October
Against the odds, Nigeria’s overstretched health service and chaotic public authorities have so far contained the Ebola virus through co-ordination and lots of water A simple chart that looks like a...
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Spain gets some breathing space over Catalonia
It was an interesting week to visit Spain. On Tuesday, I interviewed Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, on stage at an FT conference in Madrid. We spoke, just as dramatic news was emerging from...
View ArticleSmart Reads 30 October 2014
A rash of apparently random acid attacks against women in Iran, perpetrated by assailants on motorbikes, is sowing fear and sparking angry questions of the government For emerging market economies...
View ArticleSmart Reads 7 November 2014
Relations between Beijing and Tokyo are at a 40-year low amid territorial disputes and rising nationalist rhetoric, but with the leaders set to meet, can they do anything to ease tensions? Catalans...
View ArticleDysfunctional labour market leaves millions out of Spain’s recovery
A strong, broadly based economic recovery in the eurozone is nowhere in sight – as will become clear on Friday, when Eurostat, the EU agency, and several national statistical offices publish estimates...
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Spanish polls show Podemos surge is no aberration
Another week, another sign of political upheaval in Spain. Monday brought a fresh poll showing that Podemos, the upstart anti-establishment party, is now the most popular political movement in the...
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Podemos’s spending plans lack financing ideas
What does Podemos want? It is, without doubt, the question that has occupied political analysts and commentators in Spain more than any other in recent weeks. The country’s new anti-establishment...
View ArticleSmart Reads 9 December 2014
The divisions opened up by Libya’s civil war have left it not only with two governments fighting for power but also with rival central bank governors Spain’s historical transition from dictatorship to...
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Resigning is a laughing matter in Spain
Grateful to Jose Antonio Martinez Soler for this photomontage doing the rounds of Spain’s blogosphere The headline around which almost the entire Spanish political (and royal) class appear to be...
View ArticleSpain, and the threat from Portugal and Cyprus
The refusal of the Portuguese courts to authorise the full version of the latest round of austerity cuts will be watched closely in neighbouring Spain – which is, of course, a bigger and more...
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Mariano Rajoy, the slush fund, and a ticking time bomb…
Protesters outside the PP HQ (Getty) Things are not looking good for Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister. Luis Bárcenas, the treasurer of his right-wing Partido Popular for 20 years until 2009 who is...
View ArticleSpanish sausages highlight temptations overseas
An elderly woman walks through a wintry Spanish city, sadly bemoaning her country’s fate. “All the studies show we always come last in the rankings,” she exclaims, shuffling past a placard...
View ArticleFive things to know about Manuel Valls
French President François Hollande has made an uncharacteristically audacious decision in appointing Manuel Valls, an economic reformer and Socialist party moderniser, as his new prime minister. Here...
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Old-school machismo inspires interest in modern Spanish politics
Miguel Arias Cañete and Elena Valenciano shake hands (Getty) On Thursday night, Spanish television broadcast the first and only live debate between Spain’s leading candidates for the European...
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Renzi wins big but bad just got worse for Hollande
Now that most of the results have come in from the European parliament elections, let’s take a family photograph of Europe’s presidents, chancellors and prime ministers. Who have the broadest smiles...
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Popular parties blight Rajoy’s electoral fortunes
It seems as if good news is gushing out of Spain these days like water from a Seville fountain. The economy is expanding at its fastest rate in seven years, leaving behind France, Germany and Italy....
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