If Catalunya is the success story of Spain's recent economic implosion, I shudder to think what the rest of the country must look like. Here in my admittedly lower to lower middle class neighborhood of Les Corts, fully 3-4 shops per block are shuttered or announcing FINAL LIQUIDATION sales or sport tiny hand lettered signs, "Se Traspasa Local," indicating some obscure or non-existent new location where they have moved to seek either heavier foot traffic, more bustling business or both.
The bloom has long ago withered from the Zapatero rose, and it doesn't require an advanced degree or years of experience covering Spanish politics to realize that his days are very likely numbered--even if this crisis is none of his doing.
A bleaker interpretation of this Icarian fall from newly integrated EU high-flier to moribund economic basket case is that the past year will prove to be not the abberration but the return to Spain as it is meant to be; that is, that the cocky, proligate, (mostly Brussels, German & UK sudsidized) boom of the early noughts was the exhilirating if delusionary exception to a Spain who's time has not, in fact, come.
