Spain, Gibraltar, and the Tiff with Queen Elizabeth

The Spanish Government just swept into power a conservative government following the grand failure of the previous administration to deal with crippling bond interest rates and toxic debt which has already swallowed up the largest bank in the country.

Bankia just witnessed the doubling of speculative interest rates over new bonds, which all but threaten any continued life-line of credit to the Iberian nation, including wealth, trade, and stability at an alarming rate, and entering a phase where it may need its own bailout, one whose staggering proportions have blanched stronger member states into stifled panic.

Previous reforms have done nothing to allay growing and justified fears of rampant fiscal failure. The Spanish government is still tilting at the windmills of inching reforms, cutting little, yet hoping for still more to staunch the waste, fraud, and chronic losses of lax cradle-to-grave subsidies to an impoverished generation of Spaniard.

Not since the Civil War of 1936 have so many fears surged to the surface. Now, instead of Communists fighting with Phalanx's, instead of partisans attempting to subdue the nefarious power grab of nationalists, instead of Basque and Catalonian disaffection threatening the core control of Madrid, housing crises, investment dumping, and the sclerotic centralization of state power are rubbing away the final glory of a nation whose empire once spanned the globe.

Now, not even the wealth of the New World would defray the overwhelming liabilities, entitlements, and insecurities of the Spanish people.

The Spanish government is enduring its own Dark Night, trying to save the soul of the nation without going into massive default, which will upset the hegemony and integrity of the entire European Union.

In spite of growing fiscal constraints, the Spanish government has gotten into an empty tiff with Great Britain over the ownership of Gibraltar, a tiny rock in the middle of the mouth of the Mediterranean sea. Perhaps a nationalized diversion to distract the Spanish voters from their failing, flailing leadership, Queen Sophia and King Juan Carlos declined a warm invitation to attend the Diamond Jubilee celebration of the tiny island's current proprietor, Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain.

The surprising amount of attention proffered to this little Island off the coast of a declining nation exaggerates the misplaced priorities of a nation plagued with economic woe. Great Britain, which wisely remained out of the Euro Community, is undergoing its own brushed with crushing austerity, and may win more by losing the riddled rockpile south of Grenada. Spain cannot maintain cohesion and order in her own streets. What possesses the government in Madrid that they can manage another territory?