Be sure to listen to this week’s Heritage Libertad Radio Show. Click here for the first 30 minutes in Spanish. Click here for the second 30 minutes in English. We kicked off the Spanish side with a look at the Super Committee, followed by an interview with Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who discussed Occupy Wall Street and the riots in Europe. The Spanish segment closed with a discussion of the presidential debate Heritage recently co-hosted. The English side starts with a brief segment on the Super Committee, followed by discussions with two …
Be sure to listen to a special Heritage Libertad podcast on the recent Spanish elections. Click here to listen. With 23 percent unemployment overall, and 46 percent unemployment among its youth, how does the new government in Spain increase employment going forward? Furthermore, what effect will this election have on U.S.-Spain relations? Do we have a role to play in their recovery? Click the above link to hear answers to these questions and more!
Spain will have a new government in time for Christmas, and unlike Greece and Italy, Madrid’s government will be a democratically elected one. Mariano Rajoy’s center-right Partido Popular secured an absolute majority in yesterday’s elections and, on December 22, will take 186 out of 350 seats in the lower house of the Spanish parliament. What is less certain, however, is whether Spain can last that long without falling the way of its fellow southern neighbors—Greece and Portugal—and needing a bailout. Spain’s economic position is perilous. Unemployment is at 21.5 percent, …
A week ago, the Spanish government of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero agreed to Spain’s participation in NATO’s European missile defense system by allowing four U.S. Navy Aegis guided-missile destroyers of the Arleigh Burke class to be stationed at the naval base of Rota, in southwestern Spain. These destroyers are armed with the Standard SM-3 surface-to-air missile (SAM) designed to intercept short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The U.S. Navy destroyers will be based in Rota beginning in 2013, along with 1,100 servicemen and 100 civilian employees. Together with …
Two centuries ago in Mexico a powerful advocate proposed New World freedoms and liberty as the answer to Old World tyranny. The voice came from an obscure Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and, issued on September 16, 1810, is remembered as the famous call for Mexican independence from Spain. Like Americans in the 1770s, Mexicans of the 1810s recognized that citizens no longer derive their laws and rights from divine or monarchical authority but from the people and the consent of the governed. On this historic bicentennial of …
Today, 154 Republicans joined me on a letter to the President’s debt commission asking them to stand against a new value-added tax, or VAT. I’m proud to see our Conference unite against a tax that’s being pushed by Paul Volcker, John Podesta, and Nancy Pelosi. The VAT is clearly a job killer. While in the last 20 years American businesses created 45 million jobs, the European economy only created 10 million. The healthcare bill moved us toward European levels of government, but now liberals want European taxes to pay for …
It is the sad plight of the proud Cuban people to live under the yoke of the Cuban Communist regime. May 20, 2010 marks the 108th year of Cuba’s independence. This year is also the 51st year of the Castro dictatorship. The people of Cuban – vibrant, ethnically-diverse and enterprising – are shackled hand and foot by a system conceived in the 19th century utopian musings of Marx but actually forged and perfected by the great totalitarians of the 20th century. In History’s light, Havana’s aging dictators – Fidel and …
For his sake, let’s hope that Bruce Arnold at the Congressional Budget Office doesn’t get the Gabriel Calzada treatment from the American Wind Energy Association and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. To freshen your memory, Gabriel Calzada is the economist at the King Juan Carlos University who got out his calculator and analyzed the green job situation in Spain—the same Spain whose job-crushing subsidies are supposed to be a model for our green recovery. The professor found that subsidizing green energy costs more traditional jobs than are created in the …
The country that leads the clean energy economy will lead the global economy. We’ve heard some version of that story a number of times from President Obama, whether it be in his State of the Union address or trying to sell the stimulus at wind and solar manufacturing plants across the country. Countries like Spain and Germany are leading the race in the clean energy; as President Obama says, “they’re making real investments in renewable energy.” But what’s at the finish line? If Spain and Germany provide any indication, it’s a …
The Fundacion para el Análisis y los Estudios Sociales of Spain recently sponsored presentations on the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom (www.heritage.org/index) in Madrid and Barcelona. Discussion centered on Spain’s 18 percent unemployment rate, the highest in Europe, and its labor market regulations that are among the most severe in Europe. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, the average labor freedom score for the members of the European Union is 60.0, on the Index’s 0-100 scale. Spain’s score, by contrast, is only 47.3. The average unemployment rate for EU …
