“This joke is over” Jose Garcia-Margallo, Spanish Foreign Minister told his British counterpart William Hague this week regarding the Gibraltar sovereignty dispute.
Spain’s economy contracted in the fourth quarter and will shrink 1.5% this year, the Bank of Spain estimated, undermining government efforts to cut the budget deficit amid the second recession in two years.
Spanish Foreign Affairs minister Jose Garcia-Margallo is seeking to revisit talks on co-operation with the disputed Gibraltar UK Overseas Territory on a new variation of the formulas for talks: a quadripartite forum.
Spain's Conservative government ruled out a bad bank to deal with toxic property assets, wary of adding more debt to a nation fighting to control its deficit and putting the onus on lenders to make their own provisions.
Spain ended 2011 with record high unemployment, according to data released Tuesday as the new conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy considers additional austerity measures to reduce the budget deficit.
Spain’s economy is forecasted to contract in the first quarter of 2012 after shrinking in the previous six months admitted Economy Minister Luis de Guindos confirming analysts’ expectations that the Euro zone fourth largest economy is already in recession.
Spain's new government revealed on Friday that the public deficit for 2011 would come in at 8% of GDP, well above a target of 6%, and announced income and property tax hikes and a civil servant wage freeze in response.
The Spanish king's son-in-law was charged Thursday in a fraud and embezzlement case that has damaged the royal family, which this week took the unprecedented step of disclosing its income.
Ana Botella, the wife of former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, was sworn-in Tuesday as Madrid’s first woman mayor. She succeeds Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, mayor of the capital since 2003, who resigned to serve as Justice Minister in the new Conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
The President of the Spanish Association of Marine Fishing Officers (Aetinape), José Manuel Muniz, has asked the new Spanish government to get involved and act against the pressure placed on Falklands-flagged vessels by the Argentines, according to an article in the Galician newspaper Faro de Vigo, which examined the Spanish reaction to the ban on the entry of Falklands flagged vessels to Mercosur ports.