Geography Archives: Spain

  • What Sent the Stock Market Tumbling? It Wasn’t the S&P Downgrade

    Time to beat up on really, really bad news reporting.  The stock market doesn’t tell people why it does what it does.  We have commentators who bloviate on what they think caused the market to rise or fall, but they don’t really know and they could be completely wrong. That is why it was incredibly […]

  • The Struggle against Stupidity: European and U.S. Governments Continue Wrecking Their Economies

    All money managers’ eyes were on the U.S. jobs report this morning after the U.S. stock market yesterday suffered its biggest drop since 2009 and panic surged through financial markets worldwide.  The headline numbers were not as bad as many had feared: the U.S. economy added 117,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate edged […]

  • Sense and Nonsense in the Balanced Budget Debate: A Socialist Response

      The Republicans have successfully changed the main emphasis of the economic debate from job creation to deficit control.  Why the urgency for balanced budgets?  After all, this anemic “recovery” has set itself apart from all previous post-war turnarounds precisely by its manifest failure to generate jobs.  Economic growth needs to considerably exceed 3% per […]

  • Greece

    Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 29 June 2011. | Print

  • Blues on the Border: Legendary Rock Guitarist Javier Batiz Plays and Sings for “My Beloved and Beautiful Tijuana”

    Javier Batiz, the great Mexican rock-and-roll guitarist, played and sang last week in a concert that embodied and gave voice to everything that is most wonderful about Tijuana and the U.S.-Mexico border region.  Batiz, who since he was thirteen has played in the bars and nightclubs of Tijuana, performed this time with the Baja California […]

  • Why the Euro Is Not Worth Saving

    The Euro is crashing today to record lows against the Swiss Franc, and interest rates on Italian and Spanish bonds have hit record highs.  This latest episode in the Eurozone crisis is a result of fears that the contagion is now hitting Italy.  With a two-trillion dollar economy and $2.45 trillion in debt, Italy is […]

  • German Leopards for Saudi Arabia

    Merkel just wouldn’t let the cat out of the bag.  In the first days after the arms sale scandal began, her front seat in the Bundestag was conspicuously empty.  When she finally did show up she wore a sour look but said not a word.  The decision made and any reasoning behind it were highly […]

  • Job

    Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 1 July 2011.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

  • All These People

      “Where did all these people come from?” “Who cares!  Don’t stop.  They don’t belong to our circles.” Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 19 June 2011 under a Creative Commons license.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. Victor Mallet, […]

  • The System

    Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 20 June 2011.  Cf. Victor Mallet, “Spain Protesters Turn Anger against Brussels” (Financial Times, 19 June 2011); Paula Díaz and Ana Requena, “El […]

  • Greece

    Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 17 June 2011.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. “Varoufakis Says Greece’s Papandreou ‘On His Last Legs’” (Bloomberg, 16 […]

  • European Integration at the Crossroads: Deepening or Disintegration?

      Are the member states of the Eurozone responsible for the Euro crisis the ones having problems servicing their debt?  The majority of people in Europe believe that this is the case.  Therefore, indebted countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland must subject themselves to a brutal austerity program of savage cuts in welfare spending, diminishing […]

  • Should 15M Movement End Occupations of Sol and Other Plazas?

    The movement of citizens that has occupied Puerta del Sol and other plazas in diverse cities of Spain since the 15th of May has brought back political debate to the streets and put the role of political parties into question.  Should the movement now take down its encampments and look for other formulas to channel […]

  • When Push Comes to Shove? Exposing the Empty Threat to Kick Greece Out of the Eurozone

    A sword of Damocles, we are told, is hanging over Greece.  Even the Greek EU commissioner says that Greeks must accept that their country will be run, nay micromanaged, by a committee of foreign creditors, or else Greece will be kicked out of the eurozone. This threat is found upon a flagrant lie.  Greece cannot […]

  • NATO

    We have developed planes invisible to radars . . .. . . and victims invisible to justice. Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 30 May 2011.  Translation by Yoshie […]

  • Sol

    May our sun, the Puerta del Sol camp in Madrid, not be turned off!

  • The Crisis Enters Year Five

    The current global capitalist crisis began with the severe contraction in the housing markets in mid-2007.  Welcome to Year Five.  A usual inventory of where things stand begins with the good news: the major banks, the stock market, and corporate profits have largely or completely “recovered” from the lows they reached early in 2009.  The […]

  • Democracy

    Every now and then . . . a fiesta of democracy In the meantime . . . a siesta of democracy Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 25 May […]

  • Spain: 2011 Municipal and Regional Election Results

      Ballot boxes are like black boxes. Upon opening them you’ll discover the causes of the accident. Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 22 May 2011 under a Creative Commons license.  Cf. <resultados2011.mir.es/99MU/DMU99999TO_L1.htm>; <resultados-elecciones.rtve.es/municipales/>; and “More revealing perhaps, however, is to examine votes relative […]

  • Rebellion of the Indignant: Notes from Barcelona’s Tahrir Square

    There is no doubt about it.  The wind that has electrified the Arab world in recent months, the spirit of the repeated protests in Greece, the student struggles in Britain and Italy, the mobilizations against Sarkozy in France . . . has come to Spain. These are not days of “business as usual.”  The comfortable […]