Spanish eyes smile with hope in grim times

Christmas lottery tickets for sale in Spain. Photo / Bloomberg.

This could have been the year when 70-year-old Joaquin Rodriguez didn't play the Christmas lottery.

It would have been the first time he skipped the world-famous "El Gordo" gamble in 50 years, but stranger things have happened in Spain recently.

The left-leaning prime minister turned his back on the unions to appease investors, for instance. And the Government declared a state of emergency for the first time since General Franco and placed the fate of the country's air traffic in the hands of the Spanish military.

Even stranger in this topsy-turvy world, Rodriguez, a retired taxi driver, didn't win a thing last year, not even one meagre break-even prize in the world's largest payout. He bought €400 ($714) worth of losing tickets.

But in hard times, tradition beckons. Two of his six children are unemployed, and all of them are "up to the neck" in debt. So yesterday Rodriguez doled out €300 for 15 tickets.

"I'll give them to my children to lift them out of the crisis. It's a foolish hope, very foolish, but I keep hoping."

The state lottery offices are one of the few places where Spaniards can find a glimmer of hope this holiday season - and even those face an uncertain future after the Government announced it would sell off a 30 per cent stake to private investors, one of many moves to calm market fears that Spain could need a Greek-style bailout.

Spirits are usually high in the run-up to Christmas and Three Kings Day, the gift-giving holiday on January 6. But this year the season looks far from jolly in Spain, with record unemployment of 20 per cent, a barely contained sovereign debt crisis, government cuts to rein in the deficit and unpopular labour market reforms.

Just a few years ago, Spain was lauded as a shining example of growth in Europe, a land blossoming with designer architecture and luxury retirement villages for sun-worshiping northerners built with the cheap labour of a sudden stream of eager immigrants. Now, with the property boom gone bust and regional governments strapped with debt, nervous investors have thrust Spain into the spotlight again - this time as the EU's worst potential nightmare, a country too big to fail but also too big to save.

A sign of the troubled season: the man in the Santa Claus suit outside a department store in Madrid is an unemployed caterer from Mexico trying to raise a few coins to buy a plane ticket home. Scrooge takes the form of tax hikes for alcohol and cigarettes and 5 per cent wage cuts for public employees, a large chunk of which is inconveniently carved out of December's "extra pay".

The air controller's strike last weekend set the grumbling tone. The strike left 700,000 passengers stranded at airport counters at the start of Spain's busiest five-day weekend, the Puente de la Constitution.

Nearly 5000 flights were cancelled, causing chaos and tears. Couples arrived late for weddings and honeymoons. Mourners missed funerals. A baby with a tumour had to be transported by a special flight from the Canary Islands to Malaga for a scheduled operation.

Things are back to normal now. But Spain's tourist industry, which generates 11 per cent of the country's wealth, is reeling from the strike with an estimated €350 million in losses from hotel cancellations and package reimbursements. Airlines have reported losses of about €100 million. The industry was counting on December to compensate for a slow year.

"We had hopeful predictions and we took a beating," said Pedro Garcia, president of the Association of Andalusian Travel Agencies.

The industry worries that Spain's international image has been damaged for the holiday season.

"With the current economic crisis, a country like Spain can't afford the luxury of turning everything upside down in an instant. It's like handing a silver tray to competing markets," said Santiago Padilla, a spokesman for the Seville Association of Hotel Owners.

The military is still controlling the air towers to ensure the striking controllers remain at their posts - not the best incentive to plan a New Year's trip.

Remon den Bode, a Dutch social worker, told Las Palmas Daily as she awaited a flight home: "I don't think I'm going to return to the Canary Islands if they can hold hostage entire families in the airport without information. A little paradise turned into a true hell."

The spin doctors at Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's office are not merry either. The popularity of his Socialist Party has hit historic lows.

But much anger has been targeted at the air controllers, who baulked at a government decree that sliced their wages and, they say, effectively left them without basic worker rights like paid breaks or sick leave. Spaniards are pinching pennies to buy gifts and traditional foods this year, and so they find it hard to muster sympathy for people who earn an average of €200,000 a year.

"They have no right," said Maria Jose Romo, a 56-year-old insurance company worker whose salary was cut by 5 per cent.

"We attend accident victims in hospital. What would happen if we went on strike?" She said her daughter's planned holiday in Cadiz was ruined because of the air controllers' stoppage. Now she's crossing her fingers that air traffic flows normally at Christmas, when another daughter is supposed to fly home from Dublin.

"It doesn't look like a very good season," she said, adding that the family had slashed its gift giving budget. "Instead of having to buy gifts for everyone, we picked names out of a sack for a Secret Santa."

Many Spanish families are planning to give less expensive gifts and less extravagant dinners.

"We're all cutting down even if it doesn't look like it," said Pedro Azpiri, a 63-year-old pensioner, while joking with his wife and friends. "You know, the humour is the last thing to go."

"Spaniards are like that," chimed in pensioner Mariano Sanchidrian, who supports the Government's plans to raise the retirement age and other reforms to quiet market jitters.

Amparo Illan, a retired nursery school teacher from Valencia, said she hadn't noticed the pinch this season, but she had always counted every peseta and euro cent. "We're workers: we've always lived on a budget," she said. "It's the ones who have lived above their means that are crying now."

Beatriz Aguirre, a 23-year-old university graduate, will spend the holidays looking for a job. She studied tourism in the wine region of La Rioja, where many bodegas once planned to build luxury hotels. "Now everything is paralysed," she said.

Stores and restaurants, usually smug at this time of year, are begging for business with pre-holiday discounts. Miguel Angel Garcia, a father of three, is handing out luncheon-menu fliers on a rainy street corner, a waiter's uniform under his coat, but he doesn't mind. He had been out of work for eight months until he found a job at La Caserola restaurant in Madrid, where business is slow.

"It doesn't bother me because what I want to do is work, and if the owner says to hand out fliers, I do it."

Unlucky days

* 20 per cent: Unemployment rate for the last 12 months - double the Eurozone average.

* 43 per cent: The youth unemployment rate - also double Eurozone average.

* €2500: Cash benefit to new mothers - which is about to be cancelled.

* €426: Monthly subsidy for the long-term unemployed - about to be cancelled.

* 67: The new retirement age, two years older than previously.

* 0.7 per cent: Projected growth rate for 2011 after a contraction of 0.6 per cent this year.

* 5: Number of Spanish banks found to be vulnerable to economic stress by a European study this year - out of just seven across all of Europe.

* €2.3bn: Prize money of hugely popular national lottery, El Gordo - 30 per cent of which is being sold off.


- Independent