Opinions on the Economic Crisis

As I wrote in a recent blog post, I have had the opportunity to meet more Spaniards through intercambios. What do we talk about for an hour? Anything from music, to sports, to the USA. With some, the conversation flows naturally, and with others it can be awkward and choppy.  An easy fallback question, I have discovered, is something that everybody here has an opinion about: the EU and the debt crisis.

I asked my intercambio partner about it last night; he was a middle aged man, a journalist, who recently lost his job after the newspaper he wrote for went under, who wants to improve his English so he can get a job working at a newspaper in Madrid.  He noted that Germany is doing "most of the work" for the European Union; they go to bed at 10 pm, he said, and wake up to go to work when people in Spain are just coming home from the party! There, he said, people have a different mindset and live and work more like Americans.  He also said that countries like Norway and Sweden are very wealthy, but as they're not using the Euro, they are off the hook.  He wasn't sure why people in Spain lived so much differently from countries like Germany.

I was discussing this with my American friend Bria the other day: we were walking to class, and she wanted to buy gum.  We walked by a small corner store where she usually buys snacks.  But, it was around 2 pm, so they were closed for siesta.  Here, it is normal for most stores to close around 1:30 or 2 and to open again around 5 or 5:30 pm. "To improve their economy, Spain should get ride of siesta! It's not helping them economically," Bria exclaimed as we walked toward Carrefour, the grocery store chain here in Salamanca that doesn't close in the middle of the day.  She has a point: with a 20% unemployment rate and a large fiscal deficit, can Spaniards really afford to close their businesses during the day to go home and eat?   In the eyes of Americans, this is very strange. You would think that they would be working even harder to pull themselves out of debt.

Another intercambio partner I had didn't have much of an opinion about the EU or economic crisis.  This to me reflects that "who cares" attitude that some people have here.  The European Union seems like something that is far away and complex, not having a direct affect on their lives.  In class yesterday, my professor, a Spaniard, said jokingly (in reference to our test results) "who really cares if you know where Bulgaria or Romania is?! Most Europeans, or most Spaniards at least, probably don't even know!  It is unfortunate, but true."

As I take economics and social science classes about Spain and the European Union, it has been interesting living here, understanding the EU better, watching the economic crisis all play out.