Courtesy of Mish.
There’s an excellent post on Keep Talking Greece this evening on the simmering feud between Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and Spanish prime minister Minister Mariano Rajoy.
Tsipras made a claim that Rajoy’s plan is to “wear down, topple or bring our government to unconditional surrender before our work begins to bear fruit and before the Greek example affects other countries… And mainly before the elections in Spain. … for obvious political reasons“.
Spanish foreign minister García Margallo, returned fire with a statement (a lie actually), that “Had Spain not given €32.744 billion to Greece, it could have increased the unemployment benefits by 50 percent or increase pensions by 38 percent.”
Theheart of the bickering is the rise of the Spanish political party Podemos to the top of the Spanish polls. Elections are later this year. Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, and Tsipras are good friends.
Greecification of Spanish Politics
With that backdrop, let’s pick up the discussion with a look at the Keep Talking Greece article “Hellenization” of Spanish politics or How PM Rajoy lies about the Greek loan.
It doesn’t matter whether SYRIZA and PODEMOs have a lot or just a few things in common. PM Rajoy is concerned that if SYRIZA manages to achieve some austerity relaxation, his days on the Spanish PM’s chair are counted.
So what does PM Rajoy do in order to undermine his enemy abroad? He blocks any Greek attempts to reach some concessions by the Euro zone partners, he does his best to crash the slightest hint of a compromise.
I often discussed the Rajoy-SYRIZA conflict with my colleague blogger from Spain Todos Somos Griegos. She had recently published an interesting report and I asked her to translate it in English. Original text in Spanish on Info-Grecia.com.
The slogan “First we take Athens, then we take Madrid” of Alexis Tsipras and Podemos during SYRIZA’s pre-election rally is the perfect justification for the Spanish government to block any concession to Syriza in Europe.
During the Eurogroup meeting in February Rajoy had the harshest and most uncompromising stance against Greece, even towards the proposal to dissolve the Troika. Despite the fact that the troika had caused a true humanitarian and economic disaster, Rajoy insisted that Greece must follow the same path, in unprecedented partisan egoism, because any minimal concession to Greece, could serve in the future to Spain and other southern countries.
It’s very unfortunate that both the government and the PSOE (Social Democrats) agree that concessions to Syriza can skyrocket the vote to Podemos. [They] have sent to Brussels, separately, a warning: “If the troika made excessive concessions to the reforms demanded Syriza in Greece, the door will open and votes for Podemos can skyrocket at a time crucial for Spain and for the EU.”
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