I would like to re­fer to Ian Nar­ine's ar­ti­cle which ap­peared in the June 7 edi­tion of the Busi­ness Guardian, en­ti­tled "No (S)pain, no gain," in which, among oth­er things, he seems to at­tribute to Spain the bulk of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the cur­rent phase of the fi­nan­cial cri­sis. I have found his ap­proach both in­ter­est­ing and cre­ative, and yet some­what far from what is re­al­ly hap­pen­ing in my coun­try and the EU. In­deed, my coun­try and the EU have se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial prob­lems that re­quire ur­gent and bold mea­sures. There is no point in deny­ing it. But Spain's tem­po­rary weak­ness­es are be­ing sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly high­light­ed, and late­ly, in some in­stances, clear­ly ex­ag­ger­at­ed. This has caused ex­ces­sive alarm in the mar­kets. In this re­gard, in his piece Mr Nar­ine makes two as­ser­tions that I need to re­spect­ful­ly re­fute. First­ly, the au­thor states that Spaniards have "all but re­ject­ed aus­ter­i­ty as an op­tion." Any­one who has read a Span­ish news­pa­per, walked a Span­ish street, or more gen­er­al­ly tak­en some time to care­ful­ly fol­low Span­ish and EU cur­rent af­fairs, may have eas­i­ly gath­ered that not on­ly have aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures not been re­ject­ed by my Gov­ern­ment, but rather have be­come a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent of pub­lic poli­cies at all lev­els (state, re­gion­al and lo­cal).

Fur­ther­more, for the past year, my coun­try­men have had to make se­vere and painful sac­ri­fices in or­der to play their part in over­com­ing the sit­u­a­tion. This col­lec­tive ef­fort has in­clud­ed a ma­jor re­duc­tion in Gov­ern- ment spend­ing, dras­tic salary cuts, and ex­ten­sive re­form of the ex­ist­ing pub­lic health and ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tems. In this con­text, Spaniards have ac­cept­ed aus­ter­i­ty on a dai­ly ba­sis, as a pre­con­di­tion to full eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and to be­ing able to keep the EU project to­geth­er. Against this back­drop, the pub­lic deficit is set to be re­duced by 4.5 per cent in two years, ex­pen­di­ture has al­ready been cut by &eu­ro;8.9 bil­lion, all pub­lic ser­vant salaries have ei­ther been frozen or re­duced, and the pub­lic sec­tor and ad­min­is­tra­tion are be­ing ad­just­ed and down­sized. These mea­sures are on­ly the vis­i­ble peak of a much deep­er, struc­tur­al and long-term re­form process, that will con­tin­ue to un­fold dur­ing the up­com­ing months (for fur­ther in-for­ma­tion on the on­go­ing eco­nom­ic re­forms, con­sid­er vis­it­ing www.la­m­on­cloa.gob.es). The way Spaniards are as­sum­ing these strin­gent cuts con­sti­tutes bla­tant proof of their stead­fast­ness, their en­durance, and their sol­i­dar­i­ty. I firm­ly be­lieve that it would be un­fair and friv­o­lous to turn a blind eye to this undis­put­ed fact. The sec­ond point on which I tend to dis­agree with Mr Nar­ine's as­sess­ment is his view that the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the EU, the IMF and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions (IFIs) may be un­der­mined by Spain's al­leged in­abil­i­ty to com­ply with these agen­cies' "con­di­tion­al­i­ties." Please re­call that no such con­di­tions have been im­posed so far, sim­ply be­cause my coun­try has not re­quest­ed the in­ter­ven­tion of ei­ther the EU or oth­er IFIs (IMF, OECD).

Fur­ther­more, in the past week it has be­come ob­vi­ous that Span­ish in­flu­ence on the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process that will de­ter­mine the fu­ture of the EU, and the long-term sta­bil­i­ty of the mar­kets, should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. Cer­tain in­ter­est­ed par­ties have been pre­pos­ter­ous­ly call­ing for an in­ter­ven­tion of my coun­try for the past two years, and yet the re­silience of Spain's pol­i­cy mak­ers and cit­i­zens have proven these clear­ly spec­u­la­tive ma­noeu­vres ster­ile and ground­less. It should be not­ed that last Sat­ur­day's pre­lim­i­nary agree­ment by the Eu­rogroup to as­sist Spain in re­cap­i­tal­is­ing part of its bank­ing sys­tem does not in­clude po­lit­i­cal or macro-eco­nom­ic dis­burse­ment pre­con­di­tions (read the Eu­rogroup com­mu- niqu&ea­cute; on www.eu­ropa. eu). This fi­nan­cial fa­cil­i­ty is lim­it­ed to 30 per cent of the ex­ist­ing Span­ish fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions; as the rest have been cer­ti­fied by the lat­est IMF re­port to be sound and sol­id. In con­clu­sion, we should keep in mind that for the EU and for the rest of the most ad­vanced economies, Spain is not the prob­lem. On the con­trary, Spain is a fun­da­men­tal part of the so­lu­tion: it's one of the pil­lars of the EU and a ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestor (in par­tic­u­lar in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean). Spaniards will do what they must, through sac­ri­fice and long-term com­mit­ment, to put the EU and the eu­ro back on course. But they will not foot the bill for the greed and mis­takes of oth­ers, not now nor in the fu­ture. In its ef­forts to re­ac­ti­vate eco­nom­ic growth and em­ploy­ment, in Spain and in Eu­rope, my Gov­ern­ment, as it has al­ways done since it joined the EU in 1986, will con­tin­ue to ho­n­our its oblig­a­tions. We are not ask­ing for help or for mag­ic so­lu­tions: we just want every­body to play by the rules.

Joaqu&ia­cute;n de Ar&ia­cute;stegui Labor­de

Am­bas­sador of Spain to T&T