Divided states

Forgive me if I get a bit serious here…

Somehow, I feel the contrast between the two women in this image says something about modern Spain. It illustrates the uneasy time the country’s having trying to marry the weary, increasingly redundant, traditional sectors of the economy with the new, thrusting, dynamic Spain that seems determined to stride away from huge sections of society leaving a country dreadfully divided between the haves and the have-nots. A section of Spain is thriving, is flourishing, is moving onwards and ever upwards, but an even bigger section would seem to have been relegated to the sidelines, looking on - and only just hanging on.

For me, I guess it’s the fact the two women are outside a Bankia branch that brings the contrast especially home. Having denied and denied that there was a problem, it was the crisis at Bankia, then the largest holder of real estate assets in the country, that forced the Spanish government to finally throw its hands up and acknowledge the dire state of the housing sector and the economy’s dangerous dependence on it – and to bail Bankia out to the tune of a cool twenty billion euros, bringing Spain very clearly into that not-so-exclusive club of Eurozone countries in undeniable crisis.

How you now bring the two increasingly divided Spains together, I simply don’t know. But what’s really worrying is, I don’t think those in power know either… and sometimes one wonders if they care?

(Sorry! I spent last night watching a live-feed of La Bohème from the Met, so maybe some of the despair and poverty – albeit very, very prettily portrayed poverty – of the final Act left me a little blue!)