Lot of news in Spain in the past days but there is no doubt that the most import­ant one is the new package of aus­te­rity mea­su­res (social cuts) adop­ted by the Govern­ment last Friday.

One week ago the Euro­group deci­ded to fuel up to € 100 bil­lion to the Spa­nish ban­king sec­tor. After that the Govern­ment decla­red that the loan was not lin­ked to con­di­tio­na­lity except for the banks nee­ded of Euro­pean money. Nevert­he­l­ess two days later the Coun­cil of Minis­ters appro­ved the most import­ant pack of social cuts tar­ge­ted on public employees and unem­ployed. I’ll try to sum­ma­rise the most rele­vant measures:

Public employees:

· Eli­mi­na­tion of the extra month’s salary paid at Christ­mas (around 7’5% of annual salary). Last year the salary of public employees was fro­zen and the year before was redu­ced 5’5%.

· Eli­mi­na­tion of three days off and “senio­rity” days off. These days aren’t a pri­vi­lege of public employees as the Spa­nish Govern­ment usually says but an agreed com­pen­sa­tion for the lack of incre­a­sing sala­ries in the last deca­des. A public employee which has been working for 30 years will loose 9 days off.

· 40% salary reduc­tion in case of sick leave.

· Reduc­tion of union’s representatives.

· And it should be remin­ded that 150.000/ 600.000 public employees will be fired in the next months

Unem­ployed: 10% reduc­tion of unem­ploy­ment bene­fit from the sixth month of per­cep­tion (only 62% of unem­ployed touch unem­ploy­ment benefits).

Incre­a­sing VAT: the Spa­nish VAT is below the EU aver­age, it’s true. But it doesn’t seem a good idea to increase indi­rect taxes in the frame­work of decre­a­sing eco­no­mic activity. Fur­ther­more, the VAT is counter-​​distributive and Spain is one of the most unequal mem­ber sta­tes in the UE.

The aid for young people to rent flats has been redu­ced by 30%.

On the other hand, employ­ers’ social con­tri­bu­ti­ons will be redu­ced in 2012 and 2013.

The streets are burning. Spon­ta­neous demons­tra­ti­ons take place ever­y­where. Senior offi­ci­als or poli­ce­men join the pro­tes­ters for the first time.

Ramón Baeza San­juán ist Pro­gramm­lei­ter für euro­päi­sche und Inter­na­tio­nale Stu­dien der gewerk­schafts­na­hen Fund­a­ción 1° de Mayo in Madrid. Die­ser Bei­trag erschien ursprüng­lich in sei­nem Blog „Neith­ter fiesta nor siesta – Post­cards from a res­cued Spain“.