Spain: Parliament Protest As Jobless Rate Rises

Around 1,000 demonstrators take to the streets of Madrid as the unemployment crisis in Spain accelerates.

受到財政緊縮政策影響，西班牙一季度失業率升至37年來最高。首都馬德里爆發大規模示威游行，抗議失業率上升。游行最后發展為大規模沖突，造成約30人受傷。據悉，西班牙一季度失業率為27.2%，較上季度的26.02%繼續攀升，也高于市場預期的26.5%。一季度崗位流失32.2萬個、失業率排在歐元區第二位，僅次于希臘。

It was a minority demonstration. Radical groups say they want to dissolve parliament and dissolve the government and everything. But they are a great, they are minority. I don’t think the anger is spreading onto the streets, though the question of unemployment is so worrying, it’s a wonder that people are not angry.

Yeah, let me ask you about that, because we now have two million households out of 17 million in Spain when no person has a job, what can the prime minister do with that? Because there is not a lot of fact that can be trimmed, is there?

No, they can’t. In fact, trimming more fact may give rise to more unemployment. We don’t have the figures in the Europe status figure as we have. The figures for the reduction unemployment in the financial industry, those are coming. And then there will be reduction also in public jobs because it’s been the private sector that has shed from the year of 2007, something has shed, something like 3.2 million people while employment in the public sector has grown by 80,000, so I think there’s some more bad news come in on the unemployment front.

So we’ve already gone down unemployment at 27.2%, I mean, where do you think it is going to go later this year?

Well, the summer is better for employment. Because of you and also the Holy Week’s out there as Easter because that increases employment notorious industry, so we might not have such a big increase immediately, but I think there will be more unemployment, especially worrying if the unemployment is young because there are something like 56-57% of the young in unemployed and they have been, many of them have been unemployed since they left school.