The problem was all the other European countries got all the money, including Germany, so there was no international money left for Spain

Spain were no less deserving than the Germans or Italians, they just happened to have their war a little earlier than the others

Anyway, it is ancient history and has nothing to do with today

China is always going to be the exception to the rule - simply because it's the biggest country on the planet. Although when you compare pre-"democratised" China with Hong Kong, that illustrates the point very nicely.

(In fact it's even arguable that China has succeeded because of it's one-party system. It would have been impossible for a democracy to have imposed a "one child per family" rule for example. That led to an almost doubling of the available workforce, when mothers were returned to the labour pool after a short period of early childcare).

I read - though I can't remember where - that the reason for the Marshall Plan was to prevent the russkies from doing the same thing and therefore it's prime goal was to prevent the spread of communism. That strategy didn't apply to Spain due to geography. Oh, and Franco was already anti-communist, so didn't need "bribing" .

Europe also benefited from not having to invest in defence after the war - our friends who shall not be named mostly took care of that until recently...

(erm, you mean we gotta pay for our own defence now? Yet another bill to pay? That's not fair you greedy bastards! Sheesh, can we just claim we have no money and get free defence? No worries, I'll just google it to see what entitlements we can get for free...).

You're right, Spain doesn't pay 1000's to people every week. But benefits don't always come in the form of money.

It wasn't long ago that having a job in Spain for more than a year meant it was almost impossible to be fired. I have plenty of experiences meeting young foreigners seeking to get a "Spanish" work contract so that after the first year they knew they could slack off and enjoy more beach than work because they couldn't be fired. They could never get that in Germany, for example.

And on the other side of the coin, I know many employers who were swindled by slacker employees - either not showing up for work, not working while they're at work, or even stealing from the company - and all the stories about having to pay each slacker €10K, €20K, and even €50K to get rid of them. It was a disaster for employers. Good employees are still hard to find. Most are completely unmotivated.

Those kinds of benefits not only make it more complicated and expensive to do business - it is a cost and a big one, and often mean you have to hire more people to do the same job, because employees just don't have the motivation to work, and become very unproductive.

Fortunately, despite mass protests, "guaranteed employment" is no longer possible in Spain, and business can operate with a lot less cost and risk, and people are becoming more productive.

But OK, you complain about the UK's overly generous welfare system, but you also complain about Spain's less generous welfare system.

I think you'd have to agree that neither system is actually working, is it?

I just read El Invierno del Mundo by Ken Follett and he said exactly that. But Spain did get a lot of US investment after the Pact of Madrid in 1953. Franco agreed to let the US have rent-free military bases on Spanish soil, and the US paved the way for Spain to join the United Nations in 1955.

Or UK but we did not get any either. Our infrastructure suffered as much as any except perhaps European Russia. The railways were shot the highways were years behind W. Germany and we have just finished paying off our war debt to the good ole US of A.

So the answer is NO I haven't been to Mumbai

Yes I have read the novel Shantaram

and I guess you will not be moving to the UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/m...trafficking-uk

I find the post on this thread amazing, without putting too fine a point on it, we seem to have had a complete change of opinion from one source.

A new champion of the poor is born, I seem to remember a few heated discussions a good while beck with a certain "local" poster, pitted against another who, more or less denied that poverty existed in Spain.

The poster in question, had the solution to poverty in Spain it was " a good uni degree".
and often quoted that benefits were rather generous in Spain.

Now I cannot believe my eyes that the baton of the wellbeing of the disadvantaged has changed hands in such a short time.

I am cynical?.......I suppose so, because the trun around is huge.....of course I will mention no names, but I am sure that a good number of posters know what I am talking about.

There maybe more relevant threads to post this on, but this thread is active.

Spanish politicians to be fenced off from evictions protesters

http://www.chronicle.gi/headlines_details.php?id=28829

Some out of context quoting going on again

I've heard that dogs can instantly distinguish their own shit from others.

True, but the number of permanent funcionarios actually increased between 2007 and 2012 and so represents an increasing proportion of a shrinking workforce. Meanwhile the public sector has not been paying private suppliers with the result that some have gone out business. For example, I know a supplier of fire extinguishers that has gone bust, not because it was a bad business but because the bank would not provide credit until it received payment. The banking sector, which should be shrinking in line with the contracting economy, has been protected from closure.

The result is that resources are not necessarily being directed to productive areas but non productive areas are being preserved. It is more reminiscent of soviet planning rather than sowing the seeds for a recovery.