Demotix/Nathalie Paco. Some rights reserved.The former Spanish ambassador to the UK, Mr. Carles Casajoana, said recently in a conference about the exercise of power: “Sooner or later, every politician has to shoot an elephant”. Recalling the origins of the Spanish Indignados movement in May 2011, one could argue that everything started, indeed, with one elephant shot dead.
In May 2010, the Socialist Prime Minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, received two hot-line calls: one from President Obama and one from Chancellor Merkel. They both urged him to take a U-turn in his economic policy: to cut down major social expenses immediately and to swiftly implement an aggressive austerity fiscal policy.
Spain, like the other southern European countries, was facing the deepest recession since WW2. Prime Minister Zapatero was arm-twisted into carrying out an express reform of the Constitution in order to introduce an extraordinary clause on public deficit limitation that would put an end to his welfare policies. He was forced to shoot an elephant.
