← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
. Austerity or not?
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Pascale Harter's testing the mood in Spain in the week hundreds of thousands made of...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC.
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This is from our own correspondent.
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You can hear the version of the
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programme we make for the BBC World
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Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on
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BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards tell their government austerity's not the way forward. While in France, the difficulties pile up for a new president who believes there are other ways to bring back the good times. The Nigerian authorities admit they're losing millions as people help themselves to the country's most precious resource, oil. And we're finding out how 100,000 Finns came to be dancing the tango under the midnight sun. There had been huge protests in Spain against the government's latest austerity measures. They took place as formal approval was given for a bailout of the country's banks. Eurozone finance ministers endorsed a loan of billions of euros, but the move failed to rally the Spanish stock market, which Yesterday plunged some 6%. The demonstrations against the government's economic policies took place in more than 80 cities and towns across Spain. So why then in Castilla La Mancha, did Pascal Harta find herself asking, crisis? What crisis?
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Here in Ciudad Real, the children are chasing the starlings, dipping and diving in the town square. Young parents scoop up toddlers in football shirts and set them back on their feet. The little girls have ribbons in their hair. Lipsticked women in their 60s wearing crisply ironed dresses walk arm in arm towards the cafes. But there are no more tables free outside. It's eight o' clock and it seems as if the whole town is meeting here for beer and tapas. It looks as if nothing has changed in Spain, but 40% of young people are now unemployed here. Couples have defaulted on their mortgages and moved the whole family in with Grandma to live off her pension. So how come everyone seems to be out spending money? And how can they afford to be so very well turned out? Lola Merino, spokesperson for the Popular Party at the town council, brightens when I put this to her. You know the saying bad times, good face? Well, studies show that in times of economic crisis, poor beauty salons do better than ever because people want to put on a good front. This sounds like a study from a women's magazine, but it's the only statement approaching a statistic or a figure that Mrs. Marino has been able to give me. I'm puzzled by this because she is the counsellor for the local economy and I'm interviewing her about whether public money was invested in an airport in Ciudad Real, which opened and promptly shut, leaving huge debts. It's one of Spain's many notorious white elephant projects. But I can't even find out how much the airport cost or whether there's any truth in Mrs. Merino's accusation that the regional government invested directly in it. Her Popular Party, now in government, blames the Socialists who were in power at the airport's failure. The Socialists blame the recession, and the Spanish taxpayer blames them both. Bah, they're all rotten, an old man says after he stops me in the street to ask if I am British. He went to work in England during the time of the dictatorship of General Franco. Times were very bad then, he says, but they're getting worse again. Now we need a proper revolution. Our politicians still run this country as if they are lords and and we're peasants on their land. Spain needs tighter transparency laws to respond to the crisis, argues freedom of information activist David Cabo. His organization has joined forces with the anti cuts group kintheime. The lack of information you found when investigating the bankrupt airport in Ciudad Real is typical of Spain, he says. Our politicians aren't used to being monitored or held accountable. And coupled with Spain's multiple layers of public administrations, you pile up many opaque layers with plenty of opportunity for conflict of interest and corruption. Spanish workers complain that when it comes to getting a job, the notion that it's who you know, not what you know is taken to extremes. The public sector is particularly rife with Enchoufe, literally plugged in, as they call being well connected. And if you get a job through Enchoufe, then you don't have to work hard to keep it. Spain's sick note Culture is a big problem. Companies complain that doctors are only too willing to sign workers off for months on end with conditions like stress. There's an old joke here. It sounds bitter. Now the good times are over and the government's introducing cuts worth 65 billion euros, its fourth austerity measure, 60 since coming to power less than a year ago. Someone's telling three people, one French, one English and one Spanish, that he has healing powers. It's a miracle I can see again, says the Englishman. You've cured me. I can walk again, says the Frenchman. Don't come anywhere near me, says the Spaniard. I've got a slight twinge in my back and I've been off on full pay for six months. Those well turned out families in Ciudad Real are putting on a front. They might come out for a beer, but they all go home at 10, says Antonio, a waiter at one of the tapas bars. Every outside table used to be full until midnight, 1 o'. Clock. We used to have 12 waiting staff. Now there's four of us. For rent signs festoon the balconies of the apartment blocks in the central square. Time was you couldn't get an apartment in that location for love nor money. Now, Antonio tells us, one entire side is empty. Make no mistake, despite the good face, Spain is in crisis.
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And that's Pascal Haute France this week abandoned large chunks of the economic policy associated with the former president Nicolas Sarkouzi. The ending of tax breaks on overtime work and the raising of wealth tax are part of his successor's pledge to reboot the economy without subjecting citizens to a withering program of auster. But two months after being elected to the Elysee palace, the problems are starting to pile up for the Socialist president, Francois Hollande. Top of the heap is a row over the decision by car giant Peugeot to lay off 8,000 workers. David Chazan says there's increasing speculation that President Hollande won't be able to push through the policies he feels France needs.
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Alys works in one of the last surviving textile factories in the gritty industrial belt of northern France, near Valenciennes. 37 years ago, when she was taken on, the group that owns the Factory employed about 8,000 people. Now only 200 jobs are left. Alice, who's in her 50s, says the group's still making the same products, but not in France, in countries where labor is cheaper. For 20 years, she says, she's heard politicians promising to do something to stop industry moving abroad. But it was just talk. And she reluctantly accepts that Francois Hollande and the new Socialist government in France can't exert as much control as they'd like over industry and international business. They're discovering that they can do little to stop the carmaker Peugeot from closing a factory just outside Paris. They're threatening to cut state aid to the ailing company, but executives argue that that will only make things worse for workers. And yet, beneath the combative rhetoric of the left wing unions, I found that many people were as resigned as Alice to the idea of a future with fewer manufacturing jobs in France. It's depressing, said Jacqui, a worker at the plant. Obviously we're angry, he said, smoking furiously. But it would have happened anyway, whoever was in power. Another worker, Christian, said, we didn't expect miracles, but we do want Hollande to do something. We're worried about ourselves, and we're even more worried about our kids future. I met the two men in a suburb a few miles from the factory on the day management announced the plan to phase out production there over the next two years. We went to a cafe where Jacqui ordered brandy and Christian beer. Its been a long, bad day, they said as they raised their glasses. Both are in their late 40s with children still at school, and until now they've enjoyed a decent quality of life. We're too young to retire, they said, but maybe we're too old to retrain. They're hoping the government will manage to force Peugeot to back down. But they said they were prepared for the worst. President Hollande's campaign slogan was Change is now. But since he's been in office, another catchphrase has started to be heard more often. It's one inherited from the previous Socialist president, Francois Mitterrand. D' unais du temps au temps. It roughly translates as all in due course or be patient, don't rush things. But many of those who signed up for change now are none too happy about being told to be patient. One of the first campaign pledges the government fulfilled was to raise the minimum wage. But the increase met with derision from many union members. They calculated that it would only add up to a few extra euros a month after tax. It's not even enough to buy a baguette a day, snorted Jackie. At the same time, Mr. Hollande's plan to sharply increase taxes on the super rich and big companies has angered those who argue that it will lead to capital flight and a brain drain to countries like Britain or Belgium. I spoke to a group of architects in their 30s and 40s. On the face of it, they're doing quite well. The last thing any of them wants to do is leave France. Most of them in fact voted for Mr. Hollande. But like a lot of other middle class people, they're starting to feel uneasy about the impact of higher taxes on their business. They want more social justice, but they also want the government to recognize that French companies have to be able to compete internationally. So what do they want Mr. Hollande to do? One of them, a woman called Muriel, said that he models himself on President Mitterrand and he would do well to remember that after two years of left wing policies, which didn't work in the 1980s, Mr. Mitterrand did a U turn, becoming less radical and more friendly to business that she said led to a period of comparative prosperity. Mr. Hollande will do the same, she predicted. There's really no choice, she said it's only a question of time.
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David Chazan in Paris. Nigeria is Africa's biggest producer of oil. Yet its government and the oil companies operating there are losing millions to people helping themselves to the country's most precious resource. Most of it's found in the Niger Delta in the south. Extracting it has always been controversial. There have been complaints that it's brought little benefit to people in the Delta region. While it does seem to have lined the pockets of some of those in positions of power, the violent militancy which plagued the Delta for many years has now subsided. But Will Ross has been finding out that the row over ownership of the oil has only intensified.
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My shoes lying by the bin look as though I've been walking in Marmite. They're actually caked in crude oil from the Niger Delta, which I guess makes me a small time accidental thief. But I've just met some men who are making a living stealing the sticky stuff. The sprawling city of Port Harcourt ought to be the Dubai of Nigeria. Sadly, the proceeds from half a century of oil production are not too visible. Some flashy cars and hurriedly built hotels with mirrored windows are evidence of the few who've made it big. But from what I saw, prostitution and religion are the booming businesses. In one hotel, a posse of brightly painted prostitutes glided confidently through the lobby, ignoring the reception and headed straight into the lift. They looked like a gaggle of geese returning in formation to a familiar pond heading out of the city towards the oil fields. I drove past the vast compound which is home to the staff of the Anglo Dutch Oil company Shell. The wall topped with barbed wire from towering billboards. Men in suits invite you to join their warehouse sized churches. They have names like the Royal Palace Assembly International, where Sevenfold blessings are on Offer, the Home of Success and Christ's Power Church worldwide. After an hour's drive, I was in Agonyland, an area fabulously rich in oil, but famous for a long, bitter struggle with the people on one side and the international oil companies as well as the government on the other. You may have heard the name Ken Saro Wiwa. He was a prominent activist who in the 1990s, led the calls for the Ogoni people to get a fair share of the oil proceeds and campaigned against the appalling environmental damage caused by companies like Shell. The military government saw Ken Saro Wiwa as an unwelcome threat who was endangering the flow of oil, the economy's lifeblood on which the ruling elite gorged itself. Along with eight other activists, Ken Sarawiwa was framed for murder and was hanged. Shell was forced to abandon its oil production in agonyland back in 1993. But it's left behind some of its old well heads, which are like rusting ghosts dotted around the landscape. I'd arranged to meet a man on a motorbike who'd lead me down to a remote creek where oil production was still going on illegally. As our wheels spanned through the mud, the road got ever narrower. Soon head high grass and cassava stalks were brushing against the car. Suddenly the colour changed from green to black. For hundreds of meters there was not a leaf in sight and the ground was covered in a thick oily sludge. This is our business place, said a man who asked me to call him Edward. Next to the polluted water, which was coated in a rainbow coloured sheen, a large wooden canoe lay on its side. We used these to go and get our natural resources, our crude oil, he said, the use of the word our pointing to the feeling that the oil belongs to the people, not the multinationals. Regardless of the contract signed, they get it by breaking into the oil company's pipelines. All along this palm tree fringed creek were oil drums with protruding pipes leading into troughs. Home made oil refineries. At night, firewood is used to boil up the crude. Edward makes the process sound simple. First gas comes out. After gas we get kerosene. After kerosene we get petrol. After petrol we get diesel, he says, adding that it's dangerous work because if the gas catches, the whole place goes up in flames. This operation alone produces more than 10,000 litres of diesel every night. There are similar sites across swathes of the Niger Delta and far greater amounts of stolen crude oil are simply pumped onto barges and and taken out to sea to waiting ships. All this damages the environment, hurts the oil companies and costs the government hundreds of millions of pounds a month. So why can't it be stopped? Edward has one answer. When the soldiers come, we give them something so they'll not talk and we can do our business, he tells me. If we have 10 drums, we'll give the army two. It's normal. He says it's widely believed that politicians are also in on the illegal trade. Edward, who's now 32, says he got credits in all his exams when he finished secondary school, but then hit a brick wall. No money to go for further education and no jobs in the village. It's stressful and dangerous, but I don't know how I can get out of this business, he says, gazing out over the once beautiful but now, Blackened Creek
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Wilross in southern Nigeria. It's 60 years since Eva Peron, Argentina's most famous first lady, died of cancer. Thousands will attend events to mark the anniversary of her death on Thursday in Buenos Aires. Evita and her husband, President Juan Peron, are remembered fondly by the Peronist faithful as the perfect political couple who delivered on their promises to the poor in the 1940s and 50s. To their detractors, they were and remain dangerous populists who did only harm to Argentina. Linda Presley's been to its capital city to explore another part of Evita's story.
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The brown slip on man's shoes are gathering dust on cheap wooden shelving in a downtown Buenos Aires flat. I picked them up. I always think used shoes are almost rudely personal, intensely human. These ones are all leather, and inside they reveal the indents of the owner's feet. I look up at Mario Rotundo. He's round like his name, with steel rimmed specs and a flat cap. Those shoes belong to General Juan Peron, he says in his soft, low voice, inhaling deeply from a cigarette. Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, when Argentina's former president was living in exile in Spain, Mario was his friend and aide, which is how he came to inherit Peron's belongings. In a villa in Madrid, Juan Peron held court with his third wife, Isabelle, and a dancer he met in Panama and planned his return to power. I'm fascinated by Mario's flat. It's stuffed full of the contents from that house in the Spanish capital. There are carpets, curtains and clothes, pictures and papers, books, drinks, decanters, and a whole stack of tango LPs. There's even the large stone that was placed on the grave of one of Juan Peron's adored pet dogs, Canela. It reads, the best and most loyal of friends. This hard man of the military just loved poodles. And so did his most famous wife, Eva Peron. There's a great photo of the couple taken in Buenos Aires, probably in the late 1940s, each of them snuggling one of these curly furred pooches with Juan Peron just beaming at his fabulous wife. Evita died in 1952. Her body was embalmed. It was Juan Peron's intention to display her to the adoring Peronist public in a grandiose mausoleum. So even in death he would harness her power as an icon of the poor. That didn't happen. Evita's preserved body was spirited away by the military in 1955, after Peron was deposed in a coup and went into exile. Eva Peron was the love of the general's life, Mario tells me after we've cleared a space on some dusty armchairs. Isabel, he thinks, was more of an assistant than a wife. Wife, assistant. Whatever her role, it can't have been easy for her when one September morning in 1971, Eva Peron's corpse, somewhat worse for wear, was delivered to the house in Madrid after being disinterred from a secret grave in Milan where it had been hidden by the military. Imagine that your husband's dead former wife is suddenly on your dining room table and she's naked. And then, Mario tells me, Isabel cleaned the body. Apparently, she also washed its hair and blow dried it. Did Isabel ever express any disquiet about having Evita's corpse in the house? I asked Mario. Never, he says, as if it's all just so run of the mill. Maybe it became that the body was there with the Perons for nearly two years. So perhaps life went on around it. Dinners and drinks, tango sessions, and the endless political scheming before Juan Peron returned to Argentina to become president again in 1973. In Madrid, a kind of shroud was made for Evita from blue and white silk. Mario describes it as three pieces of cloth rather than a robe. Years later, Isabelle was once again in exile in Spain after being deposed as president of Argentina. She'd taken over when Peron died of a heart attack. Because she was vice president back in the Spanish capital, she kept the shroud in a box in her bedroom. By this time, Evita's body was buried in Buenos Aires and Argentina had descended into a dark and bloody dictatorship. Anyway, one night in Madrid, Isabelle phoned Mario in the middle of the night. She was terrified, he says. He went immediately to her flat, where she told him a ghostly light had appeared around the box containing the shroud. Mario took the box away with him. In 2004, he sold the shroud at auction in Italy. It fetched around £100,000. He says he spent the money helping the disadvantaged. Looking up from my dusty armchair, I see one of the light fixtures has a price tag on it. It's Mario's intention to sell all the Peron's possessions and spend the money on the poor. It is, he says, what Juan Peron would have wanted. But there are legal challenges. In the meantime, Mario Rotondo remains the custodian of this extraordinary collection, one that tells an important part of the story of one of Argentina's most controversial presidents, Linda Presley.
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And you can hear more of that extraordinary tale on Monday evening here on Radio 4 in her documentary Evita's Odyssey. It came as no surprise to hear there that in the flat of that Argentine exile there was a stack of tango LPs. The sensual dance and its accompanying music first became popular in the working class districts of Buenos Aires in the late 19th century. Today it's not just a South American phenomenon, as Mark Bosworth's been learning on a visit to a normally rather slim sleepy town in Finland.
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As far as the eye can see, couples dance the tango on the tree lined street beneath a brilliant cobalt blue sky. It's two in the morning and the sun has barely dipped below the horizon and it will soon rise again. The sound of the accordion fills the warm summer air and the orchestra starts up the drums, then the violins. The singer bursts into a song called Satuma or fairy tale land. Aven meren tula pu len yasakin non ma. Finland's most popular and most frequently performed tango song describes a faraway, idyllic land where people live happily. But in this sad tune, the land can only be reached through music. This is Tango Kattu, or Tango street in Seiniyoki, a small town three hours train ride north of Helsinki. Senayoki's main street has been renamed especially for the tango festival, which is the highlight of the Finnish tango calendar. This five day festival has been going for nearly 30 years and attracts over 100,000 tango mad finns. And there are all sorts here. Men in sandals, cut off denim shorts and cowboy hats, an elderly couple in matching shell suits. Women wear leopard print and polka dot dresses, and there's lots of leather. I came to find out why the Finns are so in love with the tango. After all, they're stereotyped as being withdrawn and quiet, hardly the fiery Latin American type. The tango took Finland by storm in the 1920s and 30s after being exported from Buenos Aires. But it was during the grim conditions of wartime Finland that the Finns made this music. Their own lyrics of lost love and sorrow struck a chord with those who had lost loved ones during the fighting. And these sad songs, which are nearly always played in a minor key, have remained firmly in the national consciousness ever since. The Finnish version is slower and simpler. Melodies taken from old Finnish and Russian waltzes are weaved throughout. The accordion replaces the Argentine bandonion. The dance is also different. No fancy flicks of the legs from the women. But the fins dance closer, bodies pressed firmly together inside a cramped sweltering sports hall, the tango moves are being closely scrutinised in a dancing competition. A woman with long blonde hair in a crushed red velvet dress glides past. A brunette in bright yellow sails the other way. One couple, Sari and Reini Ristola, have been competing at the Seine joki event for 10 years. And the emotions are just as strong for them now as they were the first time they danced here. Raine can't put the feeling into words, not even in his native Finnish. Instead, he rolls up a shirt sleeve to reveal an arm covered in goosebumps. Then Raine's bright blue eyes suddenly light up. When you are dancing, it is like loving. Well, maybe the bit before the feeling is so high, he tells me. Like Sari and Rainey Ristola, most people here are middle aged. But some younger people can be seen dancing the same steps as their grandparents did before them. The tango festival culminates in a televised X Factor style singing competition inside the cavernous Seine Yoki Arena. Six entrants, all in their 20s and 30s, have been voted by text message to today's final, but only one will be crowned as the Tango King or Queen of the Year. This is a major event. Former kings and queens have gone on to become big celebrities. Even the Finnish president, Sauli Ninisto is here tonight. One singer distinguishes himself by singing a tango version of a popular Finnish pop song. Pekka Mikkola, a music student from the northern town of Oulu, is the latest person to join Finland's only royalty. I've already got a big head, Pekka jokes as he struggles to fit the crown on his head. He has every reason to be happy. A record deal, full national tour and instant fame await him on Tango Kattu. At three in the morning, the sun is already beginning to creep up over the horizon. Partners to be will soon meet for the first time and share their first tango together. Feet tapping, eyes closing, bodies swaying to the music. I recall what Arya Koriceva, a former Seinayoki tango queen, told me earlier in the day. Her parents got together whilst dancing the tango in a wooden hall tucked deep in the Finnish forest. Finns may be quiet, she said, but tango gives their feelings a voice. And on a beautiful night like this, the Finns could be forgiven for thinking they had finally found that distant, magical fairy tale land of of Satuma.
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Mark Bosworth enjoying some late night tango in Finland and bringing this edition to a close. I'll be here again next Saturday morning with more from our own correspondence. Not sure yet if there'll be more singing, but I hope you'll join us anyway. Goodbye.