From typicallyspanish.com
Spain Papers Review - Thursday April 10 2008
By h.b.
Apr 10, 2008 - 9:54 AM
El Mundo leads with the headline that the IMF is claiming that the Spanish economy will increase by half the amount claimed in the Government’s budgetary figures. The paper says the IMF thinks growth will be 1.8% in Spain, while Pedro Solbes has said 3.3%. El Mundo notes that the IMF thinks growth will be even lower in 2009 and unemployment will rise over 10%.
El País headlines that Spain will suffer the greatest slowdown among the developed economies, according to the IMF report which forecasts higher unemployment and high inflation. The paper notes that the recession in the USA will lead to a worldwide slowdown.
ABC leads with the headline that the IMF is also putting a brake on the optimism of the government and has reduced the growth forecast. The paper says they say inflation will be 4% this year and unemployment 10,4% next. ABC also notes that the number of judicial insolvencies in companies in Spain has increased by 74% in the first quarter of the year compared to last. The paper describes the forecast from the IMF as the worst of recent weeks.
El Mundo has a front page photo of the PP regional leader in Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, with the party leader Mariano Rajoy. Both look glum. The paper says that Rajoy has been emphasising the results he obtained at the election, (even though he lost) and his ‘independence’. The couple met at a working media breakfast yesterday.
El País says that members of the Rajoy camp are calling on him to give more details about his project for the future, compared to Aguirre. The paper notes that Rajoy told Aguirre ‘I don’t leak my private conversations’, referring to a recent lunch the two had at a Madrid restaurant. Of course he has leaked that very comment to the press.
ABC says that Rajoy has said ‘I am serious, and I have announced my presentation to the party’.
Público leads on the story and says it is a new step up in the internal war of the Partido Popular. The storm gets worse, says the headline, noting that Gallardón’s right hand man has criticised the ‘spectacle’ from Esperanza Aguirre, and that Rajoy has told her off for leaking a private conversation.
El Mundo reports that the PP will not demand that the new Anti-Terrorism Pact with the government be written. Rajoy has said that it is not about drawing up grand documents, but about generating a climate of confidence.
El País motes that the abstention of CiU and the PNV, Catalan and Basque nationalists, has forced the second vote to invest Zapatero, which will take place on Friday.
ABC considers that Zapatero was left alone in the ‘legislature of consensus’. The paper notes that he is the first elected Prime Minister not be invested after the first vote.
El Mundo claims this morning that Elena Salgado will be the first woman to be Defence Minister in Spain. The paper says Zapatero will present his new cabinet on Saturday, and there will only be four new faces.
El Mundo tucks away the decision of the Constitutional Court not to back appeals placed by the PP against the Organic law of the organisation. The paper says it was forecasted.
ABC thinks the way is now open for the new Catalan statute.
El Mundo has a photo of the single deputy, Rosa Díez, from the UPyD. She spoke at the investiture debate yesterday by complaining how in Cataluña it is not possible to study Castellano in public schools. She said it was generating discrimination and breaking the equality among Spaniards, and that the Constitution was beginning to break up as a result.
El País reports that the United States left tons of radioactive earth when they abandoned Palomares in Almeria after the nuclear bomb accident there in 1966, when three US bombs fell in what the paper calls the largest nuclear weapon accident in history. The paper says the radioactive earth was hidden in trenches. Washington is accepting the cost of removing the radioactive material.
El Mundo tells its readers today that the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will not be going to the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, and that President Bush has called on China to hold talks with the Dalai Lama.
Público highlights the protests in San Francisco in the latest stage of the running of the Olympic torch.
El País has the story of Marta, a 31 year old who was sent for an abortion at the Isadora clinic in Madrid after complications in the La Paz public hospital in the capital during a wanted pregnancy. After that she finds herself questioned by the Guardia Civil for an allegedly illegal abortion.
And finally,
El País has a front page photo of Silvio Berlusconi getting his hair being done. The paper says he ‘heads’ the polls and says he will win the Italian election on Sunday and Monday.