The Great Spanish Crash

BBC reporter Paul Mason travels to Spain to investigate how this once thriving economy has become the latest casualty of the Eurozone crisis.

Greece, Ireland, and Portugal have all received massive bailouts with strict conditions. But Spain is different. One of the largest economies in the world, for nearly twenty years “cool España” meant cutting edge architecture, the world’s best restaurants, and the magic of Barcelona Football Club. Spain was a European success story.

In The Great Spanish Crash, Mason reveals how the transition to democracy after Franco’s dictatorship created a financial and political system that left the country vulnerable to catastrophe when the world economic crisis struck in 2008. One of the keenest advocates of the European single currency, Spain is now the biggest victim of the Eurozone crash with youth unemployment running at more than 50%. Interviewing key players, including former prime minister Felipe González and European commissioner Joaquín Almunia, Mason reveals how Spain’s extraordinary credit and construction boom collapsed, leaving millions facing poverty and the politicians still bickering about a massive potential bail-out.

Paul Mason has been economics editor of Newsnight since 2008 and covered business and industry on the program before that. His reports from China in 2003 won the Wincott Award and in 2005 he was named Journalist of the Year in the Diageo African Business Journalism Awards for a report on the social impact of cellphones in Kenya. Paul has reported widely – from Hurricane Katrina, to the tin mines of Bolivia and the derelict cities of middle America. He was named RTS Specialist Journalist of the Year in 2012. He is the author of four books, of which the latest is the novel Rare Earth. He will move to Channel Four News as Culture/Digital editor in the autumn of 2013. He is visiting professor of economics at Wolverhampton University.