Current political situation in Spain?

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SUE

I agree with you...very little interest in politics at all! (mostly because I've watched enough politics to know how vilely incorrupt they ALL are! Wasn't it Machiavelli who said "Power corrupts...absolute power corrupts absolutely"? well, whoever said it...)

I lived in Spain during the coup of 1981. Other than that...things are tons better than under Franco. The king that he hand-picked to continue his iron fisted regime turned around, and as soon as he had died, turned the country into a democracy...Franco must be still rolling in his grave! The image pleases me. Modeled at least loosely on the British government, the king has very little power, and is little more than a figurehead. bicameral legislation with something like 50 political parties (maybe more) and they have to make coalitions in order to get anything done at all. The fun thing is that a coalition can have members from many parties that look extremely disparate, like communists, socialists and democrats all coalesced because they could agree on something, though we lay folk would never believe that they could even agree on a correct way to say "hello".

Prime minister has more power than the king, but I'm not sure his power relative to, say the US president...and I think there is someone with the title of president as well.

Good luck on the scholarship.

finestrat1

Current situation:
Head of the state: Juan Carlos I
Government (Presidente del Gobierno): Rodiguez Zapatero, PSOE (socalist laboures party: www.psoe.es)
Generally: bi-partitional between PP (Partido Popular, part of the group Popular Parties of Europe within the European Parliament) and PSOE (part pf the Socalist Fraction of the European Parliament) with strong regional parties, influencing the central politics.
Tendency of separation in the Basque country (west of the Pyrenee Mountains) and in CataluÃ±a (4 north-eastern provinces of Spain.
Spain is regionalised (some similarities with the US-states, but not that far going).
Big problem: Water. The provinces of the south west of Spain (comunidad Valenciana with provinces of Castellon de la Plana, Valencia, Alicante), the Autonomous Region of Murcia (Province of Murcia) and the Province of AlmerÃa of the Region of AndalucÃa) are very short of water, but many of the other regions donÂ´t want to give excess water to them.
Economy: Spain is since about 4 months in a recession, especially due to the excessive construction of homes ( in 2005 or 2006: more construction than in UK, France and Germany together) with a population of 40 millions (the 3 countries above about 200 million). Collaps/Bancrupcy of some big constuctors with an explosion of unempoyment and the following sharp cut in consum.
Look especially for the pages of the 2 big parties PP and PSOE, they will give you a lot of information.

biswox

And if you new how bad and enemies of Spain are the governors we have, you would be even less interested.

SOC JO! A capite ad calcem

The 1978 constitution created a bicameral parliament called Cortes, divided into the Congress of Deputies and the Senate which holds legislative power. The 350-strong Congress is elected every 4 years by proportional representation, while the 202 senators are chosen by direct election. There are also 17 autonomous regions, the governments of which are elected every 4 years.
Politics of Spain takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic constitutional monarchy, whereby the Monarch is the Head of State and the President of the Government is the head of government in a multi-party system. Executive power is vested in the government. Central legislative power is vested in the two chambers of parliament. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.

Today, Spain is a constitutional monarchy, and there is thus no person holding the title of President of Spain. However, the Prime Minister holds the official title of President of the Government.
Mr.Zapatero (socialist party)

Hope it helps!

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