Spain, the land of sun, sea, and sand - and a shrinking economy.

I have listened a podcast from BBC News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p006mrhk

This podcast is about Spain`s struggling economy. I had to listen to it twice in order to understand it better. The major problem for me in understanding was the accent of interviewed people. Most of the words were easy to understand because I have learned them at my English lessons.

Now, about the podcast. As I mentioned before, this podcast is about economy in Spain and people struggling to survive during the financial crisis time. Lesley Curwen has interviewed two people with opposite views on this situation in Spain: Javier Andres, who is a leading economist at Valencia University and Spain's Secretary of State for the Economy, Jose Manuel Campa.

Javier Andres was first. He told that 1.000.000 of jobs have been lost in one year and now there are high rates of temporary workers in Spain. In his opinion, the government does not see the necessity of undertaking any kinds of reforms and also politicians say that Spain is an example for the rest of the world, that`s why they do not need to change anything, which is really bad.

On the other hand, Jose Manuel Campa is more optimistic about this situation. Lesley Curwen asked him if Spain is becoming the second Greece, which is in a bad debt situation right now. His reply was not clear enough economically wise, because he said that Spain is in a  better situation than Greece, but, still Spain’s debt is almost as bad as Greece`s and an employment rate is even higher there. He is more optimistic about the possibility of that reforms will take place.

Meanwhile, Spanish people will never lose their hope but they are very pessimistic about their future. They are just focused on getting through the next couple of years. One of them said: “We`ll try to live”

This podcast seems very interesting and very realistic to me, though it is very sad to see how people struggle for their lives.