CONSEQUENCES OF INACTION
My last ten years in Spain have been dominated by politics both local and national. In 2007 I was elected as a Councillor with the CDP in Parcent. (Democratic coalition of Parcent). We gained control of the Town Hall just before the crisis, when the building boom in Spain was at its height. This had an impact in the building plans for the village which I have written about on this blog (Sierra de Carrascal) but speculative building projects were going ahead all over Spain. People were being encouraged to buy hugely overpriced properties on the promise it was an unfailing investment, lent money they could ill afford, put savings into unsecured share schemes that went bust with the banks. The Town Halls and Regional Governments were spending income they didn’t have, encouraging the building boom and profiting from it (both legally and illicitly) and building up massive levels of unsustainable debt. In 2007 we could see this happening, immediately acted to reduce our Town Hal...