PP plays down Spain’s youth unemployment tragedy

If there is one thing that all international financial institutions agree upon is that Spain’s economic recovery has one weakness: its high unemployment rate, especially among young people, many of whom have had to emigrate in recent years.

That is why the words of Rubén Urosa, director of Spain’s Instituto de la Juventud (Centre for the Young), are wholly unacceptable, even insulting. Mr Urosa --who was unknown for the general public until yesterday-- denied a number of self-evident facts to do with the tragedy of youth unemployment in Spain; namely, that most jobs that are available to young people are precarious and, therefore, prevent them from starting a life of their own. He went as far as to claim that the recession caused no “brain drain” in Spain, only “career mobility”. But the extent of the PP official’s nonsense went even further: he denied that many young people are forced to become self-employed in order to get any work at all. “Young people are young, but not dumb. A young person does not become self-employed unless he chooses to”, he remarked.

Needless to say, if Mariano Rajoy’s government does not issue a denial, it will mean that Mr Urosa’s words actually reflect the cabinet’s position on the matter. But even if he was forced to step down, his words would still be meaningful because they reveal the sort of thinking that is ingrained in the more conservative circles within Spain’s ruling Partido Popular. They blame young people for their own joblessness and claim that they are not trying hard enough to find a job, not unlike when the unemployed were accused of not wanting to work during the economic boom. Obviously, this narrative is easier than to take onboard the responsibility --jointly with the PSOE, by the way-- for the economic model that led to the real estate bubble that has sentenced a whole generation to queueing outside job centres.

Emboldened by all their chest-beating about the economic recovery, the Partido Popular is running the risk of ignoring the devastation caused by the recession --so traumatic that not even the unemployment drop will heal the social wounds-- and the generation of perfectly qualified youngsters who might never come back.