LIBERTAD DIGITAL

El diario recurre a los dos ex dirigentes políticos para analizar la situación de España, que ve muy preocupante: apunta a una "espiral de déficit", a un paro de casi el 20 por ciento y del riesgo de quiebra social por los primeros recortes impulsados por Zapatero. Habla, incluso, de las graves consecuencias en el euro de una hipotética quiebra de España.

Ante este panorama, The New York Times decide preguntar a Santiago Carrillo y Manuel Fraga. Ambos concedieron una entrevista a este medio el mes pasado y el diario contrapone en un artículo sus opiniones, parecidas sólo en un asunto: la valoración de la crisis por la que pasa España. Fraga sentencia que Zapatero debió haber actuado antes "y ahora necesita hacer más, de inmediato". Apunta a una muy delicada situación. Carrillo, mientras, coincide en que ésta es "bastante crítica" y alerta de que las cosas se pueden poner "muy feas".

Iniciado por Capigorrista

Sí, tan duras como en Paracuellos, "señor" Carrillo.

Iniciado por ibn_sina

Dado que ambos dicen que hay que tomar decisiones duras también pudo ser: "como en Badajoz señor Fraga""Como en el campo de concentración de Miranda, señor Fraga" o "como en el famoso baño de la bomba nuclear falsa, señor Fraga"...qué tal "como los cientos de muertos durante la construcción del valle de los caídos, sr. Fraga"

MADRID — Spain, with a spiraling deficit and a jobless rate of almost 20 percent — double the average in the European Union — has moved to the forefront of Europe’s economic crisis. The situation has required the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to make deep spending cuts and begin reforms of the labor market that are expected to lead to further strikes, as workers protest the government’s plans to trim back a cherished social safety net.

Officials in the European Union, who had to agree on financing to rescue Greece only two months ago, know a collapse of the much larger Spanish economy could gravely undercut the euro.

But they are not the only ones saying Spain faces one of its most challenging moments in recent history.

Manuel Fraga Iribarne and Santiago Carrillo, two veteran politicians who have by no means agreed in the past, coincide in warning that Spain’s fate hangs in the balance, even if they have different views on the path ahead.

The men should know about assessing a crisis. Mr. Fraga, 87, was a minister under the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco who, after the dictator’s death in 1975, played a leading part in Spain’s transition to democracy as interior minister. He was also a founder of Spain’s main center-right party and a writer of its new democratic Constitution.

Mr. Carrillo, 95, also had a significant role in Spain’s transformation as the long-time secretary general of the Spanish Communist party, which led the resistance against Franco. Mr. Carrillo joined the party in 1936, at the onset of the civil war, and finally lost its leadership in 1982, having brought Communism into mainstream Spanish politics.

In separate interviews late last month, they both were critical of Mr. Zapatero’s efforts to address the crisis and rejected the government’s claim that enough has been done to guarantee economic recovery.

“Obviously the economy has worsened more than everybody expected, but that is not an excuse for the government, which should have acted earlier and now needs to do more — and right now,” Mr. Fraga said in his office at the Senate. “This is a very delicate situation.”

And in an interview in his home here, Mr. Carrillo warned that “the situation in Spain is really quite critical.”

“We could still avoid a major social fracture,” he added, “but not if this crisis is allowed to deepen and drag on because then things could really turn very ugly.”

Spain has endured other downturns in the 35 years since Franco died. But the situation is arguably more critical now both because Spain’s problems are part of an international debt crisis and since a decade-long boom has made Spaniards forget about past hardships and decades of lagging behind most other Western countries.

“The idea that the government is now threatening to take away the welfare state has become a lot harder for people to accept,” Mr. Carrillo said.

Mr. Carrillo has retired from politics while Mr. Fraga, after 15 years at the helm of the regional government of Galicia, remains a senator.

Given their ideological differences, however, they disagree on how far Spain has changed since the dictatorship.

For Mr. Fraga, “Franco died without leaving a trail behind him.” He said he saw little need for further institutional reform and urged resisting regional politicians who might be using the crisis to strengthen their own powers and break up the country. Last week, Spain’s constitutional court ended four years of legal uncertainty by endorsing most of the self-governing statute of Catalonia — except for its preamble, which described Catalonia as a nation.

“Catalonia has always been part of Spain and an immense part of its people would want to remain within Spain,” Mr. Fraga said.

For Mr. Carrillo, on the other hand, Spain continues to be dominated by Franco's heirs and the Catholic church, so that this crisis should be used to force through a major structural overhaul, not only of labor market rules but also of institutions like the judiciary. “This country is much more polarized than it was two decades ago, and I think the church is largely responsible for this,” he said.

Last month, Mr. Fraga was among senators who narrowly approved a motion calling on Spain to forbid women from publicly wearing the burqa or other garments that cover the whole body, in a significant escalation of the country’s debate about how to handle radical Islam. A ban was not only in the interest of women, but also a matter of national security, he argued. Asked to elaborate on the security aspect, he said that “even a donkey would understand that somebody whose face you cannot see is a potential danger.”

Neither Mr. Fraga nor Mr. Carrillo expressed regret about their past. Asked whether it would not have been natural to withdraw from politics following the death of his Fascist mentor, the physically frail Mr. Fraga raised his voice in an emphatic denial. “Obviously not,” he said. “When Franco died, I never thought this was the end but rather that it opened new opportunities.”

Mr. Carrillo’s civil war involvement remains clouded by the massacre of thousands of prisoners at Paracuellos, on the outskirts of Madrid, when Mr. Carrillo was in charge of security in the city. “What was happening outside of Madrid was completely out of control and beyond my responsibility,” he said.

More recently, the country’s brutal past has been in the spotlight because of the suspension of Spain’s most influential judge, Baltasar Garzón, for allegedly abusing his powers by trying to investigate civil war atrocities.

Both men had strong views about the judge, who has started working instead for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, a departure that Mr. Fraga welcomed since “he should be kept as far away from Spain as possible.”

But Mr. Carrillo praised Mr. Garzón for pursuing a just goal.

“Crimes were committed on both sides in the war but not on any comparable scale,” Mr. Carrillo said. “And Franco then jailed or shot any opponent after the war, as well as rehabilitating his dead. That is yet to happen for his victims.”

Rather than dwelling on the past, however, both men questioned the ability of Spain’s current political leadership to get the country out of its economic quagmire. For Mr. Fraga, holding early elections to replace Mr. Zapatero with Mariano Rajoy, leader of the center-right opposition, should be the first step toward recovery. “Zapatero is not the right man for this moment,” he said.

Mr. Carrillo, however, is in no hurry to allow the center-right opposition to return to power. But he too questions whether a weakened Mr. Zapatero has what it takes to avoid further unrest.

“The trust that had existed between Zapatero and labor unions has been broken,” he said. “The government is now not only in a difficult but also very weak situation, but to change government without changing party seems impossible. So if the only alternative to Zapatero is Rajoy, that would be a very bitter pill to swallow for the progressive forces in this country.”