The rain in Spain(I)

I love this video:



A few days ago I received a message from one of my tweeps about the weather in Europe and in particular in Spain. This summer, the weather has been a bit strange so far. But I couldn't help thinking about a different climate. The political and economical climate.

I know people outside Spain are worried about the situation in Spain. What can I tell about it?.

Yes Spain have problems. Several kind problems. Fiscal at federal/state/local level. Economical problems:Zombie banking sector. More than 20% unemployment in the overall population and more than 45% unemployment in young people. Bursting of a real state bubble. Political problems too. Corruption all over the place. Politics far from Main street. We have two regions with a serious problem of independentism. And moral problems too. Again corruption all over the place, people full of rights and with no obligations, and a feeling that everything not strictly forbidden is allowed.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and there are also some good news. But overall, big problems.

It seems similar problems are all over Europe and also in the States. I'm not quite sure, but maybe it's that I live here.

State of Emergency: very serious

It's in the news. Spanish Government has declared "State of Emergency". This declaration gives special powers to the government like the ability to limit the circulation of people, commandeer things or even enter in private properties (but not homes).
It's somewhat similar to State of Siege, but lower in intensity. Being Spain a democracy one could think that this kind of declaration should be reserved to extreme cases. That's true in the law. It can be declared only due to four reasons:

1. Catastrophic events (like floods, earthquakes...)


2. Sanitary crisis


3. Stopping of Public Services but only in connection with one of the other points.


4. Shortage of first necessity products

The declaration of today seems motivated by what seems to be a salvage strike of air traffic controller. It's being restricted to airports. And the declaration invokes Public services (point 3) with references to point 1 and point 4.

Do we have any kind of catastrophic event? NO.

Do we have shortage of first necessity products? NO

Then???

In my opinion this is an extremely abuse of the law.

I don't like what air controllers have done. I would like that the government acted like Ronald Reagan did. But I don't feel comfortable at all with a Government that can limit my freedom because it has lost any perspective.

This is very serious.

Civil service: Why me?

A few days ago I promised to explain why I chose to become a civil servant, and why I keep being one.

I was going to write about the challenge of a competitive examination, how challenges motivates me, and how my job keeps being interesting even though sometimes is a bit tough.

But then I came to "Reasons to work". Seth Godin. No more words needed.

Flying, flying, flying

I've been to Rome this weekend. I used to fly a little more before my children's bbirth, but since then I haven't flyed for quite a few years. Train and car a lot. But no planes. I knew what I was going to face.

But the experience has been worse. To pass through the security line is something stressful and disgusting. Wait a long queue. Put all your belongings through the X-ray. Don't forget the belt. Pass through the metal detector. Keep your boarding pass in your hands. Keep your hands up. Beeeeep. Please go back and pass again. Some of the people go through patdown. And you ask yourself "Will I make some mistake? Will I be questioned because I did anything wrong?". And after everything is over you start to think what's the point of all this when you see a person on your side with three shaving blades.

But this isn't over. Wait, wait, wait. Your plane is delayed. Wait, wait, wait. You go in with a suitcase for two people. But then you see people with what it seems a non-standard suitcase, a laptop, and a garment bag (and a hat). You don't know where to put your suitcase because everything is full. You manage to do it at the end, but you still have to wait the take off of several planes before yours.

That was departing from Madrid. But Rome wasn't better. One hour delay for the plane, one hour delay because of the travelling weather. And half an hour to pick the bag, because I chose to checkin the suitcase.

When I travel by train (long distance, not commuting) I can come 15-30 minutes before the departure, maybe there's some security, but no queues, and I'm pretty confident of when I'm going to arrive to my destination.

Civil service: How to improve

A few days ago I promised to explain some of my ideas to improve the civil service in Spain. Of course there is no silver bullet. Instead, as you can see the links, all the bricks are in place:

1. Try to introduce economic incentives. People who work should be rewarded. Of course that could be misused to give more money to friends instead of giving it to the people who work.


2. Proper evaluation of how money is spent, trying to spend the money where it is better used.


3. Encourage initiative in modernization of the Public Service. Good ideas should be praised. Bad ideas should be turned into good ideas. All Ideas should be taken into account for the first point. It doesn't cost money and for some cases it's very useful.

In the end, nothing new. More money, better spent, not only money.

If it's nothing new and is not being applied, somebody could ask what makes some people work harder even if they know they won't succeed. You'll have to wait.

Corruption

Wow. It seems Wikileaks is going to publish some documents showing implication of some world leaders in corruption practices. I don't have any other information but the Reuters piece of news.

I wouldn't have brought it to this blog if it weren't for the last paragraph of the first page:

Two of the sources said Assange has also made the documents available to at least two other European publications -- the newspapers El Pais of Spain and Le Monde of France.

That would suggest that government leaders implicated could be Spaniards or Frenchmen. Don't know if it's true.

But watching financial markets regarding peripheral European bonds I can't help thinking that this could have connections with Spanish politics.

Spring course

I'm attending this week to a Spring Framework course. It's a very small class: the teacher, my boss and me.

I don't consider myself slow, and neither is my boss. No, he doesn't read this blog. But we two were trying to keep up the frenetic pace the teacher is imposing. I had already used Spring, but up to now I didn't suppose who little did I know about Spring, about TDD, or even about Eclipse. Watching the teacher coding, and trying to understand what he was doing, and trying to type as fast as him is a rewarding but extremely demanding experience.

Regarding Spring Framework, I do think it's a very powerful tool, and we probably are going to use it at one of my teams (the architecture group). But I don't think it's something it can be used in other teams. We'll see.