As the Economist looks at tabloids it is worth looking at this table (click to enlarge).

I sometimes say that Spain has no tabloid press. Sometimes I am believed and sometimes not, but I stand by what I say. In a country where El Periódico is regarded as a bit strong for some people, and where journalists are expected to report the facts reasonably honestly, British-style tabloids are quite beyond the pale.

So what's this table about? Marca is one of several Spanish dailies that report exclusively on sport; when I say that Spain has no tabloid press I mean the general press. El País is Spain’s biggest-selling newspaper with around 400,000 copies daily (add about 33% for proportional UK figures). It is boring. It makes no pretence to ‘entertain’. It reports facts and carries heavy op-ed pieces. Counting similar general papers, which range across the political spectrum, about 2,000,000 Spanish people buy such papers every day. That is not counting truly local papers.

To return to the Economist, I am not sure but I suspect that Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport also covers sport exclusively. I can say nothing about the two Japanese titles.

Spanish TV is another matter. There is no shortage of tacky tabloid-style TV programmes.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson has resigned. I said as soon as he was appointed that he was heading for trouble.

He says, ‘my integrity is completely intact.’ Indeed, he is a proud man.

This letter appears in today’s Observer (my emphasis):

… A necessary condition for getting the chronically unemployed off benefits is a rise in the minimum wage. Simply curtail immigration and the market will up unskilled pay rates. Nothing less than the unthinkable, namely a UK opt out from the EU accord on the free movement of people, will do.

No outsider is going to worry about the social costs of our growing underclass or feel any sense of obligation to do something about it. This is our problem and it can only be resolved by ourselves. It follows that our citizens have priority over would-be immigrants. Home solidarity trumps both international solidarity and unbridled capitalism.

Yugo Kovach, Winterborne Houghton, Dorset

Now it may be the case that the Kovaches have been settled in Dorset since the days of Alfred the Great, or at the very least that one Guy de Kovach was a trusted lieutenant of William the Conqueror. But on the other hand, that may not be the case.

Candide has restarted his blog. Cataloniawatch is a useful corrective for those who start from the default position that Catalan Nationalism is obviously, necessarily, unarguably and inevitably right.

This graph (El País 6-6-11, click to enlarge) is what underlies all serious comment* on the problems facing the eurozone. It shows the difference in yields (country risk) on 10-year bonds between Germany (reference) and the countries that the 'Anglo-Saxons' insultingly refer to as PIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. It starts at the left in January (E for enero) 2010 and runs to June 2011. The vertical scale is in hundredths of one per cent: Spain has to pay 2.241% more interest on its debt than Germany does.

The graph clearly shows the panic in early May last year, when the euro was in serious danger. That was the weekend following the British general election and the British media were obviously preoccupied with other things but the risk was real, and Angela Merkel's own preoccupation with a Land election that Sunday (which she lost anyway) caused her to delay the inevitable and necessary action until it was very nearly too late.

However, the really important point from Spain's point of view is what happened in late July. Until then Spain had pretty well mirrored the other three countries (though some way below them) but on 23 July the bank stress tests were published and Spain immediately separated itself from the general trend. The figures were there for all to see, but actually believing that a Mediterranean country can manage its affairs properly is alien to the northern mind-set, even though anyone who looked at the matter knew that Spain's banks had been forbidden by the Bank of Spain to buy dodgy US mortgages and were in fact remarkably healthy. In those stress tests Spain exposed 90% of its banking system. The minimum, adhered to by most countries, was 50%. That way, Germany and other countries could conceal some real horrors. The published figures showed Santander alone holding more Greek debt than all of Germany because it had issued a small amount of properly guaranteed trade credit while no German bank let on that it even held any Greek state debt!

Spain has problems. It is not completely out of the woods. There is a lot of debt in the Autonomous Communities and a lot of fuss has been made of it following the recent elections, which handed the PP a landslide. But for all its centralising nature, when the PP runs a community its barons want as much local power as they can get and have not been slow to become indebted themselves; and with something like 60% (from memory) of Spain's GDP spent outside Madrid, its effect on the national economy is very considerable. This is not a surprise, however. The nature of Spain's system of government is not a secret, and many banks will have made provisions already to deal with the problem.

The problem -- and this is surprising -- is with Germany. I have known Germany well all my life and I know that the country has always been remarkably well governed. There have been ups and downs of course, but overall its domestic and foreign policy has been well managed -- until the arrival of Angela Merkel. Her inward-looking nationalism is both a surprise and a disappointment. One purpose of the EU was to produce a European Germany rather than a German Europe. The latter is being forced on us by events and I for one don't object to it in principle, but the narrowness of the German view is not good for anyone. The idea of the German ants and the Mediterranean grasshoppers overlooks the fact that the German trade surplus has only been possible because people in Mediterranean countries have been buying German products and -- yes -- getting in debt to do so. But a large part of that debt is held by German banks, and any default will affect Germany itself. Merkel's comments show more influence from Bild Zeitung than a sensible politician should allow, and her recent comment that Spain's retirement age was lower than Germany's was plain, factually wrong.

Which brings me on to the famous cucumbers. They have nothing to do with the euro, but the immediate response of the Hamburg Health Senator (Minister) to blame Spain, when the cause of the problem was, as we now know, very close to her own home, simply smacks of the typical north European arrogance towards southerners that has been much in evidence during this long financial crisis.

*As opposed to the ignorance of the British media (e.g. the Guardian 'Spain [is] an obvious candidate for some close attention from the bond market vigilantes.' (as if it wasn't already)) and the malevolence of the ratings agencies.