The Government of Spain – of the PP- has begun in its first year of operation with an intense struggle against the broad and general form of state. Fiscal reform, financial and labour reform are the most significant. In all these reforms, meeting the recognised targets for the implementation of the changes will be difficult. Despite the fact that the initial tax deficit limit is relaxed, the estimate that compliance with the 5.3% approved by the European Commission for 2012 will be impossible is very broad, let alone 3% for 2011. The reform of the financial system in February, which sought the stability and cleanliness of institutions to inject liquidity, is not achieving that objective. The fact that Spanish banks hold almost half of the loans from the European Central Bank shows that the reform has been cut short. Rajoy himself has questioned, shortly after the adoption of the law, the requirement of the third reform, the creation of jobs, recognising that it will not create jobs in the short term.

However, given the political and economic realism, these laws are by no means an indication of a profound transformation of the figure and function of the State. They are the axis of a strategy that is subject to the interests of the State and which is beneficial both to the State and to the economic power linked to it. It is precisely last week that the Bank of Spain approved that in the Spanish State company incomes were for the first time above wage incomes. Therefore, on the pretext of the crisis, there is a gigantic rereading of incomes, a line in which these counter-forms are deepening and jeopardizing the fragile beams of the social pact put in the transition. Both financial and fiscal reform further promote the publication of private debt, making a significant part of the debt of financial institutions public debt. Labour market reform promotes an orthodox line of concurrent deflation, i.e. improving the competitiveness of companies based solely on reducing labour costs and thus increasing profits. The reform leaves not only the rights of the workers, but also the collective bargaining and the strategy of concertation of the main unions of the state bankrupt. We cannot therefore fail to mention that we are dealing with a new process of restructuring the Spanish State, which I mentioned earlier on these pages and which we will analyse later on, the State of the Autonomies.