Corruption

Every month there is a survey about the things which most concern ordinary Spaniards. Recently corruption has been up there in the top three usually just behind unemployment. Over the past few years there have been several high profile corruption cases and, because the Spanish justice system still hasn't bought many computers and is notoriously slow, most of them are still current news stories. Anyway there are new scandals almost on a weekly basis.

The King's son in law is in court on corruption charges and the Infanta, a Princess in British terms, has to declare in court tomorrow. The ex treasurer of the governing right of centre Partido Popular is currently on remand accused of handing over wads of money in brown envelopes to lots of prominent people - one name on his payment list is that of the President. Everybody seems to be in on it from prominent business people and heads of regional government through bankers to town mayors and even to the unions who are accused of running dodgy redundancy scams.

There was a Europe wide report on corruption published this week. Spain did not do well. On the radio and the television an excuse that I heard trotted out regularly was that this survey was about the perception of corruption rather than a measure of real corruption. This apologist argument suggested that if you asked the average person on the Lavapies omnibus if they reckoned there was a lot of corruption they would say yes because they were being bombarded with news stories about people on the take every day.

In fact the question that produced the map I saw was "Are you personally affected by corruption in daily life?" That's a very specific question. I know, for a fact, that most tradesmen doing work in houses ask the question "With or without VAT?", that it is normal practice to lie about the cost of a house purchase on the title deeds to avoid paying quite so much tax and that cash in hand work is everywhere. I know that happens in the UK too but there is a marked difference of scale.

Some of it is the Government's own doing. For instance to set up a small business, as I understand it, you have to bank a fixed capital sum. Even if you want to start up a dog walking or ironing business you consequently need capital which lots of people simply don't have. The self employed "NI" payments is a fixed minimum rather than a percentage of earnings. This means that the system for starting a small business is so punitive that it simply isn't an option. The consequence is that people set up on a cash in hand basis and, if things go well, they go legitimate later. It's the same with contracts. Employers have to pay a hefty contribution for each employee so they simply decrease the value of the official contract and hand over an extra payment each month on the sly.

I've talked about this with a few of my student classes and my language exchange pals. They all think there are different forms of corruption. They seem to make a clear distinction between the corruption that involves stealing money from someone and the sort of corruption that avoids paying out your hard earned money, usually to the Government. I presume they represent a cross section of the Spanish population

My take on this is that the low level form of corruption is so widespread that it's not a big leap for people who finds themselves in a position of power to consider their actions as a mere extension of that "acceptable" corruption.

One of the politicians named by the ex-treasurer mentioned above was quick to confirm that he had taken money but he said it was simple; he'd done extra work and so he had been given extra pay.