Stability comes first

The prime minister's meeting with 41 top executives and businessmen has served, firstly, to accord priority to the stability of the Spanish economy, which is still emerging from recession, rather than to the question of prime ministerial succession that has arisen in the political world in recent weeks.

The chairman of Banco Santander said, with nuances, what most Spanish businessmen think: the mixture of budget austerity with economic reforms (pensions, labor market, pending ones in the saving banks and in collective bargaining) has stabilized the economy, and has increased its solvency vis-à-vis the markets: it is necessary to shore up this stability before urging the prime minister's substitution, because a too hasty change might wreck the economic advances now achieved.

Obviously, Saturday's meeting has political consequences. It endorses the government's economic policy (though, of course, the businessmen are calling for more far-reaching reforms) and complicates any decision on the succession to Zapatero, but shows that it is possible to obtain support for a tough and much-questioned economic policy.

The government has sought public support from the major companies; this is not a reprehensible decision ? any show of internal unity can only be welcome in troubled times of debt, with unemployment in excess of 20 percent. This cohesion, which will be of no electoral help to the ruling Socialist Party, has also been sought by the regional government of Catalonia, when last week it requested, and obtained, an agreement with other Catalan political parties, and with the labor unions, to combat recession and unemployment in Catalonia. The points of agreement are very vague (simplify the administration, reform the vocational training system, change the tax regime for small and medium businesses), but they do give the Catalan government some wiggle room in which to make decisions.

Throughout the weekend the opposition Popular Party (PP) has been stubbornly bent on unleashing an absurd war to see who enjoys most support from employers. If Zapatero met with 41 executives, on Monday Rajoy met with the heads of 100 small and medium businesses. The PP argues that in Spain it is the small firms that create employment, and that the government is only meeting with big businesses. They forget that small businesses generally collaborate with major corporations, and that Joan Rossell, president of the employers' association CEOE and present at Zapatero's meeting, also represents a great number of such firms. The PP's promises to the small businesses are of a disturbing vacuity: more tax breaks, a presage of further fiscal disarmament of the state, if Rajoy moves into the prime ministerial mansion. Tax cuts are the PP's cure-all.

But the PP does not accept its share of responsibility for Spain's poor image of international solvency. In this it has much to learn from the companies (large and small), who are quite conscious of what economic and political cohesion means for the growth and well-being of the country.