Spanish Youth Take to the Streets as Unemployment Soars

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Spanish Youth Take to the Streets as Unemployment Soars

Tens of thousands of Spanish youth have taken to the streets in protest as the jobless rate soars to more than 45 percent for 16-to-24-year-olds—the highest in the European Union. In the space of the past few weeks, the central square in Madrid has become the epicenter of a new movement of those who call themselves the indignados—the angry ones.

Even the youth who have jobs in Spain are often caught in a system of poorly paid, temporary contracts. Polls show that half of Spanish 30-year-olds are living with their parents. The crisis shaking the eurozone has forced numerous young Spaniards to live much below their aspirations.

This situation is now transforming a generation once thought of as apathetic into a group of political activists. “Suddenly people are talking about politics everywhere,” said María Luz Morán, a sociologist at the Complutense University of Madrid. “You go to have coffee or you are standing in the subway and you hear conversations about politics. It’s been years since I heard anyone talking about politics.”

Many of the protesters say they are disgusted with both of Spain’s main parties, which they view as corrupt and unresponsive. Indeed, one of the major demands of the youth demonstrators is the alteration of Spain’s election laws, which currently favor only the country’s two leading political parties.

These two ingredients of mass unemployment and dissatisfaction with the political system present eurozone nations with the risk of political extremism. As austerity measures kick in and the eurozone debt crisis begins to really bite voters where it hurts, extreme political parties are becoming mainstream, warns Dylan Grice, a strategist at Societe Generale in Paris. Many decent, moderate, law-abiding and overall tolerant citizens of more than one EU nation have recently voted for parties with an extremist past, militant rhetoric and a dubious political agenda.

In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front, is polling ahead of both President Nicolas Sarkozy and any likely Socialist challenger for the presidential election in 2012. In Germany, genuine fears exist concerning the possible emergence of a nationalist party pushing to restore the deutsche mark.

The growing discontent over the euro crisis could well be a catalyst that leads to the ascension of a second Adolf Hitler or a new Charlemagne in Europe. For further proof of this, read our editor in chief’s editorial “A Monumental Moment in European History!