Spain has pushed through 40bn euros of fresh austerity measures in the teeth of recession, despite violent protests across the country and separatist crises in Catalonia and the Basque region that threaten to break the country apart. Premier Mariano Rajoy has frozen public pay in 2013 for the third year in a row. The agriculture ministry and culture expenses will be cut by 30 per cent and the defence bureacracy by 15 per cent. It comes on top of a 62bn euros squeeze already in the pipeline. He brushed aside warnings that fiscal overkill – at a time when unemployment is already 25 per cent – could push the country into turmoil, saying he would listen only to the “silent majority” of responsible citizens. Bowing to pressure from Brussels, the government has agreed to an independent budget office and a clampdown on early retirement. Pensions will rise by 1 per cent, paid for by raiding the social security reserve fund. The closed professional guilds and old-boy networks dating back to the Franco era will, in theory, be shaken up. The plan was carefully crafted with the European Commission, which praised the measures as “concrete, ambitious and well-focused,” The Telegraph reports.

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