Merkel will cure Spain of its laziness

Many offices and shops are remaining closed in Spain today because employees are taking Monday off since Tuesday, All Saints' Day, is a public holiday in the country. And the public holidays on December 6 and 8, when the days before and after are also often taken as holidays, are not far off. The bridging days are making the country seem so unproductive in the eyes of the North that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will no doubt ban them soon, the conservative daily ABC fears: "The bridged days are a social construct the preservation of which is threatened by European Calvinism. ... Spain's creditors are frowning about our work habits and any day now they are going to tell Angela Merkel to ban this licentious custom. Not in Germany, of course, but in Spain, where Ms Merkel can give orders without having to convince parliament first. The Protestant view on the productivity of the southern Europeans is pretty stereotyped, like the fable about the ant and the grasshopper. We are naturally the grasshoppers who sing while pumping the ants for money."

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