Félix de Azúa on corruption in Spain and Italy

Writing in the Spanish daily El País, Félix de Azúa examines the historical reasons for the high level of corruption in Spain and Italy: "There was a time when Spanish politicians appeared to take pains to avoid committing offences - as in Italy. That country has been destroyed by a leading class that blatantly kept the very citizens that financed it at a distance. People thought such a thing could never happen in Spain, but the past few months have shown that the kleptomania is also spreading here. … The parallels to Italy cannot only be explained by a weak judicial system and the dishonesty prevalent in Mediterranean societies but also by the fact that the Italians experienced only a couple of decades less fascism than the Spanish. Fascism is - besides being an absurd ideology - a system that nationalises the entire resources of a country and distributes them among those who are loyal to the system. … If in Italy or Spain there had been a purge of all those who got rich thanks to fascism there would have been no one left at the leadership level. And it was they who decided whether there was to be a purge or not."

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