Why Spain Lectures Other Countries on Immigration
From the desk of Soeren Kern on Sun, 2008-06-01 21:25

Italian voters in April returned Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to a third term in office. The center-right leader was given a strong mandate to crack down on runaway immigration and spiraling street crime, two hot-button issues that are intrinsically linked, not just in the minds of Italians, but in those of many other Europeans too, especially in Spain.

As a result, Spanish Socialists are (rightly) worried that Berlusconi’s get-tough approach will jeopardize their own fantastical vision of turning Europe into a post-modern multicultural utopia.

It therefore comes as no big surprise that Spanish Socialist Deputy Prime Minister MarĂ*a Teresa Fernández de la Vega, who is also commonly known as Spain’s high-priestess of political correctness, recently lashed out at the no-nonsense immigration policies of the new Italian government. Her pontifical rebuke declared that the Spanish executive “rejects violence, racism and xenophobia, and therefore cannot agree with what is happening in Italy.â€