Word: spain
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...siesta is disappearing, not because the Spaniard no longer wants his afternoon snooze but because he no longer has time to take it. So crowded have Spain's cities become that it would take him most of his three-hour lunch break to get home and back. The rush to the cities has had another effect as well. It is slowly breaking down the old regional barriers that have always divided Spain. There are still separatists in Barcelona, but their cause is dying fast: half the working force of Catalonia is now composed of forasteros from other parts...
...more delighted at all the bustle than Francisco Franco, the stubby (5 ft. 3 in.) Galician general who is now in his 30th year as "Caudillo (literally: commander or headman) of Spain by the Grace of God." And quite probably, no one is more surprised. For until six years ago, Spain was isolated from most of the world, brooding, stewing in its evaporating juice. Foreign investment was unwanted and restricted, and Franco was as openly anticapitalist as he was antiCommunist. Spanish industries, creaking and featherbedded, stumbled along behind trade barriers that kept most foreign products out entirely and imposed rigid...
...knows exactly how sick the Spanish economy was; the regime had no way of compiling proper statistics and went out of its way to obscure the ones it had. But by 1959 all signs were bad. At least one-fourth of Spain's total imports, from whisky to machinery, were being smuggled in. The peseta was swinging wildly on the black market. Inflation was rising, production was actually falling...
...despite large doses of U.S. aid, Spain had run completely out of hard currency...
...ascetic who had been arguing futilely for change. On a hot July day in 1959, Ullastres announced a sweeping stabilization plan. Credit was tightened, the budget slashed, the peseta devalued to a realistic 60 to the dollar. With the aid of a $400 million international loan, Ullastres threw open Spain's doors to imports necessary to rebuild its economy. And over the howls of government protectionists, he pushed through a series of measures to encourage foreign investors to enter Spain...