'Spain is a picture of poverty' says Express

SPAIN (Daily Express) British expats in Spain face a battle for economic survival along with millions of families as demands in the country grow to scrap the euro and return to the peseta. Rampant inflation and rising unemployment have produced a crisis of confidence and anxiety with millions fearing the economy will worsen. Some towns have already taken matters into their own hands and gone back to using the peseta. The country’s bad luck has even affected the royal family. King Juan Carlos has had surgery after breaking his right hip on a trip to Botswana. Yet as the 74-year monarch recovered yesterday, 46 million Spaniards and the one million Britons who now live there are desperately searching for someone who can help the ailing country recover. Borrowing hit a record £260.9billion in March as Spain now faces the worse ­economic crisis since its Civil War. Households have been hard hit with the price of essential goods rising by 43 per cent since the introduction of the euro in 2001. (Read the whole story here - but be sure to  take several pinches of salt with you.) (Prospero comment: we don't usually read or quote from the Express, but a reader sent this in. In my opinion, it is no more than the usual anti-everything diatribe from that paper.)