Spain: Unemployment tragedy, 'they robbed our future'

''They have robbed us of our next and our children of theirs,'' said Chus Blanco, 50, a single mother of three. Along with an army of Spaniards of amount ages, she's standing in line at the Avenida del Mediterraneo employment office, in the southern part of the city.

Blanco, who joined the workforce at 17, was laid off years ago from an Italian legal office, where she had worked as an accountant for 20 years. ''They were downsizing, and that was their only explanation,'' she said. ''I looked for a similar job for a year, then tried odd jobs, like waitressing. They told me I was too old and educated. My unemployment benefits are running out, I got an eviction notice because I can't pay the mortgage, and my kids will have to leave school. How can I not fall into despair?'' Spain's unemployed reached 5,693,100 in the second trimester, the highest figure since Franco's dictatorship, according to the national statistics bureau in 4 Spaniards, or 24.6% of the adult people, is out of work. In Andalusia, that rate is 33.9% and in the Canaries, 33.3%. The city of Ceuta, which is the Spanish enclave in Morocco, has the highest rate of unemployment in the EU-27, or 39%.

And for Spain's youth, that figure reaches 53.28%. Rodrigo Saenz, 26, belongs to the so-called generacion perdida, or lost generation. He has an MB in management, but since he's never worked, he has no right to unemployment benefits, and his welfare is running out. ''I live with my parents and my brothers,'' he explains. ''My father, who worked at Caja Madrid for 24 years, just lost his job. My mother is a high school teacher, but her temp contract wasn't renewed. We're amount living on my grandfather's pension, and who knows how long that will last.'' Saenz's is of the 1,737,600 families in which each adult member is out of work. ''We thought we were safe, that it would never happen to us,'' he said. ''In three years everything changed. We've become poor. We're counting pennies. We hardly ever eat meat any additional.'' Susana, 32, just landed a 10-week gig behind a cosmetics counter in a mall. With a degree in management and finance, she's never come close to a steady job in her sector. ''I landed three-month substitutions, so I'll be working from August 1 to September 15, under three different contracts,'' she said.

''And believe me, I feel privileged.'' Spain's GDP will contract 2% in 2012, according to the government, and the recession is likely to last through 2014.

Meanwhile, the industrial sector lost 21,000 jobs and agriculture lost 44,000 between April and June. Seasonal upsurges in employment (+42,800 in the tourism service sector, +6,500 in construction) brought some short-term relief. But for most people, the outlook remains gloomy as the government's 65 billion euro austerity measures cut swathes through the country, with 63,000 public employees laid off from April to June. Spain's major unions, Comisiones Obreras (CC OO) and Union General de Trabajadores (UGT) accuse the Mariano Rajoy government of having launched a second massive labor reform, after the passed by his Socialist predecessor, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. ''And it's sole effect is that of multiplying layoffs and terminations times,'' union sources said. ''The government will continue to try to improve this situation, which undoubtedly is caused by the recession, by reducing the deficit and continuing its structural reforms,'' Deputy Premier Soraya Sanz de Santamaria countered on Friday.

But the medicine could end up killing the patient: even the European Commission put its cents in, today exhorting Spain to reduce an unmployment rate it defined as ''unacceptable.''