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A President Romney Will Come to Regret Damaging Remark about Our Nation (El Pais, Spain)

"If he wins this election and becomes president of the United States, how will he manage his relationship with Spain, a member of NATO, a territory with strategically-important American military bases, and a first-rate ally of the United States? If Romney is made president, the phrase 'I don't want to go down the path to Spain,' delivered at the worst moment in Spain's recent history, will haunt him whenever he needs to come in contact with our country."

By Antonio Caño

Translated By Halszka Czarnocka

October 5, 2012

Spain - El Pais - Original Article (Spanish)

Those ten words by Mitt Romney - I don't want to go down the path to Spain - sounded like a bomb going off to the ears of Spaniards who were following the U.S. election debate. It was a battle of two contenders aspiring to the most important political office on earth, the presidency of a country that, to a great degree, governs the destiny of the world. To be cited there, and in such a negative way, is an injury that can have consequences beyond the mere discomfort it represent.

Much of the leeway Spain has for getting out of its crisis depends on its image abroad. Romney, who for many years headed an investment firm, should be the first to know. This allusion, in a televised event watched by millions of people around the world, has an extraordinary power to bring a deterioration in that image.

For years, it has been a cliché to mention certain failed countries or nations with little international influence as examples of what not to do. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy himself once said, We are not Uganda, with the intention of highlighting the supposed solvency of Spain. Now it is Romney, who is considered a political ally of Rajoy in the United States, who is substituting Uganda for Spain in his unfortunate comparison.

The context in which Spain was mentioned, and the stark reality that our country is experiencing an extremely difficult economic period do nothing to diminish the far-reaching consequences of the Republican candidates words.

Romney said: Spain spends 42 percent of their total economy on government. We're now spending 42 percent of our economy on government. ... I don't want to go down the path to Spain. Since, of course, there was no Spanish representative in the debate, nor was it the duty of Barack Obama to play the role of explainer of Spains public accounts, the failure of the Spanish model was therefore established.

Given the events that have taken place in Spain over the past several months, the fact that the Spanish situation frequently draws the attention of American media is natural. A recent article in The New York Times that portrayed the grimmest aspects of the Spanish crisis, describing the poverty and sadness that are seeping into the national landscape, caused quite a controversy in Spain.

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Media are focused on news and tend to accentuate the negative, which rarely results in accusations of distortion, and even less so, of deliberate attack. But media includes a variety of nuances and declarations and can be answered in a variety of ways. When a politician of such high stature, in such a mass venue, utters words that are so crushing, the effect can be a strange one.

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Romneys words may even have diplomatic consequences. If he wins this election and becomes president of the United States, how will he manage his relationship with Spain, a member of NATO, a territory with strategically-important American military bases, and a first-rate ally of the United States? If Romney is made president, the phrase I don't want to go down the path to Spain, delivered at the worst moment in Spains recent history, will haunt him whenever he needs to come in contact with our country.

Moreover, Romneys criticism, to say nothing of its questionable veracity, feeds into the worst mutual stereotypes of our two countries. It confirms to the Americans their belief that Spain is an insignificant country in a remote corner of Europe (or perhaps Latin America), and gives fodder to the prejudices of Spaniards, who want nothing to do with the United States and constantly refer to it as the source of all evil.

Only four years ago, in a 2008 debate, Obama alluded to Spain as a model for developing alternative energy sources. How long ago that seems!

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