Madrid - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy warned Spaniards off Greek-style anti-austerity policies Monday, saying the kind of confrontational stance adopted by the Athens government jeopardised economic recovery.
Rajoy's remarks come less than a month before local elections in which his conservative Popular Party faces a challenge from two new parties, including the anti-austerity Podemos, an ally of Greece's ruling Syriza.
"At the moment, I see as enemies of Spain's recovery the political instability -- it's a possible enemy of the recovery -- and then Greece," Rajoy told a press conference in Madrid.
Unlike cash-strapped Greece, which still risks a messy default on its international debt and even an exit from the euro zone, Spain has started to recover from its 2008 property crash, which put millions out of work and pushed the country to the brink of a bailout.
In 2014, Spain's economy expanded by 1.4 percent after five years of recession or no growth and the central bank last month raised its forecast for 2015 to 2.8 percent.
But the recovery remains fragile and the crisis has prompted voters to look to new parties.
Rajoy has previously warned Spaniards against seeking radical solutions, and on Monday he again blamed the left-wing Syriza for Greece's problems.
"Things weren't going badly (in Greece). Then the government changed. The new government decided to say that it accepted none of what the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund said," Rajoy said.
"But these three are its creditors and if it doesn't accept (their terms) it risks having its funding cut," he added.
Talks between Greece and its creditors aimed at unlocking 7.2 billion euros ($7.8 billion) in remaining EU-IMF bailout money have yet to yield any concrete results.
Rajoy said the key to solving the crisis was to have "growth and employment. And for that you have to do like everyone else: fiscal consolidation, structural reforms, etc".
Linking the situation in Greece with that in Spain, which was also battered by the eurozone debt crisis and which is gearing up for a general election expected at the end of the year, he said: "Spain is the first to want things to go well for Greece."
"No-one hates Greece or Mr (Yanis) Varoufakis," Greece's finance minister, he declared.
AFP
