Within the colossal ignorance most of the Spanish population has been living in as regards facing the economic crisis, one of the most relevant episodes took place in the November 2011 general elections, in which the Spanish voters massively opted for kicking out the shameful socialist government by giving almost unlimited power to the other major national party: the conservative PP, an even more dangerous option not only for those who did not vote for them, but also for most of the ones who did.
The newly elected Spanish president, Mariano Rajoy, did not take too long to dispel any well-founded doubt about him: the announcement of the members of his council of ministers revealed an alarming combination of lame ducks and sods of infamous reputation. Within this select group of parasites, one character seemed though to clearly stand out from the rest: Luis De Guindos. He had already been the Director of the Economy State Department in the last government of the psychotic president Jose María Aznar, but the most relevant position in his whole professional career was as the Lehman Brothers CEO for the European Region between 2006 and the corporation’s bankruptcy in 2008.
His appointment as the new Spanish Finance Minister was therefore the equivalent to imagining Al Capone leading the Chicago Police Department. However, this insulting decision did not seem to especially outrage the most outstanding journalists of the country’s mass-media. In the subsequent months to De Guindos’s landing at the Government, none of these intrepid truth seekers displayed the slightest interest in thoroughly asking the minister about his past (and present) as an international terrorist. One of the few exceptions in this respect came from the journalist Ana Pastor, who asked him about the implications of his Lehman Brothers experience during a tv interview, despite doing it in an utterly superficial manner, almost apologizing.

Here you can see the video with the afore-mentioned extract of the interview in Spanish.

And this is my English translation:

Ana Pastor: …Some people might think that those who somewhat contributed to the crisis are now holding relevant positions. We have seen it in the Obama administration -he who had criticized it so much…-, Draghi –Goldman Sachs, Greece…-, and your own case coming from Lehman Brothers… What can you say to those people?
Luis de Guindos: Well, let’s see… my professional career started 30 years ago and I was at Lehman Brothers for just two years. LB was one of the fundamental global banks, but the sole difference between LB and the rest of the financial corporations is that LB wasn’t rescued. And anyway the problems of LB did not come from either Europe or Spain…
AP: And what about your own management…?
LDG: It wasn’t that important, make no mistake about it… I have been working in many other places, like Price Waterhouse Coopers right after my Lehman Brothers experience. And bear in mind that PWC had been LB’s court officer, so that was obviously a difficult situation because I had people in Spain who were not responsible at all for what happened and underwent an extremely difficult time, and I fully supported them. From then on I have held other responsibilities, but don’t doubt for a second that if I considered myself responsible for the global financial crisis, now I wouldn’t be the Spanish Finance minister…
AP: Don’t mislead me, minister. I didn’t hold you responsible for that. I just said that some people have the feeling that…
LDG: I know, I know…
AP: …how is it possible that those people who, in some way –directly or indirectly-, were part of those corporations now are where they are? Not just you, I also gave the example of Draghi…
LDG: Sure, Draghi, Mario Monti himself…, well… this kind of things…
AP: “Technocrats” they are called now…
LDG: Yes, they are called “technocrats”, but it obviously takes all sorts… even in every government…
AP: Many thanks minister for showing up in this program.
LDG: My pleasure.

For some understandable reason, one of Oscar Wilde’s memorable quotes in The Importance of Being Earnest insistently came to mind at the sight of this interview: “If you are not wicked, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy”.
There is no need to highlight that both my talent and command of the English language are too far from Oscar Wilde’s; which, together with the scarcely poetic mood certain topics put me in, leaves the following rather unhealthy words on my part:

Dear Mr. Luis De Guindos, you are one of the greatest pieces of crap to have ever held a public office in Spain, which is saying too much. You are not only responsible for the ruin of many middle-class families at a global level, but also for the endless deterioration of our supposed democratic system. On top of that, your responses in this interview are almost as clueless as cynical.
You can be sure that we will only be living in a sufficiently habitable world the day when people of your sort will end up packed tight in the most remote high-security prisons for the rest of your days. You may think that  day will never come, but you may be wrong. Meanwhile, we will just try to find the best possible way to stand your “Al Capone” face and your disgusting smile without believing that we have been transported to Dante’s inferno.

Ups, I almost forgot to mention something positive about Mr. Luis De Guindos: He speaks English, an absolutely indispensable language to apply for any job in Spain, excluding those of CEO, banker and politician. And he speaks it despite not having maintained much contact with the Lehman Brothers headquarters in the USA…