Skift Take
Spain's excesses are a lesson to all other cities and downtowns trying to revive their future through a focus on arts, culture, and sports.
Spain's regions spent billions competing with each other to build prestige projects when the economy was good. Now the young are being crushed by the debt burden, which promises to cause a Greek-style disaster which many Spaniards are starting to blame on Europe.
On the way to the docks in Valencia, past rows of dreary blocks of flats, is a fabulously expensive opera house built to get the Spanish city noticed, no matter the price.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="350"] Valencia, Spain's city of arts and sciences. Photo by KΛ13.[/caption]
The building, centrepiece of theis the kind of experiment in contemporary architecture on which Spanish cities spent billions of euros during the giddy decade to 2008 - when the property bubble burst and the economy crashed.
An arresting, glimmering white building that looks as if it could have just flown in from outer space, surrounded by pools of cool blue water, it was supposed to rival the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or the cityscape of Barcelona, up the coast to the north.
It seemed expensive at the time. But it is only now that Valencia understands the true price of architect Santiago Calatrava's bold vision. The city, Spain's third biggest, is so mired in debt that last week it had to turn to Madrid for a €2 billion bailout - setting a precedent for other Spanish regions.
Within days Murcia region had followed suit and much larger Catalonia, which is €42 billion in debt, is likely to do so shortly. Between them, Spain's 17 regions owe an estimated €140 billion
