Here's a link to the CIA Factbook for Spain. I thought this was pretty interesting. It contains an extensive list of economic, political, and social data. From here, besides the Spain info, you can access, first, a listing of all countries' statistics on each particular datum--e.g. telephone lines per 1000 people or whatever--for purposes of comparison, by clicking on the second icon (not the open book, the other one) for each datum, and second, the same extensive report on any other country in particular. I suggest that people look up a couple of the Latin American countries and see how their data compare with, say, those of an Eastern European country, an Arab country, an East Asian country, and an African country. Just pick fairly standard countries--say, compare Peru and Hungary and Syria and Thailand and Ghana. See if you can make any generalizations from that. I don't know if I've succeeded. If I do, I'll let you know. I'm sure y'all are waiting with bated breath.

I thought this paragraph was interesting:

Spain and UK are discussing "total shared sovereignty" over Gibraltar, subject to a constitutional referendum by Gibraltarians, who have largely expressed opposition to any form of cession to Spain; Spain controls the coastal enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, which Morocco contests, as well as the islands of Penon de Alhucemas, Penon de Velez de la Gomera, and Islas Chafarinas; Morocco rejected Spain's unilateral designation of a median line from the Canary Islands in 2002 to explore undersea resources and to interdict illegal refugees from Africa.

The emphasis is mine.

Other things I thought were interesting were: In 1997 Spain had 9000 kilometers of expressways. Now, Spain is a big country, the size of Texas, but when I first came here, in 1987, there wasn't a four-lane road all the way from Barcelona to Madrid, and the road from Córdoba to Granada was just barely two-lane. This is a major change; here's an important piece of infrastructure that's jumped from high-Third World level to real European level. Since they're still building expressways all over the country, I figure Spain has well over 12,000 km of them by now.

The countries with which Spain has the most international commerce are France, Geramany, and Italy, in order. The US provides 4.5% of Spanish imports and takes 4.4% of Spanish exports; I'd figured it would be more. Latin America provides only 2% of Spanish imports and takes only 4% of Spanish exports; I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the lack of imports from Latin America, because I don't think there are any but coffee--it's hard to find anything Latin American here. I thought Latin America was an important buyer of Spanish imports, though, but they're not.

Spanish electricity production is 57% from fossil fuels, 12% from hydro, 3% from "other sources", and 28% from nuclear plants. I thought hydro was much more important, and I'm surprised at how dependent Spain is on nuclear power. Agriculture provides only 4% of the Spanish GDP, which I find surprising, because of Spain's enormous fruit and vegetable production--it feeds half of Europe--and I'd thought that the traditional Spanish crops, wine grapes and olives, were lucrative crops per hectare. In addition, Spain has huge pork and poultry industries and a large dairy industry; it exports a lot of this stuff to the rest of Europe as well. I keep forgetting that Spain is now a major economic power, with the fifth largest economy in Europe.

By the way, today's Vanguardia is reporting that Aznar has said that he wants Spain to be a "First Division" country; there's a nice soccer metaphor. He's succeeded, as the Vangua publishes a photo of some demonstrators in Cairo holding up a sign that says: "New Axis of Evil=USA UK Italy Spain". Cool! Spain's important enough to get bashed by the Islamofascists! Seriously, I believe that Mr. Aznar is very much enjoying feeling himself a major world leader. Well, he is one now. The anti-PP Spanish press, which is most of it except ABC, has been publishing a flood of editorial cartoons trying to ridicule Aznar's world standing, showing Bush as the sheriff and Aznar as his subservient deputy. For some reason they're all using the same tired image. The truth is that Mr. Aznar has fairly won the esteem and high regard of the American and the British governments, and this cannot but be a good thing for Spain.