IT'S NOT ONLY the real-estate, it's an employment crisis in Spain too:

Tensions mounting between native job-seekers and immigrants competing for a declining pool of work in Spain will intensify in 2009 as generous benefits for those laid off reach the end of their fixed terms.

Unemployment at 12.8 percent in November, a 12-year high and by far the highest rate in the European Union, could reach 20 percent of the workforce in 2010 as a slump in construction spreads into the wider economy, economists say.

That is a level not seen since the 1990s and as Spain heads for its deepest recession in 50 years it may trigger social unrest like that of the 1980s, when high unemployment and low wages led to country-wide demonstrations and violent strikes.