THE FIESTA is over.

UPDATE. 75% jobless in a Spanish town:

LA LANTEJUELA - ON THE outskirts of this town of white-washed houses, dozens of warehouses where building materials were once produced have been idle since an economic boom came to an abrupt end last year.

During the height of the country's credit-fuelled property boom the dozens of small and medium sized building firms which sprang up in La Lantejuela employed up to 80 per cent of the south-eastern town's workers as local residents abandoned farm work for more lucrative jobs in construction.

Spain's jobless rate at 14.8%
Spain's unemployment rate hit 14.8 per cent in January after the impact of the collapse in the building sector spread to other areas, and many economists predict it will continue to rise to hit 20 per cent next year.

To draw attention to the plight of La Lantejuela, the mayor of the town locked himself in his office for 24 hours in February - and got national media coverage.
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But those jobs began to quickly disappear last year as the global credit crunch exacerbated a slowdown that was already underway in Spain's real estate sector.

Today nearly 75 per cent of the town's economically active population is jobless, one of the highest unemployment rates in Spain, which in turn is the nation with the highest jobless rate in the 27-nation European Union.