NOW THEY TELL US: only five days after the European election, and after having spent the whole campaign for them accusing anyone who alerted of the bad economic situation of being an alarmist, the Spanish government officially downgraded its forecasts for the country's economy:

Spain's economy will shrink 3.6 percent this year, two percentage points more than previously forecast, the government said Friday in a gloomy and steep revision to its expectations for a country that had been one of Europe's success stories.

The Cabinet approved a new official forecast that said Spain's central and regional governments together will run a deficit equivalent to 7.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2010, more than double the 3 percent target set by the European Union. For this year the forecast so far had been 5.8 percent of economic output.

As of the end of the first quarter, Spain's unemployment rate stood at 17.4 percent, the highest in the European Union.

Now the government says that by the end of the year it will go up to 17.9 percent and hit 18.9 percent next year.

Green shoots my ass.