Spain looks like Greece. For the first time and not for what you think.

For the first time, Spain is beginning to look more like Greece. There are few similarities between their economies, their debt burden or their history in the Monetary Union. They are two different worlds, in fact. But they have in common the attitude of their governments.

So far, Greece is the only one of the bailed out countries that begged for months before it got the Eurozone aid. The other two, Ireland and Portugal, said publicly and quite aggressively that they didn't want and didn't need any loans. In March 2011, Prime Minister José Sócrates even confronted a Brazilian journalist in Brussels for asking about it a few weeks before the bailout was formalized. “We have money and we have dignity. We are not out there begging”, said the primer minister then (he lost badly the election after that).

Today the Treasury minister, Cristóbal Montoro, said that “Spain doesn’t have the market door open” just hours before Spain issues between €1bn and €2bn (between $1.24bn and $2.48bn) in bonds. It could seem that the Spanish government is more sincere (or more desperate) than the Irish and the Portuguese. But at the same time it is trying to trick Spaniards (and the press) into believing that a bailout just for the banks won't be the real deal. 

And yet giving money to financial institutions from the common European fund is a bailout. It has no other name than that. And conditions will obviously be attached also to the Government, that has a stake, for instance, in Bankia, one of the institutions receiving the money. No country will lend without conditions. It better won't.