Spain’s king, crown prince take pay cut
Reduced salaries part of country’s plan to cut debt; austerity protests continue
MADRID – Spain’s king and crown prince are taking pay cuts as part of the latest round of austerity measures meted out by the country’s government as it attempts to control its deficit during a recession, the Royal Palace said Tuesday.
The salaries of King Juan Carlos and Crown Prince Felipe will be reduced about seven per cent – to about $272,000 and $131,000 respectively – in line with the new austerity package, the Royal Palace said.
The royal family itself has about $8.3 million budgeted for it this year, down two per cent from 2011. Queen Sofia and Princess Letizia, Felipe’s wife, don’t get salaries, but saw their expenses cut.
Palace officials did not provide details, and the royal family budget cuts came a year after 2011 reductions of five per cent overall with palace employees including the king seeing their salaries cut up to 15 per cent.
Spain is enacting more austerity measures in an attempt to convince skeptical investors it has a strategy to deal with its public finances and its banks, which are being bailed out with up to $100 bil- lion from the other 16 countries that use the euro. The measures include government worker pay cuts, higher taxes and l abour reforms making it cheaper to fire employees.
The king and prince voluntarily cut their salaries, the royal palace said. The announcement came as the Spanish royal family’s public profile has taken a battering over the past year, and just as Spain’s economy entered its second recession in three years and unemployment rose to nearly 25 per cent, the highest in the eurozone.
Recent Spanish royal embarrassments include a national uproar when news leaked out that the king went on an expensive elephanthunting safari to Botswana in April, and while his son-inlaw’s financial dealings are under investigation.
Europe’s financial crisis has also hit the royal family budgets of Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, known along with Spain’s royals for their palaces, estates and often ostentatious tastes.
Before Tuesday’s announcement in Spain, Belgium’s King Albert II said in January that he would use part of his salary to help pay for the upkeep on his properties. In the Netherlands, much of last year’s savings was in cutbacks to the royals’ private travel expenses, and the queen paid for maintenance on her private yacht.
The pay cut for Spain’s king and crown prince came as rallies against the Spanish government’s austerity have started to become daily affairs in Madrid and across Spain, though the king hasn’t been targeted by protesters.
Spanish workers are directing most of their anger at the administration of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Civil servants whose salaries are being cut blocked major avenues again Tuesday. Riot police cordoned off the entrance to a sprawling police facility to prevent 100 plainclothes police officers from disrupting a graduation ceremony for about 1,200 cadets about to enter the force.
The demonstrators were protesting against the elimination of one of the 14 pay cheques that most Spanish civil servants get each year. The one being axed comes right before Christmas.
As National Police chief Ignacio Cosido addressed the graduating class and highlighted their task of “guaranteeing harmony, social peace and respect for all citizens’ rights,” police demonstrators in plain clothes a few hundred meters away all but drowned him out by blowing plastic horns. The starting salary of a National Police officer is about $1,400 a month, which is slightly above average in Spain. Lorenzo Nebrera, a police union spokesperson, said officers get their uniform and service weapon, but have to pay for the rest of the equipment, like bulletproof vests, “handcuffs that work” and flashlights.
“In the end, all these cuts sap morale among the police because they feel that conditions out on the street are more and more dangerous, and if these cuts continue the safety of the police will be jeopardized,” Nebrera said.