“Not sure which paper to buy,” I said. “The one with corruption headlines, or one with headlines about corruption.”

“Expletive,” the newsman said. “Those politicians are a bunch of expletive expletives.”

“A lot of them do seem to be up to their eyeballs,” I said.

“We need to go to France,” the newsman said.

“You wouldn’t be the first.”

“No, we need to go to France and steal from some museums.”

“Sorry?”

“Si, si. Steal some of their old guillotines. Set them up in our plazas. Make a few corrupt heads roll.”

“Well, I –“

“That’d make the next thief think twice.”

“Or,” I said, “Spain could just toughen existing penalties for corruption. The statute on such crimes usually runs out in five or six years. And if people do go to jail, it never seems to be for more than a year or two.”

The newsman nodded. “And,” he said, “they never give what money they’ve stolen back.”

I nodded.

“Which is why we need guillotines.”

“Yeah, but one big problem with guillotines is who gets to run them.”

“Guillotines.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

I crossed the street to buy bread, and at the bakery the same discussion was already well underway.

“We ought to take away everything they own,” the baker was saying about politicians and bankers, shaking her fist. “If they’re going to continue stealing and kicking people out of their homes, then we take the clothes off their backs. Force them to live on the street too.”

She was holding a copy of a different newspaper, in which there was an article about another suicide by someone who’d been evicted from his home, but who was still being forced to pay the debt that led to his eviction to begin with. There was supposed to have been a moratorium on such evictions, since a couple of similar suicides this fall. But so far this year about 50,000 have been carried out.

A guy working on one of the baker’s ovens lifted his head up, wiped his brow.

“If a politician or civil servant steals the public’s money,” he said. “I don’t care about getting it back. I think we should put them to work, digging ditches. Then, when they’re done, we shoot them in the head and bury them right there. Under roads, wherever.”

An elderly woman waiting patiently in line nodded vigorously in agreement.

Complaining in shops is typical on early Spanish mornings. People gripe about whatever there is to gripe about, and you don’t really think too much about it. It’s more like a reflex. But what was different this morning was the suggestion of violence. I’ve never heard head-chopping and summary executions figure in the routine.

It doesn’t in any way suggest that my neighbors were serious. Or that Spaniards are close to a sort of collective uprising that might lead to lynchings.

On the contrary, violent protest here has been remarkably low in over five years of economic crisis. But the morning’s rants do reflect just how fed up people are with sacrificing, in the form of higher taxes and reduced public services, while their elected leaders are exposed, one after another, as corrupt. Or allegedly corrupt.

Every day seems to bring a new case to light. From the Royal Family to the top leadership of the country to countless local barons. Before leaving the bakery I suggested this was all actually good news.

“All the scheming must have already been underway,” I said. “The fact that the press is now writing about it shows that society is in a process of cleansing.”

My neighbors shook their heads, glanced at each other.

“Well, you have to start somewhere,” I said.

“The problem,” the oven repair guy said, “is once you start looking, it’s never going to end.”

That was a deeply defeatist thing to say, suggesting a total lack of confidence in the country’s ruling class. Some recent national polls here have reflected similar sentiment.

Apparently even the European Union Commission is becoming alarmed. According to the El Pais newspaper, it has issued an internal memo, expressing concern that so much corruption could cause ordinary Spaniards to “totally disconnect” from the political process.

This in a country held up and hailed as a model of democratic tradition only one generation ago.

“In the long journey Spain has undertaken to rediscover a part of herself, few occasions are as moving as today,” he said. “The measure we’re announcing will let anyone who can prove their Sephardic origins obtain Spanish nationality.”

In 1492 the Catholic Kings Ferdinand and Isabela, expelled the Jews from what is now modern day Spain. Those who stayed were forced to convert to Catholicism.

Some 200,000 chose to leave. More than five centuries later, very few have come back.

Today in Spain there are only some 40,000 Jews. The head of the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities told Spanish TV that the new offer of immediate citizenship for descendants had created a buzz in Jewish communities around the world.

“I can tell you that in less than a month we have received about 6,000 inquiries, among which I would highlight one from an American member of Congress,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Federation could not say who that Congressman was. But one American who has looked into the possibility of becoming Spanish is Doreen Carvajal, a reporter with the New York Times in Paris.

Some years ago she learned she had Sephardic Jewish roots. She began to investigate, even moved to Spain and wrote a book about her experience, called “The Forgetting River.”

“My initial reaction was that it was a really thrilling moment,” Carvajal said. “That it was an act of justice. They held this news conference with top ministers to offer automatic citizenship to descendents of all Sephardic Jews who left during inquisition. Point blank done. 363 It was a romantic notion on my part. I told my husband, I think I’m going to try and get the passport because it closes a circle. It was very poetic,” Carvajal said.

But Carvajal says that when she contacted Spain’s Jewish Federation, she learned she didn’t qualify. Not yet anyway.

Part of Carvajal’s family was Sephardic Jew. But when they left Spain for Costa Rica, they converted to Catholicism, at least officially, out of fear of Spanish Inquisitors. The Inquisition hunted down and persecuted Jews even in the far-off Spanish colonies.

So, Carvajal is technically the descendent of converts or, conversos. She’s not a practicing Jew herself. She says she was told she’d have to convert to become Spanish.

“I felt like another it was act of being forced,” she said. “Here are the these people, the descendents of the anousim, the forced ones, the conversos, being told you have to do this, you have to be a certain religion? So what happens if you’re a secular Jew? It was a bittersweet moment for me when I realized there were a lot of clauses there and it really wasn’t an automatic offer for everyone.”

Isaac Querub, the president of Spain’s Jewish Federation, did not respond to multiple requests for interviews. Nor has Spain’s Justice Ministry commented on why some descendants are excluded from the citizenship offer.

Carvajal says she’s been left to wonder whether Spain just wants to attract Jewish wealth, from known Sephardic enclaves that have survived in place like Venezuela and Turkey.

Maria Josep Estanyol, an historian on Jews at the University of Barcelona, says she’s not sure why Spain is splitting hairs now. But she says it is well known that when Spain expelled the Jews in 1492 it had disastrous effect on the economy.

Many Iberian Jews were wealthy textile traders and jewelers and bankers.

“At the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan was said to have commented that he couldn’t understand why a great Spanish king like Ferdinand would go without the Jews, who were such a source of wealth, and just give them to him. The Sultan was very pleased to receive these Jewish families, who went on to enrich his empire,” Estanyol said.

In theory, enticing them back now might give a boost to Spain’s shrinking economy. Although, Estanyol doubts many families would reestablish roots in Spain.

“Given how disastrous things are here today, I’d advise against it,” she said.

It’s also been suggested that Spain made the offer to appease Israel, after Madrid supported last year’s successful Palestinian bid for a seat at the United Nations.

Whatever the motivation, some Muslim scholars are denouncing the offer as unfair. They point out that their ancestors were expelled from Iberia too, just a few years after the Jews. But no one’s inviting them back.

But getting convictions in such cases is often difficult.

The World’s Gerry Hadden examines why it’s so hard to prove wrongdoing when it comes to betting on soccer.

They look like extracts from a bookie’s ledger: Column after column of handwritten dates, names and cash sums. They’re not in reference to horses, though, but to political leaders. The top leaders of Spain’s Popular Party, or PP, which is currently in power.

The documents appear to be a secret record of under-the-table payoffs to the PP’s top dogs, dating all the way back to 1990, as well as donations to the party mostly from big construction firms. The record was created and maintained by none other than the PP’s last two party treasurers, the guys who controlled the largely unregulated cash pouring into party coffers.

One prominent name appearing in the ledger is that of the current Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, the man who just days ago said his hand would not waiver if it came to light that anyone among the ranks was engaging in illegal activity.

The documents purport to show that Rajoy received an annual “parallel pay” of around $32,000 a year, for 11 years.

Two former high-ranking members of the PP corroborated the existence of secret, cash-stuffed envelopes, before Thursday’s revelations. But party leaders have been vehemently denying knowledge of the funny money, much less having accepted any. The PP has threatened to take legal action against whomever is behind the documents, insinuating that they’re false.

But then today one current member of parliament for the PP admitted he had received about $8,000 from the treasury, on the quiet – but paid it back. This is hardly proof of systemic stealing within the party, but it adds to doubts among Spanish citizens who already largely considered the country’s political class to be corrupt.

Another worrying detail: These documents have come to light via an investigation into one of the former PP treasurers, who police say stole and squirreled away in Switzerland $30 million in public funds. That same treasurer also admitted this week in court that he laundered about half that money back into Spain through a recent tax-evasion amnesty program.

As of this writing, many questions remain unanswered. Not only as to whether the pay-offs ledger is real, and whether secret money was slipped to PP execs, but whether such payments are even illegal.

Legal or not, this is rapidly spiraling into an unprecedented crisis of ethics in modern Spanish politics. Prime Minister Rajoy has called an emergency meeting of his inner circle for this Saturday.

For Carla Bruni, being First Lady wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

In a 2010 TV interview, she lamented how cruel the press was being toward her and especially her husband, the president. “Do you know any journalist who’s been neutral when it comes to Nicolas Sarkozy?” She asked.

French media have been speculating that Bruni will seek revenge on her new CD, called “Little French Songs.” But this first single doesn’t go on the offensive. It’s a nostalgic look back. To the 1970s.

It’s called “Keith and Anita.” As in Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and his former girlfriend the model Anita Pallenberg. The two became legendary symbols of the post-hippy, sex-drugs-and-rock n’ roll era.

It’s not an accident that Keith and Anita was released Monday. It was husband Nicolas Sarkozy’s 58th birthday. Probably also not an accident how it avoids media bashing.

Which may be why Bruni’s agent, Bertrand de Labbey, has been making the rounds on French radio, urging journalists to forget Bruni’s time as first lady, and refocus, as she’s doing, on her art.

Artistically speaking, Bruni’s single, sort of sounds like a jazzed up version of her break-out hit “ Quelqu’un m’a Dit” over a decade ago.

So if you liked the old stuff, the new should please. The new CD is out April 1st.

On it Bruni pays tribute to some of the masters of French chanson, and there’s at least one love song to her hubby, who she calls Raymond. “My Raymond might wear a tie,” she sings, but underneath he’s a pirate.

A pirate she’s out to defend, with some choice words for the media. French news outlets report this same song attacks them for making her life as first lady miserable.

It’s both things, according to Spanish journalists and researchers. There is more corruption now than, say, 20 years ago. The cases are as varied as they are numerous: From a famous singer accused of embezzling from an artists association, to the grand daddy of them all: a former treasurer of Spain’s ruling Popular Party accused of stashing 30 million dollars in public funds in a secret Swiss account.

Spaniards have been left reeling of late by the sheer number of corruption cases, most involving the political class.

About 800 politicians are currently being investigated for corruption, according toManuel Villoria, an expert on corruption at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid. Villoria’s also a researcher for Transparency International. He said every country has corruption, but the types differ. In Greece, for example, you have to pay cash bribes to see a doctor. In Spain, he said, it’s all about pilfering public coffers.

“The most important problem in Spain,” he said, “is the political system and the political parties.”

Villoria said they sometimes fund themselves through illegal means.

“They use urban planning, they use sometimes money from the European Union for professional education, to fund their parties.”

Villoria said corruption has risen in Spain, as have the amounts of money involved.

Veteran Spanish investigative reporter Eduardo Martin de Pozuelo said that in some ways this is good news – an indication that Spain’s 35 year old democracy is maturing.

“We’ve long thought it was a good aspect of our new democracy that all these cases come to light,” he said. “Because under the dictator General Francisco Franco corruption was the essence of the system.”

And you couldn’t speak out against it. Today of course you can. And people are finding new ways to do so, besides at traditional street protests.

At a recent town-hall style gathering in the city of Terrassa, people vented their anger over local corruption. An elderly gentleman took the mic and said simply that the country is rotten through. That got folks cheering.

One of the people leading this meeting was activist turned investigative reporter Albano Dante. He runs a website called Café Amb Llet, or Coffee with Milk, in Catalan. He’s been exposing alleged corruption in public healthcare – corruption that he said went undetected for years while Spain’s economy was growing. In essence, he said, austerity has produced an upside.

“If there’s a river with lots of water, and some of it gets diverted away, it’s no big deal,” he said. “But if river’s level suddenly drops, and people are thirsty, then we focus on the leaks.”

Dante said illegal siphoning of public funds has been going on for years. But since there was money, people could steal and maintain public services.

“Now that there’s no money for the services, we’re starting to ask questions,” he said.

Dante spends most of his time traveling from town to town, trying to teach people how to investigate corruption for themselves. And he said its working. Almost too well. His website is a tiny operation – he runs it with his partner, Marta Sibina, who also works as a nurse. But he said that lately people have started to contact them directly, filtering leads to them.

“We’ve got so many leads”, he said, “we can’t handle them all.”

In the meantime Spain’s federal government is trying to improve transparency with a new law increasing access to public documents. But that doesn’t seem to be enough to make the Swiss account scandal go away. The same ex-treasurer accused of stealing the 30 million? There are allegations now – even from within the Popular Party – that for years he handed out monthly envelopes to party leaders; envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars in stolen cash.

His dishonesty casts a shadow over an entire sport, even its honest competitors but as The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Barcelona, good guys can finish first.

Everything about this train was different from the old. It’s sleek, quiet. Average cruising speed, about 250 miles an hour. And not a ripple on the surface of your drink. Classy, said Spanish retiree Javier Varo, who’d been waiting his whole life for this.

“Until now I never even considered taking the normal train to France,” Varo said. “Not once. I used to drive. The regular train is really slow.”

It typically takes about three hours to cover the 100 miles to the border. To Paris it’s 12 hours or more. But on this high-velocity number? Six hours, 41 minutes.

This is a huge milestone for Spain. Historically, it has lagged behind most of Western Europe when it came to public transport.

Under the authoritarian regime of General Francisco Franco, the nation rolled out track slowly, announcing in newsreels progress that would have been old news elsewhere.

Spanish trains were more a symbol of isolation than advancement. Especially when it came to reaching the rest of Europe. Blame it on the track gauge. From the get-go Spain purposely made its tracks wider than the rest of Europe’s. That meant Spanish trains couldn’t cross into France. And more importantly, French trains couldn’t roll into Spain. As in, invade.

For travelers it meant losing a lot of time.

I met a half Spanish, half French woman named Silvie riding the new high-speed train. She told me she spent her summers as a kid, in the 1950’s, in Spain.

“It was like returning to the 18th century,” she said. “The trains and their coal engines. It smelled. Those trips were interminable.”

After Franco died in 1975, Spain seemed to make up for lost time. Today it’s a world leader in high-speed trains. In building them, and using them. For several years trains like this one to Paris have been careening around the country. But not to Barcelona – or by extension, the rest of Europe.

The Catalans of Barcelona believe the delay has been political. So says passenger Miguel Ribes, a Barcelona native, who’s on the train today with his wife, Pilar.

“Catalonia is Spain’s front door to Europe,” he said, “but Spain has always treated us like its backside.” Ribes wondered allowed why the Spanish government built a high speed route all the way to Galicia, and then to the south, to connect to Portugal, ignoring this more strategic route.

Catalan leaders, who are currently pushing for independence from Spain, have long included the fast-train controversy in their arguments. But now, the train is rolling. Paris lies ahead. Most riders just seem glad. Even giddy. Most.

Sylvie, who complained about the coal-fired trains, said she still pined for the old days. She herself is a throw-back: she’s a hobo. Sort of. She did have a ticket from Barcelona – for the first leg of the trip. But she’s hoping to hide on board until Paris.

“If we see the conductor I hope he can cut me a deal,” she said, nervously smoking a cigarette outside during a brief stop. “I don’t have the money. I’m sort of on the margins of society.”

Silvie said she felt more comfortable on the cheap old trains, especially on the Spanish side. Despite their problems, she said they were more fun.

“One train was right out of a Western,” she said. “Wooden sides, wooden seats.” You’d pack a basket of food for the trip, she said, and people would open the baskets on the train, and share together. “Maybe I had ham, but you had some fruit.”

Today, she said, everyone has a smartphone. And no one even looks up.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with The World’s Gerry Hadden in Paris about how the conflict is playing there.

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Marco Werman: Islamist leaders in Mali have responded to the French military offensive against them by threatening retaliation. The Islamists have vowed to strike back at the heart of France. The World’s Gerry Hadden is in Paris and he says there are few outward signs in the French capital of a heightened security alert.

Gerry Hadden: There isn’t a giant concern about the Islamist rebels in Mali fulfilling their pledge to strike in the heart of France at the moment. Today in Paris, on the streets, you’re not really seeing any sort of built-up police or military presence. There are virtually no protests planned for the French military intervention in Mali. There’s no sense at all that people are upset about it. I just happen to take the train today from Spain and, from the Spanish border all the way to Paris, sitting across from me were two men with military security uniforms on. At one point, one of them jumped up and began questioning passengers about an apparently abandoned bag at the end of the car. It turned out to belong to somebody who was still on the train. But, these guys didn’t want to comment to me about whether they were on the train specifically because there are worries about attacks on French infrastructure or transportation systems. The worry is over the so-called ‘lone wolf’ sorts of attacks like the one we saw last year in Toulouse in which seven people were killed. Those are the kinds of attacks that are very difficult to stop.

Werman: So, this French muscular intervention in Mali isn’t exactly reflected in police concerns on the ground in France.

Hadden: I wouldn’t say that. I think it’s just not visible. The French security forces often work without uniforms, undercover, and I’m sure that in the train station… I came into Gare de Lyon this afternoon – one of the main train stations in Paris. It was very difficult to see any particular build-up in police or military presence but you can be guaranteed that every corner of that station was under surveillance. France has been at terror alert level ‘Red’ since 2005 actually, so that’s quite high. So, there’s already the sense that the French intelligence service are working around the clock, domestically and overseas, to prevent attacks.

Werman: Why such an elevated terrorist threat level in France since 2005, and is France really using the color-coded threat level still?

Hadden: Well, France has the largest, mostly population in Europe and there is always that fear that any French involvement in efforts to rein in or curb terrorist organizations around the world could produce a homegrown backlash.

Werman: How is Francois Hollande perceived in France, generally?

Hadden: He is perceived and has a reputation of being somewhat weak especially when it comes to foreign affairs. However, since last week’s intervention in Mali, he’s actually seen his popularity rise quite dramatically. There’s just a recent poll that’s been published of a 1,000 people, and 63 percent actually savored the French intervention in Mali. So, that’s a big boost for Hollande who has, as I say, struggled with a reputation for being wishy-washy and weak especially on foreign affairs.

Werman: The World’s Gerry Hadden in Paris; thanks so much.

Hadden: My pleasure Marco.

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Now a carrot rebellion may be underway. It started at small theater in the northeast Spanish town of Bescano. Bescano isn’t on a lot of tourist maps. But last October it made the news as far away as New Zealand. Because one night, instead of selling tickets for a play, it sold carrots. For the same price. Carrot-holders could then get in to the performance for free.

It was a protest against the tripling of the sales tax on cultural events. And a way to skirt it; tax on produce is much lower – 4 percent compared to 21 percent.

Quim Marce at the Bescano Theater. To protest Spain’s new tax on cultural events, he sold carrots instead of tickets. (Photo: Gerry Hadden)

The theater’s director, Quim Marce, said he and staff thought for a long time about what to use as a substitute ticket. They thought of pens. But taxes have gone up on schools supplies too. Then they struck on vegetables.

“Of all the produce, the carrot struck us as the most ridiculous,” Quim said, on a recent visit. “We were hoping to get local media attention. But the whole world came.”

By all measures, it was a perfect protest – and publicity stunt. But Marce did it just once, afraid tax authorities would fine him. Now six months later, he said the crisis has only worsened. Journalists have long forgotten him, his public has dwindled, promised government subsidies haven’t materialized. The Bescano is barely staying open. This year might not be the last, Marce said, but only because the town pays for some shows.

“Well likely go from hosting about 50 events,” he said, “to just hosting the end of the school year celebration and the town Christmas pageant.”

Marce said since the tax on theater tickets went up, sales are down by 40 percent nationally. Some of the country’s most important theaters are laying off staff and threatening to close altogether.

But hardest hit are small theater companies, like one called Pocacosa.

Pocacosa’s two principals, Meritxell Yanes and Elena Martinell, are currently staging a play for kids – about a cow that wants to sing opera.

Between shows Yanes took a reporter to her home, a small space above an abandoned tanning factory. There, she said, she keeps warm by the heat of a pellet stove, and eats lettuce and onions she grows out back, to save money.

Elena Martinell and Meritxell Yanes, with a colleague, in the abandoned tanning factory that they use in summer as a rehearsal space. (Photo: Gerry Hadden)

“Up till this year I was taking home about $2,100 a month,” she said. “Now I’m earning half that.”

Spain is in the fifth year of a crisis involving huge public debt and a property crash. Yanes said she’s glad at least that Spaniards have found creative, rather than violent, ways to voice their discontent with austerity measures.

“Each protest is like a mushroom,” she said. “It grows, dies but another springs up. We’re civilized. We’re not out trashing the town, or burning trash bins.”

That does happen at some of Spain’s bigger anti-austerity marches. But Spaniards have also found more offbeat ways to speak out against austerity, tax hikes and the ensuing misery. Besides the locksmith boycott in Pamplona, there are individual drivers who are refusing to pay increased toll charges on highways, then posting their acts of civil disobedience on a popular Facebook page.

And while some angry mobs occasionally storm banks, last week a group of musicians snuck into a crowded unemployment office – not so much to protest, as to brighten some faces.

Suddenly a man began playing the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” on a clarinet. Other instruments appeared, and a singer. The song made people smile and sing along, even though the numbers in Spain aren’t promising. Unemployment is set to rise again this year, surpassing 26 percent.

For workers in the theater world, the hope is that more venues will sell carrots to keep prices down. And the idea may just be catching on. A concert hall in Zaragoza just did it, and a comedy festival is planting carrots now, to sell as tickets at their events in the spring.

For over half a century, Meneses worked as a photographer and foreign correspondent for news outlets in Spain and Europe.

He is most remembered for being the first to photograph and interview Fidel Castro during his guerrilla campaign in Cuba.

Meneses had a knack for being on the front lines of history, even before he became a journalist. He was born in Spain in 1929, just as the US stock market crashed, setting off the Great Depression. Soon after, his family escaped the Spanish Civil War, settling in Paris. Then the Nazis invaded.

“I was 11-years-old,” Meneses told Spanish National Television a couple of years ago. “I got my little brother and sister on the last train out of Paris, heading for the Spanish border. All we had to eat was a couple of tortillas. The train was overflowing with wounded French soldiers, and the Germans were machine-gunning the engine to try to stop us from leaving.”

After the war, Meneses’ parents wanted him to become a diplomat. But his dad was a journalist, and he followed suit. A decade later, he got the scoop of his life.

Later in the TV documentary, Meneses showed off his photo of the young bearded revolutionary, Fidel Castro, hiding in the mountains of central Cuba in 1957.

Enrique Meneses spent four months with Castro and other Cuban revolutionaries in 1957-58. (Screen grab from www.enriquemeneses.com)

Click here to see a slideshow of Meneses work in Cuba.

That image and others first appeared in Paris Match, and became the image of the Cuban revolution. Meneses spent four months with Castro and fellow rebel Che Guevara. Both fighters were then virtually unknown, but Meneses said he could sense greatness in one of them.

“Truth is,” he said, “it never even occurred to me to stick around the base camp that Che was running. The guy never left. I went following Fidel through the hills, and I mean right behind him, literally. I was second in line during the patrols.”

Meneses’ nose for the big story, and his courage, took him from the Suez Crisis in Egypt to the American south to cover the Civil Rights movement. Up into his 70s he was still working — covering the siege of Sarajevo from inside the bombed out city.

Author and New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson says he knew Meneses by name for years. They were connected by Cuba. Meneses wrote a book called Fidel Castro. Anderson’s is entitled Che Guevara. But they didn’t meet until about ten years ago, when Menenes had finally been sidelined by cancer.

“You were very aware when you were with him, you know, OK, Enrique’s 83. He’s got an oxygen tube in his nose, but he’s ignoring it. He looked and seemed like a kid,” Anderson said.

“I always felt like I was with a contemporary when I was with him. Someone even maybe younger in spirit than even myself. And I had no doubt that if he was physically capable he would have hit the road at the drop of a hat again, just like he’d done so many times since he was young.”

Anderson calls him one of the last of the gentleman adventurers. “Instead of blood in my veins,” Menenes said in one of his last interviews, “I’ve always said I have ink.”

It’s a pretty ingenious way to stop evictions, really.

The police might come and drag debtors out. But if no one changes the locks on the apartment, the bank can’t repossess it. Because the evictees can get back in. And the legal proceedings to get them out again would take months, even years.

Banks and government authorities have been evicting an average of two families a day in recent months in and around Pamplona. Locksmiths like Iker de Carlos are hoping to put an end to it. De Carlos says in this small city, the dozen or so locksmiths often know the people they have to lock out on eviction jobs.

De Carlos told local TV that locksmiths worked often with the police and bailiffs, evicting families or elderly folks who barely had time to get their pants on before being put out on the street.

De Carlos says he and his fellow locksmiths decided last month that they could no longer ignore such suffering.

“We’re people,” he said, “and as people we can’t continue carrying out evictions when people are killing themselves.”

De Carlos was referring to the suicide of a woman last fall, outside Pamplona. As authorities, including Judge Juan Carlos Mediavilla, were arriving to evict her when she jumped from her balcony. Just after her death Judge Mediavilla spoke out publicly, his voice shaking.

“We can’t let economic problems devolve into tragedies like this,” Mediavilla said.

The judge called on the government to revise legislation so the growing number of Spaniards who can’t pay their mortgages don’t end up on the street.

Spain’s center right government initially said it would take immediate steps to protect about 600,000 of the country’s most vulnerable, including families with small children and the elderly.

A law was passed allowing some people to negotiate lower payments with banks. But it excludes retirees and any single mothers with a child over 3-years-old. And activists say banks, which had promised to ease up on evictions to avoid a social disaster, have not done so.

The social tension over evictions has led to protests across the country, and grows as unemployment rises further. But the locksmiths of Pamplona say their tiny rebellion may be the most effective way to stop evictions, even if its only one lock at a time.

We covered it all.

But for me the most interesting stories of 2012 weren’t about the movement of money but the movement of people, whether it was physical, mental or even, bare with me, astrological.

The Physical

A mass exodus of people continued in Europe in 2012, flowing mostly from south to north. Where I live in Spain, emigration jumped 20 percent from 2011 to 2012, continuing a trend that began with the bursting of Spain’s housing bubble in 2007.

Unlike other exoduses from Spain in the 20th century, this one does not involve principally unskilled laborers in search of jobs in construction or other low paying sectors. Today’s flight is of the country’s most educated, and frustrated, young people. People who have spent years getting masters and doctoral degrees in medicine, science, engineering. People who’ve sent out a hundred resumes to Spanish companies and haven’t gotten a single response. People, like a couple of engineers I met in Munich in 2012, who sent out resumes to German firms and got multiple job offers.

I’ll never forget accompanying Juan Alberto and Jose, two engineers from Malaga, Spain, as they got off the bus for the first time in freezing cold Munich and dragged their suitcases across town in search of a youth hostel where they planned to live for six months, whiled they learned German. Language was the only thing keeping them from several great job offers. Their plight highlighted the economic divide that’s grown between Northern and Southern Europe.

The Mental

As southern Europeans headed north in search of work, a couple of other huge groups of people began seeking similar, fundamental changes for themselves – but precisely by not leaving home. I’m talking about the Scots and the Catalans. The Scots successfully negotiated the right to vote on seceding from Great Britain. The Catalans say they’ll do the same, even though the Spanish central government has warned them any such vote would be unconstitutional. The economic crisis has helped fuel both independence movements. More might follow.

The Individual

Group movements get a lot of attention, but sometimes individual moves do as well. Case in point: Gerard Depardieu. In another sign of that overarching story battering Europe, the economic crisis, France’s most beloved actor has begun moving, permanently, to a tiny village in Belgium – to escape a 75 percent wealth tax that was to go into effect today in France. Depardieu’s decision has been a front-page debate in France for weeks, but he may have packed his bags too soon. France’s highest court has just struck down the wealth tax, saying its unfair.

The Astrological

Ah, Bugarach. The story of the millennium that lasted the entire year. It began with a cry for help from a tiny village in the southwest of France. The mayor of Bugarach, population 400, warned the world that tens of thousands of doomsday disciples were planning to descend on the town to escape the end of the world. He had only one hotel, and no public toilets. He needed money, investment, helping hands.

The end the doomsday sayers talked about was December 21, 2012. It was based on a misreading of the Mayan calendar. I went to Bugarach to talk to the end-of-the-worlders. I found only a couple. They made me climb Bugarach Peak, the mountain that would supposedly be saved by aliens on the Winter Solstice, before they would talk to me. Four sweaty hours later, they told me about UFO’s and the lights and how anyone sage enough to be on the mountain would not be killed in the coming catastrophe.

But when the date arrived there was just one doomsday believer in the village. And more than a hundred reporters from around the world. They practically stormed the mayor’s office demanding an interview, and an explanation. On my visit, townsfolk had pooh-poohed the mayor’s message to the world. They’d told me he was the one looking for attention. Boy did he get it. The world didn’t end, but his political career may now be doomed.

So what’s in store for 2013 on the continent? I don’t make predictions. But the economic crisis isn’t over – far from it – so we’ll no doubt see more demographic shifting, and fanciful attempts to dodge hardship (read, taxes) until Europe can turn the corner.

It is a village of a couple thousand residents and many are from somewhere else. Like French movie star Gérard Depardieu, who recently bought a house there.

The French government accuses the actor of dodging taxes and the actor admits he is exasperated with the French government, which levies very high taxes on the very wealthy.

Nechin is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

It is here that French actor Gérard Depardieu. The quiet village of Nechin may be a far cry from Paris, but what is lacks in excitement, it makes up for in lower taxes.

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A poster in Cercs’ town hall announced a dinner and dance for Saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners. There are no more miners in town, but the folks who remain try to keep the tradition alive. (Photo: Gerry Hadden)

I pointed this out to Cercs’ deputy Mayor, an affable guy named Jesus Calderer, and he smiled with weariness. Yes, he told me just before our interview, ‘Santa Barbara’ was once busy here. Back in the days when the local lignite mine was employing 3,000 people, and the coal-fire power plant another 300.

Today, he told me, both the plant and the mine are closed. Saint Barbara’s flock has been severely culled.

Still, the poster, which featured a black and white photo of a helmeted miner, piqued my interest; it listed the date and time of this year’s celebration, and mentioned a dinner and a dance up at ‘the colony.’

Calderer explained that the colony was the miner’s settlement another 20 minutes up the mountain highway. After our interview, I made the drive. Along the way I passed an old castle-like mansion, set nearly as imposingly on a ridge above Cercs as the coal plant itself. The mansion, I would learn, was built by the Basque businessman who once owned the mine. Out front hung a huge for-sale banner – another sign of the times.

(Photo: Gerry Hadden)

Inside, a guide named Montse told me that only a handful of people still lived up here. “Everyone who can leaves,” she said. “My whole family worked in the mines, except for a cousin who went to study in Barcelona.” Even just a generation ago, she told me, when you finished your mandatory public education – at age 12 – you either went to work for the mine or you left.

Montse said she barely remembered the Saint Barbara festivities from when she was a small child. “Better to talk to Ferran,” she told me.

Ferran was Ferran Perarnao, a retired, camera-shy miner with a thick head of white hair and a beer in hand. I met him up at the colony’s bar, called, of course, Santa Barbara’s. I asked Ferran if he could describe the atmosphere of old, on the day of his patron saint.

“Ooooh,” he began, standing up with some trouble, “it was something else. The biggest party of the year. We miners looked forward to it more than any other day.”

For starters, it was a rare day off, he said. In the afternoon there was a mass, then people started piling into this very bar. “There wasn’t a better celebration in the entire region,” he said. “We had all of the best orchestras. We had such a great time.”

Ferran said he still lives up here at the colony, because his daughter works here and he wants to be close to her. He’s one of just a handful of miners who’s stuck around.

“There used to be a ton of people up here,” he said sadly. “But then they stopped offering work to young people. And so everyone left.”

(Photo: Gerry Hadden)

A stark, sad place all around, I thought, with its inescapable air of abandonment. But what made it even sadder is this fact: though this mine is closed, and mines across the country are losing the government subsidies that kept them open for years, Spain is actually burning more coal than ever.

It’s importing it, from the US and elsewhere. The reason: natural gas prices in Europe have gone so high that coal is a cheaper option. And nearly five years into a brutal economic crisis, cheapness is everything. Even if it pollutes.

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