The investment plea underlines the extent to which Spain and
Portugal are scrambling to find new ways to exploit their historical
and cultural ties with Latin America.
Starting in the late 1990s, Spanish companies began a drive into
Latin America that resulted in their taking over some of the
region's most prized assets. Now, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of
Spain wants the investment to flow in the other direction.
Mr. Rajoy used a weekend summit meeting here to try to persuade
Latin American leaders to invest more in recession-hit Spain,
suggesting that his country could be "the closest platform" for
companies to make forays into the rest of Europe, and even North
Africa.
"Spain receives Latin American investment with open arms," he
said Saturday in a speech.
Mr. Rajoy's investment plea underlines the extent to which Spain
and Portugal, among those hit hardest by the European debt crisis,
are scrambling to find new ways to exploit their historical and
cultural ties with Latin America.
The International Monetary Fund forecast last month that growth
in Latin America would accelerate to 3.9 percent next year from 3.2
percent this year, with Brazil's economy growing 4 percent.
Luis Alberto Moreno, the president of the Inter-American
Development Bank, said during an interview that "for years you had
capital going from north to south and immigration going from south
to north and what we are increasingly going to see is a reverse of
the flows."
In fact, some of the participants in the two-day summit meeting
suggested that Spain and other European countries should pay closer
attention to Latin America's recent recipes for economic success to
help them emerge from their own economic quagmire.
"I think Latin America now has a lot more to show Spain and
others in Europe than the other way round," said Heraldo Munoz
Valenzuela, a former member of the Chilean government who is now
assistant secretary general at the United Nations Development
Program.
One of the lessons from Latin America's ability to overcome
several rounds of financial crisis, he suggested during an
interview, is that "the idea cannot simply be to tighten the belt."
"I'm very concerned by the tendency now in Europe to dismantle
the welfare state and the social gains that have been achieved," Mr.
Munoz said.
While Mr. Rajoy maintains that Spain can meet the budgetary
targets that it told its European Union counterparts it would meet,
his administration has been debating since September whether to seek
further European rescue funds amid concerns in Madrid that such help
would require Spain to introduce further austerity measures.
"To get out of the crisis, austerity is necessary but not
sufficient," Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil, the Spanish
foreign minister, said at a news conference Friday. "Growth is the
key."
For now, however, the economies of Spain and Portugal are
expected to contract through next year. And with unemployment
already at 25 percent in Spain and nearly 16 percent in Portugal,
expectations of a prolonged recession are helping to fuel an exodus
to Latin America and other growth markets. Mr. Rajoy, for instance,
noted Saturday that already more than one million Spaniards lived in
Latin America.
To strengthen their presence in Latin America, Spanish companies
