Spain Falls In Latest Global Democracy Standing

The latest survey by The Economist newspaper shows that Spain has fallen by six places in their global democracy index .

The index which has been published yearly shows that falling to 22 on the list of 167, but remains a “full” democracy with a score of 8.12.

Its best score was 8.45 in 2008 and its worst 8.02 in 2011-2013.

The fall has been attributed to the management of Covid-19 pandemic by the PSOE-Unidas Podemos coalition government, who assumed office a year ago.

The deputy prime minister and leader of the junior government partners, Pablo Iglesias, appeared to agree saying that  “there is not a situation of full political and democratic normality in Spain,” in reference to the ongoing stand-off with Catalan nationalists Oriol Junqueras and Carles Puigdemont, the former who is in prison and the other in exile in Brussels on charges of sedition after the illegal referendum and the unilateral declaration of independence in 2017.

The survey underlines that 2020 was not a good year for democracies across the globe stating that “democracy received a big blow in 2020” with  almost 70% of the countries examined to have regressed in “democratic freedoms” due to the restrictions on citizens imposed in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic which led to downgraded scores in the civil liberties’ section of the index.

The average score of the 167 countries analysed fell from 5.44 to 5.37 representing the biggest global average drop since the index began in 2006.

Western Europe as a whole including Spain fell from 8.35 to 8.29.

Top of the list are the Nordic countries led by Norway, Iceland and Sweden with 9.81, 9.37 and 9.26 while bottom is again North Korea with a score of 1.08.

According to the index there are only 23 ” full democracies”  in the world, accounting for 13.8% of all countries and 8.4% of the world’s population.

The vast majority of countries are classified by ‘The Economist’ as imperfect democracies (51 countries including the United States and which accounts for 41% of the global population), authoritarian regimes (57 countries that are home to 35.6% of the world’s inhabitants) and hybrid regimes (35 states where 15% of the world’s population lives).

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