The New York Times has a report today on the Chicago-style corruption in Spain that helped put that nation in such dire fiscal straits:

In the good times, the former mayor of this small, wind-swept village of 5,000 in northern Spain was busy building: the olive oil museum, the wind museum, the museum of life. If that were not enough, there was the new bullring, the sports center with 25,000 seats and the zoo with the exotic-bird park.

The former mayor, Mara Victoria Pinilla, seemed to be prospering personally, as well. Three stately houses took shape on her family plot. There was an apartment in Madrid, a beach house and a vacation home in the Dominican Republic next to Julio Iglesias’.

Now, however, the fence outside the former mayor’s family compound is in disrepair and half-built housing developments lie abandoned on the outskirts of the village. And last month, Ms. Pinilla, 57, became just one more in a growing throng of political officials in Spain to face corruption charges.

Investigators calculate that she and other family members accumulated about $24 million, mostly from shady land deals during Spain’s boom years. Searching her property, the police had to borrow a bill-counting machine from a local bank to help total up all the cash: $485,000.

For decades, corruption was accepted in Southern Europe as a fact of life, a way to distribute the spoils, and few people — including, in many cases, prosecutors — gave it a second thought. But the grinding economic crisis, which stalled projects and ended the flow of cash, has helped lift the veil on corrupt officials, exposing graft, bribery, payoffs, secret favors and other misdeeds on a scale that few imagined.

Standard Disclaimer: “Chicago-style corruption” is a reference by this author (a life-long Cook County resident who was born and grew up in Chicago) to Chicago’s corrupt political culture. It does not refer to Barack Obama in any way, shape, or form.