Another thing that is left silent in these discussions of European economies is that Portugal and Spain are still, 30-something years later, still suffering the effects of the long term damage done to their economies by the fascist regimes that held power for 50 years in those nations. It has been especially difficult to modernize the Spanish economy due to the damage done by the Falange and the Church - this lead to the overreaction during the boom as the socialist government thought they might be able to fix many of the things left undone in decades of reaction in their nation.