Yesterday the troika of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission had to threaten the Greek government with the torments of hell to get them to agree to lay off 15,000 civil servants in 2012 to lower the country's deficit. Greece has more than 700,000 public servants (out of a population of 11 million) and has promised to cut that number by 150,000 by the year 2015. But it is doing so with the alacrity of a turtle. In fact, it already had promised to slash 32,000 last year, but in the end trimmed only 2,000.

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The Spanish government is no stranger to this. The EU leadership do not like the prospect of opening the exit door of the euro club, because after Greece would go Portugal, and nobody knows where the list could end. But they would also like the Greek politicians to take events more seriously. "We knew long ago that the Greeks are the way they are. The problem is not only economic but political," says a senior official.

And the way out does not seem to lie in threats, like the German threat to appoint a proconsul or the French idea of creating a separate account where the money to pay the interest can be deposited. The Greeks have never felt inferior to other Europeans. Although their economy is in ruins, their national self-esteem and pride are gigantic. They have, in fact, always distrusted the idea of Europe, unless it would mean that Brussels would fund their lifestyle. But all this was known almost from the day they entered the EU.