Strategic companies. Cartoon of 09/09/2023 in CTXT
After learning that STC Group, a company owned by the Saudi Arabian government, has bought 9.9% of Telefónica to become its largest shareholder, the neoliberals have not stopped whining and have not been able to somatise their own medicine.
They are no longer free-market fanatics and have gone from crowing about the supposed virtues of the free market to blaming the government for who knows what. They now see dangers where before they only saw advantages.
Take this hyena, for example:
Not even the Telefónica bosses knew about the move until it was done. Or at least that's what they say, although you know that you shouldn't believe anything about these people from the start.
The incessant trickle of partial privatisations of many public companies began with Felipe González in the 1980s and was completed with Aznar in 1997 (under his mandate the main companies of the Spanish economy were privatised), when he privatised 20.9% of what the government kept of Telefónica, bypassing Congress. From this final plundering came a distribution of nice gifts among PP colleagues.
Now everyone is running around in circles screaming in horror, some out of posturing and others as well.