Well...it's Europe. As a member of the Euro, Spain has vastly less control over their monetary policy than any truly sovereign state on the face of the planet. Conversely, as a member of the EU, they also have vastly less support from a central government than any province or state would have. They also face an incredibly sclerotic bureaucracy and a non-functional political process, dominated by groups and factions which (to put it mildly) do not have their best interests at heart.
To a first approximation, there is nowhere else on Earth where this debt crisis would be simultaneously so serious and so hard to deal with. You can't treat this like you were dealing with the US, or China, South-East Asia. This is Europe and that means that, barring a miracle, we're all[1] probably screwed.
[1]: Well, anyone who relies on the global economy for income, goods, or services, anyhow. Which would be, uh, all of us on HN, at a minimum...
