Bullrings and fake Eiffel Towers may not be enough to hold back the tide of surging unemployment in Spain, Europe’s one-time engine of job growth.

As an 8 billion-euro ($12 billion) stimulus program runs out, that will help destroy 250,000 jobs at the start of next year, according to the AGETT association of employment agencies, and push the jobless rate above 20 percent.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s package, designed to fight Spain’s worst recession in 60 years, has kept people in work by funding a wave of building projects from a theme park of European monuments to sports complexes and bullrings. The risk is that a further jump in joblessness will delay the return to growth, boosting the budget deficit and borrowing costs.

“What they’ve done is just put the unemployed on ice,” said Fernando Fernandez, a professor at IE business school in Madrid and former International Monetary Fund economist. “There’s been a series of transitory measures based on the idea the crisis would be short, and now we have to deal with the consequences.”

Under the Plan E program, which created 422,298 jobs, builders in Torrejon de Ardoz, near Madrid, are erecting the collection of monuments among 5,000 trees. On the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, 3 million euros is being spent to build a swimming pool, while a bullring near the capital has a new roof.

Click this link to read the FULL article: Bullrings, Theme Park Can’t Stop 20% Spanish Jobless (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.