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The French president makes his maiden official visit to Madrid as the European Central Bank scrambles to work out a mechanism for buying some eurozone governments' bonds so as to curb those borrowing costs.Many thought Hollande’s victory over Sarkozy in France’s May 6 presidential election would turn the tide on the German chancellor’s strict recipe of budgetary discipline and spending cuts. Speaking at a press conference following talks in Madrid Thursday with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Hollande urged politicians to use the next European Union summit on Oct 19. "to make decisions concerning the eurozone, lasting decisions." Hollande was referring to delays in introducing measures agreed at a summit in June to grant countries easier access to bailout money and set up a single banking regulator that could take the burden of bank bailouts off national governments. The French leader's remarks came as the financial problems of Spain's regional governments put the country under even greater pressure to ask for a bailout.

The visit by Prime Minister Monti forms part of an intense agenda of bilateral contact between the Government of Spain and the Government of Italy. This will be the fourth time this year that the President of the Government of Spain and the Italian Prime Minister have attended bilateral meetings, besides those they have attended with other European leaders as part of the European Council. They will also discuss the plans for a banking union, and the creation of a unique banking supervisor, a role which will be taken up by the Central European Bank. Neither Rajoy nor Monti like the idea of the bank supervisor.

French President Francois Hollande called on Europe's leaders to make serious headway in introducing measures to ease the pressure on countries such as Spain. Spain is in a double-dip recession with near 25 percent unemployment following the bursting of a real estate bubble in 2008. It is under fierce pressure to reduce its swollen deficit, cut central and regional government spending and clean up a banking system laden down with toxic property assets. Hollande was referring to delays in introducing measures agreed at a summit in June to grant countries easier access to bailout money and set up a single banking regulator that could take the burden of bank bailouts off national governments. The French leader's remarks came as the financial problems of Spain's regional governments put the country under even greater pressure to ask for a bailout.

Mariano Rajoy has received Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil in the Moncloa today. The two have been discussing the crisis in the Euro and how Latin America could help to end the crisis.Rousseff says the austerity measures that Spain and other members of the zone have invoked should include more flexibility so high unemployment can be reduced. When the financial crisis hit Brazil in 2008, Rousseff's predecessor went on a government spending spree.Another topic that could be on the table is the immigration policy, after the Brazilian Government has announced its readiness to facilitate the entry of workmanship qualified for other countries such as Spain.

Carrillo was born in Asturias, and his father was Wenceslao Carrillo, one of the founders of the Spanish Socialist Party. His political involvement began through his membership in the Socialist Youth (Spanish: Juventadas Socialistas). Frustrated by the Socialists’ reformism and after visiting Moscow, Carrillo joined the Spanish Communist Party in November 1936. He was in charge of public order in Madrid, and some held him responsible for the massacre of prisoners at Paracuellos in November of that year. After the Spanish Civil War he went to the Americas, and he later spent many years in Paris. He participated in the founding, in July 1974, of the Junta Democrática Española, which partially united the opposition to the regime of Francisco Franco, and in March 1977 he helped found the Coordinación Democrática, which incorporated the opposition parties and Spain’s regional autonomy movements.

Santiago Carrillo, the veteran Communist leader who was Spain's last surviving public figure to have taken an active part in the civil war, has died aged 97. Born in 1915 in the northern city of Gijon in 1915, Mr Carrillo was politically active from a young age. Although he lived in exile for decades, mostly in France, Carrillo was a central figure in Spanish politics during much of the tumultuous 20th Century and a player in the difficult transition to democracy in the late 1970s after dictator Francisco Franco died. After Franco's forces won in 1939 with the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Carrillo went into exile, from where he helped organise resistance to the dictatorship.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy warned Catalonia on Wednesday not to "persist in error" in a fight for fiscal independence from the rest of crisis-hit Spain. A week after Catalans flooded Barcelona in a pro-independence rally of 600,000 to 1.5 million people, Rajoy bristled at the northeastern region's growing campaign to levy and spend its own taxes. But Catalonia, which accounts for one-fifth of the Spanish economy, says it pays the central government far more in taxes than it receives in return: a deficit of seven to eight billion euros a year."If there is no agreement" on increasing Catalonia's economic self-government, "the road towards freedom will be open," regional Prime Minister Artur Mas said Tuesday.