The financial malaise that has affected the Eurozone countries of southern Europe - Spain, Portugal, Italy and, in its most extreme case, Greece - has been attributed to a number of factors with most analysis focusing on dry macroeconomic and financial factors.

Although these aspects are undeniably important, geographical, political and sociological considerations are every bit their equal while the severe negative socio-spatial outcomes of the ultra-neoliberal austerity policies introduced supposedly to solve the crisis and the great variety of social movements resisting...