Gateway to Europe: Madrid’s leaning towers offer a potent symbol of debt-fuelled folly

In this anxious lull between the Spanish bailout and the Greek election result, the most potent symbol of the continent’s perilous financial state is Madrid’s Puerta de Europa, or ‘Gateway to Europe’. That happens to be the name of the twin skyscrapers that lean towards each other at a sickening angle over the shoulders of television reporters tasked with trying to explain whether last weekend’s €100 ­billion deal was a triumph of robust collective action or — as markets seem to be signalling — another domino-fall in the inevitable disintegration of the single currency.