The unemployment rate in Spain recently hit an astounding 27.2 percent for the first quarter of 2013, which is the highest it's been in decades and higher than unemployment was in the United States during the Depression. Spain's unemployment rate now matches that of Greece, which is basically insolvent and dependent on European bailout aid. It's more than twice the European average of about 11 percent.

More astonishingly, Spain's unemployment rate was less than 8 percent at the beginning of 2008, which means it has soared by nearly 20 percentage points since then. "Spain lacks the tools to break free from the recessionary spiral," economist Raj Badiani of IHS Global Insight wrote in a recent research note. "The downturn is evolving depression-like characteristics."