But compared with where things stood five years ago, the American economy—for all its struggles—has grown a bit, while Spain’s has completely collapsed. The exchange rates in some sense “should” have moved a lot, turning Spain into an American tourist’s paradise.

But they haven’t, because Spain is only a small part of the eurozone. The exchange rate dynamics reflect the overall conditions throughout the currency area, most of which is doing much better than Spain or Greece. Because of Germany’s strength, the euro doesn’t fall across the rest of the continent (just as a recession in Florida doesn’t pull down the dollar in the rest of the United States).

This is not about poor, poor American tourists who would like to go to Barcelona not being able to afford it. This is about the trap that eurozone economies find themselves in. In the pre-euro world, the Spanish peseta would have fallen commensurate to the performance of the overall Spanish economy, making Spanish goods and services a lot cheaper. Bargain-seeking tourists might have flooded into Spain, bringing their cash with them, and stimulating the creation of new jobs. Spanish exports would be more affordable, and therefore sell more. But that really can’t happen now. The success of northern eurozone economies relative to the southern ones are keeping things artificially inflated down south, prolonging misery.