Spanish Newspaper Retracts After Comparing Angela Merkel to Adolf Hitler

El Pais, a Spanish newspaper has retracted a column that compared German Chancellor Angela Merkel with German dictator Adolf Hitler. The column was written by economist Juan Torres Lopez of the University of Seville and published on its Web site and Audalusia printed regional edition.

The daily apologised for the column which sparked protests in the Internet.

"Angela Merkel, like Hitler, has declared war on the rest of the continent, this time to guarantee [Germany] its vital economic space," Mr Lopez wrote, adding, "She punishes us to protect her large companies and banks and also to hide from her electorate the shameful model that has seen the poverty rate in the country rise to its highest level in 20 years, 25 per cent of employees earn less than €9.15 an hour and half the population represent ... a miserable 1 per cent of all the nation's wealth."

His comments were an apparent response to Ms Merkel's stand on the Cyprus bailout which is an unpopular move politically.

Her comments were reportedly made at an extraordinary meeting of the parliamentary group of her party, the Christian Democrats, in the Bundestag. She was quoted by The Guardian as saying that Cyprus as "exhausting the patience of its euro partners" and she was very angry at the failure of the Cypriot government to produce an alternative plan over the protested taxes on bank deposits.

El Pais removed the column titled Germany against Europe from its news portal due to its improper content.

"El Pais regrets that a supervisory error allowed the publication of this material. The opinions expressed by Torres Lopes are his alone," the newspaper said.

It is not the first time that the tough female German leader has been compared to Hitler.

Mathieu von Rohr, Paris bureau chief of the German newspaper Der Spiegel, wrote through a tweet that "to put Merkel's policies on a level with Hitler is as loco [crazy] as it gets."

"Of course Merkel's (and everybody's) stance may be criticised. But to use Hitler is incendiary, stupid and irresponsible," he added.