YPF Nationalization Draws Praise in Argentina But for many Argentines, the nationalization does not go far enough. "They should expropriate 100 percent, not just a part of it," said Fernando Solanas, a congressman and filmmaker who is an opponent of Mrs. Kirchner's government. Oil is a public interest. In seizing control of YPF, Mrs. Kirchner has adroitly shifted attention away from her country's soaring inflation, capital flight and her own falling approval ratings, focusing instead on a longstanding subject of resentment here: the market-oriented policies of the 1990s, which preceded a severe economic crisis at the start of the last decade. The nationalization has been so warmly received here that Argentina's Senate voted 63 to 3 early Thursday to take control of YPF, the country's leading energy company, during a lengthy special session in which most senators used their allotted time to speak to laud Mrs. Kirchner's initiative. Some members of the political opposition from oil and gas-producing provinces came close to tears expressing gratitude for the measure. The expropriation bill will be taken up on May 3 by Argentina's lower house of Congress, where it is also expected to pass by a large margin. Even Carlos Menem, the former president who oversaw the start of YPF's privatization in 1992, now supports the state takeover. "The scenario has changed," said Mr. Menem, now a senator. To critics here and abroad, the nationalization - and the readiness of so many Argentines to invite a clash with Spain, one of their nation's largest trading partners - is the kind of step that has made Argentina seem like a "truant of economic management," in the words of Walter Molano, an American financial expert. Indeed, some here contend that Argentina has gone to the dogs, literally. So many nervous citizens have taken their money out of the country that Argentina's tax agency now uses Labrador retrievers trained to detect the ink used to print dollar bills in an effort to stanch capital flight at the airports, ferry terminal and bus terminal in Buenos Aires. "It's a marvel to watch them," Ariel Viola, a tax agent at the Buquebus terminal, where ferries transport passengers to Uruguay, said of the dogs. They're incredibly effective. They've smelled out millions of dollars travelers were attempting to smuggle. Capital flight accelerated sharply to $22 billion in 2011 as fears spread over soaring inflation. Unofficial measures suggest annual inflation is between 20 and 25 percent. But the authorities have fined researchers for disseminating such figures, and the official estimate stands at 9.8 percent. Dollar-sniffing dogs and fines for publishing statistics might point to an economy in crisis. But Argentina's economy is actually growing robustly, albeit at a slower pace than in recent years. This decade-long recovery has given Mrs. Kirchner the broad political support to pursue nationalist policies that sometimes perplex - and enrage - foreign banks, companies and governments, not to mention some Argentines who view her moves as a return to the protectionism that long hobbled the economy. Riding an export boom for commodities like soybeans, Argentina's economy grew at an average rate of 7.7 percent from 2004 to 2010, almost twice as high as the average annual growth of 4.3 percent in neighboring Chile, a country often cited as a model for economic policies, over the same period. Some controversy also swirls over the way Argentina officially measures economic growth, which the government said reached 9.2 percent in 2011. But even the I.M.F. sees Argentina growing 4.2 percent this year, a rate outstripping the 3 percent growth foreseen for Brazil, the region's economic powerhouse. Argentina's post-collapse boom underscores the shifting fortunes on both sides of the Atlantic. Thousands of young Spanish emigrants have recently made their way to Buenos Aires; in the hipster restaurants of Palermo, one district of this city, Spanish accents are heard among the wait staff and bartenders. After Mrs. Kirchner was elected to her first term in 2007, succeeding her husband, Néstor Kirchner, as president, she increased social spending on programs like the "universal allocation per child," which provides poor families with monthly cash stipends. These programs, along with other anti-poverty initiatives, reduced inequality, helping Mrs. Kirchner cruise to re-election in 2011. At the same time, the buying power of Argentines soared as incomes climbed and the government maintained controls on energy prices. Meanwhile, YPF and other oil companies, wary of investing in a country where low energy prices curb profitability, limited spending that could have lifted energy production. The result: Argentina went from being an energy exporter to importing fuel from countries as far away as Qatar. This reliance on foreign energy sources grew especially acute in the past year. The authorities now struggle with a $3 billion energy deficit to meet domestic demand for oil and natural gas, according to Esteban Fernández Medrano, an independent economist. Charles Newbery and Emily Schmall contributed reporting.