Friday 10 June 2022

Did We Just Lose Our Vote?


There's a big fuss going on in expat circles (or at least, there should be) about a news item saying that the European Court of Justice has ruled on a case in France regarding the remaining voting rights of the British residents living in the EU.

The ECJ ruled on Thursday that the British, being non EU-members following Brexit, have no voting rights within the block.

In Spain, there are some bilateral agreements allowing votes in municipal elections for a number of countries. These include several Latin American states (but not all), plus Norway, New Zealand, South Korea and - for some impenetrable reason - Trinidad & Tobago. 

With Brexit, the Brits lost their vote in the European elections (not that any continental MEP was going to speak for the 800,000 or so Brits living in Europe), but, we were assured, we would not only keep our vote in local ('municipal') elections, but would be able to continue to run as a candidate. 

Indeed, despite the fact that most foreign residents don't tune in to their local municipality, there are a modest number of foreign and even a few Brit councillors here and there in Spain. 

Now it would appear, if the ECJ authority takes precedence over any bilateral arrangement, that all non-EU foreigners - not just Brits - would lose whatever modest suffrage that they had enjoyed since 1999 (the first municipal elections in Spain where foreign EU citizens, including Brits, could vote).

The problem is obvious. If the town hall must choose discrepancies or squabbles between voters and non-voters, it's clear which way they will go. Why waste time on people who can't vote for you - or indeed, against you?

The question is whether this is a storm in a tea-cup, or the future European policy. 

The next local elections will be held in May 2023. We need to know: will we have the vote. 

One Spanish friend wrote - give us back Gibraltar, and we'll let you keep your ballot-paper. Ah, if only it were that simple.

Monday 6 June 2022

Useful News about Spain, in English...

 I've been writing Business over Tapas for about ten years now. 

I'll continue to do so as long as I enjoy reading the newspapers and reporting on what's going on in Spain.

The English-language reporting here is awful, frankly. Much of it is not even about Spain, but leans towards pro-Brexit poppycock, puzzles, TV listings (Brit TV naturally), or fuzzy articles about cats or British galas. 

They remind one of the on-board news distributed on cruise-ships. 

No wonder we call ourselves ex-pats. Most of us don't even know the name of the Spanish president.

News about Spain should be the news that affects us as foreigners, whether investing or living here. 

For those who wish to learn about the politics, the history, the geography, the culture, the language, the gastronomy and the key issues, BoT is the solution - and there are no adverts, no corporate owners, no lies, no fake recommendations and no fluff.

Thus, if anyone wants to read Business over Tapas, then ask me nicely...

Wednesday 1 June 2022

BoT 448

 

Business over Tapas

A digest of this week's Spanish financial, political and social news aimed primarily at Foreign Property Owners:

Prepared by Lenox Napier.  Consultant: José Antonio Sierra

For subscriptions and other information about this site, go to businessovertapas.com

email:  lenox@businessovertapas.com

***Now with Facebook Page (Like!)***

Note: Underlined words or phrases are links to the Internet.

Business over Tapas and its writers are not responsible for unauthorised copying or other improper use of this material.

Subscription and e-mail information in our archives is never released to third parties.

 

 

June 2 2022            Nº 448

 

 

Editorial:

 

The summer hols are upon us. We shall pack our bags (or our hand-luggage if we are travelling with one of the cheapies) and jet away to somewhere warm, where we shall get drunk, have a brief romance, buy a souvenir, punch someone and be sick in a flowerbed. Perhaps we shall look wistfully at a property if there’s a rainy day, or discover to our surprise that the holiday business has become an industry.

Spain is no exception.

Ludicrous newspapers like The Express are always full of stories about why readers shouldn’t be holidaying here for one reason or another: whether it’s a limit to six drinks a day in the all-inclusive hotel, the ignominy of having to queue in the Non-EU line at the airport or the bar-staff that can’t understand you when you ask for a bacon sarnie.

The Spanish probably couldn’t care less what The Express thinks, short of a few small hoteliers who are worried that anyone is going to change their mind because of some inflammatory article about Etias visas and decide to stay this year for two weeks in Southend instead.

Meanwhile, Easyjet and other airlines cancel large numbers of flights from the UK for some reason or other. More queues, more anger, less time around the pool.

There are several issues of slightly more weight that worry the Brit tourist, such as the 90 / 180 day deal in the Schengen Zone, and the agony of whether a resident can use a British driving licence (both subjects sublimely ignoring the self-inflicted punch of Brexit).

Some of Spain’s destinations are crashing out of the tourist stakes – such as La Manga, which overlooks the Mar Menor: now a dying lagoon. Under extreme threat too from illegal wells from the strawberry growers is El Parque Nacional de Doñana in Cádiz.

So, tourism changes: it diversifies and it evolves. Now we read that the second kind of tourism, what might be called city-visitors – is facing a crisis as China considers halting all Chinese holidays abroad. They may not be much for bucket and spade tourism, but they do appreciate a flying visit to Madrid, Granada and Barcelona to see the sights.

Better news comes from Germany, where the travel agencies are mooting the idea of sending their senior citizens en masse to Spain for the winter months to save on energy (a sensitive topic in Germany at the moment). If Spain tuned in, they could convert some of their abandoned villages into merrie North European retirement centres (and get some funding from abroad to pay for it).  

...

Housing:

From Mark Stücklin’s Spanish Property Insight here: ‘Experts forecast market slowdown in second half of this year’. 

(There are two types of property that figure in certain analyses – city apartments for Spaniards, and coastal casas for foreigners. We generalise and we exaggerate). On the first type, this story: From Xataca here – ‘In the last five years, the price per square metre in the sale of homes has increased in Spain by 15.6%, while salaries have barely increased by 5.9% in the same period and, in fact, during 2021 they decreased 2.5%, according to a joint study carried out by the Infojobs employment platform and the real estate portal Fotocasa. For this report, both companies based their figures on the adverts published on their respective websites…’

Much is written of the abandonment of the forgotten pueblos – understandable as the local services (bus, bank and post office) diminish. No province has a higher loss of inhabitants than Burgos says the local paper, with no births recorded at all in the last twenty years in 37 municipalities there.

As potential buyers look in the display windows of the estate agents, here’s a place to consider at The Robb Report: ‘This 20 million euro Spanish estate outside of Seville has a bonkers 185 acres of gardens. Just an hour from Seville, the sprawling Andalusian estate borders a natural park, an UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and the Huéznar River’.

...

Tourism:

20Minutos is buoyant. ‘The tide of tourism in Spain: visits by foreigners skyrocket by 755% and visitor spending grows by 840%’. Over last year, understandably. A graphic shows that we are in fact somewhere between the 2016 and 2017 January to April figures in spending and considerably lower at 24.2 million than 2016 (29.3m) in visitor numbers....

Spanish News Today says (screams) that ‘Sun-seeking Brits To Splash Out More Than 10 Billion Pounds On Spanish Holidays This Year’. That’s 10,000 million pounds or a bit more in euros. British holidaymakers, says the article, spend an average of £630.78 during their holiday (how much of that stays with the airline?).   

...

Finance:

Southern Spain is of course poorer than the north. A map here shows the average income and the level of unemployment in cities of over 20,000 inhabitants across the country. It has also emerged that the State underspent in its budgets last year for Andalucía, Valencia, Asturias and Catalonia, while Madrid received almost double the projected budgetary investment. Both items are from elDiario.es. La Vanguardia says that the State investment in Madrid is three times that for Barcelona.

From Financial Post (copied from Bloomberg) here: ‘Rooftop solar takes off in Spain, aiding Europe's bid to shun Russian gas’. We read, ‘The rush for the rooftops comes amid soaring energy prices across Europe and a host of new financial incentives by the Spanish government to encourage homeowners to invest in cleaner technology…’ Meanwhile, ‘According to the solar energy cooperative Ecooo, it takes between seven and ten years for a single-family home to recover the investment in photovoltaic panels. A calculation that does not take into account incentives or subsidies and is, according to its coordinator Laura Feijóo García, as conservative as possible…’ Item from El País here.

Tax collections are up (thanks to the zeal of the Ministry of Hacienda). El Confidencial has the story here. ‘With an 11,000 million euros increase, tax collection shoots up 17% in the first four months of 2022 and leads the State to a surprise surplus. The IVA contributing 20% more than it did a year ago while personal income tax is also up by 13%. Expenditures remain contained despite a 4% increase in public salaries’.

From The Corner here, ‘The Social Security allocated a record 10,810 million euros to the payment of contributory pensions this May, 4.8% more than in the same month of 2021, the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration said on Friday. The Department headed by José Luis Escrivá estimates that spending on pensions stood at 11.8% of GDP in the fifth month of the year…’ The average pension paid in Spain is 1,252€ monthly – as broken down by region and province by Bankinter here.

A large number of fines – said to be around 5,000 of them – originating from the 2012 rule of holding monies, properties or credits abroad to be declared in the Modelo 720 tax-form, ruled improper by the European Court, must now be re-assessed by the Supreme Court.

...

Politics:

Celebrating Spain’s 40-year membership of NATO, Pedro Sánchez told the General Secretary of the organisation Jens Stoltenberg on Monday of the need to increase defence spending in these troubled times, led by the growing Russian threat, and that he was willing to raise the amount allocated to this matter to a full 2% of the Spanish GDP. The next summit for the NATO (OTAN in Spanish) will be held in Madrid at the end of June. The story here. Much to the President’s disappointment, the non-ministerial deputies of Unidas Podemos – there are 29 of them – say they will not be attending the NATO summit. However, the Minister of Labour Yolanda Díaz will be present (representing the ‘Loyal Left’, as ECD reports here).

President Sánchez is to review the rules under which the Spanish Secret Service may operate and to sign a new law on official secrets says El Huff Post here.

The PP plan (Pablo Casado’s plan) to sell the headquarters in the Calle Génova in Madrid following the problems of dirty money used in its refurbishment during the Rajoy years have been shelved. ‘It’s not the building’s fault’, says the party spokesman.

...

Andalucía Elections June 19:

Another day, another survey. From the Centro de Estudios Andaluces and posted at elDiario.es, we read that The PP is doing well, but will almost certainly need the Vox to govern. The numbers: PP: 39.2%; PSOE-A 24.2% and Vox 17.3%. Many observers are worried about the growth of the Vox vote (especially in areas where there are lots of foreign agricultural workers who of course can’t vote).

The official two week long campaign begins on June 3rd with candidates and their supporters putting up posters everywhere from midnight Friday. The elections (after a day of sober reflection) are on Sunday June 19th and the new Andalusian parliament will be inaugurated on July 14th. An item at Público here.

If Ciudadanos loses badly in Andalucía then it’s adiós, says elDiario.es here.

According to this, the first measure on Vox’ Andalucía shopping list is to suppress the Catalonian autonomy. From Andalucía. They also (it says in a comment) call for anyone living in Spain for less than ten years to have no public health coverage. Whatever Vox is or isn’t, Steve Bannon’s Iberian followers aren’t exactly a benevolent party of the people.

Only 4% of Andalusians resident outside Spain have bothered to register to vote in the 19J. It’s cumbersome to register abroad in the consulate (and then return there to place one’s vote), although a new simpler system will soon be in place.

...

Catalonia: 

From EuroNews here: ‘Can Barcelona shake off its reputation as the ‘bag-snatching capital’? Inside the city's new plan’. We read that ‘The Catalonian capital is notoriously rife with pickpockets. In 2018 there were an average of 12 robberies an hour, according to Spain’s interior ministry. The large drop-off in street robberies in 2021 - plummeting by 56 per cent compared to 2019 - suggests the ebb in tourists was a big contributor…’ 

The day the 21,000 cruise-ship passengers visited Barcelona. The Wonder of the Seas gives you ‘enough time ashore to see a couple of things, then it’s back to the ship’. Does Barcelona take much out of these visits (besides the contamination)?

...

Gibraltar:

From Sur in English here: ‘Spain is reportedly unhappy about the upcoming royal visit to Gibraltar on June 7th to 9th. The Spanish media are claiming that foreign minister José Manuel Albares has made an official complaint to the UK government, saying the visit by Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex and his wife Countess Sophie is "inappropriate" at the moment’. More on the background to this issue is at El Confidencial here.

…...

Europe:

(To cheer up readers) The Express reports that ‘Brexiteers give Boris 2,000 ideas to obliterate EU rules. From allowing fracking to building super-powered vacuum cleaners, the British public has handed the Government 2,000 ideas on how to reap the benefits of Brexit and get rid of hated EU red tape’.

The ‘Sanchista inflation’ (as the PP would have it) currently suffered in Spain is, in fact, overtaken by a number of other EU countries says InfoLibre here. Including Germany (8.7%), the Netherlands (10.2%) and Belgium (9.9%). Spain is at 8.5% year-on-year.

...

Health:

‘Tourists from outside EU can now enter Spain with a negative Covid test. Rules altered to now no longer only require a certificate of vaccination’ says Catalan News here.

Just behind Murcia, and ahead of the Valencia Region, Andalucía has the second-worst health service in Spain says Diario de Sevilla here. One can certainly expect a long wait between the family doctor and the visit to the clinica… (The País Vasco is the best). NB, the scoring is between 32 and 130, so Andalucía’s 63 or Murcia’s 60 isn’t that great. 

‘Spanish LGBTQ groups wary of monkey-pox stigma as Madrid Pride festival nears’ says The San Diego Union Tribune here.

...

Corruption:

The normally sober El Confidencial has a story that claims that ‘The Police have seized from the Russian mafia the audio of an operation to silence Luis Bárcenas (the corrupt party treasurer) and save the PP. A Russian mafia lieutenant arrested in 2020 had in his mail the recording of a meeting in which he negotiated to extort the former treasurer so that he would not provide more information about the famous black accounts held in the party headquarters in Madrid’.

...

Ecology:

‘Spain's Doñana National Park under threat as groundwater pumping continues’. An item with video from EuroNews here.

The Olive Press looks at the plight of the immigrant agricultural workers in Almería in a well-researched article here.

There is a third type of land beyond private and public, and that’s community land, or la propiedad colectiva. The Conversation (it’s in Spanish) looks at the advantages of collectively-owned land: which can’t be divided, sold off, embargoed or traded. New shared-owners are possible – as newcomers join the community, they can be attached to the Cooperative, and if people move away, then they will lose their ‘membership’. Galicia is the leader in this type of collective property, with around 20% of its extension held in this way. The communal land can be used – as voted upon by the ‘owners’ – for any agricultural or commercial use.

...

Various:

From ITV News here: ‘Spain's parliament has voted to approve a bill that's been heralded as making the country a "freer place for women" after years of campaigning.. The proposed law, known as "only yes means yes", makes consent a determining factor in rape cases…’ 

‘Tired of speaking to a machine when you call the bank or power company? Spain’s government wants to end those nerve-shattering, one-sided conversations with a computerized answering service by making it obligatory for companies to offer a real, flesh-and-blood customer service worker when so requested by a caller. That is one among a battery of measures included in a customer service bill presented by Spain’s left-wing coalition government on Tuesday. The bill will need the approval of Spain’s Parliament before it can become law…’ Item from The San Diego Union-Tribune here.

LaSexta is showing a six-week documentary on Los Borbones, from the coronation of Juan Carlos I forwards. It’s said to be hard-hitting. You can see it on their player here.

From El Español (paywall disabled) here: ‘Felipe González takes out Dominican nationality at 80: This is how he helps his wealthy friends on the island. Felipe, who began as 'Isidoro the Sevillian’, on the 40th anniversary of his ascension to the presidency of Spain in 1982, has taken out citizenship of the Dominican Republic. A book called Cap Cana: los osados aprendices de Donald Trump by Miguel Ángel Ordóñez reveals the business reasons behind the move. Cap Cana is a luxury resort in the Dominican Republic – ‘a sort of Caribbean Soto Grande’.

From 20Minutos here: ‘José Manuel Otero Novas, the Minister of the Presidency of Adolfo Suárez, narrates the ins and outs of how Spain's accession to the Atlantic Alliance was forged 40 years ago’. It’s a remarkable story. Felipe Gonzalez and other leaders of the PSOE (still in waiting in 1976) had been to Moscow to come to an agreement – the party would resist any union with NATO (very much in those days, an extension of the American military). The Russian ambassador then told Suárez in a private meeting in November 1976 (a year after Franco’s death) that the Warsaw Pact viewed any attempt by Spain to join NATO as a danger to world peace. A year later, a small terrorist independence group in the Canaries called the Canary Islands Independence Movement or MPAIAC (Wiki) came into view after the Americans told Suárez that they would support the group unless Spain joined NATO. ‘Either you join NATO or you lose the Canaries’ is the title of the article. Spain agreed that they were certainly in favour of joining the alliance and the leader of the Canary terror group was promptly severely injured by persons unknown and he duly retired from the armed struggle. The MPAIAC was never heard of again… When Felipe González, now president of Spain, called for a referendum on joining the alliance in May 1982, the PSOE inexplicably switched from recommending to vote against the proposal to calling for a ‘yes’ vote.

Feral cats can be a problem, and those kind souls who feed them only make things worse (Perhaps?). Anyhoo, the Councillor for Environmental Sustainability in Almería, Margarita Cobos, has issued (so far) 86 official cat-sitter cards to those Good Folks who tirelessly shovel food into these creatures. El Diario de Almería has the story.

An interesting subject here. Spain is the only country that prohibits the use of its place-names in Spanish where local versions/names occur. Mostly. Gerona or Girona? Sangenjo or Sanxenxo? Jávea or Xàbia? The local version often takes precedence, which is a bother if you don’t know that Iruña is another way of saying Pamplona (apparently it’s Pampeluna in English says Wiki) or Elx is really Elche. A few other cities have an English version (we use Seville over Sevilla and Majorca over Mallorca even if we have largely given up on The Corunna). Sometimes – in the Basque country at least, they just use both – like Vitoria-Gasteiz (well, officially anyway). Then there are the English-language newspapers that for some reason don’t have an ‘ñ’ on their keyboards, bringing us the joys of Logrono, Peniscola and Salobrena. And the seasonal Feliz Ano of course. Come to think of it, the Catalonians prefer Catalunya to Cataluña (they haven’t used the ñ since 1913).

Spain therefore bends over backwards (mostly) to accommodate regional variants – Lleida for Lérida, Eivissa for Ibiza (I mean, really!) and so on, whereas other countries just use the regular name (imagine the weather forecaster on British TV saying Caerdydd instead of Cardiff or Dùn Èideann for Edinburgh).

However, when they go abroad, it’s all Londres, Estocolmo, Nueva York and Pekín.

Finally, how about the Galician name for Xibraltar? (Spanish Shilling here)

The dioceses of Barcelona, headed by the powerful Cardenal Omella (Wiki), has proposed to the Vatican to allow both women priests and non-obligatory celibacy. Watch this space.

‘In these difficult economic times, money is short, so why not work for free? Joe King here. It could be an answer for people struggling to make ends meet. Joe has been working for free on and off for more than fifteen years and loves it. Is he nuts?’ Eye on Spain has the story here.

Over a Reddit, there’s a photo of the shortest frontier in the world. It’s the border between el Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera and Morocco.

From Think Spain here. ‘Spain gets ready to rock: Deluge of concerts, festivals and tours scheduled this summer. A mega music revival is set to hit Spain this summer as the backlog of live concerts the pandemic put paid to joins a list of those already scheduled for 2022…’

Pension Life scams are considered on their blog here.

A list of the International Schools in Madrid is here.

The British Benevolent Fund here ‘is a Spain-wide charity for when times are tough. We provide financial support to help Britons in Spain get back on their feet’.

A small rant: we have no fibre-optic here in our barrio and the service from the telephone provider is beyond hopeless. The Internet goes out many times a day. Grrr!

...

See Spain:

The Times brings us ‘The 20 prettiest villages in Spain’ with some nice photos here.

A remarkable item from The London Post (‘powered by the Moscow Media Group’) about ‘The Best Cities for Tapas’. Er, it’s always nice to be guided by an expert…

...

Finally:

Chasing up last week’s recording led me to a piece from Celtas Cortos I hadn’t heard before, a cover of The Waterboys’ Fisherman’s Blues. Blues del Pescador on YouTube here.

 

 

 

Wednesday 25 May 2022

Business over Tapas Nº 447

Business over Tapas

A digest of this week's Spanish financial, political and social news aimed primarily at Foreign Property Owners:

Prepared by Lenox Napier.  Consultant: José Antonio Sierra

For subscriptions and other information about this site, go to businessovertapas.com

email:  lenox@businessovertapas.com

***Now with Facebook Page (Like!)***

Note: Underlined words or phrases are links to the Internet.

Business over Tapas and its writers are not responsible for unauthorised copying or other improper use of this material.

Subscription and e-mail information in our archives is never released to third parties.

 

 

May 26 2022            Nº 447

 

 

 

 

Editorial:

 

It’s a subject that one would prefer to shy away from, but the Old King, Juan Carlos I of España, was briefly in his erstwhile kingdom over the past weekend. He had flown in to Vigo airport in a horribly expensive chartered jet. It was his first visit to Spain in 21 months.

He was generally given a rapturous welcome (the local daily gave him the first nine pages), and certainly so by the good folk of Sanxenxo (Pontevedra) where he went to the Club Náutico to join the regatta for the weekend. One fondly imagines that he ate mountains of caviar and drank the best champagne, but no one seems to think that such behaviour, far removed from the experience of most of his ex-subjects, was in any way inappropriate for the occasion.

And, after all, he had been in exile in Abu Dhabi for a couple of years, no doubt quietly drinking tea, weeding his garden and reading favoured bits from The Old Testament.

The journalists finally caught up with the Emeritus, and as he was setting off to Madrid on Sunday one of them thrust a microphone under the Royal nose and asked Juan Carlos what explanations he would be giving to his son. ‘About what?’ said the ex-king, as he wound up the window with a laugh.

On Monday, attention moved to the Royal Palace for what must have been a slightly frosty interview with his son – the first time they had been together in two years – followed by a luncheon (his wife Queen Sofía, just back from Miami, has tested positive for Covid and regretfully missed the meal, while Queen Letitia also decided against joining the family reunion) and then a trip to the airport with one small overnight bag (just kidding).

No press release has been issued about what went on behind the closed palace doors.

How the brief visit played with the population is down to which news-source one prefers – with everything from a clutch of flag-waving Spaniards outside the Royal Palace shouting ‘¡Viva el rey!’ on the one hand; to Alberto Garzón, the truculent leader of the Izquierda Unida, telling jounalists that ‘everyone in Spain knows he’s a crook’.

The New York Times is quoted in the Spanish media as making the point that Juan Carlos’ actions are certainly complicating the reign of Felipe VI.

Then there’s the suggestion that the Emeritus will soon be returning to Spain for another refreshing dalliance.

But, let us leave the last word with El Gran Wyoming, who has written a song to celebrate the fleeting Royal Visit.

...

Housing:

‘British buyers snap up 20,000 homes in Spain in three months. In the Balearics 35 percent of sales are to non-Spaniards’. Headline from the Majorca Daily Bulletin here. The article begins: ‘British property buyers went on to a major buying spree in Spain during the first three months of this year, snapping up almost 20,000 homes, according to figures released last week…’ Spanish Property Insight has a similar title: ‘Foreign demand starts 2022 with strong growth’. The article brings some interesting charts of the different nationalities and ends with the remark that: ‘Whichever figures you look at, the story is the same – foreign investors are piling into Spanish property like they haven’t done since the real estate bubble year of 2007’.

From iNews here (paywall removed), we read the opposite. ‘Brexit barriers leave British communities in Spain fading away as expats put off by huge visa costs’. The article – which claims 407,000 Brits as living in Spain – says that, with some post-Brexit issues to deal with, ‘British expats find themselves grappling with a new, and in most cases, unwelcome new world’.

Helicopters are just one of the aids used by the catastro people to find our spare buildings, swimming pools and sheds. From El Confidencial here: ‘Hacienda has detected in the Region of Madrid more than 11,500 undeclared pools in its latest analysis’. It also recorded 100,000 new constructions, extensions and other buildings in the region. Even glassing in one’s terrace is a change in the structure of a dwelling, and must, of course, be reported. Understandably, it rarely is. The changes in the size of one’s built area naturally leads to increases in the annual property tax, the IBI.

Idealista News has a peculiar idea: ‘If you are tired of your home and are thinking of moving, you would be forgiven for thinking that the only option is selling your house in order to buy or rent another one. However, there's another option! House swaps are on the rise in Spain, meaning you can get your hands on another property, in most cases without any money even changing hands…’ They even list some homes where the owners want to trade away from (one can’t help but guess that there must be a hidden problem…).

Idealista is a go-to site for buying/selling property. We typed in ‘cheap home in Andalucía’, and found several houses at six thousand euros or less…).

...

Finance:

There hasn’t been a great resignation of jobs, just a refusal to work for peanuts, says eldiario.es here, which claims that there are around 109,000 jobs out there that no one wants. El Mundo says that The Ministry of Labour recommends that businesses should pay their staff more if they don’t want to lose those who work long hours – like waiters and bar-staff. Directo al Paladar explains the issue here: from the bar and restaurant-owners: we wish we could pay more. From the staff: huh, they need slaves, not staff. An owner says on a TV show, quoted at 20Minutos – ‘In this business, a half day work means twelve hours’.

...

Politics:

The polls are back again – in the event of an election today, who would you vote for? The main CIS poll gives the PSOE a small lead of 30.3%, the PP catching up with 28.7% and Vox at 16.6%. The DYM poll has the PP ahead with 28.4%, the PSOE following at 26.3% and Vox at 16%. The Simple Lógica survey gives the PP a three point lead: PP at 29.2%, the PSOE at 25.7% and Vox at 18.3%. This last survey also shows the popularity of the different political leaders – with a veritable gulf between Yolanda Díaz and Ione Belarra – the two leaders of the far-left.

Madrid’s Isabel Ayuso is still looking for the top job within the PP says elDiario.es here. The Party Congress this past weekend was ‘an enthronement of the new president of the PP in Madrid’ and, to help this along, says El Huff Post here, the celebration removed all memory and mention of Pablo Casado.

Alberto Nuñez Feijóo himself is aware of his party’s rise in the polls and is seeking the centre-ground says ECD here. The president of the PP says that his party will not return to the debate against the right to an abortion, so as not to play into the hands of Vox. (ECD readers are 84% horrified).

Yolanda Díaz already has a party-brand with which to begin to gather support in the process that will begin after the Andalusian elections says elDiario.es here. It’ll be called Sumar.  

...

Andalucía Elections June 19:

La Vanguardia (paywall) says The collapse of the left in 2018 and the forecasts of the polls predict a solid conservative majority on June 19’. elDiario.es says that ‘The PSOE must fight to regain the support of its traditional electorate in Andalucía in a campaign which the party realistically has few expectations of winning’.

The candidate for the Vox party is Magdalena Olona. Ms Olona is normally a deputy in Madrid – she comes from Alicante – but she will now stand down in the Cortes to run and work out of Seville. There was some bureaucratic fuss over her recent empadronamiento in Salobreña (Granada) as she doesn’t live there, indeed the town hall gave her warning last week, but the Electoral Board ruled on Monday that there was nothing improper and that her candidature stands. The Vox candidate promptly sued the mayoress of Salobreña for ‘the crimes of administrative and electoral prevarication’. An article at ECD here enthuses about the chances of Ms Olona becoming president of Andalucía (colour that unlikely).

...

Catalonia:

‘The Court of Justice of the European Union has provisionally restored the parliamentary immunity of Catalan pro-independence MEPs Carles Puigdemont, Antoni Comín, and Clara Ponsatí’. Found at Catalan News here.

‘The Spanish Supreme Court has reversed its decision to uphold the pardons for the formerly jailed independence leaders. On Tuesday, the tribunal voted in favour of allowing the appeals against the pardons to go ahead. The decision happened after a change in the composition of the court. The court revoked the ruling from January 2022, with the vote of three judges against two...’ From Catalan News here. (!)

…...

Europe:

‘President Sánchez affirms that Finland and Sweden will be at the NATO summit in Madrid’. El Huff Post says that ‘The President of the Government indicates at the Davos Economic Forum that Spain will accelerate the accession process of both countries’. Spain is to host the next NATO summit in late June.

The European pig population, by country.

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Corruption:

The Spanish cesspit activities – as the secret activities of the Rajoy Government are known – included the activities of the ex-national police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo who acted as an enforcer. From El Confidencial here: ‘Speaking on TV3, Villarejo admits that he carried out "absolutely illegal" actions to stop the Catalonian independence process, and he affirms that he would do so again’. Catalan News also reports the story here, saying ‘…that Spain plotted fake news reports to discredit the independence movement just before an election in Catalonia’.

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Courts:

‘The ‘trade-union’ Manos Limpias (wiki) denounces Alberto Garzón before the Supreme Court for calling Juan Carlos I an "accredited criminal" and a "thief"’. EuropaPress has the story here.

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Media:

Much is being written about Pedro Sánchez referring in the Cortes to the national police in Catalonia as ‘piolines’. The joke (?) comes from the previous national government barracking the police during the independence troubles of 2017 in a gigantic Snoopy and Donald Duck cruise-ship moored in Barcelona harbour. Un piolín is a Tweety-bird from Looney Tunes. Maldita looks at the issue here.

While the old folk watch up to six hours a day of television, those between the ages of 13 and 24 manage on just over an hour average says VozPópuli here.

The monthly collection of fake news items (‘bulos’ in Spanish) from the far-right media, as always collected by Al Descubierto here. They are usually about Muslim attacks against the Spanish police, or the neighbours, or foreign rapists and other evildoers, often found in OKDiario, EsDiario or Libertad Digital and often invented for our reading pleasure. Other subjects touched on in April include banning beer and wine from the menu del día (a bulo originated in El Español) and many others of an overtly political nature.

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Ecology:

The thermometers have fallen at last, as The Guardian writes of ‘Temperatures in parts of Spain reached the highest on record for May’. There’s still the summer ahead of us! elDiario.es says: ‘Record heat: two out of three provinces registered maximums up to 17 degrees above normal in the May heat-wave. The spike from last week, an extreme phenomenon that will be increasingly common due to climate change, has left unprecedented temperatures in seven provinces’ (our province, Almería, last Thursday recorded a peak of 34.7ºC, that’s 10.6ºC higher than the May average since 1960).

‘The mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau has sent letters to the Government, the Ministry of Transport and to the Port of Barcelona to address the limitation of cruise-ships. She describes the situation as "totally unsustainable" due to the daily arrival of large ships and summons the three competent administrations to create a working group to agree on a limit’ says elDiario.es here.

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Various:

Two stories from the remarkable San Diego Union-Tribune: ‘Spanish govt chides ex-king for failure to explain conduct’ and ‘Spain’s former king mulls second visit amid swirling debate’. Here and here.

‘The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, criticized this Tuesday the "humiliating treatment" that the King Emeritus, Juan Carlos I, received during his visit to Spain after two years away, with the "complicit and cowardly silence " of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez’. Item from 20Minutos here.

The Headline of the Week must be ‘Spain appeals to British tourists to make up for a lack of Russian visitors’ says Andalucia Today here. Enjoy.

There are so many structures on the pavement now – including the extra space allowed for bars and restaurants – that local residents are getting steamed up about it. El País in an opinion piece looks at ‘The City against its Inhabitants’ here.  

Oddly, football clubs are allowed to build up a massive debt without much fuss. elDiario.es says that first and second division clubs owe the banks and other lenders a total of 2,328 million euros.

Funds from the EU for the Mediterranean Corridor seem to be ending up in routes that pass through Madrid. From Valencia Plaza here: ‘With an invertebrate country, in which the train from Valencia to Alicante takes longer than the one to Madrid, the State continues to prioritize central connections over those on the coast, even using the European funds allocated for the Mediterranean Corridor…’

This is an interesting video (in English) on YouTube about the ‘empty part of Spain’. The pronunciation of Spanish names is a bit dodgy, but no doubt somebody else wrote the script. It’s worth a watch!

Around 100 of William Turner's evocative and romantic landscapes are on show at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya through September 11. More (in English) here. Over at El Español, there’s a fuller article on the subject, with several photographs of the artist’s work (tastefully decorated with McDonald’s and other adverts).

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See Spain:

Satisfaction as The Times chooses Agulo, in La Gomera, as Spain’s most beautiful pueblo.

From The Guardian here: ‘Bandits, beaches and Roman baths – Andalucía’s wild side’. You’ll need a car (or a sturdy bicycle) for these…

A blog called BBQBoy brings the reader to Jaén here.

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Letters:

Cowboys in Almería

Sounds like fun. Never met Lenox. Lots of Brits around Mojácar.

My first jobs in Spain was galloping around the Tabernas area in Almeria westerns. I rarely knew the titles but they were for the most part Italian or Spanish productions. Back to back productions, my agent told me which bus to get on at the break of dawn and on the set you would be given a horse, a saddle and a bocadillo. Except for the bocadillo you had to return the horse and saddle at the end of the day and in return you were given a thousand or so pesetas according to whether you had a line of dialogue or not. All the same, sound and dialogue was usually done in post-production.

Since I was usually the only rider who looked vaguely like a cowboy, the rest were gypsies, on most occasions I got to say the dialogue. Normally something like "Let´s go boys” before galloping off in a cloud of dust. Always very scary for me because up until then, I had only ridden lazy Alabama plough-horses. The movie horses were most often very nervous and damaged horses from the bullfight world.

The gypsies had to ride as Indians in the afternoon. Mostly naked and bareback. Thanks to the colour of my skin, I was spared that.

The westerns were so bad, the cowboy thing didn´t last long, the Clint Eastwood films were the notable exception. But there was always some major production going on down there. World class actors sitting around the terraces in the afternoon. From Yul Brynner, Sean Connery to Bridget Bardot and Raquel Welsh. I think about just about everybody who worked in films showed up in Almería at one time or the other in the 60s. Now they go to Morocco or Tunisia.

B-

 

Funeral plans

Hi Lenox,

As a retired financial adviser (working in Spain) I was acutely aware of some of the “dubious claims” made by a number of funeral plan companies! In particular they would offer a level of service (for sake of argument let’s call them Gold, Silver, Bronze) and you would pay a fixed sum / monthly premium commensurate with the service level you selected. So far, so good!!

Now this is where things start to get interesting, as you have agreed (& paid) a price for a service, that you hope won’t be needed for some while in the future. How do you know that what you invested say 10, 15, 20 years before, will be sufficient to provide the level of service you bought and paid for?

The answer is of course they can’t! Sadly, there are some funeral plan businesses who effectively lie to their clients, by telling them that their money is invested with guaranteed returns! There is no such thing! Indeed a BBC Radio 4 “Moneybox” investigation a few years back highlighted some of the very questionable sales tactics used by some funeral plan companies!

Sadly, I lost my wife in 2019. I used the local tanatario, who provided an excellent service. It was significantly less expensive than the plan I was offered (some years before) by a local funeral plan company, and the procedure nowhere near as complex as their “scare” tactics would have you believe!

All I would say to anyone taking out a funeral plan:

Caveat emptor”!!!

Brian

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Finally:

Los Celtas Cortos is a terrific group. They stepped out of character for this one from 1990. Odín on YouTube here. Loud, please!