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Weekly Report

Business over Tapas (Nº 253)

Business over Tapas (Nº 253)

  • A digest of this week's Spanish financial, political and social news aimed primarily at Foreign Property Owners: With Lenox Napier and Andrew Brociner. Consultant: José Antonio Sierra

jueves 19 de abril de 2018, 21:04h

By Lenox Napier and Andrew Brociner. Sent by José Antonio Sierra

19ABR18.- For subscriptions and other information about this site, go to businessovertapas.com email: [email protected] ***Now with Facebook Page (Like!)***Note: Underlined words or phrases are links to the Internet. Right click and press 'Control' on your keyboard to access. Business over Tapas and its writers are not responsible for unauthorised copying or other improper use of this material.

Opinion:

This is merely a few subjective thoughts – but why do many of the poor support the conservative parties? It is of course understandable that those with money should see themselves as conservatives, since capital creates wealth and jobs both. But, how about those who are obliged to take on the lower-paid jobs, or those without employment, or those with low pensions or those with health issues, or those who find it hard, as the Spanish say ‘to make it to the end of the month’? Many of these people are of course left-leaning, but a surprising number of them are not.

We can partly blame the media for this, as the national TV news pumps out right-wing memes (with massive doses of Hollywood-style sports news) while news programs like Informe Semanal are so biased as to have become unwatchable. The press, too, is right-leaning as they take their orders from the corporations that own them, and accept huge amounts of ‘institutional advertising’ from the very government they are meant to control, in order to balance the books. Perhaps even the system of education itself – as we repeat what we have been taught (José Luis Sampedro with Jordi Évole here).

Who hasn’t heard of the severe problems of Venezuela (with its by now subconscious connection to Podemos)? Yet, we see and read little about Turkey or Saudi Arabia...

Perhaps it’s the same reason much of the working classes voted for Trump: perhaps (this time) some of that wealth will trickle down. Perhaps again, some of the working classes are distracted by the songs of the extreme right with their racism and their hatred (although not, I think, here in Spain).

I found that as I approach 65 years of age, with only eleven years of social security paid, I will one day (hopefully) receive a state pension. It will be ‘una pensión no contributiva de jubilación’ and will pay 369.90€ per month (call it 370€). If I had a vote, I might consider giving it to a party that offered to increase this sum...

Whatever the reasons, the latest poll shows the conservative Ciudadanos in the lead in voters’ intention, followed by the Partido Popular. Between them, they have 50%. The PSOE and Unidos Podemos (if one accepts that the PSOE is a leftist party) have 39.4% to share.

The opinion of the leader of the Izquierda Unida Alberto Garzón (the party is allied with Podemos) is that left-wing politicians need to understand their voters better. Indeed they do.

Lenox dixit

Housing:

An article in T Magazine shows how to make a tiny apartment into a cosy flat. Something like that. A video from Kasita shows us how. They have crayons! Those architects, hey!

‘The news that BBVA is bringing back 100% mortgages for resident buyers in Spain should be a cause for concern for some. Before the great 2007 crash, most banks were far too happy to hand such mortgages out, but the disaster that followed changed after millions of homeowners were left unable to pay back their loans, leading to financial meltdown from which we have only just recovered...’. Found at The Olive Press here.

A useful article from Mark Stücklin’s Spanish Property Insight: ‘Bank valuations vs. market value. Lawyer Raymundo Larraín explains the difference between both concepts as they are often confused by non-residents. He also ventures the start of a new expansionist super cycle in some areas of Spain’.

There are some dodgy sales-people out there... ‘Real estate is arguably the most important economic activity on the Costa del Sol and employs a good deal of its working population. A prime sector like this should be well protected but in reality there isn’t enough regulation. In fact, the only region in the country where the property sector is regulated and subject to qualitative control is Catalunya...’. The Olive Press has the details here.

El Confidencial reveals that ‘Tenants who trash or steal from rental flats could go to jail. They can be prosecuted in criminal proceedings for the crime of daños if they cause damage to the home and apropiación indebida in the event of them taking away property’.

The title from La Gaceta de Almería: ‘The PSOE promises to continue working to find solutions to those homes which have still not been regularised’. Well, friends, there were at one point 300,000 ‘illegal homes’ in Andalucía. Some have been demolished, others have no water or electricity and some have been ‘regularised’ (which means various things, but doesn’t mean ‘legalised’). The Junta de Andalucía, run by the PSOE, were responsible for the 300,000 illegal homes in the first place (they said they never noticed them - until the cheques had cleared). The article refers to a meeting (as below) held in Mojácar this weekend to discuss the ‘illegal homes’ of Andalucía.

A press release from the AUAN: ‘After the recent conferences on irregular planning in Andalucía, which took place in Almería and Mojácar, where it became evident that immediate and basic measures needed to be taken to deal with this great social problem which affects some 300,000 houses in our autonomous community and perhaps up to one million people, AUAN states that it is going to ask for an urgent meeting with the leaders of the political parties in Andalucía that have representation in Parliament...’. (Teleprensa covers this en castellano here). Podemos, also at the meeting in Mojácar, are cautious: reminding the law-makers ‘...to defend the need for greater controls over illegal construction, to protect the environment from the massive attacks of illegal urban planning and to put the common good of citizens who do comply with urban planning legislation before speculators, unsupportive citizens or corrupt city councils...’.

Mario Blanke, speaking for SOHA on Cadena Ser, cuts to the chase in this recording: ‘There is a demolition in the making of a house of a couple of septuagenarians in Almería due to the situation affecting almost 300,000 houses in Andalucía. It's a real situation. Why does the Regional Government of Andalucía continue to insist on demolitions?’

Tourism:

‘The tourist ministry plans to spend one million euros, within the 14 million euros earmarked for the promotion of Spain abroad, for the "management of the effects of 'Brexit' on Spanish tourism", bearing in mind that the United Kingdom, Spain’s largest market, emits 20% of the total number of international tourists arriving here...’. Agent Travel reports here.

Beach holidays: hot, boring and uncomfortable? Are sun and sand holidays losing ground, asks The Guardian here.

The UK is changing the rules regarding suing holiday hotels for food poisoning. The hotels are suitably relieved. The story is at Mallorca Diario here.

A hundred years ago, there weren’t any tourists in Spain – just a few visitors or travellers. Then, along came the Comisaría Regia de Turismo, and in 1928, the first of the Parador hotels opened in Gredos... El Independiente has some photos to go with the story here.

Seniors:

Following on from a gloomy report last week, La Opinion de Málaga says that ‘Almost 100 elderly people are abandoned in Málaga hospitals every year’.

Finance:

‘The International Monetary Fund has revised its growth forecast for the Spanish economy upwards by four tenths to 2.8% in 2018, while in 2019 the increase in GDP is expected to moderate to 2.2%, one tenth above the forecast published in January....’. El Diario reports.

An interesting article on the budget (that so far has not found enough support in Parliament): ‘High Risk Spanish Budget; The Political Crisis Dominates Everything’. From The Corner here.

The Social Security deficit for this year is an estimated 18,000 million euros says El Mundo here.

Foreign investment fell in Spain in 2017 by 7.2% over the previous year, says Público. Six regions suffered a harder fall than Catalonia, it notes... Most of the foreign investment of course goes to Madrid.

‘The new value of the Catastro "triggers the alarm" due to its impact on IBI, municipal capital gains, IRPF and so on’, says Invertia here. ‘The controversy is made. The Catastro people are working on a "reference value" to find out what the market value of each property is. This new catastral value will undoubtedly affect the taxes that are based on it: namely, the IBI, municipal capital gains, Patrimonial Transfers (ITP), Patrimony and Income Tax (IRPF)’.

Cuarto Poder is concerned that so-called vulture funds are getting their claws into all sorts of odd places in Spain. We meet Vicente Losada, the spokesperson for the ‘Plataforma contra los Fondos Buitre’. Spanish hospitals and old people’s residences, for example, are under threat from these for-profit funds.

Navantia Will Build Five Corvettes for Saudi Arabia Which Will Create 6,000 Jobs’, says The Corner here.

Politics:

Cristina Cifuentes, the president of the Madrid region, says she has renounced her master’s degree from the University of King Juan Carlos and has apologised to the dean. However, she also says that she has no intention of resigning her post. Both stories from El Mundo. Could this be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back for the government? I think so.

Fire-fighters must, by law, be present when dangerous munitions are loaded onto a merchant-ship and during its passage out of a port. A fireman called Ignacio Robles last year refused to do his job in Bilbao saying that the arms – in this case sold by Spain to Saudi Arabia – were against his considered beliefs. His protest could bring him several years without pay. Since the event, he has become something of a personality. Robles, who has spoken of Spain’s arms sales in the European Parliament, is a member of Greenpeace. Here he is interviewed by El Diario. "The arms industry has a very close link to politics and opposing the sale of arms brings consequences."

Podemos has passed from the ‘Greek model’ to the ‘Portuguese model’. A good idea. An article in El Confidencial has a photo of Pablo Iglesias and the leaders of the Bloco de Esquerdas and France Insoumise, Catarina Martins and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, respectively, signing the so-called 'Lisbon Declaration'.

From Libertad Digital (founded by the right-wing journalist Federico Jiménez Losantos) comes an article that says the EU considers Andalucía to be the worst government in Spain. The report comes from the University of Gothenburg . The European Quality of Government Index 2017 here.

The luxury marinas of Andalucía should be returned to the public weal this summer, but the concessionaries are – naturally – anxious to keep on going. Puerto Banús, Almerimar, Sotogrande and Puerto Sherry are all coming to the end of their thirty-year licence. The Junta de Andalucía is considering a legal twist to allow the concessionaries to carry on (competition free) with these marinas which should fall under the Ley de Costas.

‘Huh’, says Rajoy, ‘there are far worse things than Cifuentes’ master’s diploma’. He’s right, says El Diario in an angry editorial here.

Juan José Millás on LaSexta TV: ‘Susana Díaz is the incarnation of populism’. Video here.

Catalonia:

‘“I have complete trust Spanish judges will give Puigdemont a fair and independent trial”

The leader of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, reiterated his support for the justice system in Spain after German courts dismissed rebellion charges against the ousted Catalan leader’. An interview with Weber in El País in English here.

From The Local: ‘The speaker of the Catalan parliament said Wednesday that new elections were not in the region's "interest" while Spain persists in blocking a new president from taking office. The separatist politician Roger Torrent spoke to reporters in Geneva after discussing the situation in Catalonia with a senior official at the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights...’.

Courts:

Ex-president Manuel Chaves again: ‘I know nothing’. El Mundo is following the court case over the ERE fraud in Andalucía.

The radical actor Willy Toledo is called to explain himself in court for insults made against God on his Facebook page. Seriously.

Brexit:

Alistair Stewart on ‘Why it’s time for overseas MPs’. Here. ‘...The proposal is far from unprecedented. In France, there are 11 seats to represent the 2.5 million Français établis hors de France (citizens of France overseas)...’.

From Think Spain: ‘Thousands of Europeans living in the UK, including a high number of Spaniards, could lose their basic rights following Brexit – and children, the elderly and victims of domestic violence are the most at risk, says the Migration Observatory at Oxford University. Even if they meet all the requirements for remaining permanently in Britain once the country leaves the European Union, problems in presenting the required paperwork to obtain 'settled status' could leave them in a situation similar to that of an 'illegal' immigrant and losing their right to stay...’.

Will we British residents in Spain lose our right to vote in next year’s local elections, thanks to Brexit? Maybe. Will we lose our British councillors? Most probably. Lenox’ blog makes the point here.

Media:

The Supreme Court has ruled that the ‘Google Tax’ is unlawful. The daily newspapers had persuaded the government back in 2015 to charge a tax on links to their sites (and, indeed, anyone else’s) by aggregators. Back to the Drawing Board! Xataca has the story here.

If the OJD is the audited measure of ‘useful’ copies printed by the newspapers, the EGM is the audited readership (open to interpretation, to put it mildly). According to El Mundo, that newspaper is growing in readership against its competitors. Putting things in perspective, the most read daily newspaper in Spain is Marca, a sports-only paper, at a horrifying 1,843,000 readers (claimed). Marca, like El Mundo, belongs to Unidad Editorial (which, at 96%, is owned by the Italian group RCS Media Group (Wiki), owned in turn by several investors including the Italian Cairo Communications with 60% (Wiki) and so on)...

Ecology:

An unexpected consequence of the new law in Galicia about ‘chipping’ one’s dog has lead to a record number of dogs being abandoned to their fate in the region. El Confidencial says the local dog homes are overwhelmed.

‘Spain has just bravely passed a law regarding single-use plastic. From the beginning of 2020, plastic forks and plates, cups, drinking straws and so on will neither be imported, exported or sold in Spanish territory. Plastic bags will also be controlled from that time, and will need to be biodegradable in the future. Supermarket food wrapped in polystyrene will also be controlled...’. From Spanish Shilling here.

Recycling plastic? Forget it, says an article in Público. ‘We live surrounded by adverts that tell us that we have to recycle, that it is very important to throw plastics in the yellow bin so that they can have a second life and the planet becomes a better place. What no one says is that plastics are very difficult to recycle and the small percentage that is recycled becomes a poor quality and economically uneconomical plastic. As a result, much of the plastic that we produce is simply incinerated...’.

‘The invasion of the bed bug: infestations rise 50% in Madrid. Fumigators say numbers of the parasite are growing thanks to the rise of tourist apartments and a lack of awareness’. A tale told at El País in English here.

The Housing Sector

by Andrew Brociner

Each year, we take a look at the housing sector to assess the situation and to compare it to the previous year. We begin by taking a look at property prices in Spain, the following being based on statistics from the National Institute:

The index begins at the end of the boom and follows its downward course before bottoming out and entering into a period of consolidation. It seems that in the last two years, prices are gradually picking up. We are not up to anything like the boom period, but there is a small, steady increase recently. These are general prices and represent the whole of Spain, with some areas influencing these results. We shall explore this topic further in the following issues.

Various:

‘Without the ‘express title’ from the University of King Juan Carlos, many chiefs of police would not have their positions today. Police observers report that some inspectors and commissioners would not be in their current position without their Degrees in Criminology’. The above headline from La Información is a little unnerving. El Plural meanwhile claims that senior policemen had been acquiring their titles at 3,000€ a pop from the university.

From The Sun Daily (Malaya): ‘A decade after Spain's property bubble burst, dozens of vacant apartments in Madrid and Barcelona city centres have turned into "drug flats", to the dismay of local residents who complain of abandoned syringes and frequent brawls. "You don't live anymore. You are more afraid at home than outside," said Begoña Sebastian, a 51-year-old accountant whose building was one of the first in Lavapies, a district in the centre of Madrid, to have a "narcopiso", or drug flat, where people come to buy and consume drugs. For three years, dealers sold hashish and cocaine in the apartment below her own, which had been seized by a bank from a heavily indebted family...’.

An article from Business Insider considers some of the towns and cities of Spain that are losing population. Cádiz is the city with the largest fall in the number of its inhabitants.

To take out Spanish nationality these days, one must go through a handy and easy cyber-system. Even this is painfully slow, with the title at Para Inmigrantes: ‘Only 113 files of Spanish nationality have so far been resolved electronically since the entry into force of the new process in October 2015’. Another 63,500 are in the pipeline. We are told that the process suffered from some initial teething problems, but will now speed up significantly! To put your name forward, go here.

From El País comes the story of the Irishman who immigrated to Spain and changed history. ‘Dionisio O'Daly defied the reigning corruption of Santa Cruz de La Palma and succeeded in 1773 in making it the first town hall in the whole country to elect its government by general suffrage’. In 1997, the future king Felipe V1 honoured O’Daly during a visit to the Canaries city.

See Spain:

Canena is the small town in Jaén where an extraordinary telecommunication museum stands. Pictures and story at El Confidencial here.

Cívica, Guadalahara: ‘...What resembles an ancient, mythical village is carved into the rock, complete with elegant arches that lead into ornate corridors. Perhaps disappointingly, this random roadside scene is not at all related to the fictional Elven realm. In reality, it’s the work of a 20th-century Spanish priest...’. The story at Eye on Spain here.

A portrait of Riaño (León) wins this year’s ‘Fine Art Photography Awards’.

Letters:

Yes, the Spanish anything-to-the-right-of-Cape Touriñán would be angry. Have a look at:-

‘German Court Made Right Decision in Releasing Puigdemont. A German court ruled Thursday to temporarily release Catalonian separatist leader Carles Puigdemont. The case is still under review, but the judges have lifted the most serious charge the former leader faced. It was the correct decision’. From the opinion page at Spiegel in English.

This is of course just a point of view, but the article pretty well shows exactly how the Spanish people-who-decide-matters decide what laws to use and what these laws mean. It's just like Humpty Dumpty "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.". Till the word ends up in another country where a word has to mean what the majority of people take it to mean, and not just what a few "L'état, c'est moi" people's representatives mean.

Jan

Finally:

Old Spanish Pasodoble: Óle Torero! - sung by Luis Mariano, 1951. Here on YouTube.

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