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Business Over Tapas (06th March 2014)

By Lenox Napier and Andrew Brociner

miércoles 22 de octubre de 2014, 11:21h

A digest of this week's Spanish financial, political and social news aimed primarily at Foreign Property Owners: with Lenox Napier and Andrew Brociner - For subscriptions and other information about this site, go to businessovertapas.com - email:  [email protected]  

Note: Underlined words or phrases are links to the Internet. Right click and press 'Control' on your keyboard to access.

 

Editorial:

Spain is meant to have more laws than any other country, ever. Perhaps it's all to give the funcionarios something to do. The system works, because most people ignore the petty rules, find a way around it, and get on with their lives. As the Spanish say: Hecha la ley, hecha la trampa.
A new rule is to do with the oil that is served in a jug in all restaurants and bars. Now it's to be supplied in cute little plastic packages to reassure the customer that it's a kosher oil and not something taken out of the chipper. So from now, it's the way forward, and to hell with the extra cost, packaging and trash generated. Why? The Government once again shows more concern for the industrials than for its subjects.
But the kicker I mentioned earlier?
Add a little bit of pepper, or garlic, a bay leaf or a guindilla to your oil and carry on serving it in a jug. It's now a sauce, or an 'aderezo para ensaladas'.
Probably jolly good, too.

Housing:

'Across the EU, enough houses are lying empty to house all of the EU's homeless people, according to British media. Insiders criticize that houses are increasingly being used as investment objects, instead of as homes...  But the situation is worst in Spain, where that figure shoots up to roughly 3.4 million - 14 percent of all properties in the country. The number of empty Spanish homes has risen by more than 10 percent in the past decade...  The European Parliament estimates that 500,000 families in Spain have fallen victim to forced evictions during the crisis. Many of the empty Spanish properties were repossessed by banks after owners defaulted on mortgages. Under the Spanish mortgage law, holders not only had to give the house back, but also pay off bank debt. If they couldn't, upon their death it was passed on to their relatives. In March 2013, the European Court of Justice ruled that the Spanish mortgage law was incompatible with consumer protection because it doesn't provide the affected people with ways to defend themselves...'. Excerpts from an interesting article at Deutsche Welle.

The Olive Press features the second part of its interesting ' Caveat Vendor: A brief guide to selling your home' here (see last week's BoT for Part 1).

'The graph accompanying the article deserves few explanations: the price of housing in Spain continues to sink quarter-to-quarter without anything to make us think that it could touch bottom in the short term. The effects of the housing bubble are still currently much in evidence...'. From El Blog Salmón.

Perhaps a bit more cheerful: a history of Spanish property prices at 'The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Spanish Property Market' brought by Property Showrooms.

As always, bear in mind that 'Spanish property' for the average Spaniard means an apartment on the edge of a large city, rather than a home in an urbanisation with sea views...

'According to the latest data published by the National Statistics Institute, the number of new mortgages granted on homes fell by 27.8% in 2013, over the previous year, to a total of 197,641, marking a new annual low. Since the peak levels of 2006, when 1,342,171 new home mortgages were constituted, the figure has fallen by 85.2%.

The drop in the number of home mortgages in 2013 adds to the declines registered in the previous six years, although it has moderated compared to 2012, when the number of new mortgages fell by 33%. In 2011 the decrease was 32.8%, in 2010 it was 6.7%, in 2009 it was 22%, in 2008 it was 32% and in 2007 it was 6.7%...'. From Kyero.

The top-ten most attractive cities in Southern Europe for foreign investment, according to the 2014/2015 European Cities and Regions of the Future report: 'At the top of the ranking for southern Europe is Barcelona, followed by the Portuguese cities of Lisbon and Porto. Bilbao sits in fourth place, followed by Valencia, Madrid and Murcia. In eighth place is Skopje (Macedonia), ahead of Seville and finally Málaga, creeping into in tenth place...'. From the Sur in English.

'Banks such as Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan are teaming up with international funds to bid for a multi-billion-euro portfolio of Spanish property loans as the country's real estate market thaws, sources close to the process said.

The loan package of over 4 billion euros ($5.5 billion), from Germany's Commerzbank, is one of the biggest of its kind to be auctioned in Spain's six-year real estate slump as lenders burned in the crisis clean up their books.

It is made up of some soured debts and other performing loans backed by office blocks and shopping centres, rather than debts related to residential homes which have more commonly been offered to investors...'. More at The Chicago Tribune.

A story in the local Actualidad Almanzora highlights the problems of the British property owners in northern Almería. Titled (in translation) 'Junta de Andalucía... Stick it where the Sun Don't Shine', it's a lengthy comment on an earlier story in the Sunday Times titled 'Stick in up Your Junta', making the point that: 'The article by the British newspaper discuses the  growing malaise that exists in the United Kingdom in the absence of any solution to a problem faced by thousands of their compatriots in Spain'.

My own story, now in Spanish here, called 'Where are the Ecologists?' discusses the contrast between the 260 square kilometres of Almería's plastic farms and the 'illegal' homes in the Almanzora valley, ends with 'Almería podría haber sido la Florida de Europa, pero en cambio ha optado por ser la de Georgia de los campos de algodón. Culpo a los ecologistas'. Almería could have been the European Florida, instead it's gone with the cotton fields of Georgia. I blame the ecologists.

Finance:

'The European Commission on Wednesday removed Spain from its list of European Union member states with excessive economic imbalances but imposed a fresh set of demands on the conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to correct persistent problems...'. Some good news at El País in English.

'Unemployment fell in February by a modest 1,949 people, according to data from the  SEPE. Affiliation to Social Security has risen by 38,964 people, all in a month where usually the reverse happens...'. From El Huff Post. Not that all those 'en paro' get any benefits at all, following a long enough period out of work. Those registered as unemployed but with no social welfare payments in Spain currently run at around 40% of the 4,812,000 people on the list held by the Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal.

El País reveals that while retirement can be a bit thin for the average person, our friends the bankers can expect rather better treatment, with 23 top bankers holding 227 million euros in retirement funds.

'In 2013, banks pocketed the not inconsiderable amount in commissions of 18.4 billion euros. Of this amount, approximately between 30% and 35% correspond to commissions declared illegal and therefore null and void according to regional court decisions. The financial institutions do not dare to appeal to the Supreme Court for fear that a formal ruling  could force them to suspend these commissions forever...'.  From Nueva Tribuna.

Why look to the banks for investment money when you can use 'crowdfunding'? Once again, the Government is stepping in to protect the industrials from any competition, especially from some new area. So, a limit of 3,000€ per person for a crowdfunding (or 'Plataforma de Financiación Participativa') project. See here. (Crowdfunding is the collection of finance to sustain an initiative from a large pool of backers -the "crowd"-, usually made online by means of a web platform: Wikipedia).

Moody's has improved the note on two banks – the Santander and the BBVA, from Baa1 and Baa2 respectively. 'Moody's says that it has improved the ratings on both banks by their ability to absorb losses despite the "current pressure that exists in the sector on the quality of the assets". In addition, the Agency has improved the prospect of both entities from "stable" to "positive"...'. From El Mundo.

Corruption:

Seven scandals that the Partido Popular do not want to be investigated... El Huff Post lists them as: Bárcenas and the PP finance; the recent tragedy with the immigrants in Ceuta; the political use of the Caja Madrid; the Santiago train accident; fiscal amnesty for politicians and senior businessmen; the rescue of the banks and, finally, the scandal of the Tax Agency AEAT.

Politics:

'Google has finally replied to the proposed Spanish Internet Copyright Law, that would, in theory, make Google News illegal unless they paid for every news story they used.

In fact, the new law, badly thought out and pandering to elderly news editors who don’t understand the internet, won’t affect Google at all – although it will stifle Spanish innovation. In a blog post here, the head of Spanish Strategic Alliances, Luis Collado, sniffs that Google News last year sent 10 billion readers to newspapers worldwide, and that Google paid over 9 billion dollars in advertising revenue to newspapers. Also, they don’t make a penny off Google News, so you can’t sue them under the law...'. From David Jackson. More criticism of the 'Google Tax' at Vozpópuli here.

The subject of potential immigration by hordes of unwelcome Africans climbing over the fences protecting Spain's North-African possessions, or taking a dangerous boat-ride over the Mediterranean from Morocco, have been used in the past few weeks to frighten children from their sleep. The Minister of the Interior (blamed in Brussels for the fifteen drownings of 'Sub-Saharans' last month while trying to enter Ceuta video) is now warning that 40,000 of them are lurking in the hills of Northern Morocco, ready to storm the defences of Melilla and Ceuta, and a similar number are in Mauritania to the south. 

'The ex British Consul in Barcelona has defended the Catalan Independence Vote in the Financial Times. Geoff Cowling believes that both Scotland and Cataluña are nations.

He wrote to the paper in response of an article written by Cayetana Álvarez, responsible for international matters in the FAES, the right wing think tank headed by José María Aznar. She warned about the danger the independence movements would be for the European Union'. More at Typically Spanish.

Courts

A small bill from a 'chocolatería' in the Duty Free in Geneva has appeared showing the truth of the story of a lightening trip to Switzerland in 2008, vehemently denied by Iñaki Urdangarin. The trip was for banking purposes apparently. El Confidencial follows the story.

'Several of Spain’s leading websites for pirate movie downloads have stopped offering links to content that violates property rights. The move comes as a local judge was weighing a decision to close the websites altogether as per a prosecutor’s request last month. Popular sites SeriesYonkis, Peliculas Yonkis and VideoYonkis -- all three run by local outfit Burn Media -- stopped linking to illegal movie downloads over the weekend and instead redirected clients to advertising...'. (I had the Devil's own time downloading this news item From Hollywood Reporter).

'These are the corruption cases currently going through the Galician courts, all of them involving civil servants. Accused numbers in brackets:- Pokemón (105); Campeón(40); Orquesta (26); Muralla (10); Patos (5). One wonders how they get their names. A competition in the police HQ? Throwing darts at a dictionary? As I may have said, the Galician President has said the Pokemón case is shocking but there isn't going to be any sort of investigation. Possibly because both major parties are equally implicated and so have made a Devils' pact...'. From Colin Davies' Thoughts From Galicia.

Various:

The story of chocolate is at Eye on Spain:  'The Spanish have had a love affair with chocolate for hundreds of years even though they aren't famed for producing it, but they are one of the largest consumer markets still today, especially when it comes to drinking chocolate, and its history goes back quite a way...'.

'After 12-and-a-half years of adding local Spanish value to the 'International New York Times,' Friday's edition of the EL PAÍS supplement was the last'. An essay from James Badcock at El País in English about preparing the weekly edition (with useful insights for the Business over Tapas editor)

Of the meaning of the fifteen words most searched for in the dictionary of the Real Academia Española during the month of January, the leader, by a long shot, was 'cultura'. Possibly, in part, searched for by the minister who heads up a department under that very name.

A comical site called Rokambol News reveals that Miguel Blesa, the ex-President of the Caja Madrid, will not leave without getting in a few punches. The title: 'Blesa counter-attacks: Thousands of retired people have stolen our pens. They think we didn't notice'.

The Rolling Stones are to give a concert at the Vicente Calderón in Madrid on June 25th. Their first concert in Spain was at the end of a ferocious rain-storm at the same venue back in July 1982. El Mundo says that Felipe Gonzalez was there (while completely overlooking my own presence). Mick Jagger suddenly came out before the concert, as the staff were attempting to dry the stage, and joined in with a mop. A great concert as I remember... can they still do it today?

Finally:

An illustrated site showing the ten jewels of Spanish architecture demolished in the name of progress. From Idealista.

…...

 

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