Adventures:
I was in Baden-Württemberg (south-west Germany) for the past couple of weeks, enjoying excellent weather, good beer and food, while visiting churches, sundry Schlösser (including a giant one in Schwetzingen) and plenty of cake-shops.
I took a boat down the River Neckar in Heidelberg (an astonishingly delightful city), cycled a hundred kilometres through back-lanes and small villages (with a luxurious e-bike: it’s like you are always going down-hill) and visited a local zoo (with another cake-shop) and later, a huge old car, motorbike, plane and tank museum in Sinsheim.
The Sinsheim museum really is quite a thing. There's a Concorde one can climb inside and, better still, a WW2 U-boat (which must have been quite a bother to obtain since the town is almost 600kms from the sea).
With a couple of obligatory stops in some Biergärten, the occasional schnapps and then another cake or two for good luck, I had a great trip and now weigh rather a lot.
My thanks to my kind hostess.
I didn’t (and don’t) think much of Barajas airport. I had to wait there for several hours queuing to get another ticket after my flight from Germany had been delayed by two idiots flying drones over the runways there. Barajas, which has several hundred squatters living in this decidedly uncomfortable airport, was spraying against a plague of bedbugs while I was visiting.
In Spain, we seem to be enjoying some outside weather as well, notably while protesting for this or that. The Good Folk from Madrid for example were spoilt for choice over this past weekend with a pro-Palestine demo, an anti-Sánchez rally and a pro-European march.
Frankly, I would have gone for an ice-cream instead.
Housing:
From Spanish Property Insight here: ‘Murcia leads Spanish housing market growth in the first quarter of the year. The region topped the regional growth rankings for home sales in the first quarter of 2025, with a 20.6% increase in transactions compared to the previous quarter—the biggest rise of any Spanish region, according to the latest data from the College of Registrars…’
From El País in English here: ‘Where are you headed, Madrid? The Spanish capital is experiencing a period of success and expansion. After years of trying to carve out a niche in the global city scene, it finally seems to have found a model and a brand to go with it. Is it all real or just a façade? And does it lead to an inclusive place to live or is it just for a select few?’ Good stuff here!
The Local has ‘A new study sheds light on who owns all the Airbnb-style tourist lets in Spain’. It seems that slightly over a quarter of all tourist-lets belong to landlords owning (and operating) ten or more of these homes. Furthermore, around 40% of tourist apartments are unlisted. The article notes that: ‘Tourist apartments are partly being blamed for Spain's housing crisis. Given that they can be considerably more lucrative when they have high occupancy rates, landlords often prefer to rent to tourists than to long-term tenants, reducing the stock of normal rentals and thus increasing prices’. It’s probably also fair to that that homeowners will always appreciate a little extra pin money, and above all, it’s the (powerful) hotel industry that loses out from the competition offered by the short-term apartment rents.
A comment on the video ‘Why Living in Spain has Become Impossible’ here: ‘One of the most overlooked yet significant drivers of the housing crisis is the growing dominance of investors in the real estate market. Today, investors, not traditional homebuyers, account for over a quarter of new home purchases. This shift has profound implications. Even if Baby Boomers begin to downsize or if more inventory becomes available, the fundamental issues won’t go away. Why? Because well capitalized investors continue to buy up properties, pushing prices higher and pricing everyday families out of the market. It’s a basic supply and demand imbalance but one distorted by wealth concentration and long-term investment strategies’.
‘Missed the Brexit TIE Deadline? Spain’s new immigration rules give Brits a second chance’. The story at Eye on Spain here.
Tourism:
From elDiario.es here: ‘The increase in tourists to Ibiza is overwhelming the island with garbage. Starting in October, the largest of the Pitiüs Islands (cf, the islands of Ibiza and Formentera plus a few islets) will send its waste to Mallorca because its landfill is overwhelmed due to poor management. "It's not a sustainable or supportive solution," laments environmentalist Joan Carles Palerm.
There’s another issue: From Infobae here- ‘A shared problem across the Mediterranean: tourism needs employees, but the workers are fed up. Following on from the coronavirus pandemic, and due to the unattractive working conditions in the hospitality industry, no one wants to accept a temporary contract for the high season’.
Finance:
From El País here: ‘The blackout stirs up the great energy hornet's nest. More than 500 registered companies, including marketing, generating, and distributing companies, are competing in an activity as complex as it is profitable’. The article explains both who the main players are, also who the main shareholders are. ‘…The sector's pace is set by investment giants such as BlackRock (Iberdrola, Repsol, Naturgy) and IFM (Naturgy); state-owned companies such as Italy's Enel (Endesa), Algeria's Sonatrach (Naturgy), Qatar Investment (Iberdrola), and China's CTG (EDP); and sovereign wealth funds such as Norway's Norges (Repsol, Iberdrola) and Dubai's Mubadala Investment (Moeve)’.
In short, the usual suspects… Furthermore, we read that ‘…The energy sector takes the cake as a refuge for high-ranking officials (a practice known as ‘revolving-doors’), regardless of colour or ideology. The list seems endless. Not all of them are included here, but it ranges from former presidents Felipe González (Gas Natural) and José María Aznar (Endesa) to former ministers such as Pedro Solbes (PSOE), Ana Palacio (PP), Isabel Tocino (PP), Luis de Guindos (PP), Ángel Acebes (PP), Elena Salgado (PSOE), Luis Atienza (PSOE), and José Montilla (PSOE)…’ This situation gives las electricas enormous influence and power…
El País again: ‘Spanish banking's profit-feast in the first quarter of 2025. The major banks earned €8,489 million in profits in the first quarter of 2025, which is 27% more than in the same period in 2024’.
But didn't the big Spanish banks say that the government's tax on banks would ruin them?
Industry, banks, and now La Iglesia Católica. From Cadena Ser here: ‘The Church is the largest owner of real estate in Spain. And we're not just talking about places of worship or those related to social work, which would be exempt from paying taxes. But also real estate such as commercial premises, parking lots, and rental housing. How much could the state collect if the Church paid its fair share of taxes? Asunción Villaverde, a member of the board of directors of Europa Laica, responds that "what we have calculated is the amount of money the Catholic Church receives directly or indirectly, and it is more than 12,000 million euros per annum." This is the sum of what it receives directly plus the tax exemptions it enjoys. The Church doesn't pay IVA either. For example, the entrance fees charged at temples are recorded as donations and therefore don't pay IVA or are declared. It is purely money collected under the table. "It's the largest real estate agency in Spain" says Villaverde, who estimates it owns more than 100,000 properties, most of which come from newly-registered properties. A clause of the 1946 Mortgage Law, in force until 2015, allowed the Church to summarily register properties as theirs that were in many cases publicly owned’.
From Moving to Spain here, an interesting piece called ‘Spain Regional Tax Comparison - Where Do Expats Pay Less Tax?’ It begins: ‘Why do regional taxes matter when moving to Spain? Spain’s seventeen Autonomous Communities (ACs) can adjust regional tax rates, exemptions, and deductions. In 2025, differences between regions like Madrid and Catalonia or Basque Country and Andalucía can mean thousands of euros in yearly tax differences. If you’re moving to Spain — especially as a retiree, remote worker, or property buyer — the region you choose can affect your net income, wealth tax, inheritance planning, and property costs…’
The article shows comparisons with the various taxes to pay (including Wealth Tax, Inheritance Tax, Property Tax, Municipal Property Tax (IBI), self-employed rates and also provides a useful glossary.
The Supreme Court forces banks to take responsibility for phishing thefts if the customer can show that he/she had not been careless says elDiario.es here.
There’s a campaign from some British lawyers which says, ‘Warning, Spanish pickpockets operating in this area – if you are being exploited under the Beckham Law, you are not alone, and you have rights’. From El Economista comes the reply from Hacienda that "Only 0.5% of Beckham Law beneficiaries have been inspected". That’s 160 out of 37,000.
Politics:
From The Corner here: ‘Spain’s 100 Largest Family Business Groups Call for PSOE-PP State Pacts. The president of the ‘Family Business Institute’ (Instituto de la Empresa Familiar) – and of the Estrella Galicia brewery – Ignacio Rivera, is calling for a state pact on energy on the same day that Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo clash again in Congress. “We represent 90% of the business fabric in this country, generate 70% of private employment, and contribute 70% of GDP… and we are worried,” he asserts.
“We are not doing our homework,” said the Galician businessman. “I find it very hard to believe that we cannot agree in Spain and in Europe on defence, technology, energy, housing… We need to get our act together so that there are state pacts.”
Some of Spain’s leading business figures participated in the assembly, such as the president of Barceló, Simón Pedro Barceló; of Banca March, Juan March; of Sener, Andrés Sendagorta; and of Saica, Ramón Alejandro. Also present were the president of Catalana Occidente, José María Serra; the vice-president of Iberostar, Sabina Fluxá; and the president of Alsa, Jorge Cosmen’. The story also appears in Expansión here.
Junts per Catalunya is a (sometimes) ally of the Government, a powerful if small party: powerful in that it brings – or withholds – the Government’s parliamentary majority. Junts is led by the exiled Carles Puigdemont and is an independentist right-wing party (which is aware that Vox, at least, and probably also the PP would like to see it, along with other secessionist parties, outlawed). We read that Junts says it could vote against the 2.5 hour reduction in the working week because ‘We Catalans aren’t lazy’. No doubt they speak for all labourers in the northeast of Spain…
From El Nacional here: ‘The leader of Esquerra Republicana in the Congress of Deputies, Gabriel Rufián, last week accused MPs from the PP, Vox, and Junts per Catalunya of taking money from energy companies. "It's a lobby that pays deputies to vote on certain issues, even if they are directly against the people; the Spanish far right, the Spanish right, and the Catalan right; the same people who, with their votes, eliminated a tax on large electricity companies, earning €11,000 million a year"’.
From 20Minutos here: ‘Feijóo calls for the PP national congress in early July: "Since I don't trust Sánchez, we must be prepared"’. Feijóo says "This government is already in its countdown, however long it lasts. We have to activate the change counter now. With a strengthened team, with an exciting project, and with the determination to serve Spain. I can offer this to all of you; I will present my candidacy to continue leading the PP"’.
(In other news) the PP barons are well aware of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s shortcomings and would never let her become the presidential candidate says El Huff Post here. That, to my way of thinking, leaves JuanMa Moreno from Andalucía as a likely front-runner…
The Vox price for supporting Valencia’s embattled Carlos Mazón. ‘Climate denial, conversion therapies, Spanish dance, the suffocation of unions… Vox puts a price on Mazón. In its amendments to the Budget, the far-right party demands eliminating funds for LGBTQI+ rights, financing the expulsion of migrants, and ending the promotion of the Valencian language’. The story at Público here.
Gibraltar:
‘A Gibraltar deal is needed before Keir Starmer’s EU reset, says Spain. Days before the prime minister hosts EU leaders in London, Spain’s foreign affairs minister has said Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status must be resolved’. The story comes from The Times here.
El Huff Post is even more alarmed: ‘Spain is preparing to close the doors on Gibraltar, and Europe is already talking about a "passport panic". All eyes are on what will happen if an agreement is not reached in extremis in negotiations that are dragging on and on and have not reached a successful conclusion’. It says: ‘The inexorable countdown to one of the biggest consequences of Brexit for Gibraltar is running out. This is what will happen starting November 10th regarding access to and exit from the Rock. From that day on, Britons will become "third-country nationals" in the eyes of the EU, just as they had called for in their referendum for leaving the European Union…’
Health:
An article from La Voz de Galicia on mental health here looks at male loneliness. ‘Men feel lonely, but they don't say it: "Vulnerability isn't possible in a bar or at a football game"’. We read that around 20% of men in Spain suffer from unwanted loneliness, according to data quoted from Soledad here. ‘Although the figures reported by women are similar, men experience difficulties socializing that are marked by masculine gender roles…’
Corruption:
La Vanguardia quotes The Financial Times with its powerful title (and rather weaker editorial): ‘The FT talks about 'lawfare' while examining the cases of Begoña Gómez and David Sánchez (Pedro Sánchez’ wife and his rather colourless brother, both targeted by the far-right).
The ‘Begoña Case’, says El Plural here, is rapidly becoming ‘the Peinado Case’, accusing the judge of prevaricación or using manufactured proofs (despite all evidence to the contrary).
Courts:
Love this one: elDiario.es on the Valencia floods: ‘The DANA judge rules that the female journalist who ate with Carlos Mazón at El Ventorro restaurant will not be called to testify because Mazón is a member of parliament (i.e. with immunity)’.
From The Olive Press here: ‘Inside the Costa Blanca’s €35m CWM pension fraud – as justice is finally served’.
El Debate has ‘Three people arrested in Toledo for hunting, cooking, and eating nearly 500 hedgehogs during filmed celebrations. The detainees published photographs posing with the catches and videos showing them being cooked’.
Media:
El Mundo has traced a private conversation on WhatsApp between Pedro Sánchez and his then minister José Luis Ábalos from August 2020 which has Sánchez criticising a couple of the regional PSOE barons. The paper doubled down in the next days with more messages cribbed from Pedro Sánchez’ WhatsApp account without any apparent guilt or explanation about how they pirated them. A suggestion from elsewhere says it might have come from a hostile leak from within the UCI (fraud police) currently investigating Ábalos. The journalist from El Mundo admitted in a later interview that the messages came from before the time when Ábalos lost his position as minister at the onset of the Caso Koldo. The Government says it will call for an investigation to get to the source of the leaked messages. Then there’s reminders of the famous call for action against Pedro Sánchez by José María Aznar, as remembered in various dailies: "El que pueda hacer, que haga".
La Razón seems to have muddled up their photos of the anti-Pedro Sánchez protest in Madrid this weekend with another (larger one) from a few years ago.
The Telegraph certainly doesn’t like ‘Europe’s Teflon PM’ here (Hat tip to Jake).
The right, and especially the far right, are trying to instil in public opinion the idea that Spain is an unmitigated disaster. On Saturday, they demonstrated in Madrid's Plaza Colón, where else? The coincidence of two events in less than seven days, such as the blackout and massive train delays, initially supports this argument. Also, the political instability caused by the government's lack of a majority in Congress. The underlying message is that the country is on the brink of collapse, and to achieve this, they are twisting reality into a caricature.
The opposition will always say that things are bad and that they will only improve with them in power. So far, so good. It happens in every country. What is happening in Spain is that the Partido Popular is immersed in a catastrophic drift that gained strength under Pablo Casado and that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has only intensified. Obviously, they must take advantage of the April 28 blackout, especially if its reasons are still unknown. And yes, there's no way to present it as an innocuous or irrelevant event.
Their criticism stems not from having a different energy model, but from this desire to claim that Spain is going down the drain. It doesn't matter that Spain has been growing at a much faster rate than the rest of the European Union for the past three years. It doesn't matter that Spain was the largest economy with the fastest growth in the world in 2024, according to the analysis conducted by the OECD, the IMF, and the European Commission. It doesn't matter that a key factor was the low price of energy in relative terms thanks to the Iberian exception that the government obtained after pressuring the EU and which the PP was against (of course!).
All of this data is contradicted by Feijóo's speech, when a few months ago he was able to claim that "GDP per capita hasn't risen; we've been at the bottom of Europe since 2018". This is false. Logically, GDP per capita takes population into account. Even in this regard, the PP peddles facts that only an economic illiterate can defend.
They say this to challenge "the lie of growth." What conservative media outlets like the Financial Times and The Economist are saying must be a lie. They've surely sold out to Sanchezism. For those who think that the GDP doesn't reflect a country's economic status, just note that this isn't true in the case of employment and public debt. And now tell me those two factors are irrelevant.
On the political level, the baseless sensationalism is no less important. Spain is no longer a democracy. The Constitution has been suspended. Freedom of expression is suffering like never before. The threat of autocracy is greater than ever. "They've sneaked a dictatorship in through the back door and we're at the beginning of it," says Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The PP has been taking these complaints to Brussels for years, secretly hoping that the European Commission will treat Spain like Hungary. Without any success.
The paradox of this failed strategy is that it will likely benefit Vox more than the PP. Vox's is a protest vote, a no to everything, fuelled by the portrayal of Spain as a failed state that must be saved at all costs. Periodically, right-wing media outlets feature articles quoting PP leaders convinced that they have finally succeeded in gaining votes from the far right, most recently through Vox's support for Donald Trump. They then describe an apocalyptic outlook in Spain, which contributes to Vox voters believing that a radical option is needed to confront Sánchez, one that doesn't involve the soft Feijóo.
And we know that the PP can’t rule Spain without Vox.
Many surveys and studies reveal a growing loss of support for democracy among sectors of the population. Some of these studies reveal, above all, the existence of biased questions that influence responses. Given a CIS poll that says many young people would be willing to accept an authoritarian regime if it guaranteed them a better standard of living, one must ask how many dictatorships can do something like this. If this were true, the number of democracies would be fewer.
There are indeed issues, such as housing, where it's clear that Spain has regressed in the last two decades. It's objectively more difficult to buy or rent a home now than it was back then, and this has a harsh impact on younger people. The consolidation of certain progressive values, or those achieved thanks to progressive governments, such as the right to abortion, has led to a spread of rebellious attitudes among young people on the right, who associate the current government with a series of values that only have negative consequences.
Throughout Europe and in the USA, resentment has become a very profitable political tool. The far right builds its narrative of tension and polarization on the basis of this social resentment, generating a context in which, indeed, catastrophism has a following. Inequality, the lack of good jobs, and dissatisfaction with unfulfilled promises open the door to fear and resentment. Job insecurity may not be as severe now as it was in the 1990s, but that means nothing to people if it doesn't help them buy a home.
For democratic institutions to continue to enjoy public support, they must be able to solve people's problems. This is the essential element of the debate, which is why we must distrust those who demand more authoritarianism, as if all citizens were minors. We must also refute the prophets of doom who claim that Spain is falling apart and can only be saved with a firm hand. They are the ones who stir up social resentment and seek to create enemies among the most vulnerable groups, starting with immigrants.
This country is much better than its false defenders claim.
(Based on an editorial from Iñigo Sáenz de Ugarte, assistant editor of elDiario.es)
I was talking to J. Antonio Sierra (collaborator on Business over Tapas) and he mentioned that as a young man he hitch-hiked to Frankfurt to find work there. His adventure appeared years later in Desbandada (a Spanish-language German magazine) here. The piece begins: ‘In 1961, Professor José Antonio Sierra, founder of the Spanish Cultural Institute in Dublin, travelled from his native Ávila to Germany to volunteer at the largest German cemetery from World War I. Later in France, he learned about the reality of Spanish political refugees. This is the story of his adventure. It not only takes us back to a time without the internet, but also to a period in Spanish history, the Civil War, whose consequences must be re-examined and whose memory revisited…’
We read: ‘…His time in the German cemetery and the port of Bordeaux changed José Antonio Sierra's life forever. "First of all, because of the political refugees, who in Franco’s Spain had always been presented as the bad guys: terrible, criminal people. When I returned home, I began to see everything differently, to analyse everything that was happening, and if someone spoke to me about the Reds, I thought that they must never have known them"…’
Ecology:
From Twitter here, a post by the climate journalist Andrés Actis states that ‘We've had 21 of the last 22 months at +1.5°C. The 12-month period between May 2024 and April 2025 was +1.58°C. The world is already experiencing a new climate, never before seen in the annals of human existence, and we're not even talking about it’.
Various:
From, El País here, a pictorial. The King and Queen at Mauthausen on May 10th: Images from the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camp. Over seven thousand Spanish Republicans were sent to the camp, and an estimated 4,700 lost their lives in the forced labour conditions. Mauthausen concentration camp at Wiki here.
Images of the King of Spain surrounded by Republican flags can be seen here.
Here’s Leonard Cohen with The Partisan (subtitled in Spanish) on YouTube.
What happened on October 29th: the story of the Valencia floods on YouTube here.
From Directo al Paladar here: ‘Although Rome dazzles at every turn with its monuments, ruins, and palaces, not everything worthy of attention is immediately apparent to visitors. In a city where the ancient coexists with the eternal, there are corners steeped in history that can go unnoticed.
One of these is the Palacio de España, or Palazzo di Spagna, a Baroque building that impresses not only with its elegance but also because it is the setting for a diplomatic rarity: it houses the oldest functioning embassy in the world.
Curiously, this embassy does not represent Spain in Italy, as one might expect given its location. It is, in fact, the Embassy of Spain to the Holy See. Its history dates back to 1480, when the Catholic Monarchs decided to establish a permanent representation to the Papacy. In fact, this initiative marked the birth of modern diplomacy…’
A jury of 53 journalists bring us the fifty best Spanish movies since the death of Franco. Babelia has the list (Arrebato wins first place) and in many cases, a link to see the film.
See Spain:
Fascinating Spain brings us ‘Spain’s most captivating Roman theatres. These Roman theatres provide a unique perspective on Spain, allowing us to discover the true essence of Hispania’. With photos.
Finally:
La Vida es Corta (Swing Jazz) - Nadador Compulsivo on YouTube here.
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