Editorial:
Spain's national TV showed a major programme on the subject of 'viviendas ilegales' on Tuesday: the scandal of the 'illegal homes'. There are said to be 300,000 of these just in Andalucía and these are homes which, at best, can be made 'alegal' (a made-up Spanish word which lies between legal and ilegal in a politician's dictionary). Evidently, there's no hurry to do so. These homes, so often bought in good faith, have no papers, or the wrong papers; they are unsellable, or unliveable. They may be denied water and electric (so necessary for any level of comfort, particularly for elderly couples). They may be demolished and the owners might even be put in jail. Despite Spain having plenty of room (have you ever looked out of an aeroplane’s window as you flew across the country?), and with the second largest proportion of national parks in the world (after the USA), the politicians have still managed to create a massive scandal of poverty, job-loss and misery. Now (finally), comes a major TV exposé of the injustice of Spain's illegal homes.
Housing:
The Spanish TV1 showed a news-program on Tuesday called 'Comando Actualidad' with a full seventy minutes dealing with the subject of 'illegal homes'. Here's the video. From Min 50, we meet the AUAN from Albox, together with Len and Helen Prior. The presenter is aghast when she visits their home (the house was demolished in January 2008) to find: 'let's get this straight – they live in a garage with a swimming pool?'.
'Many foreigners bought in their day land in the Costa del Sol to build a House, but their dreams turned with time into nightmares. Such is the situation of the three hundred residents of the Axarquia region who wanted to regularise the situation of their homes and asked the Junta de Andalucía to speed along in the processing of their paperwork. But cases like this are repeated in many points of the provincial geography. Were they buyers in good faith? Did they know what they were doing? A criminal court has just condemned two British couples to six months in prison for an offence against land planning. Another British couple can't be found - or perhaps they have left the country, while another Briton has died before sentencing...'. All four houses in question must be demolished, feeding more ammunition to the British Press. The towns on the Costa del Sol with particular problems of 'illegal homes' are listed in the article as Viñuela, Tolox, Alcaucín, Mijas and Cártama. The story above from La Opinión de Málaga comes from Tolox.
Bloomberg is sanguine, says Spain Sees Embers Glow in Wreckage of Property Crash: '...As the recovery in the euro-region’s fourth-largest economy extends and its record unemployment subsides, the property market whose slump locked the country into a recession is showing signs of life. While home-price data isn’t yet signalling a turnaround, an increase in sales indicates values may be starting to stabilize...'. A similar story at FXStreet is titled: 'Spain pain easing as investors step into the property market'. From the ordinary citizen's point of view, however, the second story notes in passing '...Given the tightening in mortgage lending criteria and the underlying economic struggles of your average Spaniard (30% of workers earn less that €1216 per month), it may still be hard for the domestic side of the market to pick up...'.
'...some Britons are swimming against the tide, determined to forge a life in Spain despite the tough economic climate. Typically they are retirees who have no need to find stable work and many are snapping up homes at big discounts. The stagnant economy has created a glut of cheap homes on the market, many of which are bank repossessions that lenders are keen to shift quickly....'. The Telegraph says that 'Cheaper housing and a strong pound are luring some British buyers back to Spain' (mostly another advertorial for which, in international property matters, this newspaper is becoming increasingly prone).
'Spanish home mortgage approvals rose in March for the first time in almost four years, adding to signs that the property market is stabilizing six years after triggering the worst recession in the country’s democratic history. The number of residential loan approvals rose 2 percent from a year earlier, the first increase since April 2010, the Madrid-based National Statistics Institute said on Wednesday...'. From Bloomberg.
From BeLegal.com and Antonio Flores: It is hereby informed to the public at large that on the 14/11/2013 the Directorate General for Taxation (DGT), by means of Tax Binding Consultation V3350-13, concluded that a scheme consisting on transferring Spanish property to a UK-based company, with the purpose of avoiding Spanish Inheritance Taxes (IHT), is not legal.
The following statement has been issued by the DGT: “In relation to the tax scheme consisting in legally transferring a property to a UK-based company, with the sole purpose of avoiding IHT in Spain through relocation of the taxation of the shares of the said company to the UK, there cannot be a favourable response by this Tax Department in relation to the lawfulness of the scheme. Only via the appropriate inspection procedures will the Tax Office be able to establish whether the scheme conforms to the law or, as the case may be, infringe it in which case, the Tax Office will be able to regularize the anomaly by initiating the required procedures to combat tax fraud.” More here.
Tourism:
Tourists spent a record 14,856 million euros in Spain during the first four months of 2014 according to the Ministry of Industry and quoted at the ABC. The spend is 11.2% up on 2013's January – April figures. The average tourist spent 968 euros.
I wonder how much the average foreign resident spent in the same period?
Finance:
From A Fistful of Euros: 'According to the Bank of Spain, the Spanish economy continued to push forward with its recent expansion in the first quarter, and it did so at an accelerated rate, growing by 0.4% over the previous three months. This is certainly good news for everyone in Spain, and there is no doubt that this is the strongest expansion in economic activity since the crisis started. The economy also grew by 0.5% over a year earlier, the first time it has done this in nine quarters...'. Of course, there's a 'but' coming along. A useful and full analysis of Spain's position from Edward Hugh.
'Higher consumer taxes, lower corporate rates and few changes to income tax. Those were the proposals for the Spanish economy presented by the International Monetary Fund in Madrid on Tuesday, in the latest report issued by its mission in the country. “There is room for increasing indirect revenues,” the report reads. “Raising excise duties and environmental levies, and gradually reducing preferential treatments in the VAT, would bring Spain’s collection effort more in to line with its European peers. This should be combined with clearly identified measures to protect the most vulnerable...'. From El País in English.
Corruption:
'The Spanish Hacienda has confirmed to the investigating judge in the Noos Case, José Castro, that Iñaki Urdangarin, the Duke of Palma, defrauded the tax office for better than 240,000 euros between 2007 and 2008...'. Story at Euro Mundo Global.
'The ex-conseller of the Valencian Government Rafael Blasco has been sentenced to eight years in prison and twenty years of inhabilitación for diverting funds that should have gone as aid to the third world, in the so-called 'Blasco Investigation'. Blasco avoided the maximum penalty called by the prosecution of 14 years imprisonment and 33 years disqualification from public office...'. Blasco was in Valencian politics for many years, first as an independent with the PSOE Government of Joan Lerma and later under the orders of PP Regional Presidents Zaplana and Camps. He was sacked from various positions, apparently for corrupt practices. The current investigation is to do with 1.8 million euros that should have gone to aid in Nicaragua (43,000 euros was all they got). Two more investigations featuring Blasco are under way. Story in El Diario.
Museum News:
From Zoom News we learn that not every museum in Spain is successfully run. The Málaga Museo de las Gemas, for example, was opened in 2012 for just two hours, to four visitors, before being closed again for bureaucratic reasons (paperwork). It cost 5.1 million euros to complete. The Museo Histórico in Torremolinos was finished three years ago, but remains today empty and shut. Another museum in Ibiza called Ses Salinas, complete and with an exhibition on display, still hasn't opened since it was declared completed in 2007... Culture doesn't have the drawing power it used to (and the IVA on most culture is at 21%).
Politics:
'The outcome of the European elections in Spain represents something of a setback for the two main parties, and even more so for the Socialists (PSOE). At the last EU elections in 2009, 80.9 percent of voters cast their ballots for either the Popular Party (PP) or the PSOE. Yet on Sunday their joint results represented just under 50 percent of the vote.
This loss of votes has essentially benefited left and centre groups such as United Left (IU) and Unión Progreso y Democracia (UpyD), but above all Podemos, the new party created by the former Socialist Pablo Iglesias, whose triumphant results ensure five seats in the European Parliament...'. Editorial at El País in English
On the morning following the results of the European elections and following the massive loss of support for the Socialists, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba announced his departure as head of the PSOE, with a congress to follow in July to chose a successor (or, now it seems, a full election through party members). Rubalcaba was known to the foreigners as both the man who squashed suffrage for the 1995 municipal elections as Minister of the Presidencia (after his boss Felipe Gonzalez gave us the vote) for fear of us voting for the other lot, and (as Minister of the Interior with Zapatero) also for repealing our handy little ID cards in favour of that useful combo of passport and green police letter that we Europeans are now supposed to carry (non-Europeans with residence fortuitously got to keep their snappy Tarjeta de Residencia). In any event, most comunitarios use a Spanish driving licence for ID. Who are the likely candidates to take over from Rubalcaba? Carme Chacón, Patxi López, Eduardo Madina and... surely not Susana Díaz from Andalucía? A biographical list of the six favourites at El Mundo here.
The nationalists did well in Catalonia, with the left-wing nats beating out the right-wing nats. The 'constitutionalist' parties flopped. The biggest winner was the ERC (Catalonian Republican Left), whose leader Oriol Junqueras says that 'by 2016, at the very latest, we should have a Catalonian Republic'. More, and interview, here.
Headline: 'The untamed ambition of Podemos, the surprise victor in Sunday’s poll. Leader Pablo Iglesias says his party will “move forward until we throw the PP and the PSOE out”'. Article at El País in English. Per Svensson, who says 'this is the man that Spain needs', sends me this quote from Pablo Iglesias: 'We are being governed by the servants of the Wealthy' from an interview in El Mundo. Here's another quote: Interviewer: 'Who should be concerned by the victory of Podemos?' Pablo Iglesias: 'The establishment. And, yes, they are scared already'.
'Pope Francis on Tuesday criticized an "inhumane" system which causes a youth unemployment rate of "50 percent" in Spain and "60 percent" in Andalucía in the wake of recent European elections...'. From The Local.
Various:
The foreigners with the right to vote in our town stayed away last Sunday, with just 92 out of 1132 voting – or a depressing 8%!
As Europe appeared to vote for... well let's say lesser-known and sometimes rather intolerant political formations; we read: 'Gibraltar gets UKIP by default as euro-sceptic parties gain ground across Europe' (Story at The Olive Press). Meanwhile, El Huff Post lists ten 'frightening far-right parties now represented in Brussels' here.
There were some strange and little-known parties asking for the vote here in Spain, but now we learn that, every two days, since 2008, a new political party has been registered with the Ministry of the Interior. Indeed, in the last eight years, 987 new parties have been formed. Most, of course, just at a local municipal level. More here.
Facua, the consumer's organisation, reminds us that, before August, the power companies have been obliged to return us money from the bills covering January to March (estimated at 30 or 40 euros per household, according to kilo-wattage used).
What is the padrón? A useful explanation of the municipal register here from Ciudadanos Extranjeros Diputación de Alicante (in English).
An interesting documentary about the farms under plastic, los invernaderos of Almería, produced by the BBC (subtitles in Spanish).
'Spain is experiencing a resurgence of hemp, one of the species of cannabis with the lowest THC content, which has been used for millennia to produce textile, medicinal and food products...'. Article on the use of hemp in Spain, found at Truth-Out.
'The architect behind Barcelona's most emblematic landmarks, Antoni Gaudí, is to be beatified within the next year by Pope Francis, Catalonia's top radio station has announced. He was the brains behind the city’s most quirky architecture, including the salamander in Parc Guell and the majestic yet still unfinished Sagrada Familia...'. From The Local.
Finally:
Beautiful photographs of Mallorca, taken from the air with drones. Pictures from Stern.
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