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Weekly Report

Business Over Tapas (27th August, 2015)

By Lenox Napier and Andrew Brociner

jueves 27 de agosto de 2015, 23:10h

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] - ***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.

Editorial:

When China sneezes. As a writer in The Telegraph puts it, the massive slump (down at one point 38% from the June 12th high) in the Shanghai Composite index over the last few days could be the Chinese version of the beginning of the Great Patriotic Depression, despite an adjustment in the Chinese bank rate and the recent devaluation of the Yuan. The world’s markets were briefly alarmed over the week-end, with the Spanish IBEX-35 falling 5.1% on Monday: before bouncing back on Tuesday by 3.7%. But, says Typically Spanish in its ‘Business Brief’, Mariano Rajoy has assured the China crisis ‘will not have a very important repercussion’ on the Spanish economy. The Prime Minister has maintained growth for this year at 3.3%. In answer to that, we can only hope he’s right. However, be sure that events in far-off China surely haven’t finished with us quite yet.

Housing:

There’s so much more going on in The City, so many of the young are moving from the pueblo. Here, The Guardian picks up the tale: ‘...As young people depart, they leave villages of empty houses and shuttered shops, of closed schools and cafes, and a greying population. Fields carefully tended for centuries are left uncultivated and overgrown. Farms and outbuildings crumble from neglect. As incomes plunge, those who remain struggle to maintain a way of life that seems doomed. Projections based on European Commission figures suggest up to 22% of people in rural France, Greece, Spain and Portugal are elderly retired, while only about 10% of farmers across the EU aged 35 or younger...’. Leaving us with the question – ‘...So should rising immigration into Europe be viewed as a potential boon for rural areas?...’.

‘The production value in the construction sector in Spain is predicted to grow by 3% in 2015, after seven consecutive years of declines, according to the latest report on the sector carried out by the risk management and credit services society, Cesce. Data from the report indicates that the greatest growth will relate to restoration and maintenance (+3.9%), followed by non-residential construction (+3.2%), residential construction (+2.8%) and civil works (+1.8%)...’. From Kyero.

From the Australian Your Investment Property Mag, ‘While Sydney’s median house price hovers around $1 million, for around a third of that you could come away with an entire village in one European country. The village of O Penso in north-western Spain is up for sale after becoming abandoned following the death of its last resident over a decade ago. The village is set on 40 hectares and consists of six houses, three large barns a bakery and well providing free water...’. Yours for just 200,000€.

Tourism:

‘Data from the latest Frontur tourist border movements survey released by the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism reveal that in the first seven months of the year Spain received the record figure of 38 million foreign tourists, which represents an increase of 4.7% over the same period in 2014. According to the survey, some 54.5% of the total number of arrivals were made up of tourists visiting from the United Kingdom, France and Germany...’. More at Kyero.

How much does an Englishman spend on his holiday lunch in Málaga? Now, thanks to the BBVA, we know. Story and interactive map at El País here.

Six million overnight stays for Andalucía in July – a new record says Ideal here.

Finance:

‘A legion of lobbyists and lawyers persuaded President Rodríguez Zapatero to hand over 3,400 million euros to the electric companies’, says Vozpópuli, writing about how the companies were ‘let off’ paying a massive rebate to consumers back in 2008. The Minister of Energy at the time was the perhaps malleable Miguel Sebastián, who takes his medicine in an old article from last November in El Huff Post here.

Stretching the rules of European banking: ‘...In the last three years, the banks of Europe’s biggest bailed out economy, Spain, have received ultra-low interest loans from the ECB worth some €140 billion. To obtain that liquidity, the banks are required by law to deposit collateral with the ECB. However, Germany’s leading business and financial newspaper Handelsblatt now reveals that some Spanish banks have received special treatment from Spain’s central bank, the Banco de España, some of whose officials have shown no qualms about bending the rules...’. From Wolf Street.

The Minister of the Economy, Luis De Guindos ‘...again says that Spain is not yet out of the crisis, despite repeated messages from the Prime Minister to the contrary. In this regard, he stressed that Spain has already recovered all the competitiveness it had lost since joining the euro, that the Spanish banking system is much more sanitized, that the deficit is less than half of what it was back in 2011 and that the real estate sector has now recovered. Therefore, he says, in the next "two or three years," Spain will be completely purged of the crisis...’. From Yo Me Tiro Al Monte.

Spain has saved 8.4 billion € in the first half of this year because of the collapse of the crude oil price, says Typically Spanish.

All these new jobs. According to El Confidencial, three quarters of all job offers don’t mention the wage, and half of all job offers don’t even mention the hours.

Politics:

Before he left office as Mayor of Madrid back in late 2011, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón left some fireproof instructions – including high and unchangeable wages for a number of City-Hall employees, regardless of their possible re-assignment elsewhere – some indeed with lifetime incomes. The current regime is finding all sorts of peculiar and expensive surprises as they go through the accounts.

With an eye on the end-of-year elections, the Government is reviewing the wages of Spain’s 2.5 million ‘funcionarios’ (public employees). El Boletín lists the fresh perks and payments.

Corruption:

So, what exactly is the difference – as far as the Partido Popular is concerned – between Rodrigo Rato and Luis Bárcenas? El Diario admits that it hasn’t a clue, except... well, that Bárcenas has spoken out where he shouldn’t have...

‘Madrid blew €105 million on failed “City of Justice” project. Documents show misspending on complex intended to house capital’s legal infrastructure’ Headline from

El País in English.

Courts:

And what is Baltazar Garzón up to? According to this report, ‘Crusading Spanish Judge Sets Sights on Corporate and Environmental Crimes. Baltasar Garzón is pushing the idea that economic and environmental crimes be considered crimes against humanity, akin to torture or genocide...’. Keeping busy, then.

Various:

‘Should Spain remember native son Salvador Dalí as a famous surrealist or a fascist sympathizer and admirer of the dictator Francisco Franco? Antonio Ortiz, a 60-year-old amateur historian, wants the city government to take a stand. The city’s answer will determine whether a two-square-block space designed by the artist and popular among skateboarders gets to keep the name Salvador Dalí Plaza. A self-described materialist Marxist, Mr. Ortiz has spent the past decade compiling a list of Madrid place names associated with Franco ... Mr. Ortiz wants those names erased. Now, the end of a 24-year stretch of conservative control of City Hall has given Mr. Ortiz, as well as a like-minded band of antifascists who tear down offending street signs, a chance to advance their cause...’. From The Wall Street Journal.

If you were wondering which country spends the most of public lighting – then wonder no more. It’s Spain, of course, which merrily spends one thousand million euros per annum.

From El País in English: ‘First case of chikungunya infection in Spain detected. Health authorities on alert after 60-year-old man contracts the disease from an infected tiger mosquito in Valencia province...’.

The Valencia toll road AP-7 will be returned to Government control, and made into a free autovía, from late 2019, according to Europa Press.

‘...and the third most popular museum in Madrid, with an expected 1.2 million visitors in 2015? The Santiago Bernabéu, home of the Madrid football team 'Real Madrid'. For a price, you can see the changing rooms, the trophy room and you can even sit in the gradas...’. From The Entertainer Online.

‘The remaining ten kilometres of the A-7 motorway along the Granada coastline will be completed at the end of next month’. Found at Typically Spanish here.

Wild fires in Spain have burned 66,000 hectares so far this year, more than the total for 2014 and 2013 combined. In Andalucía, it’s so far four times the 2013 figure – at 7,000 Ha. No mention, however, in the article from El Diario about the recent changes in the ‘Ley del Monte’ – where burned land can now – in certain situations – be re-zoned as urbanisable.

The chumbo cactus, infested and dying in its millions across Almería and Murcia (and, eventually, the rest of Andalucía) thanks to the cochineal fly, has been abandoned by the ‘ecologistas’, because, well, it’s a planta invasora. It’s not originally endemic, and that’s all that there is. Cortez’ soldiers must have brought them back to Spain in their rucksacks (along with – ahem – tomatoes and potatoes). Now, however, students from Mexico have developed a use for the prickly pear, by fabricating a form of short-term plastic from the plant, a plastic which lasts around thirty days before biodegrading into harmless ingredients.

Queue-barging in Spain – an amusing look with The Olive Press.

See Spain

Some fun pictures from Tabernas, Almería, where they made the Spaghetti Westerns.

(The Guardian)

The ten most beautiful pueblos in Spain, according to El Mundo.

Finally:

BBC Radio – The Invention of Spain. Three chap

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