www.euromundoglobal.com

Weekly Report

Business over Tapas N.º 454

Business over Tapas N.º 454

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

jueves 21 de julio de 2022, 21:21h

21JUL22 – MADRID.- 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. Subscription and e-mail information in our archives is never released to third parties.

Editorial:

The banks have already collected their latest round of commissions, the monthly, quarterly and half-year wallops they like to remove from our accounts with a smile. Maintenance fees, they say airily: the cost of looking after our money for us.

However, as one of the pronouncements from the State of the Nation debate last week, they will now be paying some tax on their profits over the next 24 months and will unfortunately not be able to pass this along to their clients. Perhaps, like my bank, they’ll put up a sign which says ‘Less is More’, close their teller-windows for good and indeed many more of their branches and, why not, change their name in passing to the CajaOrwell.

They will probably quietly ease some more of their hard-won funds to the conservative opposition as well. Maybe buy another newspaper.

The Government will also be taxing the power companies’ profits, much to their chagrin.

The bonanza of gifts from last week’s debate did much to cheer up the left-wing of the government, as it did to appease citizens, worried about the high increase in the cost of living (did you know that making your own gazpacho has gone up, screams the ABC). Better still, from September, we will be able to travel around on the trains for free. Well, the local and regional ones anyway. The Guardian says ‘The price cuts are being implemented to cushion the impact of inflation and rapidly rising energy prices’. The money the banks scooped out of our checking account.

Since most of the focus in the last two decades has been on high-speed trains that whoosh from city to city (at a huge expense of capital), the local network, where it existed, has been rather left to founder. Here in Almería, where we haven’t ever had any trains except the one that chugs gloomily north to Linares in Jaén once a day, and where the old city train-station has been abandoned (lovingly), we have been promised an AVE by 2026 (it was first promised for 2009) or maybe a couple of years later, but of course, no word on a local train service. We will be able – one day – to go to Madrid, Paris and Moscow (no doubt changing trains in Murcia), but not to Alhama de Almería.

It’s a nice idea though – it worked in Germany – to use less petrol and go with public transport (the Germans currently charge €9 a month for any and all train journeys).

Perhaps the bus companies won’t be amused – they talk here of ‘discrimination’, but Renfe (railways) is a public company and Alsa (Spain’s leading coach operator) isn’t – no, it belongs to National Express (wiki).

Housing:

From Spanish Property Insight, a gloomy item here: ‘Taxes make new homes 20pc more expensive. A study by the real estate company Colliers shows that taxes and red tape make new homes 20% more expensive on average. “This means, basically, that the buyer of a home of 100 m2 would have been able to afford a home of 120 m2 in a scenario without fiscal charges,” say Colliers. Buyers get less living space for their taxes…’

The six largest construction companies in Spain – ACS, FCC, Dragados, Ferrovial, Acciona and OHLA – have routinely been meeting behind closed doors and fixing prices on public projects says the CNMC which has fined them 320 million euros for their trouble.

Two large urbanisations are announced in Andalucía (on two of the last remaining virgin bits of coast). The Olive Press here: ‘Green campaigners are digging in to save one of Andalucía’s last remaining coastal zones. They are launching a national campaign to prevent a series of projects from ‘destroying’ the fragile ecology of the stunning Tarifa (Cádiz) coastline. Ecologistas en Acción are fighting the plans that mean around 6.2 million m2 of protected land are being made available to developers…’

Over in Almería, says elDiario.es here, another tourist-pueblo is on the books. ‘The project would double the current population of Palomares. The developer minimizes the environmental impact of the plan, which includes 1,600 homes, a hotel, a promenade and parking for 1,000 cars where there is now a beach, a pine forest and greenhouse crops’. Palomares, wasn’t that where the bombs fell in January 1966? Yes.

In Mojácar (Almería), the only upmarket urbanisation (originally started with Soros money) was Macenas: a luxury hotel (currently a skeletal ruin), apartments, homes, commercial area and a golf course. A few apartments were sold before the development was mothballed in 2008. Now we hear from the Diario de Almería that it has been bought by the Grupo Cosentino (here) and work will resume there next year.

We may be too late, but there’s a house and a bar going, free, in Gormaz, Soria, for the right sort of person. The town hall and citizens of this small pueblo need a drink, and are willing to be most generous in return says Antena3 (with video) here.

One way to remove squatters is to hire a group of heavies. But, some groups are better than others. A heavily-armed Hells Angels band of five motoristas was arrested recently outside Burgos, and are now helping the police with their enquiries. Their apparent income came from removing squatters from houses on demand. La Voz de Asturias has the story here.

Finance:

Spanish bank charges have increased by 34 euros since last year says Spanish News Today, adding that ‘some of the main banks have quadrupled their prices in the last 12 months’.

The Corner (understandably conservative) asks whether the windfall tax on banks and power companies should be considered as a tax or rather as a fine.

The deal has been made for the self-employed – los autónomos – to pay a fairer monthly fee; to vary, says elDiario.es here, between 200 and 590€.

There’s no doubt but that the Spanish tax agency and the good people of this country are on a collision course. From ECD here: ‘The 10,000 million that Hacienda seeks in its campaign against the submerged economy in tourism. The main focus is bars, hostels, beach bars and all kinds of places that work directly with the consumer and allow cash payment’.

Politics:

Regarding the Government’s ‘Memory’ of events in Spain’s sometimes turbulent past (we concentrate here on the Civil War and its aftermath) the perception in the street is that the PP (and, amen, Vox) are more concerned about the apparent threat to democracy from the Basque terrorist group ETA which, as we know, no longer exists (wiki) than they are from the ashes of Francoism.

On Wednesday, Yolanda Díaz flew to Washington (to meet Bernie Saunders) and New York to present a project on social economics at the United Nations. She also began her political project, Sumar, in earnest earlier this month in Madrid. Sumar, for the time being, appears to be a chance to listen rather than to preach as she travels with her advisers around the country. Her first subject of debate – (how could it be else?) – was Climate Change.

The vice-secretary general of the PSOE Adriana Lastra (Wiki) has quit her post following health issues, including her first pregnancy says El Huff Post here. She remains as a parliamentary deputy. From the same source, an interesting article here about her importance to Sánchez and the PSOE, and the likelihood of a reshuffle within the party. ECD claims here that she has a plan to wrest control of the party from Pedro Sánchez (!). Another resignation for health reasons quickly followed – that of Dolores Delgado, whose job as Attorney General has been taken on by her deputy Álvaro García Ortiz.

From The Washington Post (in Spanish) here: ‘The danger of normalizing the extreme right as Vox continues to grow in Spain’. The article considers the rise of Vox and its influence in the regions.

The investiture of Juanma Moreno in Andalucía is being held this mid-week in Seville. Moreno has an absolute majority following the June election and will announce his cabinet by the weekend says El Diario de Sevilla here.

Catalonia:

‘The Parlament speaker Laura Borràs (wiki), who is also the president of the pro-independence Junts per Catalunya party, could face up to six years in prison, be barred from office for 21 years, and be fined €144,000, as per the public prosecutor’s office request, which was made public on Thursday morning last week, in relation to her allegedly awarding irregular contracts during her time at the head of the Institute of Catalan Letters…’ An item from Catalan News here. El Periódico says that, in return, and speaking at an anti-corruption conference, she ‘…accused the State of practicing 'lawfare' for "smearing political opponents with the corrosive stain of corruption, " in a veiled allusion to her legal case’.

From El Nacional here: ‘Catalonia increases its exports by 27% and is close to producing a quarter of the Spanish total. Catalonia sold, until May, 26.9% more products abroad than the previous year, up to 8,611 million’.

Europe:

‘The EU spyware inquiry fails to put Spain on the list of fact-finding trips’ says Politico here, adding ‘Madrid’s former interior minister and current MEP Juan Ignacio Zoido Álvarez said visiting Spain ‘should not be a priority,’ despite a raging political scandal over the use of Pegasus software’. The Catalonian news-site Vilaweb is less forgiving here.

A piece at The Local warns of further complications for those who must take a Spanish driving test. ‘…If and when they pass, these often seasoned drivers are considered learner drivers (conductores novatos) in the eyes of Spain’s DGT. Aside from having to put an L sign in their rear window, they will be viewed as learners when it comes to taking out insurance for the vehicles they purchase or when they rent a car in Spain…’

Corruption:

As outlined in an essay from BoT titled ‘Two Stories: One Narrative’ - there is much afoot and considerable indignation regarding the Villarejo transcripts, with the ex-commissar adding to the fire in several frank interviews. Leaving aside the media manipulation, here in El País we read of a conversation in 2017 between Villarejo and the then Minister and PP Secretary-General Maria Dolores de Cospedal of a plot to bring down Pablo Iglesias. From El Huff Post here: ‘Iglesias, on the audio of Cospedal and Villarejo: "All that 'garbage' has defined the country's media conversation". The former second vice president is studying possible legal actions with his team, but doubts that Rajoy's former minister could go to jail for the conversation revealed by El País’.

Much was made at the time of the secret fund of Pablo Iglesias (known as the PISA fund: Pablo Iglesias Sociedad Anónima) with its swollen bank account in the offshore islands of The Grenadines – a pure fabrication on the part of Villarejo and his sponsors. For example, here’s the story at La Razón from April 2017: ‘The judge dismisses Iglesias' lawsuit against Inda because the information is "true". The leader of Podemos took OKDiario to court for a story about his accounts in the tax haven of the Grenadines. The magistrate condemns Podemos to pay the costs of the trial’. The fake-news trial cost Iglesias €30,000 says Público here.

The ex-leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, explains how the politicians, police, judges and journalists working for the far-right improperly attacked his party over the years using false information. He seems more than a little angry about it on YouTube here.

The Media

The Irene Montero opinion on the Melilla issue (carefully excised by a number of media outlets), explained on YouTube here by Miguel Charisteas.

Nueva Tribuna writes here of the powers behind the Media. ‘…Two television groups, Atresmedia and Mediaset, absorb 83% of the general television advertising market. Something similar occurs with radio stations, since the first four in audience –SER, COPE, Onda Cero and RNE– dominate the airwaves market in Spain, except in Catalonia. And we already know in the hands of which business groups these media are. And in the talk-shows, to discuss the political situation in Spain, they will always resort to El Mundo, El País, the ABC or La Razón. Do the provincial media not exist? Those of us who write from the provinces must be thought to be halfway illiterate…’

The Corner poo-poos the suggestion here: ‘Pedro Sánchez - In Spain “there are dark powers” that try to boycott the government because it is “annoying” and “uncomfortable”. These powers “yearn for an old order”. And they have “media and political terminals”, which they do not hesitate to use to “demobilise the electorate” and “strike” at the coalition government, until “the progressives give up”. We do not know their faces, but they are “gentlemen with cigars” meeting in the “smoking-rooms of Madrid”…’

There’s a photo of Pedro Sánchez that’s being used to look like he’s posing in front of some burned-out trees, because, well… The reality is that the photo is artfully cropped and used by some of the ever-hostile media. Oh, wait, it was El Mundo. The story here. Another example of its use (with the actress Ana Obregón straying into politics) here.

There are two fact-checkers in Spain – Maldita and Newtral. The second of these, Newtral (wiki), was created by the journalist Ana Pastor (wiki) in 2019. Newtral offers a service where it answers questions or doubts about some given subject. Ana Pastor is the wife of García Ferreras, the journalist/director of LaSexta, the one who appears to have broadcast what he knew (and not ‘suspected’) to be fake news regarding Pablo Iglesias and Podemos in 2016, causing them damage just before the election that year.

Despite being asked about the Ferreras/Villarejo tapes, it has so far stood aloof (here and here) to the issue. And, despite direct questioning, here.

It’s not entirely unexpected, who wants to mess their own doorstep? The company – it also creates TV documentaries – is making some good money, says VozPópuli here (while its rival Maldita seems to be a simple non-profit organisation).

There are several English-language newspapers in Spain, with better or worse webpages. The websites in order of merit (in our opinion) are Sur in English, Majorca Daily Bulletin, the rather off-track El País in English, The Olive Press and, worst of all, the EWN, which uses the ‘all the news that fits’ approach.

Some others of interest with just a web-presence only include Catalan News (publicly owned), Spanish News Today (Murcia based), The Local, Think Spain, and The Corner (finance)…

Ecology:

The courts obliges Iberdrola to dismantle the largest photovoltaic plant in Europe. Against this sentence, on which a clarification procedure has been issued to the parties, there only remains an appeal to the Supreme Court’ says The Objective here. The 500ha site is located in Núñez de Balboa, in Badajoz and was, apparently, improperly expropriated by the company.

From El Español here. ‘The largest nest of plastics in Europe has been in Tarragona for decades: "We distribute them throughout the Mediterranean". The article says that the micro-plastics of the Tarragona coast increase every year. These pellets come from a local plastics factory, and have embellished the beaches of Tarragona for the past forty years.

The CadenaSer brings us this gem: ‘A Vox deputy speaking in the Cortes on climate change: "So the planet warms up a little more will help prevent deaths from it being too cold"’.

The current heat wave has brought many major forest-fires and El Independiente said here on Monday: ‘A week of extreme heat, the second wave in a month, with nearly 400 people dead, with record temperatures, dozens of fires, reservoirs in critical condition after a too-dry winter and the vitally important subject of climate change all but absent from the Debate on the State of the Nation. Pedro Sánchez made just two references to climate change in defence of his management, which must have seemed sufficient to the opposition parties because none attempted to debate the serious prospects that science predicts for the Iberian Peninsula in the near future…’

An article in elDiario.es on Wednesday with the improbable title ‘Spain needs almost twice as much air conditioning to combat severe heat as it did 40 years ago’ looks at the rise in the temperature over the years, city by city.

By Wednesday afternoon, says El Huff Post, over 80,000Ha had been burned in the current heat-wave.

From The Guardian here: ‘Developer dismisses B-52 crash radiation fears at proposed site of Spanish resort. Two nuclear bombs exploded in 1966 after US aircraft involved in mid-air collision over Palomares in Almería. The British-owned Bahía de Almanzora plans to build 1,600 homes, a hotel and a sports complex about 1.5kms from the contaminated zone in Palomares, which has been fenced off for the past 56 years…’ The paper says, ‘…Aside from the radiation issue, environmentalists say the proposed development will destroy what is virtually the last stretch of virgin coast in Almería. “The only reason this part of the coast hasn’t been destroyed is because it’s radioactive,” said the president of the local Ecologists in Action group...’

Various:

‘A millionaire ultra-Catholic offensive seeks to undermine the rights of women and LGTBI groups in Europe. Its most recent success has been in the US, but 'anti-gender' lobbies have been trying to impose their agenda on Europe for decades. A study puts the economic power behind this group at 707 million dollars, in which the Spaniards Ignacio Arsuaga (HazteOir) and Jaime Mayor Oreja (Wiki) stand out as references’. Gulp! More at elDiario.es here along with a graphic showing all the main anti-abortion and LGTBI groups in Europe.

Spain has a poor reputation for looking out for its pets, with over 280,000 abandoned to their luck in 2021 says Ahora León here.

A map of the train routes which will be free from September is at El Confidencial here.

From Atlas Obscura here (in English): ‘About 150 peculiar mid-century buildings stand in various states of disrepair on the stunning Asturian coast in Northern Spain. The structures are contained in a fenceless 50-acre area that opens to three beaches separated by jagged green cliffs. It’s what remains of Perlora Ciudad de Vacaciones (translation: Vacation City), a holiday resort built by the Francoist regime so workers around Spain could enjoy subsidized holidays by the sea…’

Archaeologists have demonstrated that the tsunami which took out Cádiz in the 3rd century, also destroyed Seville (Hispalis) says 20Minutos here.

An interesting thread at Reddit here about how tourism has reached – and passed – the limits on the Canary Islands. This comes from the project for a Formula One racing circuit for Tenerife (more at the Canarian Weekly here).

The Guardian has a ‘How to stay cool like the Spaniards’ article here.

Rolling my arrsss at Spanish Shilling here.

See Spain:

How large does one need to be to be a city? Frías (Burgos) manages it at just 275 inhabitants. elDiario.es says it’s worth a visit to this tiny ‘city’ (so labelled back in 1435 by Juan II de Castilla). ‘Its historical importance, its strategic location and its respectful state of conservation mean that today its cobbled streets, its hanging houses, its city walls and what remains of its castle shape one of the most picturesque, prettiest and most striking municipalities in the province of Burgos’. Frías is also on the list of the most beautiful pueblos of Spain here.

Finally:

A poem written by José Agustín Goytisolo for his young daughter Julia (or maybe his mother Julia, killed in a bombing raid in Barcelona in 1938 by the Italian air-force) became a song for the resistance in South America against the right-wing governments of the last fifty years says ArquiArte. The article brings us a dozen versions of this poem (song) and maybe this one, from Reina Roja, is the best (YouTube: Palabras Para Julia 2015).

¿Te ha parecido interesante esta noticia?    Si (19)    No(0)

+
0 comentarios
Portada | Hemeroteca | Índice temático | Sitemap News | Búsquedas | [ RSS - XML ] | Política de privacidad y cookies | Aviso Legal
EURO MUNDO GLOBAL
C/ Piedras Vivas, 1 Bajo, 28692.Villafranca del Castillo, Madrid - España :: Tlf. 91 815 46 69 Contacto
EMGCibeles.net, Soluciones Web, Gestor de Contenidos, Especializados en medios de comunicación.EditMaker 7.8