Essay:
A waiter once approached me in a club in Washington DC and held out a $100 dollar bill. ‘Your father’, he said, ‘gave me this as a tip’. My father was, you see, a bit worse for the weather after a few glasses of bourbon (and after all, all dollar bills look the same). I snatched the hundred dollars from the honest server and gave him a five-dollar bill instead.
Let that be a lesson for him.
Tipping in the USA is necessary because the wait-staff only get as little as $2.13 an hour (a preposterous amount, and apparently frozen since 1991) and they must make up the rest of their take-home earnings with gratuities. These are generally accepted as running at 15 to 20%. Even the credit card receipt asks you how much to add. Everyone over there seems happy enough to pay this.
In Spain, where we foreigners often wonder about the intricacies of tipping, the rules are different. To start with, the staff should be getting 10€ an hour from the owner, plus social security and time off for the odd smoke around the back. Many of the employees evidently are listed by the employer as part-time even if they’re not. Since tipping is a voluntary act rather than an institution, we sometimes do, and then again, we sometimes don’t.
After all, apart from taking a photo of us on our smartphone, a waiter's main job is to stop us going into the kitchen and getting our own plate of chicken and rice off the cook.
The cheaper places don’t seem to show much interest since they’ll pass you the change from their hand to yours along with a friendly hasta la próxima – see you soon. Others, a bit more on the ball, will return your change on a small saucer. You are left with the options of either leaving it bare as you get up to go or else decorated with a bit of calderilla – pocket change. It’s never going to be more than five per cent or so.
No wait, I’m being told by an upmarket Spanish magazine that one should leave ten per cent, unless they’ve already added a service-charge to the bill. Fancy places huh!
Of course, some waiters make a decent amount of cash on the side – and no doubt neglect to declare it to the tax-man.
An article at Wiki regarding tipping in Spain says that ‘In 2007 the Minister of Economy, Pedro Solbes, blamed excessive tipping for the increase in the inflation rate’. Quite a claim!
But let us drop into a bar in Madrid for a beer and a sardine. There, a new campaign has been launched by the conservative regional leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso, to encourage tipping – as (we read), she doesn’t want to raise the minimum wage. There’s a TV campaign to encourage the practice – a few extra coins could help the waitress pay for piano lessons for Elenita, or maybe English classes for Roberto… This remarkable commercial, called #YoDejoPropina, can be found at YouTube.
Useful if you mistakenly leave them a hundred euros…
Housing:
El Salto Diario here: ‘Squatters: the most profitable lie from the alarm companies. The advertising campaigns by the security companies promote the fear that okupas will take over your house so as to offer the solution: the installation of their alarms’. Sales of alarm systems have doubled in Spain in the last seven years – that’s around three million installations. Aggressive telephone sales also help the business expand says the article.
From El Español here: ‘Meet Zome, the cheap and ultra-resistant mini-house that can be installed in less than three days and will last for five hundred years. This house is prefabricated with materials to resist water, snow and fire and its price is below 33,000 euros’.
Tourism:
The threatened strike by members of the CCOO union that would have affected Spain’s airports over the Christmas period has been called off says The Leader here. However, other announced air-strikes still remain in place, says El Mundo, with a full list of strike-days at Air Nostrum, Ryanair and Vueling.
From lamoncloa.gob.es: ‘Pedro Sánchez inaugurates, together with King Felipe VI, the Madrid-Murcia High Speed Railway Line. President Pedro Sánchez has affirmed that the launch of this line represents "the value of useful politics, which sews territories together, to continue contributing to Spain's progress", and has strengthened the commitment of the Executive to take the high-speed train to the whole of Spain’. Almería next?
Finance:
Spanish Property Insight brings us ‘Will you be paying wealth tax in Spain in 2023? A new wealth-tax in Spain is on the cards in 2023 when the so-called ‘Solidarity Tax’ comes into play. It’s designed to raise additional revenue and synchronise wealth tax across Spanish regions by levying tax on assets owned by high-net-worth individuals’.
Six months of ‘the Iberian exception’: Maldita says that the electricity bill has been reduced by the tactic with an estimated average of 15.75% economy since June 15th. With graphics.
Politics:
There’s now a war going on in the Cortes. As someone said last week – ‘you tried it with the tricornios (a reference to the Guardia Civil Tejero’s attempted coup in 1981) now you are trying again with togas (the Constitutional Court’s favoured accoutrement)’. This time, though, things are going better for those nostalgic for the Old Order. A vote last week in the Cortes had agreed to (finally) switch two judges out of the Constitutional Court for two fresh ones, thus breaking the four-year-overdue control on that body by the conservatives. The Senate would ratify the vote today, Thursday. But the Constitutional Court – in an unprecedented move – has ordered the Senate not to vote on this issue. El País calls it ‘El Pleno de Sabotaje’, saying ‘The conservative majority of the Constitutional Court (TC) places Spain before an unprecedented interference in the legislative power’. The judges refuse to be properly and constitutionally (!) sacked. From Europa Press here: ‘The PSOE censors that the judges Trevijano and Narváez (the two due to be removed) vote to reject their own challenge in the TC’. El Huff Post here: ‘Sánchez asks the public for "serenity" and promises to put an end to the blockade of the Judiciary. He blames the PP for this institutional crisis by trying to retain "a power that citizens have not endorsed at the polls"’ (with video). The Guardian says here: ‘Spanish judges block draft legislation that would affect their own court. Claims of ‘a coup against democracy’ as conservative judges freeze passage of government measures’. For some balance, here’s the opinion of El Mundo: ‘The decision of the Constitutional Court to suspend the express judicial reform of the Government that the Senate was going to approve in its plenary session this Thursday is proof that the rule of law prevails. The Executive has tightened the strings to the extreme, but the TC has acted in accordance with the law and its powers…’. Politico says ‘…The court ruling does not affect other changes that Congress approved as part of the penal code reform. They include the elimination of the crime of sedition and reductions of sanctions for misuse of public funds in certain cases. The opposition has accused the government of pandering to Catalan nationalists with both changes’. (Odd that the PP didn’t try and stop this part of the reform while they were at it).
The Spanish parliament is elected democratically; the Constitutional Court, not so much. As Baltasar Garzón noted last summer: “It is clear that Justice is being used in Spain to bring about the fall of a president”.
In another triumph for the Partido Popular, La Vanguardia reports on the latest from 'The Bárcenas Papers Inquiry' to say that ‘The investigation into the supposed ‘black’ donations to the PP has been archived. Judge Santiago Pedraz considers that it is "unproven" that there were donations from businessmen to the party in exchange for the award of public works back in the years of President Aznar’. Here is the head of the Gürtel Case in court in Valencia back in October 2015: ‘Francisco Correa confesses that he collected 3% on behalf of Luis Bárcenas and the PP’ in exchange, he said, for ‘awarding works to businessmen in exchange for them paying a percentage’. Correa later retracted for some reason.
An indignant deputy, Jacinto Morano UP, ‘destroys the PP (the self-appointed owners of Spain)’ in this speech on YouTube.
Looking up BoT for last Christmas 2021, the big news was the impending departure of Pablo Casado (he gamely hung on until April 2nd) and his probable replacement with Isabel Díaz Ayuso (in the end, they went with Feijóo). Divinity asks ‘Whatever happened to Pablo Casado’ here, and answering its own question, the article claims that Casado is now working in high finance and living in the USA.
El Plural says in an opinion piece that Feijóo is feeling a bit overwhelmed, and that ‘The president of the PP is moving closer every day to the positions of Ayuso and the extreme right’.
Feijóo speaking in Valencia last week as reported by El Español here: "There is a theft of the democratic socialist vote in Spain", says the leader of the PP, adding that "we are here to tell the genuine socialist supporters to come and join us; of course we don’t want the incurable sanchistas, but there are many socialists who believe in the Spanish Constitution."
‘Congress approves abortion law reform. With 190 votes in favour, 154 against and 5 abstentions, the text leaves the lower house to be sent to the Senate’ says El País here.
The ECD says that the Government will take a 12-day break after the last Council of Ministers of the year to be held on December 27.
Andalucía:
El Mundo says that the latest opinion poll in Andalucía shows the PSOE-A in free-fall, with some 22 or 23 councillors (they scored 30 in last summer’s regional elections). The PP (56 – 58) and Vox (13 or 14) both stand pretty much as they were last summer and the Por Andalucía (Podemos/IU/Más País) would grow (with the lost PSOE-A votes) to around 12 councillors (they currently have 5).
‘The Andalusian government plans to boost the mining sector. A Junta committee has been set up to promote different projects and investments in the industry and make it a driving force for development in the region’. Item from Sur in English here.
Europe:
From The Guardian here: ‘A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across Western Europe’. The article says of Spain: ‘In Spain, the health ministry announced in May that more than 700,000 people were waiting for surgery, and 5,000 frontline GPs and paediatricians in Madrid have been on strike for nearly a month in protest at years of underfunding and overwork…’
Health:
‘Only thirteen species of Mediterranean fish have levels of mercury suitable for consumption. Some more and others less, yet rare is the fish and shellfish that is saved from this metal which is highly toxic for humans’. Mercury comes largely from burning coal says Público here, adding ‘Salpa or salema, lampuga, galán or pez peine, picarel, sardina, bacaladilla, corvina parda, boquerón, besugo, dorada, calamar, serrano and salmonete de roca are the least loaded; and the most are atún rojo, pez espada and marrajo’.
Media:
Opinion from VozPópuli here: ‘The Madrid Press Association published its annual report on the situation of the journalistic profession a few days ago and one piece of information drew attention over all the others, and that is that 82% of those who practice this profession consider that society has a negative opinion of them. Four years ago, that percentage was 76%. Don't tell my mother I work in a newsroom. Tell her I'm a pianist in a brothel…’. The article says that, since are so many news-outlets these days, and so little advertising revenue to go round, the answer is often to make noise, lots of noise… Bulos, anyone?
The far-right TV news channel 7NN ‘wants to be the Spanish Fox News’. It has some interesting people involved and plenty of funding, needless to say.
Ecology:
Nòs Diario says that eucalyptus plantations have increased exponentially in the last 50 years in Galicia. While in 1973 they occupied 131,000 hectares, by 2012 they were close to 500,000 hectares, exceeding the area occupied by native growth, which at that time the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food estimated at 400,000 hectares. Almost 32% of all eucalypts in Europe can be found in Galicia.
Various:
My voting permission arrived in the mail. Britons who could vote in previous local elections now can again (May 28th) if they re-register to do so. The rules (in English) are here. The non-EU countries with suffrage agreements with Spain are Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Ecuador, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and the United Kingdom.
From El País in English here: ‘The dark side of renting in Madrid: Four Latin American families pay €2,500 a month to stay in a 40-metre basement. 20 people, including two little girls and two babies, reside in a windowless, unheated cellar with only one bathroom for everyone’.
‘A BP subsidiary plans to drill the first pure hydrogen reserve in Europe in Huesca. The Helios Aragón firm will invest 900 million euros to obtain both hydrogen in its purest form and helium from two reserves in Monzón and Barbastro’. El Periódico de la Energía has the story.
The Spanish engineer who created a motor that ran on water (hydrogen) back in 1971 – a half a century ahead of its time? Video and article at DiarioMotor here. Wiki has a poor review of the invention here.
A tragic title from The Local here: ‘More than 11,200 migrants have died trying to reach Spain in the past five years, equating to a daily average of six people’.
As we saw last week, the centre of towns and cities over 50,000 inhabitants will be closed to high-polluting cars from January. Sort of, anyway. As Diario de Almería says (showing its map of the theoretically off-limit ZBE city centre), the spokesperson for City Hall insists that absolutely nothing will change since, ‘we don’t suffer from contamination’. Which, in a nutshell, is why we like Spain.
Artificial Intelligence gets a bad rap for anything it might produce as art. However here at Behance is a page of AI designs inspired by Gaudi / Catalan Modernisme architecture.
One of the greatest short films of the RTVE is La Cabina from 1972. See it here. (Things got so bad following this film, that the actor – José Luis López Vázquez – was hired by the telephone company to make an advert of him safely entering and leaving a telephone box to calm the public.)
See Spain:
Spain’s Most Beautiful Villages stand at 106 (something a bit arbitrary, but still). From January 1st, another six join the flock: Durro, Arties and Garòs (all in Lérida), Castrojeriz (Burgos), El Burgo de Osma (Soria), and Trevélez (Granada).
The Olive Press brings us a review: ‘Living amongst Roman remains in Córdoba’. Owners of a five-star hotel built in a sixteenth century palace called Hospes Palacio del Bailio recently found the remains of a Roman villa in their next-door basement while working on expansion plans. They have successfully fused the discovery into their hotel along with an underground spa and a fine restaurant called Arbequina (here). Córdoba is always worth a visit anyway – it’s a beautiful and well-preserved city.
Finally:
Steeleye Span brings us the Latin carol Gaudete, Christus est Natus, in heavily-accented English here on YouTube. I wonder, do I sound like that when I speak Spanish?
Si (
No(
