Editorial:
Spain is in mourning this week with an outpouring of emotion following the death of Adolfo Suárez, Spain's 'first' president after Franco (in fact, the somewhat forgotten Carlos Arias Navarro was the president during the 'transition'). Suarez later won a general election in 1977 and, following an opinion poll by the CIS which gave him an approval rating of just 4.9 (out of 10), he resigned in January 1981. He is credited today as bringing Spain out from under the shadow of Francoism and legalising several (completely respectable) political parties, including the PSOE! As El Diario notes by way of comparison, Mariano Rajoy currently scores just 2.4 from the latest poll (Oct 2013) from the CIS. The socialist leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba gets 3.1, Caro Lara over at the Izquierda Unida 3.8 and the UPD leader Rosa Diez (who's star is currently falling) 4.2. No word of any resignations among our current party leaders...
The Government has now decreed that the Madrid Barajas airport is now to be called 'Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez, Madrid-Barajas'.
Housing:
'Some 21.4% of all residential property purchased in Spain in 2013 was by foreign buyers, according to statistics released this week by the council of Notaries. In total, 55,187 homes were purchased last year by foreigners, representing a 9.8% increase on the figure from 2012. The Valencia region has seen the biggest increase in the number of foreign buyers, with 16.9&, followed by the Canary Islands with 15.7%, Andalucía with 15,6 %, Murcia at 15,2 % and Cataluña with 7,7 %...'. From The Leader. The largest increase in home-buying in Spain, by nationality, apparently comes from the Colombians.
An interesting article leading an Eye on Spain forum on how property prices could still fall a lot further: '...After five years of double-dip recession, Spain’s economy seems to have stopped sinking. But the recovery will be a prolonged one. Despite having fallen almost 40 percent since the housing bubble burst in late 2007, home prices in the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy are expected to drop by another 10 percent to 15 percent before they stabilize. “Recovery in the housing sector in Spain hinges on an improvement in employment and access to credit, both of which are prey to uncertainty,” Souheir Asba, an analyst at Société Générale, said in a note...'.
More than 50,000 houses in Málaga are still waiting to be regularised two years after the introduction of the regularisation decree, according to an article in the Diario Sur: 'Although everyone, both the municipalities and those affected, hoped that the 'Decree 2/2012' of the Junta de Andalucía would regulate the existing buildings and settlements, in the hope that this would solve all of their problems, the reality has been very different...'. Since then, nothing... In fact, it's the usual case of pragmatists on one side and ecologists on the other, struggling over their different visions of a vibrant community or an impoverished land of milk and honey. The same newspaper, in a second article, notes that local PSOE mayors in Málaga have asked María Jesús Serrano, the Junta's Secretary for Planning and the Environment, for some answers.
'The developers of four golf courses that were awarded the Andalucía Declaration of Tourist Interest (Declaración de Interés Turístico), in order to build residential areas around the courses, were given the title despite not complying with regulations. Since then, it has been decided that the building of the courses will not be able to continue. This unusual U-turn has come about due to a delay in the Junta’s handling of each case.
The second-in-command of Andalucía’s tourism department, Antonio Jesús Roldán, told SUR that the courses La Resinera Village (Benahavís), El Comendador Golf (Alhaurín de la Torre), Golf Resort Las Lomas (Casarabonela) and Finca Corvite (Almogía) were declared sites of Tourist Interest thanks to the silence procedure (this occurs when a legal application is not responded to and, therefore, automatically approved). However, the Junta has begun work to revoke the Tourist Interest Declaration...'. Another pretty fine mess... story at the Sur in English.
Tourism:
'The EU has voted to exclude Gibraltar from draft EU aviation legislation. MEPs have voted to exclude the Rock from the Single European Sky legislation, which is designed to harmonise air traffic control around Europe. As a result, Gibraltar will have no say in safety and regulation measures designed to make Europe’s airlines more competitive, share airspace and reduce pollution. It might also mean that there could be complications for flights coming in to Gibraltar if they need to liaise with Sevilla’s air traffic control...'. From The Olive Press. (With a truly massive number of readers' comments to suit all tastes).
Finance:
An analysis of foreign direct investment in Spain in the Real Instituto Elcano. The preamble reads: 'Gross foreign direct investment (FDI) increased 8.8% in 2013 to €15.8 billion and net investment after deducting divestments was 36.3% higher at €11.9 billion. Both figures exclude special purpose entities (SPEs) and hence are productive investment. FDI has long played an important role in the economy, and investment opportunities are growing'. By William Chislett.
'Over 600,000 Spanish citizens have left Spain since the country's economic crisis began give years ago, new government figures show. The numbers from Spain's national statistic institute also show Spain's foreign population shot up 6 percent in 2013. This means there were 2, 058,048 Spaniards living overseas on January 1st 2014, or 126,000 more than on the same date a year earlier...'. From The Local.
'Amancio Ortega already the world’s fourth-richest person based on the success of his Zara fashion retail stores, has quietly amassed a real estate empire worth as much as $10 billion and is emerging as a formidable competitor for prime properties from London to Beverly Hills. Relying on all-cash offers, he has outbid the world’s biggest institutional funds and professional property investors, such as Tishman Speyer Properties LP. …
...In the past four months alone, Ortega has spent almost $1 billion purchasing properties in Manhattan’s meatpacking district, London’s West End, Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive and Barcelona’s main shopping drag, Passeig de Gracia. He recently paid one of the highest prices per square foot ever for a London office building...'. Story at Bloomberg. Ortega is the third richest man in the world according to Forbes latest billionaire ranking.
Tax:
Cinco Días notes that Hacienda now insists that all tax returns must be done online. No more declarations done with a calculator and a ball-point pen, says the newspaper. Contributors may, on request, get a funcionario at the Tax Agency to help out...
From the Telegraph: 'Many of the five million Britons living and working overseas may have missed the announcement in the Budget last week that personal allowances for non-residents are set to be reviewed... ...Any ex-pat who derives an income from UK property or a pension, but is not resident in the UK for tax purposes, could be affected. Tax experts believe the personal allowance will still be made available to Britons living in the EU, but other countries could face changes. These include destinations such as the US and Australia which are popular with British ex-pats...'.
Politics:
'Why is the Spanish Government slashing support for its booming solar industry? And what is the mysterious 'sun tax' we keep hearing about? The Local spoke to José Donoso, the head of Spain's solar lobby group UNEF, to get the low-down.
Several years ago, Spain was considered a world leader in solar power, with the government pumping money into the sector. In the last two years, however, that has all changed, and the many thousands of people and businesses who invested in the industry are facing rising debts...'. An interesting and powerful interview with The Local.
A large yet somewhat 'unreported' protest rocked Madrid last Saturday. Here's El País in English with a rather confused take on the event: 'Eight “Dignity Marches” converged in the capital on Saturday. Around 2,000 people had walked from their home regions to Madrid, where they were joined by tens of thousands more supporters for a mass demonstration. The organizers of the protest estimated that a total of two million people took to the streets to voice their opposition to cuts to social spending, while the government delegation in Madrid put the number at 50,000 at 9pm on Saturday night, later reducing that figure to 36,000...'. Hostile anti-police and anti-Government videos from 'La Marcha de la Dignidad' as offered by Público here.
The BBC noted the violence at the huge protest in Madrid this past Saturday from an on-site reporter: 'Violence has broken out at the end of an anti-austerity protest attended by tens of thousands of people in the Spanish capital Madrid. Dozens of youths threw projectiles at police, who responded by charging at them. Demonstrators were protesting over issues including unemployment, poverty and official corruption. They want the government not to pay its international debts and do more to improve health and education...'.
The radical American site Truthout runs an interesting article called 'The Disastrous Labour and Social Reforms in Spain'. A taste: '...Besides the growth of unemployment, another consequence of the reform has been a rapid deterioration of the working conditions. Precarious work (titled by the labor unions as “shit work”) has been increasing very rapidly. Actually, most of the new jobs belong to this category. Ninety-two percent of new contracts have been temporary jobs, with only 8% as fixed contracts. Another result of the reforms has been the lengthening of the period of unemployment. Six out of every ten unemployed persons have been out of a job for more than a year, an authentic tragedy. Again, another record in the unemployment league (side by side with Greece)...'.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winner Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has asked the Spanish Government for the liberation of the political prisoner Arnaldo Ortegi, erstwhile leader of the Herri Batasuna (the political wing of ETA), jailed since 2009. Story at El Diario.
Adolfo Suarez:
El País in English has an article on the passing of perhaps Spain's greatest president in modern times: - 'He reached power undemocratically, by royal designation, on July 3, 1976. By the time he stepped down on January 29, 1981, after two successful elections and one traumatic resignation, democracy was fully functional. Adolfo Suárez (1932-2014), the man who guided his country out of the shadows of Franco’s regime and into the light of freedom, built this democracy on the foundations of sweeping legal reforms and great cross-party consensus. They were 1,670 days that changed Spain...'.
Courts
'Spain's Constitutional Court on Tuesday partially struck down a sovereignty claim approved by lawmakers last year in the northern region of Catalonia, a vital step toward a referendum on full independence, court papers showed. In January 2013, Catalonia's regional parliament unanimously adopted a declaration of self-determination saying the people had the right to vote on breaking away from the rest of Spain...'. From Reuters. The Catalonians will nevertheless go ahead with their referendum scheduled for November 9th.
Anyone who is still in any doubt about the duplicity of the Spanish political/legal system will be surprised to read that the lunatic 22 storey hotel outside Carboneras, the Algarrobico, is in fact and after all, er, legal. The Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Andalucía has ruled that the land on which the hotel is standing (despite being in a natural park and on the beach) 'is urbanisable', and was zoned as such in the 1994 plan for the Cabo de Gata in its Plan de Ordenación de Recursos Naturales (with its rather appropriate acronym PORN). More court decisions must nevertheless follow before the owners can hang out the welcome mat. The mayor of Carboneras says he is relieved and he regrets the eight lost years of court-cases. This ruling will presumably also green-light the accompanying shops, bars, golf course and 250 holiday homes originally planned for the resort. One can't help but wonder what Helen and Len Prior living in the ruins of their house over in Vera must be thinking as they digest this news.
'Last Tuesday, a Court sat to decide the closure of a website that the Ministry of Culture had declared to be illegal. The blocking of the website goear.com, with holds some 4,000,000 audio files of various types, was in the event denied by the Court. The request of the 'Sinde-Wert Commission', had it been approved, would have meant blocking thousands of audio-clips distributed by political parties, online radios, associations and NGOs. It would have also meant the withdrawal of the music of more than 50,000 artists from around the world who use Goear for the dissemination of their own work...'. From El Diario.
Various:
An article on Spanish media 'start-ups' of Internet news-sites and small-press ventures in The Guardian: '...Nearly 40 years after the country's transition to democracy, there have been more than 300 journalism start-ups. Staffed by a mix of veteran journalists laid off during the economic crisis and young journalists trying to gain a foothold in an industry where few are hiring, the start-ups tout themselves as willing to ask the questions that traditional Spanish media will not...'. (As a comment following the article says: 'The blatant corruption of the current government in Spain goes under-reported in the mainstream media, and as the article quite rightly points out, many people, particularly the younger generations, are turning to the internet to get their information').
BlaBlaCar will soon be making a small charge for passengers. The French company, which puts potential passengers together with drivers to help share the petrol, will be making a charge of 10% of those same petrol costs (presumably as estimated), together with the corresponding IVA. Five million passengers used the service in Spain last year.
Horrible television, heh? A report in The Local says that '580,000 Spanish kids glued to TV after bedtime. Experts say TV networks are deliberately airing children's favourite TV shows until as late as 1.30 in the morning in a bid to increase ratings...'.
What happens to these sub-Saharans who successfully manage to gain Spanish territory, whether in Melilla or Ceuta or on the mainland? Most of them are able to stay, says an interesting article on the law-blog ¿Hay Derecho?
A useful web-page for foreign residents and visitors is called 'How To... In Spain'.
According to a piece in Murcia Today, all foreign-plated vehicles held by foreign residents or businesses must be properly imported into Spain and transferred to Spanish plates after a month!
Finally:
Here's Raimon singing 'Al Vent' (a popular 1963 protest song) in Valenciano (or Catalán according to Wiki).
Si (
No(
