Editorial:
Europe, a United Europe, should be a place where we who live there all have the same rights. A strong Europe is not about the trade or the money or the interest payments, it has to be about the people. All of us who live in Europe must expect the same treatment, including those of us Europeans who live in another part of Europe (twenty million Europeans liveoutside of their country of origin within the EU). Europe should be a place of freedom and unity, peopled by ‘citizens’ and not by ‘subjects’. On Sunday, Greece voted ‘no’. By which they mean, they voted ‘yes’ for Europe: not for the bankers but for the people. If this works, we may have a better and fairer and a more united Europe: which must be a good thing.
Housing:
‘Blackstone Group LP is seeking to restructure some of the 6.4 billion euros of Spanish home loans it bought at a discount to help borrowers meet repayments, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The world’s largest private equity firm is offering to cut outstanding debt or allow homeowners to hand back the keys and walk away from loans, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Blackstone holds the mortgages of 40,000 homeowners in Spain after buying the debt for 3.6 billion euros from struggling savings bank CatalunyaCaixa...’. From Bloomberg.
The ecologist Rafael Yus bitterly writes in Diario Costa del Sol about the ‘urban delinquents and offenders’ who have successfully championed ‘a total amnesty for the 300,000 illegal homes across Andalucía’. From BoT: we say ‘Well done, the AUAN, the FIPE, the property lawyer Gerardo Vásquez, the Prior family and others’. The Round Town News celebrates here: ‘Property rights campaigners are celebrating victory in a “titanic struggle” that guarantees home owners are paid compensation before an illegal home can be bulldozed. An amendment before the Senate in Madrid was passed almost unanimously – 200 votes against one – insuring the authorities must compensate before demolition. The vote in the upper house comes three months after the Senate approved a similar change to the criminal code. Taken together, people buying an illegal home in good faith or where planning permission was later revoked will be protected...’. A video shows the AUAN and the PSOE in a joint statement over the same agreement held in Seville here, including the comment that ‘we can now say to foreign investors, come to this country and buy your houses, knowing that you will be protected and welcomed’.
Articles in the Spanish press last week claimed that Torrevieja had the lowest income per capita in Spain. This has now been revised after it was pointed out that the staggering number of foreigners who have made their home there pay their taxes and thus their declaration of wealth abroad. So, a simple math trick gave (as often happens with the INE and other holders of the Truth) completely erroneous information (see foot of this article in El País).
Tourism:
‘Thousands of British families are facing summer holiday chaos after easyJet cabin crew threatened to strike over pay. The airline’s flight attendants earn about £25,000 a year, but the union Unite says this is not enough and warned that its members could walk out unless they get a ‘decent pay rise’. If the strike goes ahead, it would be the first in the airline’s history...’. From The Mail.
‘The city of Barcelona will not grant a single license for new tourist accommodation in the next 12 months, Mayor Ada Colau announced on Thursday morning. The move affects hotels, hostels, B&Bs, rental homes and all other businesses that offer beds for visitors to the city...’. From El País in English. ‘But why would anyone in their right mind wish to limit tourism? For Venice!’ – an opinion piece in Magnet says that you can have too many tourists, as Barcelona (population two million) has 7.5 million tourists each year. A video called ‘Bye Bye Barcelona’ makes the same point here.
Finance:
‘Spain's conservative government has raised its economic growth forecast for this year to 3.3 percent and to 3 percent in 2016, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said on Thursday (last week). The Government, which is facing a year-end general election, had earlier this year hiked its economic growth forecast to 2.9 percent for 2015 and 2016...’. From The Local.
From El País in English: ‘The number of registered unemployed in Spain fell in June by 94,727 people. The month ended with a little over 4.1 million out of a job. Meanwhile, Social Security affiliations – a measure of job creation – grew by an average of 35,085 applicants, according to Labour Ministry figures. This brings the total number of contributors to the national welfare system up to 17.25 million, back above the 17.22 million affiliations when Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy took office in December 2011...’. The news was less positive at least in Almería, where unemployment actually went up and now stands at 38.4%, despite the buoyant tourism there. (Editorial from The Entertainer Online here).
The FROB (Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring in English - Wiki) admits that it has written off as lost the 12,050 million euros injected by the Tax Payer into the Catalunya Caixa. Story at El Confidencial. The same site notes that banks owe the considerable sum of 445 million euros to the many ‘comunidades de vecinos’ across Spain – 24% of the entire debt owed to multi-owned properties accounts.
Politics:
Illegal financing goes back to the first days of the Partido Popular. As El País in English reports: ‘Former Popular Party (PP) treasurer Luis Bárcenas, who faces a string of money-laundering, tax-evasion and corruption charges, told the High Court on Thursday (last week) that the party had used illegal financing methods ever since it was first formed, under the name of the Popular Alliance (AP)...’.
‘Mariano Rajoy’s promises are not enough to guarantee a position of strength before the next General Election. The Prime Minister needs good news and success to reach these elections with some damage control after the drain of votes suffered by his party in the recent polls. This is the reason that has led him to announce by surprise a relief in taxes which was in principle planned for next year. This is the first chapter in a campaign that's unveils with the reduction of personal income tax IRPF as the first step in wooing the voters...’. El Diario dismisses the announcement of relief on the IRPF as an election ploy. Expansion has the details of the new rates (from July 1st) here.
‘Los indignados in power: Left-wing parties are taking over cities.’. ‘...City halls will provide a first taste of how Podemos, which is just 18 months old, handles power. It may get a lot more of it in parliamentary elections this autumn. Current polls show the governing conservative Popular Party losing power to the Socialist Party. The Socialists would then have to form a minority government heavily dependent on Podemos...’. An article found at The Economist.
The PP is worried that a European agreement with Greece might give extra strength to Podemos in Spain. The story at El Diario.
Concerned as to how they might vote perhaps (they tend towards the Left), Cuartopoder reveals that the Government has no plans to ease the difficulties for the 1.9 million Spaniards living abroad over voting issues: ‘...Of the almost two million Spaniards with voting rights and living outside our frontiers, only 80,000 voted in the European elections last year and just about 100,000 in the autonomous and municipal elections of May...’.
The Government is accelerating its new lease agreement with the Americans at the military base outside Morón de la Frontera, Seville, before the General Elections for fear that Podemos might arrive into power and halt the proceedings, says El Boletín.
Doublespeak – how to manipulate one’s readers. An interesting article at El Salmón Contracorriente explains the Orwellian use of double-speak in the media in an article called ‘Eight strategies from the Media to avoid the use of the term ‘capitalism’.
Spain’s El Mundo was long a newspaper of reference, until the Government managed to have the director Pedro J. Ramírez sacked. Now, it’s a sometimes silly weapon of the Establishment. See this politicised and unrestrained story if you don’t agree: The new director of communication for the Town Hall of Barcelona, Águeda Bañón, pissing in the street. With photo (sigh!). ‘Pedro Jota’, meanwhile, is starting up his new web-news service, El Español, in October. It is already posting some news analysis here.
A larger article in La Opinion de Málaga returns with more about the new mayor of Alcaucín. Three times, the paper relishes in the mayor, Belgian ex-pat Mario Blancke, identifying himself as ‘un guiri’ (a generally rude local word for a foreign resident).
Corruption:
The Fraud-police (UDEF) have arrested thirteen directives of the Junta de Andalucía for granting a licence to re-open the Aznalcóllar mine in Seville province following irregularities in the adjudication. Story here.
Problems over at La Alhambra in Granada following accusations ofmisappropriation of public money, prevarication and money laundering by the director: ‘...In a brief appearance before the press this morning María del Mar Villafranca took no questions but announced she had sent her resignation to the Andalucía Culture Councillor, Rosa Aguilar, and said time and justice would demonstrate her ‘upright behaviour’. After 11 years in the job, Villafranca resigned in defence of her ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’ after a meditated and sincere reflection, and to avoid the social image of the Nazari monument being affected...’. The story at Typically Spanish.
Greece:
Daniel Hannan, the far-right pro-‘Brexit’ Tory, is pleased that Greece voted ‘no’, but, perhaps his reasoning is wrong. Greece won’t leave the euro as he states. But, here he makes the point that ‘...the last thing Eurocrats want is for Greece to prosper with its own currency, for this would encourage other euro-zone states to follow its example. Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, Italy, even France might shake off the monetary union that has done them such harm. Spain, in particular, has its own version of Syriza, the far-Left Podemos movement, which triumphed at the recent local elections. While Greece accounts for less than two per cent of the euro-zone’s economy, Spain is its fourth-largest member. A Grexit can be managed as a controlled explosion; but a Spanish exit would blow the entire monetary union to sparks and cinders...’. Excerpt from The Daily Mail.
The vice-secretary for information at the Partido Popular is Pablo Casado, who has been in the news for apparently fabricating stories (he says he read about this in the ABC) about the abrupt rise in crime in Greece thanks to the current situation there. The Greek Ministry of the Interior has made the appropriate complaints. Story at El Plural. Headline at Reuters: ‘For Spain, Greek risk is political, not economic’. ‘Why Spain is not like Greece - and why it is’. Headline at The Local.
‘According to mainstream media, the current economic crisis in Greece is due to the government spending so much money on its people that it went broke. This claim however, is a lie. It was the banks that wrecked the country so oligarchs and international corporations could benefit...’. An explanation from Nation of Change. Over at Media-tics (a page that discusses the media), a similar claim: ‘Greece: the world’s most influential newspapers ally themselves to the Troika’ (en castellano). Letters anyone?
Various:
Viewing numbers over at TVE’s news programs have plummeted, as the effect of the Government’s control over content has become better known by the public. The lunchtime news from TVE now lies in third place behind Telecinco and Antena 3. ‘The Government’s strategy is to use the news service on the TV as part of its election marketing’ says an article at La Información.
Greenpeace features on their website an article called ‘Indignant about the Government’s ‘sun-tax’? It gets worse!’ The ecologists blame the Government’s policies as a partial cause for Global Warming (currently on everybody’s mind in Spain with the current heat-wave).
El País in English headline: ‘Spanish heat-wave to continue until mid-July, say weather experts. National Meteorological Agency warns Madrid will be “so hot it’s scary”’. Meanwhile, ‘A town in Valencia (Játiva) has recorded temperatures reaching nearly 46C (about 115 Fahrenheit) - the hottest Spanish temperature in three years, as the national weather office predicts the heat-wave will continue for at least another week...’ says The Local. Elsewhere, we read ‘...the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) reports the unusual thing is the duration which will continue until July 25, with temperatures climbing again next weekend....’. at Typically Spanish.
The first super-charger for Tesla electric cars is now operating in Spain: it’s located in Girona. They will need a few more before I buy one.
For some reason, the DGT likes to publish where it has radar traps. Find them here.
The President of the Prisa Group Juan Luis Cebrián (El País et al), says that come what may, his group will never charge for fair use of his media by news aggregators.
Italy has decided to buy cars made by SEAT for their police force, says El Mundo here.
Together with the removal of all Francoist street-names in Madrid (there are148 streets, 11 avenues, 20 squares, 3 monuments, 2 institutes, 2 schools, 2 parks y a garden – map here), we read, ‘Manuela Carmena, the new left-wing mayor of Madrid, has proposed changing the name of a Madrid square named after the Iron Lady. Madrid’s tribute to former conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is under threat, less than a year after its grand opening...’. Says The Local (Much to the annoyance of the local beat postman, we imagine).
Spain has 577 ‘Blue Flag’ beaches – one sixth of the world’s total supply. Story at Público.
Finally:
How to play the corneta! Fantastic!
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