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Weekly Report

Business over Tapas (Nbr. 432)

Business over Tapas (Nbr. 432)

  • 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

viernes 11 de febrero de 2022, 22:17h

11FEB22 – 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 Cortes duly voted on Thursday for the Labour Reform law, but things became very odd. The Government had expected the law to pass, and although the conservative PNV along with the ERC and Bildu had said they would vote against the law (two izquierda parties voting against labour reform (!) – but that’s politics), the Ciudadanos had agreed to support the measure. Thus, they had their ducks in a row. The vote was held, but then, to the concern of the authors of the reform (and no doubt, the millions of Spanish employees that the law aims to protect), two deputies from another minor party, the UPN, broke party discipline (they had reached an agreement with the PSOE some days before) and voted against the measure, leaving the Government one vote short. The measure had failed! The speaker of the house announced the result (cheers from Vox and PP, groans from PSOE and UP), when… but what is this? Excuse me ma’am, but one of the PP deputies appears to have pressed the wrong button and voted in favour. Chaos. The vote is passed! (Triumphant video here).

The disgruntled Pablo Casado now intends to take the inopportune result to the Constitutional Court. Good luck with that – although they later appeared to have found a decidedly colourful judge to help them look into the matter.

The UPN is now looking at the removal of their two duplicitous deputies… It further appears that the two politicians had held a long meeting with senior PP representatives that very same day, and it was clear to observers that the PP had expected the Government to lose the vote.

In short – (unexpected events aside) the PP and Vox were once again campaigning not only against workers’ rights but also against the 12,000 million euro disbursement from Brussels.

*The seat from the UP ex-deputy Alberto Rodríguez remains of course empty (as the party in the Canary Islands continues to campaign against his removal). Thus the Cortes numbers are one short – 349 voting deputies rather than 350.

*The involuntary new champion of the workers is a Partido Popular deputy who voted telemetrically from home called Alberto Casero.

*The PP and Vox had apparently agreed to call a motion of confidence against Pedro Sánchez if the vote had have gone the other way.

*On the campaign trail in Castilla y León, Pedro Sánchez said that the PP had tried to sabotage the Labour Reform act with transfugas (those who switch parties at an inopportune but generally rewarding moment) saying ‘Spain does not merit this Opposition’.

*The law, agreed by the Government, the unions and the CEOE employers association, brings reforms to worker protections, savaged in a 2012 vote. Its approval meets a commitment made by Pedro Sánchez’s government to the European Commission, enabling the euro-zone’s fourth-largest economy to collect its next instalment of EU pandemic recovery funds.

*From Antonio Maestre at La Sexta, a comic view of the Labour Reform Law vote begins with: ‘I’m writing this while I have to break off every sentence or two because my sides hurt too much from laughing…’.

Housing:

The new Ley de la Vivienda, when it becomes law, will bring a few changes says LaSexta – including a control on rent-increases in high-demand areas, and closing down the chance for vulture funds to buy public housing. More here.

From DigitalSevilla here: ‘CaixaBank, the American Blackstone (as ‘Testa Home’) and the Sareb control between them 4.4% of all rental homes in Spain. The trend indicates that these large owners will expand their portfolios even more, in detriment of the small landlords’.

When we move to the city in search of a better life… La Vanguardia reports that Madrid leads the way for internal migration, with a reported population increase of 70,000 in 2020. The article looks at the whole of Spain, with graphics and figures supplied by the INE. According to an article at El Confidencial here, the ‘recent great return to the pueblos from the cities… was just a myth’.

‘A crowd-funding company called Housers has decided to stand firm against any comment that qualifies it in any way as scammers, fraudsters or guilty of breaking any law or regulation. They promise to denounce any content "for attacking their honour", according to an internal statement consulted by La Información’. More here. From J Lorente here: ‘What is Housers?’ In essence, it appears to be a place to invest money in rental property.

The complex called Marina Isla Valdecañas must be completely demolished says the Superior Court of Justice in Extremadura as reported by Hoy here. The complex is a delightful looking urbanisation with a golf course built on an artificial island in Cáceres and it was launched in 2007. El Mundo in 2014 here: ‘The island that never should have existed’. The full monty is going to cost some 34 million euros – plus another 111 million in compensation to the frustrated property owners there. The company, unsurprisingly, is bankrupt: the regional junta will therefore have to stump up the costs. Thus, the ecologists finally won this battle, which began eleven years ago.

A useful piece from Spanish Property Insight here: ‘Five (big) things to think about before you buy property in Spain’. It begins, ‘Spain has a ton of things going for it and it’s easy to see why so many foreigners buy a home here every year (around 63,000 every year). Not least, the pleasant year-round climate, excellent communications, wallet-friendly lifestyle and the wide range of properties. But nowhere is perfect and Spain is certainly no exception. While the list of drawbacks doesn’t run long, it does contain a few downsides that are well worth thinking about before you take the plunge and make a major financial investment…’.

From ABC here: ‘Andalusia publishes the regulations of the new land law that allows the construction of isolated houses in the countryside’.

Tourism:

‘Spain extends Travel Restrictions, requires booster jabs for those vaccinated before May 2021’ says SchengenVisaInfo here.

From CaixaBank Research here: ‘Sustainability in tourism: make or break. One of the consequences of the Covid health crisis has been the increased awareness of the population and, by extension, that of politicians regarding the need to include sustainability criteria in economic policies in order to promote a more sustainable and resilient reactivation of the economy. The tourism industry is no stranger to these trends; firstly, because its business can be adversely affected by the consequences of climate change and, secondly, because there is ample scope for the industry to become more sustainable’. (Thanks to Colin).

Finance:

From Cinco Días we read that the Spanish banks earned (‘won’) themselves 20,000 million euros in 2021’. The highest earner as always was the Banco Santander.

Vodafone officially admits conversations to find an exit for its Spanish subsidiary. CEO Nick Read admits that they are holding negotiations in several quarters for the integration or sale of Vodafone España after another disappointing quarterly result says El País here. Meanwhile, Airtel has once again closed down (It once belonged to Vodafone, who let the ownership lapse in 2015).

From Onda Cero here: ‘The Ministry of Inclusion affirms that the Region of Murcia has lost out on the distribution of 109 million euros of European funds by not presenting any project for their consideration’. The regional president Fernando López Miras claims that Murcia was never offered this opportunity by Pedro Sánchez. The ministry disputers this – we sent them an official notification, says Madrid.

Politics:

‘Brussels has called on the PP to “stop messing around” regarding the distribution of European funds. Messages have been passed to Pablo Casado reproaching him for his continuing questioning of the EU's controls in the management of aid’. The story at ECD.

Opinion from the Cadena Ser here: ‘Pablo Casado, nervous and shaken, has become a caricature of himself. The dialogue of the leader of the PP is increasingly the fury of the extreme right and less the voice of a government party with the desire to recover the centre’.

El Huff Post says that the PP chiefs are turning their ire on Pablo Casado’s lieutenant, the party theoretician Teodoro García Egea.

After the, ah, chaos of the recent vote on labour reform, the original allies of the PSOE are now all agreed to support the next major votes on both homes and sexual rights (‘only yes means yes’) says VozPópuli here.

Right now, we are looking – in Castilla y León – at a modest collapse of the PP, which may even lose a few seats (to Vox). A poll from the apparently left-leaning CIS gives the key to the Sunday election to the España Vaciada parties says El Correo here. If the PP leader of the region, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, loses seats – or even his position – it will be down to Pablo Casado encouraging him, for party reasons, to have called for an early election. From elDiario.es (Monday) here: ‘The PP in free-fall – it’s lost six points regionally since the call for the elections’. I think that – following a poor result from Castilla y León – Pablo Casado will soon be dropped in favour of the vote-winning Isabel Díaz Ayuso (Wiki), who would move the PP further to the right, with the added attraction of pulling into the party a (I was going to say decent) number of Vox supporters.

Hazte Oír (a far-right religious pressure-group) has fallen out with the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, and they accuse him and his party of representing the ‘cowardly right’ in the Castilla y León elections says Público here. Evidently, the peculiar Hazte Oír folk wanted some written promises from the Vox leader regarding the usual claims and Abascal failed – perhaps understandably – to deliver.

Europe:

What happens if, as a visitor to the Schengen area, you are overtime with the 90/180 rule? Eurostat Statistics Explained here.

Brussels: There was no official reaction to the result of the vote in Congress that allowed the Government to carry out the new labour reform, the key so that Spain can soon request the disbursement of 12,000 million euros from the EU Recovery Fund, but Brussels and other European capitals followed its outcome with the same interest and stupefaction as did many Spaniards, including the final approval thanks to the unexpected vote in favour of the PP deputy Alberto Casero…’. More at La Vanguardia here.

What do the locals really think of digital nomads (an article centred on Madeira)?

Health:

At least 4,000 deaths attributable to Covid-19 occurred in Spain during January says elDiario.es here. *The latest weekly coronavirus figures are always on show here.

From Thursday, face-masks are no longer obligatory outside (except in concerts, protests, football matches or other tight places).

From ECD here: The autonomous regions will fire this month most of the 29,000 health-workers they hired for the sixth ‘omicron’ wave.

From El Huff Post here: ‘The reform to the Abortion Law includes distributing free feminine hygiene products in schools and institutes to help reduce "that gap that often generates a situation of menstrual poverty".

Courts:

How to make an online complaint against your employer/company to the Inspección de Trabajo – the work inspection at the Social Security.

Media:

Almost 40% of the readers of ECD (a right-wing news-site sometimes quoted here) think that Vox will win the Castilla y León elections.

Ecology:

Rainfall was down between October and January to just a quarter of usual levels, and the country is facing problems for the farmers this spring. From El Periódico de Extremadura we read that Spain’s largest reservoir, La Serena in Badajoz, is currently at 15% of capacity. Across Spain, says The Olive Press here, the reservoirs are standing at 44% of capacity. In Central Andalucía, the number falls to 29%. El Español forecasts that water restrictions are on the way.

Europe’s climate by 2050 is the subject of a post at Standing in a Spanish Doorway (with video). It doesn’t sound good. A quote: ‘…Andalucía, for example, may well experience more than 20 days above 40ºC every summer…’

What happens if you live near a huge piggery? One can probably guess. An association in Lorca (Murcia) called 'Stop cebaderos junto a viviendas' is looking for legislation against ‘this untenable situation’. They evidently weren’t impressed by the orchestrated attack on the town hall plenary session last week by the macrogranjistas. In Jumilla (Murcia), another association says that the macrogranjas were meant to bring jobs and create wealth – but what they brought was ‘shit and misery’. With video. El País has a piece on these huge piggeries: ‘Macro-farms, step by step: an industrial process to raise 53 million pigs a year’.

‘The largest landfill in Spain: irregularities, toxic gases and the largest emitter of methane in Europe. At just 5 kilometres from Pinto (Madrid), the dump is 659 meters high and currently receives 800,000 tons of waste per year’. 20Minutos says that ‘a plan has already been presented to add six more macro-plants, at just 3km from the municipality, against the will of the residents’. It receives garbage from 71 different municipalities.

Various:

Ideal says that the Government will introduce automatic motorway tolls from 2024. How will they control this? The alternatives of stickers, cameras and other systems are under study and debate over at the traffic department.

The president of the Dominican Republic Luis Abinader has granted Felipe González Dominican nationality reports their local daily Diario Libre here. Elsewhere, we read that an ex-minister of the PSOE José Bono also obtained Dominican nationality just last October. All very odd.

‘It’s my mother tongue’: the fight for a fifth co-official Spanish language’. In this case, it’s Asturian. The story is at The Guardian here.

General Franco appears to have had more work-camps following the victory of the Nationalists than was originally thought says elDiario.es here: ‘Franco created 300 concentration camps in Spain, 50% more than had earlier been calculated. From the time of the military coup until the end of the 1960s, between 700,000 and one million Spaniards were incarcerated in these camps, spending an average of five years’. With photos.

A fuss rose over the choice for Spain’s Eurovision song from Chanel after it emerged that she received only 3.97% of the popular vote, trailing somewhat behind Tanxugueiras with 70.75%. Somewhere, it was suggested that Chanel had a powerful music company behind her… Eurovoix has the full breakdown of the results via (a slightly embarrassed) RTVE.

A story at Upsticks here about how the writer passed her driving test.

From Eye on Spain here, the health benefits of olive oil.

How many days off, and how many public holidays, do workers receive in various countries (including Spain and the USA)? A graphic from Diario Abierto here.

See Spain:

An article on the Tabernas (Almería) desert with Descubrir here.

Pontevedra’s most beautiful villages at Fascinating Spain here.

Finally:

From El País in English here: ‘Rosalía breaks new ground with Saoko from her new album Motomami. Perhaps her best work yet’. It’s ghastly, but colourful – at YouTube here.

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