Editorial:
The conservatives in Spain have two juicy bones they’re working on this week. The first is that some tame judges from the Supreme Court have decided (a mere four years after the event) that a riot at the Barcelona El Prat airport in September 2019 was an act of terrorism masterminded by Carles Puigdemont (despite his being in exile in Belgium for two years by then). Why had no one raised the alert before now: there’s an unrepentant terrorist that’s been running around free in Brussels for the past four years!
That the sudden accusation of terrorism should arise just as the Government is trying to persuade the Junts per Catalunya party to come on board for an amnesty over the 2017 Catalonian fake election… is no doubt, just a remarkable coincidence.
The five judges from the Supreme Court who have accused Puigdemont of terrorism (such a crime understandably wouldn’t fall within an amnesty) were all chosen by a previous PP government for their positions on the Supreme Court.
See, it doesn’t only happen in the USA.
In reality – there are fifteen judges in the Supreme Court of which only four are progressives. As we know, when the PP is out of power it blocks the renewal of the body – even after pressure from the European Commission.
The final vote bringing Junts into the Government will be held today, Thursday.
The other, arguably more serious issue is the Koldo Case, where an assistant of José Luís Ábalos (at the time, a PSOE minister), together with some partners, managed to sell a massive number of protective masks to various public agencies during the early stages of the Pandemic in 2020… for 53 million euros. The Canary and the Balearic Isles both dug deep, although other regions are said to have found them to have been too expensive (at 2.50€ a pop).
The assistant, Koldo García and his partners, have just had some 88 bank accounts frozen.
The ex-minister Ábalos was quickly told to abandon his seat as a deputy, but (insisting on his innocence) moved instead to the Grupo Mixto, where he joins the Podemos crew and a few others.
While the PSOE may be forgiven for moving fast to dampen down the issue – the Government has now called for a commission to investigate all ‘the emergency contracts’ signed during the opening months of the Pandemic – the opposition and the media in particular are setting their aim on the Speaker (Presidenta) of the Cortes Francina Armengol, who, as president of the Balearic Islands, had bought a large number of apparently useless masks off the Koldo group back in 2020.
It’s odd how corruption is endlessly thought to be present in politics. Or in this case, was it just opportunism?
Housing:
From Property Investor Today here: ‘Positive about Spain - the year ahead for investors and buyers’. The opinion from Sean Woolley and Mark Stücklin.
Lawyers Augusta Abogados write of ‘The acquisition of real estate assets in Spain, whether for investment, rental, or personal use by a non-resident individual’ here.
Pego and Lliber (Alicante), where the old problems of overbuilding have returned. ‘The same dangers of excessive construction that the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament detected 17 years ago, when it was investigating urban planning abuses, are now occurring again in these two municipalities, where two developers want to build thousands of homes, increase disproportionate population, with plans protected by outdated laws and lack of water. It's back to square one...’ See La Marina Plaza here. (Thanks Chuck).
From The Express here: ‘The Canary Islands under threat from tourists buying holiday homes as house prices skyrocket. The Islands have the highest rising house prices in Spain, even higher than they were during the 2007 bubble’.
‘Bullas, the town in Murcia where 100 square metre houses are sold for less than 19,000 euros: one of the cheapest to buy’. 20Minutos lists the other ‘cheap’ towns found in the province here.
El Heraldo warns that ‘Eight out of ten homes will not be able to be sold or rented from 2030, since they would not meet the energy efficiency requirements demanded by Europe and will have to be rehabilitated to obtain the required certificate’. The average age of homes in Spain is 43 years and many of them don’t make the cut.
From Business Insider here: ‘I'm excited to leave the US and pursue a new life in Barcelona, but the moving process isn't for the faint of heart’.
Tourism:
From Expansión here: ‘Spain received 4.77 million foreign tourists in January, the best January in history – 15.3% more than in the same month last year; and spending increased more than 25% with more than 6.500 million euros, also an historical record for January’.
From The Guardian here: ‘Entrance fees, visitor zones and taxes: how Europe’s biggest cities are tackling over-tourism’.
Finance:
From Expansión here: The number of the unemployed registered in the SEPE (national employment agency) in February decreased by 7,452 people (0.27%) compared to January due to the push in the services sector to a total of 2,760,408 unemployed. Social Security gained 103,621 members (0.5%), its largest increase this month since 2007, driven by the two sectors of hospitality and education’.
The La Moncloa official presidential webpage brings us: ‘Contributory and non-contributory pensions: what are they and what are their requirements? Contributory pensions have been revalued by 3.8% in 2024 and non-contributory pensions by 6.9%. The Government thus maintains its commitment to guaranteeing the purchasing power of pensioners and helping the most vulnerable people…’
Ayudas Sepe says that ‘The government has approved the law that will grant the same benefits to de facto couples as those who get married, that is, the formal equality of marriage to cohabitating couples’.
Politics:
From El Huff Post here: ‘Another black week for the main government party. “Heartrending”, in the opinion of many socialist deputies, who still find it difficult to assimilate that José Luis Ábalos has gone to the Grupo Mixto. The feeling that anything can happen and that the legislature is up in the air is spreading through the territorial structures despite the forcefulness with which Pedro Sánchez assures that there will be no general elections until 2027…’ The ECD suggests that ‘Sánchez could bring forward national elections after the European elections if the difficulties with Junts, Podemos, Koldo persist’
Carles Puigdemont makes fun of his accusation of terrorism: "All I need now is to get a secret bank account in Panama", says the fugitive to the courts while he negotiates the amnesty with the PSOE’. El Mundo with the full story here.
El Salto Diario looks at the PACs. These are agricultural subsidies that sometimes find their way into the pockets of some unlikely recipients. The Common Agricultural Policy (here) – which is the target for the farmers’ current wrath – accounts for 30% of the entire budget of the European Union. For some reason, we read, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture passes some of this (over five million euros since 2018) to groups within La Iglesia Católica.
Europe:
From Head-Post here: ‘The European Public Prosecutor's Office maintains a total of 1,927 investigations for the alleged fraud of community funds throughout the European Union, cases whose impact is estimated at 19.200 million euros, according to its latest annual report, which numbers 47 files opened in Spain, with an estimated damage to the community coffers of 217.3 million euros…’
Corruption:
20Minutos brings us ‘All the names investigated in the Koldo case, and those connected in the fallout’ here.
The factory that made the ‘fake masks’ in China, with El Mundo here (!)
La Sexta claims that a leak in the Guardia Civil had warned Koldo García back in November that he and 26 others were under investigation.
The Corner takes aim at another senior PSOE figure, this time, the Speaker (‘President’) of the Congress Francina Armengol, who when president of the Balearic Islands, ‘…paid €3.7 million to the corrupt scheme of Koldo García a week after its technicians verified that the masks purchased were of poor quality and unusable for hospital use. In fact, the masks remain unused, stored in a warehouse in the Balearic Islands…’.
The European Public Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into the contracts signed by the Governments of the Balearic and Canary Islands with the acquisition of poor-quality face-masks from the group led by Koldo García. El Mundo says that the judge to follow up the inquiry is Manuel García Castellón (who enjoys a poor reputation with the Government). We read that ‘…In recent months, this judge has become a bête noire for the Government of Pedro Sánchez and Junts after having referred the evidence of terrorism against the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to the Supreme Court in the Caso Tsunami Democràtic…’
El Huff Post brings us the similarities and the differences between the Caso Koldo and the Caso Ayuso. ‘The plot staining the former Minister Ábalos has already caused around twenty arrests, while the Justice Department has not perceived any illegality in the contracts with the brother of the Madrid president’. The article even provides a picture of the two of them – Ábalos and Ayuso – standing together.
Público claimed on February 27th that ‘The PP refuses to investigate the purchase of medical supplies during the pandemic by any and all administrations’. El País reported on Monday that the Government has ordered ‘the creation of a commission of investigation into the thousands of emergency contracts that “all administrations” signed during the dramatic stage of the pandemic that Spain suffered in the first half of 2020’. Now a suspicion falls on the Xunta de Galicia from when Núñez Feijóo was president of the region. (In short, among the panic, we all wanted to obtain face-masks and, at the beginning of the Covid, there just weren’t any to be had).
Courts:
The Judiciary files against the judge who called Pedro Sánchez a “psychopath without ethical limits”. The Permanent Commission rejects the proposal that opposed sanctioning Judge Manuel Ruiz de Lara and unanimously imposes that a disciplinary file be opened against him’ elDiario.es reports here on the background of this judge.
ctxt argues in an editorial that the judiciary are far from impartial in political cases. It says in part ‘…The judges hand-picked by a General Council unconstitutionally controlled by the Popular Party, especially those in the Second Chamber, controlled by the media-friendly Judge Marchena, do not seem to be aware of the damage caused by suspicions of politicization of their decisions. The order by which they agree to investigate former President Puigdemont for an alleged crime of terrorism is a new example of a decision with more political than legal appearance…’
The Olive Press reports that ‘Three people have been arrested in Málaga for scamming around 1,200 clients who paid up to €55,000 for homes that will never be built. The trio are accused of taking reservation fees for new-build homes by falsifying documents and not owning the properties where real estate developments were taking place. Projects were being marketed in Águilas in the Murcia region, as well as Almería, Almuñecar and Málaga in Andalucía’. The fraudsters operated under the flag of ‘Grupo 21’.
Ecology:
‘The reservoirs increase their reserves by another 2% thanks to the rains, but those in Andalucía and Catalonia remain at worrying levels’ says 20Minutos here. From Córdoba, we read that ‘it has already rained here more than the average from the last 25 years, but the drought in the province has been so extreme that the reservoirs still lack more than double the water they currently hold just to reach normality’.
From elDiario.es here: ‘The Marina Alta (northern Alicante: Denia, Jávea, Benissa, Calpe…) enters an emergency situation due to the drought. The Júcar Hydrographic Confederation decrees the maximum level of alarm in the face of a very complicated summer if there is no more rainfall’.
Various:
March 8th is International Women’s Day. This is a major affair in Spain. Europa Press has a list of the main demonstrations by city here.
From Diario de Almería here: ‘Morocco displaces Spain to third place as supplier of tomatoes to the EU. Among the many reasons why farmers have been protesting insistently in recent weeks, the most obvious is the unfair competition from third countries, whose product crosses the borders of the European Union with much more lax requirements than those that Spanish producers have to face...’
A clutch of priests on an online gabfest got carried away with their conversation, praying for the early death of the Pope, Viva Franco and other remarks best left forgotten. The online discussion at ‘La Sacristía de la Vendeé’ (here they are on YouTube, ‘answering their enemies’) is reported at La Marea here. That the Church leans to the right is no secret, and the new president of the Episcopal Conference in Spain (Wiki) is the archbishop of Valladolid and redoubtable conservative Luis Argüello. More at Onda Cero here.
From elDiario.es here: ‘12-hour days, no days off and transported like cattle: six people are arrested in Lorca, Mazarrón and Águilas (Murcia) for exploiting 23 seasonal workers. The employees were picked up by buses and livestock trucks in which they had to share space with animals’.
The cars on the roads are getting older says El País here. 25% of them are now 20 years old or older. Average age: 14.2 years.
It was fifty years ago this week that the last two executions in Spain, by garrotte (uggh!) took place. Over in Dublin, at the same time, the Instituto Cultural Español had just opened. It consequently received a fire-bomb in protest from an anarchist group which luckily did only small damage, and was not reported at all in Francoist Spain, says a report written by José Antonio Sierra (collaborator with the BoT) in La Revista de Viajes y Turismo here. At the time, José Antonio was the director of the Institute.
Talking of old maps… here’s one showing the (several) Straits of Gibraltar as they were eight million years ago. No wonder we find old sea-shells on top of the mountains here in Almería. EuropaSur has the story.
‘Brexit causing scarcity of UK food exported to Spain’ says Murcia Today here. ‘Supplies of sausages, pork pies, scotch eggs and more British comfort food could be limited in Spain’. Nooo, not Gentleman’s Relish!
Help! I’ve got a rat in the kitchen. Bloody thing.
Thursday is the Día de la Vieja – the Old Grannie’s Day. Here at Eye on Spain.
See Spain:
Visit Calasparra in Murcia with El Periódico here: ‘The most beautiful town to travel to in March is in Murcia. A sanctuary excavated in a rock, rice with designation of origin and cave paintings are some of the attractions of this beautiful Murcian town’.
The Best Places to Visit on the Costa del Sol from The Travels of BBQboy and Spanky.
From El Español here: ‘The historic steam locomotive that takes you through one of the most beautiful landscapes in Madrid: nature and impressive views. This unique railway runs again during the month of March and takes you on a spectacular journey through the region’.
Finally:
If you want to write to me, you know where I am: I’m at the Front… Rozalén - Si Me Quieres Escribir ft. La Ronda de Motilleja on YouTube here. One of the most famous songs from the Spanish Civil War.
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