BoT 561

 

Business over Tapas

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

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December 12 2024            Nº 561

 

 

 

 

Editorial:

As the ex-president José Maria Aznar said earlier this year, El que pueda hacer, que haga, or in English, ‘he who can do something, do something’!

This conservative leader was – and still is – keen to cause the fall of the Government – by any and all means. A call received loud and clear by many judges, police and the Media. The cloacas, as it’s called: the cesspit.

And how are things going today?

The economy is up and so is employment. Pensions have been raised and new rules are in place to tax the wealthy and the banks.

But the leading stories are the same: Begoña Gómez, the President’s wife, remains in the headlines. We learn this week that, yes, she is married to Pedro Sánchez, and further, that she only has a few bob in her bank account (maybe). The tenacious Judge Peinado remains biting at her heels.

The President’s brother, a musician, doesn’t after all have 1.4 million euros in his bank account, so there’s another door closed.

The President’s cat still hasn’t spilled the beans (rumour has it that it’s working for the Venezuelans), but hopes are high…

All of this (except the cat) come from the denuncias of the far-right Manos Limpias, which is currently lodging complaints with the courts over the AEMET (State weather forecasters).

Maybe – just a thought – it’s time to close down this troublesome ‘pseudo-syndicate’.

Other attacks against the Government include a denuncia against the PSOE-appointed Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz – one of five hundred people who saw an email regarding the boy-friend of Madrid regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso and may have leaked it to the media. Unlikely, but there you go. The email – sent out by Miguel Ángel Rodriguez, the head of Ayuso’s cabinet, concerned a (fake) confession that the boyfriend – Alberto González Amador – had neglected to declare some 350,000 euros to Hacienda by using false documents during the Covid pandemic. So far – while nothing much has happened to the boyfriend – the leader of the opposition PSOE in Madrid has resigned, having seen the bogus (secret) email and passed it on to a notary. In short – the inquiry is not (yet) interested in the fraud itself, but rather, over the leak to the media of a phony document sent out last February.

Yet another attack against the Government comes from a businessman called Victor de Aldama, ‘unconditionally’ jailed for a massive IVA fraud in October, and released last week (can this really be true?) after he claimed paying all kinds of past bribery payments to various Socialist ministers. The PSOE deny the accusations.

Lastly, there’s the Koldo Affair.  

With all this excitement, taking an inside page are the stories about Zaplana remaining free from incarceration (10.5 years); Feijóo’s sister’s business dealings in Galicia; the connection between Ayuso’s boyfriend and the giant private-health company Quirón; the accusations of corruption against the Vice-president of the Madrid region Ana Millán; the refusal of Carlos Mazón to resign following the inept handling of the flooding in Valencia; and the revelations that family and colleagues of Rita Barberá (the mayor of Valencia from 1991 to 2015 who also under investigation when she died), defrauded the Treasury of over 631,287.65 euros between 2004 and 2008. (Yes, you read that right: and sixty five cents!) And so on.

It all depends, of course, on who controls the media that one prefers to read or watch.

But what says the conservative Corner about the PSOE (and its recent congress held in Seville): ‘The PSOE closes congress in Bulgarian Style to rally around Sánchez and his government, besieged by corruption’. We read that ‘absent, were Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra, the historic leaders of the PSOE, who are highly critical of the current government and the populist drift of the PSOE’.

I’m not sure what the Bulgarian Style means – probably something bad.

While some judicial investigations in Spain are agonisingly slow, others move at warp-speed (usually to be filed under the heading of 'Lawfare').

A retired (‘progressive’) judge says: ‘We are facing a permanent judicial coup d'état’.

One must ask - what would be the program of the PP and their uncomfortable ally (beyond tumbling a successful progressive government) - tax cuts for the uber-wealthy and a ban on homosexual marriages?

El que pueda hacer, que haga.

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Housing:

elDiario.es has a map by municipality of where the grandes tenedores (landlords with over ten properties to their name) are located. ‘In Spain, there are more than one million homes owned by major owners. This represents 4.3% of the total housing stock and 8.9% of the available housing stock; that is, those that are rented or used as second homes, among others’.

The Olive Press has: ‘Brit’s €1.6m home in Spain to be demolished over corrupt mayor’s illegal land deal – and they’ll get no compensation’. The house, in Port d’Andratx, Mallorca, ‘…was ordered to be torn down in 2013 after the former mayor of Andratx, Eugenio Hidalgo, was found to have issued ‘illegal’ planning applications to contractors in return for cash kickbacks’. While these things move slowly, the house (it’s really an apartment block says another less sensational report) is set to be demolished this month. The British owners in question are non-resident.

‘Spain´s Golden Visa is not dead just yet. The Spanish Senate has vetoed a bill which would have put an end to it and the bill must now return to Congress again for further discussion…’ says The Majorca Daily Bulletin here.

‘A Dutch couple who bought an abandoned village in Burgos for 350,000 euros last year will now have company. Two families confirmed their arrival in 2025, marking a new beginning for Bárcena de Bureba’. A story from El Cronista here.

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Tourism:

‘Spain is heading for its best year in terms of tourism history with 95 million foreign visitors’ says Expansión here.

This new hotel registration process is not going well. From BBC News here: ‘Spain hotel check-in delay fears as new data rules begin’. The article says: ‘A new law requires hotel owners and car hire firms to send personal information about their customers to the government. The rules, which also apply to rental properties and campsites, have been brought in for national security reasons, but tourism experts have raised privacy concerns and warn it could lead to delays at check-in desks…’ The Majorca Daily Bulletin leads on December 3rd with ‘First day of operation and Spain's new traveller registration system crashes. "It was chaos; it hardly ever worked during the test period"’. Maldita has the facts.

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Finance:

The number of unemployed registered at public employment service offices fell by 16,036 people in November compared to the previous month (-0.6%). The total number of unemployed stood at 2,586,018, its lowest figure for a month of November since 2007, says the Ministry of Employment.

The recently passed fiscal reforms are discussed at 20Minutos here. This includes a base-tax rate of 15% for multinationals (as called for by the European Commission). The article enthuses with ‘Let those who have more contribute more. That is the basis of fair taxation and it concerns us all. Because that is how we build a society with more opportunities, more equality and access to public services without leaving anyone behind…’ La Moncloa, the official Government website, has more. 

From Cadena Ser here: ‘Spain has the best-performing economy in the world in 2024, according to The Economist, basing its result on five indicators to give an overall grade’.

How much money can you transfer to family-members without attracting the attention of Hacienda? La Razón says that the Treasury is free to monitor movements of more than 6,000 euros. However, it must always be informed by the bank of all deposits or withdrawals of amounts greater than 3,000 euros. The maximum one can pay in cash is 1,000€.

The CaixaBank will apply a six euro fee on all transfers from next month.

How to get a non-contributive pension and what does it pay?

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Politics:

From Euronews here (December 1st): ‘Some 100,000 people attend the second demonstration in Valencia to demand the resignation of President Carlos Mazón’. He’s still hanging in though, with the full support of his party. From El País, we find that the biggest winner from the recent floods is Vox, with both the PSOE and Compromis rising slightly in public support – to the detriment of the Valencian PP. The PP, while down 4.5%, is still the largest party at 30.2% (PSOE: 29.3%; Vox: 16.4% and Compromis: 14.7%).

A presentation was held recently in the Senado regarding the evils of abortion.  From CadenaSer here: ‘Jaime Mayor Oreja, (honorary president of the Network for Values España) at the Senate's anti-abortion meeting: "Among scientists, those who defend the truth of creation against the story of evolution are winning". The former Minister of the Interior defends positions that go against science’. From the NfV here: ‘A decade of action in favour of freedom, the family and the culture of life: this is the Madrid Commitment, assumed by 300 political and civic leaders from 45 countries in Europe, America and Africa’. The astrophysicist Iván Martí Vidal says here (what many of us think) that our boy Mayor Oreja is an imbecile.

From Público here: ‘Financing the far-right: publishing, online clothing stores and anonymous donations’. A look at how the far-right lobbies fund themselves.  

From El Diario de Castilla y León here: ‘An ICADE (Catholic university) professor, Rafael del Rosal, attacks Juan García-Gallardo, the spokesperson for Vox in the regional CyL parliament: “It's a pity, Juan, that you are like that after having enjoyed so many opportunities. My shame and the shame of ICADE is having had students like you. I fought Franco and following the political reforms we thought we had finished with people like you. We were wrong. We will have to keep fighting"’. He adds on Twitter – ‘Go home, Juan, politics isn’t for you!’

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Europe:

From El Economista here: ‘The EU and Mercosur seal their free trade agreement after 20 years of negotiations’. From BBC World here: ‘The European Union has signed a trade deal with four of South America's biggest economies. The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen called the agreement a "truly historic milestone" in an "increasingly confrontational world"…’  It’s an interesting advance as Trump considers US tariffs.

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Courts:

‘With more than a dozen complaints, a month later, no court has yet taken a step to investigate the political fallout of the DANA catastrophe’. The Levante-EMV reports.

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Corruption:

More opinion on Ayuso’s boyfriend, ‘the tip of the iceberg’ at InfoLibre here.

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Media:

Opinion from elDiario.es: ‘Aldama sells fresh fish, but don't come close to smell it. After an agonizing wait for some of the news-media, the first documents promised by Victor de Aldama have appeared. For having obtained his release from prison thanks to them, they cannot be said to be spectacular, but they will serve to feed the PP's headline machine…’ In reality, it’s all down to a photo taken somewhere outside which has Aldama standing next to Pedro Sánchez (to prove that they know each other). Somewhere, I have a photo of me with Pedro Sánchez, although he doesn’t know me either.

Opinion from Ctxt: ‘The worst thing about the judicial coup d'état that Spain is suffering is not the permanent institutional embarrassment. We can accept that there is an army of judges willing to openly stretch the most ridiculous cases constructed without evidence to punish the red-wing politicians on the front pages of newspapers. We assume with a certain naturalness that any judge will consider it childish for a neo-Nazi group to attack the police or a president of the Government, while they will punish with prison and terrorism sentences song lyrics or fights in a bar if they happen in Navarra or Euskadi…’

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Ecology:

‘It’s not drought - it’s looting’: the Spanish villages where people are forced to buy back their own drinking water’. The Guardian focuses on the large water-bottling companies.

‘The average water use drought restrictions on the Costa del Sol is eased slightly. The Junta de Andalucía's committee of experts have decided to increase water limits for urban areas while the use for farming remains the same’. Sur in English reports here.

Some parts of Spain could become ‘uninhabitable’ by 2050 (35ºC for three months or more) due to global warming says NASA, as quoted in Diario de Almería here. The areas highlighted are Almería, Granada, Málaga, Seville, Alicante, Valencia and Madrid. Another dystopian story comes from LaSexta here: ‘Spain could be seriously affected by an ice-free Arctic in 2027: "Maritime flooding, more DANAs and cold waves". A study predicts that the Arctic could become ice-free in 2027 due to extreme weather events. Spain would be one of the most affected countries’.

…...

Various:

‘The US threatens Spain with a fine of 2.3 million dollars for prohibiting ships carrying weapons for Israel from stopping at the Port of Algeciras’ says EuropaSur here. From Twitter, Podemos deputy Enrique Santiago writes, ‘Preventing the shipment of weapons to allow Israel to continue the genocide in Gaza is an order from the International Court of Justice that is binding on Spain and the countries that are part of the UN’.

‘Who will benefit from the reform that Spain wants to use to give papers to 900,000 migrants in three years? The Spanish government approved a legal change to promote a massive regularization of immigrants in the country and to make its immigration regulations more flexible...’ An article at BBC Mundo here.

The story of the ill-treated Queen Sofía at Lecturas here. Bárbara Rey (Juanco’s sometime girlfriend): ‘Juan Carlos treated me like a prostitute’ at el Món here. More bad press for the shameful monarch comes from Barron’s here: ‘Spain's disgraced former king Juan Carlos is being sued for alleged tax offences by a group of retired judges’.

From Brett Hetherington here: ‘The criminalisation of homelessness in Salamanca.  A brief but compelling take on one of Southern Europe's current failures...’

From El Norte de Castilla here: ‘The Spanish Foundation of Christian Lawyers (Abogados Cristianos) will file a complaint for malfeasance against the Supreme Court judges who signed the ruling that supports the placement of rainbow flags (of the LGTBI community) on public buildings. The complaint excludes Judge José Luis Requero, who issued a dissenting opinion’.

‘Looking for a car in Valencia: the flood took 137,000 in two hours and buying one is now almost impossible. The vehicles and vans in l'Horta Sud, an area of ​​workers, self-employed workers, industrial estates and SMEs, have disappeared. The water swept away forty dealerships at the ground zero. Sales of second-hand cars are flying. “I managed to order one, but I still have to pay 15,500 euros for the old one, and who knows where it is now”.’ The story is at elDiario.es here. The floods in Valencia, Spain: then and now – in pictures with The Guardian here.

Hoy Eco has ‘Molina de Aragón, the coldest town in Spain, with Siberian temperatures’.

An odd friendship between Fidel Castro and Manuel Fraga Iribarne (politically poles apart, but both Gallegos) is examined in a book by the historian Pablo Batalla Cueto called ‘Yo podría haber sido Fidel Castro’.

What’s in a name at Eye on Spain here. ‘Foreign names are considered to be slightly frightening for many Spaniards. There are either too many letters or not enough. The easiest way is to re-name them something easier to deal with. King Charles of the UK becomes El Rey Carlos tercero. Elizabeth was Isabel. Harry is Enrique. William is Guillermo…’

Meanwhile, my Brief Flirt with Bureaucracy at Spanish Shilling here.

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Finally:

A pretty song from Vetusta Morla with Finisterre at YouTube here.