BoT 606

 

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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October 30 2025            Nº 606

 

Editorial: 

Last weekend we were obliged to put our clocks back, perhaps for one final time. Pedro Sánchez is the champion of those who don’t want any more time-changes and now the debate is advancing towards whether we citizens would prefer a permanent summer- or winter-hour clock. Indeed, Sánchez says that the European Commission had voted to change the system six years ago.

The Junts per Catalunya (the Government’s unwilling Catalonian conservative partner) was claiming last week – with some clever rhetoric – that rather than ‘change the hour’ it was ‘the hour of change’ with a plan to perhaps abandon their loose alliance with Pedro Sánchez (they have seven deputies in the Spanish parliament) unless he sweetened his deal with this rather disagreeable party. On Monday, their exiled leader Carles Pugdemont, meeting with party members in Suresnes, France, finally ruled to drop any support for the now minority government in Madrid, unless it was over something ‘that favoured Catalonia’. He however appears to have ruled out a Motion of Censure (the only other game in town being a PP/Vox combo which would be far more aggressive towards the independentists).

Some king-maker Carles will turn out to be.

Politics is often centred around criticism, and how the opposition could do things so much better. Feijóo is a great practitioner of this, and he has now called on Pedro Sánchez to explain himself in a long and no doubt tedious session to be held on Thursday in the PP-controlled Senate. Feijóo’s bon mot: "If he lies, he'll go to court, and if he tells the truth, he'll go to court too".

We shall be watching to see how that goes.

Spain has seventeen regions (plus Melilla and Ceuta). Most of these ‘autonomías’ are controlled by the PP either with or without apparent backing from Vox. Four of these are currently in deep water. All four – Andalucía, Castilla y León, Madrid and Valencia – are Partido Popular governments.

Andalucía particularly has a scandal centering around scans for breast cancer. Over the past few years – indeed, since April 2021 – the SAS (the Andalusian health service) has neglected to warn their patients of possible issues arising from the scans, and it now appears that a couple of thousand women (or maybe as much as ten times this number) were not told by the health service that they had complications of one sort or another. The president, Juanma Morales, telling the cameras that, see, they didn’t want to alarm the womenfolk. The issue is more to do with Andalucía’s ongoing push towards private hospitals and insurance. The public service being now generally considered as deficient.

The public prosecutor is reviewing the claims received from Amama, an understandably irate women’s association of victims of breast cancer.

Andalucía has regional elections coming up in June 2026.

Castilla y Léon has the issue of the fires last summer, which were hopelessly faced by their president, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, who failed to invest in prevention and even now, is cutting back on current levels of fire-services. 166,000 hectares were burnt there this summer (around 640 square miles). Another headache: there’s currently the Wind-farm trial going on in Valladolid – ‘considered the largest corruption case in the region’ – going back to earlier PP regional governments, with the court seeking some 250 million euros in fines and prison-time for the fifteen politicians and industrialists accused.

They have regional elections in CyL in March next year.

In Madrid, any number of scandals are in the news – from the president’s boyfriend’s tax-avoidance scams, to her waste of public funds (including the planned ‘won’t cost a penny’ Formula One racing circuit) and her participation in a publicly funded agency called Madrid Network that had generously paid large sums to PP stalwarts in the past. Isabel Díaz Ayuso is (or at least, she was) the likely successor to the inept Feijóo to lead the Partido Popular. However, we shall see…

Alberto Núñez Feijóo comforts Carlos Mazón 

Finally, there’s Valencia, still indignant over last year’s October 29th and its catastrophic flooding with the loss of 229 people. Where was the president that day? Having a long and leisurely lunch with a pretty journalist. Avoiding phone calls and failing to send out a warning alert until it was all over (He arrived back at his office around 8.00pm, having apparently gone home to change clothes, only to be greeted with: ‘Presidente, hay muchos muertos’). Every final Saturday in the month since then, Valencia has turned out en masse to call for Carlos Mazón to resign.

On Wednesday, 29th October, yesterday, there was an official State Funeral presided by Felipe VI. Give him his due, Carlos Mazón, squeezed into a black suit, was there.

The first regional election on the calendar – for Extremadura – has just been announced for December 21st. The president there is María Guardiola (PP) who is frustrated because the opposition parties, including Vox, won’t accept her 2026 budget. Will she win an outright majority this time around? Probably not.

Change is in the air, and not only in the provinces. The 64-dollar question being, will Pedro Sánchez be forced to call for early general elections? It’s certainly getting tight.

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Housing: 

‘Sir Alex Ellis, the British Ambassador to Spain, tells the Majorca Daily Bulletin that British residents need to get their TIE identification card and rules out hope of a change in the 90-day limit for non-EU citizens without residency’ here. With video. 

‘The Property Rights Transfer Statistics report, released by the National Statistics Institute (INE), shows that in August, home sales fell by 3.4% year-on-year to 47,697 units’, says The Corner here. 

A sobering thought from 20Minutos here: ‘Climate change also affects housing: the heat cools prices in areas where temperatures rise the most’. It says: ‘Increasingly intense heat waves, more devastating forest fires, floods, droughts... Climate change is a clear reality, and the real estate market doesn’t escape the consequences. Recently published research revealed that rising temperatures are slowing down house prices in the areas of Spain most exposed to heat, while cooler regions are gaining in attractiveness…’ 

El Diario de Madrid has ‘Mexicans lead foreign home purchases in Madrid's most expensive neighbourhoods. Mexican buyers dominate the luxury real estate market in areas such as Recoletos, Salamanca and Chamberí, where prices exceed €8,000 per square metre’. 

Infobae brings us: ‘Javier Gil, CSIC: "What's the point of building 20,000 homes if they're just going to end up as tourist apartments?" The doctor in sociology believes that converting the current 380,000 vacation rental homes into the residential market would alleviate the problem in Spain’. 

Spanish Property Insight has an amusing anecdote: ‘A squatter in Palma decided to install a 6,000-litre swimming pool on the terrace — and put the structure of the building at risk. In Palma de Mallorca, a woman has been convicted not just for squatting in a flat, but for turning it into her own private spa, according to Spanish press reports. After refusing to leave when her rental contract ended last August, she stayed put — then installed a six-tonne swimming pool on the terrace, seriously compromising the structure of the building and putting her neighbours in danger…’

More correctly, she would be considered una inquilina morosa rather than una okupa. 

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Tourism: 

From Eye on Spain here: ‘Spain Cracks Down: British tourists (and other non-EU visitors) face stricter entry rules, higher taxes, and sometimes fines. 

Flying into Spain with The Olive Press here: ‘…The new EES system replaces the manual passport stamping of non-EU visitors, using facial recognition and fingerprint scans to record entries and exits. It automatically tracks compliance with the Schengen Area’s 90-days-in-180 rule and can issue digital alerts for overstays. British residents in Spain can breathe easy – their TIE cards keep them exempt from those restrictions – but they’ll still have to join the non-EU line like their fellow compatriots’. 

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Finance: 

From El País here: ‘Andrés Rodríguez: “Half of the wealth in Spain is held by just twenty-eight octogenarians”. On the eve of publishing the list of the 100 largest fortunes, the president of Forbes Spain confesses: “The truly rich want to be invisible”’. The wealthiest Spaniard is Amancio Ortega followed far behind by his daughter Sandra and then in third, Mercadona’s Juan Roig. To join the Forbes list, you’ll need at least 300 million euros. 

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Politics: 

‘Carlos Puigdemont, after breaking with Pedro Sánchez: "We will not help this government or any other that does not favour Catalonia." The party's Executive Committee, meeting in Perpignan (apparently, it’s Perpinyà in Catalonian), voted unanimously to end negotiations with the PSOE, although this does not mean reaching agreements with the right-wing parties for the time being’. An elDiario.es headline. 

The other Catalan party in the Cortes is the ERC, the Catalonian Republican Left. Unlike the Junts, this party speaks in Spanish in the national forum rather than in Catalan (the Junts, playing presumably to their base). I imagine a lot of deputies don’t bother to reach for their earphones when the Junts spokesperson Míriam Nogueras is waffling on about something or other (she was speaking in Spanish to a TV reporter yesterday, so there’s that). The ERC have a clever speaker called Gabriel Rufián. He says of Junts, ‘they are very tedious and they bring nothing to the debate’. Junts though are worried back home in Catalonia on the loss of votes to the ‘hispanophobic’ Aliança Catalana (wiki), a far-right separatist movement. In Catalonia, they used to boast that there were no far-right parties there. Now, they have both types: Spanish and Catalan. 

The future US ambassador to Spain Benjamin Leon (wiki) warns that he will make Sánchez understand "his big mistake" in not increasing defence spending to 5% says 20Minutos. 

Sánchez scored a zinger on Feijóo in Parliament last week. The PP was left wondering (once again) how to improve their debating skills. 

‘How much did Ayuso earn from the shady organization she now defends above the law?’ The salary that Esperanza Aguirre's "illustrious student" received at Madrid Network, the agency that served as a springboard for the now-president, was 4,220€ per month between 2008 and 2011 – a time before she began her ascent to her current position. Madrid Network, known as a chiringuito in Spanish, also sustained Santiago Abascal during his lean years. The agency carries a debt of some fifty million euros says El Plural here. Some more on this agency – ‘…a racket intended to finance high-ranking officials of the community and their associates or friends…’ is at Diario Red here. 

A peculiar politician called Alvise Pérez (he’s an MEP and leader of Se Acabó la Fiesta) wants to run in the next national election, if he isn’t imprisoned first for fraud. He of course has immunity, but there are ways… Journalist Marina Lobo on YouTube here.

The next monarch after Felipe VI will be his daughter. From LaSexta here: ‘Princess Leonor delivers her most political speech, defending migration: "Democracy versus intolerance". For the first time, the princess delivered a longer speech than King Felipe VI. In her message given in Oviedo (Asturias), she defended the need to "return to the basics" and respect one's neighbour’. Good for her. With video.

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Europe: 

From El País here: ‘The Minister for Economy Carlos Cuerpo was in London last week to advocate for rapid progress on labour mobility between the UK and Spain. The minister's visit, which included meetings with members of the British government and investment funds, was aimed at strengthening economic and trade ties following the new bilateral treaty between the two countries’. The capable Minister Cuerpo not only speaks good Japanese as we recently saw (to our surprise), he’s also fluent in both English and French.  

…...

Health:

Andalucía: ‘Representatives of the SAS doctors: "Words cannot express the devastation of our group at the collapse of public healthcare". The Andalusian Medical Union denounces that, of the 705 new appointments just announced, only 243 (34%) are for doctors, "when the most serious staffing shortage is precisely that of physicians"’. More at El Libre here. 

…...

Courts: 

From elDiario.es here: ‘The judge warns of the extremist offensive (variously, from HazteOir, la Comunión Tradicionalista Carlista, Abogados Cristianos and Manos Limpias) against the Mongolia magazine for its satire of the nativity scene (a picture of a smiling faeces emoji instead of something more tasteful). The judge dismissing the fourth complaint filed by a far-right group against the publication's editors and emphasizing that there is no legal prohibition in mocking a nativity scene on a magazine cover’.

…...

Media: 

Opinion from Diario Sabemos here: ‘If you are the victim of a tragedy, the PP will despise you. Every catastrophe that occurs in a territory governed by the Popular Party ends the same way: denying political responsibility and accusing the victims of being manipulated by the PSOE’. The article goes back to the sinking of the Prestige (an ecological disaster in the sea off Galicia), the Yak-42 incident (62 soldiers dead), the 11-M in Madrid (193 dead), the Covid deaths in the Madrid residences (7,291 seniors died without receiving medical attention), the Valencia Dana (229 drowned) and now the Andalusian scandal of the mammograms. Somehow, it’s always the fault of the PSOE… 

As the crowds marched through Valencia on Saturday – something over 50,000 calling for Carlos Mazón’s resignation – the regional TV channel À Punt thought that their viewers would rather watch an old bullfight show from 1977 (featuring a future Vox bullfighter, tralala). Comically, the El Mundo Today paper runs a story titled: ‘Thousands of Valencians took to the streets on Saturday to commemorate the bullfight at the 1997 Alicante Fair’.

More seriously, the mayor of the Valencian town of Paiporta (where 56 citizens drowned) says that reconstruction there is going slowly, with only about 20% completed. 

The regular discussions about racism or xenophobia prompts Público to bring us ‘The Map of Hate: Fifteen Far-Right Organizations Spread Xenophobia in Spain. Groups that peddle messages in favour of the "right of blood" as the only way to be Spanish offer their followers courses on "self-defence" and combat techniques’. Other groups selling Hitler books or calling for action against migrant centres are inexplicably registered as legal associations’ says the article. 

The conservative talking-head Mariló Montero says on Telemadrid that Pedro Sánchez is a dictator. She also thinks that cancer can be cured by sucking on a lemon’ says Público here. 

A harsh opinion regarding Trump, as he is fielded by Nato’s Mark Rutte in the White House. 

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Ecology: 

Hunting, la caza, is a manly sport in Spain, which is why there aren’t more critters about. From The Olive Press here, ‘62 people set to be prosecuted after hundreds of animals are poisoned or illegally hunted in rural Spain’. It’s one thing to eat them, but another to wantonly kill them (even if some of them, like my wild boar, are pests).

…...

Various: 

The State Funeral on Wednesday afternoon in Valencia was a non-religious affair (per the request of the victims) officiated by Felipe VI and with Queen Leticia at his side. Each family with a lost loved-one was invited, together with Pedro Sánchez, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the presidents of Valencia, Castilla la Mancha and Andalucía (eight of the total 237 were drowned in Cuenca, Albacete and Málaga on that fateful day a year ago). Mayors from the 86 municipalities affected by the floods were also there, plus several other politicians, although neither Isabel Díaz Ayuso nor any members of Vox (including Santiago Abascal) came to the solemn event. A few of those present shouted anti-Mazón slogans. 

The ordeal of a family from Catarroja (Valencia): “A year later we still have no home or aid, and we are still paying off the mortgage”. 

Who is David Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, the brother of the President? David is a musician who studied in the Cheverus Jesuit College in Maine (USA), later moving to the State Conservatory of Saint Petersburg where he obtained first class honours. He studied further in Lucerne, Milan and Sienna, together with grants in Tokio and Toulouse.

He speaks fluent Russian, English and Italian, with competent German and French. Since 2017, he is the coordinator of activities for the Conservatories of the Badajoz Provincial Council. Quite a character! His background is here.

There’s the (rather weak) scandal of course (with thanks, as usual, to Manos Limpias): did David get his post in Badajoz because of his family connection or because he’s simply a devil on the piano? 

‘The Partido Popular will not be attending a ceremony today (Thursday) honouring the last people executed by Franco, saying "They were five terrorists". Spokesperson Ester Muñoz described the last people executed by the Franco regime on September 27, 1975, as "terrorists," the same term the regime used to condemn them to death’. Público reporting. 

‘The world is becoming a scary place once more. Spain is really no different, not when many young people under twenty-five, who are now eligible to vote, believe that with Franco Spain was a better place to live than now. They will happily vote for the extreme right Vox party at the next elections…’ María writes at Spanish Views from a Small Town.

The Chinese-run bar in Madrid that’s a homage to Franco. El Huff Post is here. 

From El País in English here: ‘The debate over bullfighting: A cultural and political battle that still divides Spain. The recent refusal by Congress to even consider a public initiative to withdraw national cultural protection from bullfighting, aided by a conspicuous abstention by the governing Socialists, has infuriated some and delighted others’. 

Telecinco reports that the Málaga carriage-horses are all now retired from their job and – some good news – they have been adopted by an equine refuge (see their Go Fund Me site) in the Axarquía (Eastern Málaga) called A Better Life 4 Horses. 

…...

See Spain: 

Idealista bring us ‘The five best thermal baths and hot springs in Spain, perfect for relaxing this autumn/winter’. 

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Letters:

Silent Running. On the other hand, there are plenty of electric cars on the market that can do 600 kms and plenty of charging stations that will re-charge within an hour. While charging stations can cost the same as petrol, charging from home gives a massive saving (less than £1 per gallon instead of £6). If you rarely travel no more than 200 kms per day and can charge at home an electric car is fantastic.

Darnico

 

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Finally: 

From El Huff Post here: ‘My goodness, Rosalía: the singer thrills her fans with 'Berghain' singing opera in German as 'Snow White'. The Catalan artist released the first single from her fourth studio album, 'Lux', on Monday, a collaboration with Björk and Yves Tumor’.

Rosalía - Berghain (Official Video) on YouTube here. You won’t want to miss this one…