BoT 641
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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July 23 2026 Nº 641
Editorial:
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| Me with a friend |
As of course I do.
Mostly.
Cats for example. Fine and agreeable balls of fur one can snuggle with. They give in return a kind of cynical love and the feeling that, if they were only bigger while we were smaller, they would probably drop the pretence and attempt to eat us instead. As it is, cats and their lower-class cousin the feral cat (inexplicably protected by both the vecinos and the town hall) are responsible for the deaths of approximately 400 million animals annually in Spain.
'This staggering figure includes hundreds of millions of small mammals, birds, and reptiles. In fact, free-ranging and feral cats are responsible for significant pressure on local wildlife and are cited as threats to hundreds of conservation-dependent species’, says Google AI.
No wonder the Dawn Chorus is ever-more muted.
But yes, cats are cute. They go ‘Miaow’.
Returning to social media, and the unconditional love of many people for all things that fly, run, stagger or crawl, here’s an exchange about a yellow scorpion I had with someone who found one in her house and was doubtful about taking it outside:
Me: Nasty things. I've been stung four times (so far) by them. It's around six hours of pain and no apparent wound or swelling to help look for sympathy.
Them: Poor little guys! Having to encounter a big clumsy oaf of an ape. I hope they're OK.
Me: I'm pretty sure I stamped on at least three of them.
Them: Colour me fking astonished. I wish you the same.
Me: You think I should have bought them a drink?
Living, as I do, in the campo, there are lots of wild creatures here that make my life more enjoyable. There are plenty of geckoes (or ‘crocodiles’ as a friend with poor English disarmingly calls them) and a few chameleons; we have wild tortoises that walk right up to me and ask for food; there are butterflies, bees and other friendly insects; rabbits scampering along in front of my car and partridge couples debating whether to gallop straight legged across the orchard or maybe take to flight. There are magpies and hoopoes; a few foxes and a very vocal owl that sits on a branch outside my bedroom window.
But we have other critters I don’t care for at all. Should I accept the social media explanation that ‘they were here first’? Even if they weren’t. Yes, the flies and mosquitos have been here forever, and also the wasps (I destroy a nest whenever I can), but the wild boar and the mischievous mountain goats (ibex) are both new, having descended from the hills in the past ten or twenty years.
The boar dig up the roots of the trees and bushes and knock down the ancient stone terraces in search of grubs and rootlets. I shake out powdered hot pepper which discourages them – maybe they’ll dig up the neighbour’s plot instead where there’s no polvos picantes to disturb their sensitive noses.
But the mountain goats! They’ll get onto the terrace and chew the bark off the ornamentals, or strip the leaves, or – and this is just nasty – break off branches from the citrus and other fruit trees and leave them scattered around as a message. It’s just as well they don’t have a Facebook account.
I know, I should get a large hound. But then, where I live, we are infested with the black fly that gives the poor dogs leishmaniasis. Which kills them.
Oh look, there’s an egret in the garden!
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Housing:
From Mark Stücklin’s Spanish Property Insight: ‘Spain’s property market is losing some of its momentum as buyers become more cautious and start negotiating harder on price. Homes are taking longer to sell and transactions are falling, but this looks more like a return to normality than the start of a slump…’ and ‘Spain is expected to have one of the fastest-growing housing markets in Europe for the rest of the decade, which is good news for homeowners but increasingly painful for those struggling to get on the property ladder.
According to ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P), Spanish house prices will rise by 9.1% this year, followed by another 7.4% in 2027 and 6.2% in 2028. That would make Spain the strongest-performing housing market in Europe over the next few years…’
The Express reckons that Fuente Obejuna (Córdoba) is the cheapest place to buy a home in Spain.
Spain Unfiltered from James Brinton on YouTube here: ‘In this video I visit a huge development in Mazarrón (Murcia) called Camposol. The urbanisation earned a terrible reputation after the developer build hundreds of properties without permission, on unsettled landfill and in the path of flood waters. I am visiting Camposol for the first time to find out if it is still deserving of its bad reputation and I am surprised by what I find’.
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Tourism:
From Europa Press here: ‘Renfe will allow dogs weighing up to 40 kilos to travel on all its trains. One can take one or two dogs weighing up to 40 kg each on the train in the 'pet-friendly' car, at a cost of 40 euros on AVE, Alvia, Intercity, Euromed, and Avlo trains. Dogs under one year old, dogs of potentially dangerous breeds, and females in heat are excluded from these trips…’
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Finance:
Splendid news from our friends in the banking sector: Spain's top six banks earned a record €19,960 million through June, a 17% increase over last year’s figures.
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Politics:
From Sur in English here: ‘EU court backs Spanish amnesty law and opens the door to Carles Puigdemont's return to Spain. In two binding judgements, the court found the law does not undermine EU rules on terrorism, financial interests or legal certainty’. ‘The joy at the Moncloa Palace was short-lived’, says El Huff Post here. ‘Pedro Sánchez's team was genuinely awaiting the European Court of Justice's decision regarding the amnesty law. Underlying this was the possibility that Carles Puigdemont could soon return to Spain without being arrested, within the framework of their legislative agreements. And the CJEU's verdict last week, finding that the amnesty does not conflict with European law, was seen as a real boost. Now, at La Moncloa, they are hoping for some gesture of rapprochement from their nemesis Junts per Catalunya, although for the moment everything remains the same. "We are neither worse nor better off than yesterday," acknowledge the sources consulted. Although Puigdemont is "closer" to avoiding the courts, on the parliamentary front, the bridges remain burned. In fact, the deficit target will be voted on again in Congress today Thursday 23rd July, and the government fears another defeat…’
From elDiario.es here: ‘Feijóo's Partido Popular promises an ambitious legal counter-reform with cuts to social rights if it comes to power. The conservative party advocates reducing unemployment benefits, limiting workers' union representation, reclassifying transgender people as ill, and ending aid for victims of the Franco regime and migrants…’ And this is before Vox adds its pennyworth to the mix.
From ECD here: ‘The Partido Popular concludes that denouncing corruption is not the weapon with which it will win the elections. It will continue to denounce the scandals of Pedro Sánchez's government and the PSOE but will prioritize an agenda focused on what it sees as the problems of the Spanish people’.
From Europa Press here: ‘Feijóo activates the countdown to oust Sánchez: "He deserves electoral punishment for being a disgrace to Spain."’. According to Frijolito (Feijóo’s nickname), ‘…the Government "are thieves and the people don't want them", and he promises a "thorough cleanup" and "national reconstruction" if he wins. Of course, if he doesn’t win, then it’ll be back to our hero calling for fresh elections every day or two, no doubt. Now, if he does win, know that it will be a PPox government.
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Gibraltar:
From The Olive Press here: ‘On July 15, Gibraltar effectively became part of the Schengen area, allowing people to move freely between Spain and the British overseas territory without passport checks or the usually long, frustrating queues that had become part of daily life for decades. As cranes dismantled sections of the old black border fence – and the removal of an old metal gate being the symbolic moment – Pedro Sánchez declared that a ‘three-century-old wound’ had finally healed’.
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Crime and Punishment:
Sometimes Justice is fast, other times… not so much. From elDiario.es here: ‘The court warns of delays in the trial of Ayuso's boyfriend Alberto González Amador due to "work overload". Madrid's Criminal Court No. 19 has agreed on the trial schedule and informed the parties that setting a date depends on when the court's "schedule" allows’. Probably after the Madrid regional elections next year.
From 20Minutos here: ‘The Audiencia de Madrid approves trying Begoña Gómez before a jury for two of the four crimes and it returns her passport’. The court struck down two of Judge Peinado’s accusations but leaves the President’s wife with the possibility of jail – indeed, since the nine jurors will have already made up their minds, it’s a distinct likelihood. Oh look! From elDiario.es here: ‘The presiding judge of the section that supported Judge Peinado's decision against Begoña Gómez is aiming for the Supreme Court's Criminal Division. Judge María Esteban Meilán has participated in all the rulings that have led the Prime Minister's wife to face a jury trial and now aspires to join the highest criminal court’. ‘…Now,’ says The Corner here, ‘all that remains is to set a trial date and select the nine citizens who, guided by a judge, will deliver a verdict. This is an unusual case in which the public prosecution—which reports to the Government—has refused to see any crime from the very beginning and has repeatedly insisted on requesting the dismissal of the case’.
20Minutos has: ‘The CJEU endorses the amnesty law and paves the way for Puigdemont's return to Spain’. A lot of Spanish judges are not happy with the decision from Brussels.
‘The reform to eliminate the crimes of insulting the Royal Family and offending religious sentiments is working its way through Congress. It will also decriminalize the crimes of insulting national symbols and slandering and insulting high-ranking state institutions’. More at Código Nuevo here.
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Media:
From The Guardian here: ‘Vamos España. Why this World Cup victory for Spain feels so different from the others’.
The Guardian also has: ‘The most beautiful act of resistance I’ve seen: Madrid tenants fighting landlords with art. When an investment fund bought their building, the residents of Tribulete 7 protested in the only way they knew how – through radical creativity’.
Arcadi Espada, the journalist companion of the right-wing politician Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, is embarrassed this week after an essay of his, written before he went on his summer holidays, was mistakenly featured in El Mundo. The essay was about how Spain lost to Argentina because ‘…this elimination offers urgent lessons for 2030, when Spain will co-host the World Cup with Portugal and Morocco. No national team fails alone: it's the country that projected itself onto that team that fails. And those eleven men, perfectly orchestrated for mediocrity, distort an image that Spain must dare to confront, taking a long, hard look at itself…’ Yes, socialist Spain was the cause of the loss to Argentina. The article at El Mundo (for the moment) here: ‘…It's never just football, always remember that. The national team had been sponsored as a symbol of a trans Spain: mixed-race, egalitarian, with vacant grins’.
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Ecology:
From Xataca here: ‘Spain is set to experience its third heat wave in six weeks. The AEMET (the Spanish State Meteorological Agency) is clear on this: it's no longer just a heat wave, it's the climate. "We've been measuring weather for decades, and what we're finding is a world on fire."’.
From elDiario.es here: ‘Pedro Sánchez announces €300 million to combat climate change and wildfires. Speaking from La Mierla (Guadalajara: scene of a huge 30,000Ha fire), the president noted that 22 major wildfires have already broken out this year, four times more than in 2015, and called for a “national pact” to address the climate emergency and “translate fundamental measures into laws and resources to safeguard life and safety.”’.
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Various:
‘The UN elects Pedro Sánchez as the new co-chair of Advocates for the Sustainable Development Goals initiative. António Guterres has appointed the President of the Government of Spain to lead the group of leaders promoting the achievement of the 2030 Agenda (Wiki), considering him "a dynamic leader on key issues."’. More at Público here.
Those narrow spaces we find in underground carparks were designed for when our automobiles were a lot smaller: maybe a generous SEAT 600 size. Now, says Xataca here, the manufacturers are guilty of ‘carspreading’.
From The Olive Press here: ‘Spain’s new anti-smoking law: Everything you need to know about where you can no longer light up – including bar terrace ban’. La Vanguardia also carries the item: ‘For the first time, smoking and vaping to be prohibited for minors, with fines of 200 euros’. The reform has passed the ministerial consensus and now waits for congressional approval.
A number of rivers in Spain have names beginning with ‘Guad-’; this comes from the Arab word oued or wadi. Usually, a dry-river bed which fills in flood now and again. Apparently, there are 72 rivers in Spain whose names have this prefix says Appangea here.
July 17, 1936 – A military coup against the Second Spanish Republic was perpetrated, a conspiracy organized over months by a sector of the Army with the support of prominent monarchist leaders, far-right organizations, and paramilitary groups. The uprising began in the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco, where troops of the Army of Africa rose up against the legitimate government of the Republic. Among the main figures responsible for the conspiracy were Generals Emilio Mola, considered the director of the coup; Francisco Franco, who assumed a decisive role from the Canary Islands after moving to Morocco to lead the traitors; and José Sanjurjo, designated as head of the new regime, although he died in a strange and never fully explained plane crash on July 20 before he could assume command. The plan envisioned a simultaneous uprising throughout Spain. However, the coup failed in much of the country thanks to the resistance of numerous loyal military units, the security forces, and the mobilization of broad sectors of the population. Failing to gain immediate control of the country, the insurrection escalated into a civil war that effectively began the following day and officially lasted until April 1, 1939.The vast majority of historians agree that the Civil War was the direct consequence of the failed coup d'état launched on July 17, 1936, against a legitimate, constitutionally and democratically constituted government.
The conflict caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, economic and social devastation in Spain, and a division—which still persists today—between those who supported the legitimacy of the Republic and those who embraced fascism and its heirs. The conflict concluded with the victory of the rebels, ushering in the dictatorship of the murderous Francisco Franco, who established a genocidal regime that remained in power for almost forty years. (unattributable).
From Wiki here: ‘The Spanish question (Spanish: la cuestión española) was the set of geopolitical and diplomatic circumstances that marked the relationship between Spain and the United Nations between 1945 and 1955, centred on the UN's refusal to admit Spain to the organization due to Francoist Spain's sympathy for the Axis powers, defeated in World War II…’
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Finally:
¡Well Done Los Rojos! Here’s a song for you on YouTube, an updated Viva España with Aaron Sevilla and Alba Dreid.
And one of those amusing Iranian Lego vids celebrates Spain’s win here.
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