BoT 642
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 30 2026 Nº 642
Editorial:
It was hot where I live, on a hill overlooking a dry riverbed, not far from the sea. Indeed, Thursday and Friday were both in the lower 40s.
My daughter was celebrating her birthday that Thursday (as it happens, she’s also in her early forties) and I joined her and others as a Party of Six (follow me please) to the table in the corner, by the windows, in a smart restaurant in the next town from mine.
Our family knows their family, and thus we were treated to cocktails and jamón as the waiter left us some menus, bread and changed our plates and glasses. Smart places always do, for some unfathomable reason.
The owner reappeared and chose the meal for us – an eminently sound idea as I never like to read menus and tend to order the same as the person seated to my left (unless he or she is a vegetarian). I think the best restaurants are those who have no menu at all – maybe a blackboard with today’s ‘catch’ – but the simpler the better. One is there for the conversation, not to get lost in a thick book of food. By now, and anyway, our unopened menus had discretely disappeared.
And it came to pass that, being both a smart restaurant, and with special favour from the kitchen, we were served endless plates of delicious thises and thatses. The plates being passed around to the left and quickly emptied.
The main course began with a similar routine, or maybe that was the continuation of the first course Part the Second. More munching and forks clashing. It was too delicious to talk (and too noisy to hear). Mmm, good! Anyway, it was then followed (fresh plates, clean knives and forks) with a hot piece of iron over a small oil-heater and a large plate of raw beef for us to cook to our liking.
I was reading somewhere that when there’s a choice on your plate, you eat more. At home, not being much of a cook, I heat up one thing or another from the fridge or a can from the shelf, add some mayonnaise and call myself satisfied. But when there are lots of little exquisitely laden plates, multi-cultured tapas, then one can become quite a pig.
My granddaughter’s boyfriend was the driver, sitting there poor chap with his glass of water. The rest of us, to a greatest or lesser extent, drank beers, wine, gin and tonics and a shot or two of tequila.
Friday morning, I had no hangover but noticed I had put on over half a kilo.
…...
Fire:
Sadly, Spain continues to burn. A giant fire in Madrid and another in Ávila managed by Sunday morning between them to burn some 45,000 hectares, but at least this time, the ES-Alarm warnings were sent out and there were no deaths reported. Other major fires were reported in Toledo and Castellón.
By Wednesday, the hectares burned in July had risen spectacularly to 172,000, as another hot-spell – the fourth this summer – arrived.
El Huff Post on Saturday had an embedded reporter with the firefighters in the south-eastern
part of the Madrid region, where the neighbours said that it was the worst fire
in Madrid’s history. Even the city to the north was full of smoke and ash. An
opinion found at 20Minutos is bleak: ‘we are not prepared for these catastrophes’.
The rule is that these responsibilities fall on the regional governments, who may cut back on emergency funds in the knowledge that central Government can and will help if called to do so. And thus we have Madrid’s Díaz Ayuso and the Transport Minister Óscar Puente trading horrific insults over precisely who is responsible to organise the defence against the flames.
The Madrid firefighters are not happy bunnies, as their standing wage of 1,300€ a month (May to October only) hasn’t increased in the last fifteen years. It’s just one of those things: considered as a waste of resources during the winter months, and as an alarming necessity during the fires. No doubt they could be found a useful task in the colder months – cleaning the dry brush, cutting back the growth, trimming the branches near the road and buildings, and even helping plan emergency escape routes and giving fire-prevention lectures to schoolchildren. Indeed, the Madrid firefighters were warning back in April that fire prevention efforts had been cut in half.
We read that ‘the farmers criticize rural abandonment and demand a plan to rid the summer wildfires of potential fuel during the winter months’. We also read that the law (la ley de montes) insists on brush-cleaning and other fire-preventative obligations.
Furthermore, we read of donkeys, goats, sheep, bison (!) and even toros bravos grazing clean the hills (following the wet winter and extra growth).
All grist for the armchair firefighters and hostile social media influencers.
The always critical leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, links the "repeated disasters" in Spain to corruption and the government's "climate fanaticism". So not much help from him.
As more than one critic says – we need more firefighters and less bullfighters.
So, is it over? From El Mundo earlier this week here: ‘The fourth heatwave of the summer will trigger a surge in wildfires starting Wednesday, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius. The intense heat and dry conditions will cause the fire risk to reach critical levels across almost the entire country’.
…...
Housing:
‘Blackstone has executed one of the most profitable real estate transactions in recent Spanish market history. The US fund has sold its 5,000-unit holding to the Canadian fund Brookfield for €1,050 million. This includes the same portfolio it originally acquired, in part, at a bargain price thanks to the institutional generosity of the Madrid City Council when Ana Botella (José María Aznar’s wife) was mayor’. More at aquimicasa.net here.
Should Spanish be the language used in all community housing? From Málaga Hoy here: ‘A homeowners' association in Málaga has approved a requirement to be fluent in spoken and written Spanish to serve as president of the community, and has also stipulated that the costs of interpreters and translations into other languages will be the responsibility of the residents who request them … The Diversity and Coexistence Association, created in 2004 in Málaga to promote all the languages of Spain recognized by the Constitution in Andalucía, has asked the political parties with representation in Parliament and the Senate to reform the Horizontal Property Law’.
…...
Tourism:
From The Olive Press here: ‘Hospitality associations in Spain have ramped up their campaign against the proposed smoking ban for terraces- claiming that over 30,000 bars could close. The Council of Ministers on Tuesday approved a final bill that would curtail smoking in many public places including bar and restaurant terraces’.
El Diario de Mallorca says ‘News of the police crackdown on the largest protest against overtourism is spreading like wildfire across Europe. Major media outlets in key markets like Germany, the UK, and France are reporting on the scale of the protest and the escalation of violence in Palma on Sunday night’. The Majorca Daily Bulletin reports that ‘The National Police are investigating whether certain officers used excessive force at the end of Sunday's protest in Palma’.
Spaniards are going on holiday with fuel up to 21% more expensive than last year and hotel prices skyrocketing says 20Minutos here.
…...
Finance:
Unemployment is reported to be at under 10% - no doubt due to the seasonal tourist jobs.
Valencia: ‘The PP accepts Vox's amendments to extend the income tax cut to incomes over 100,000 euros and lower the wealth tax’. That should help! Item from Valencia Plaza here. This is a warning of what to expect, along with ‘National Priority’ (wiki) and cuts in social services, with a future PPox national government says elDiario.es here.
…...
Politics:
The summer holidays: ‘Sánchez enters the final stretch of his term without a budget, with few certainties, and with the courts dictating the pace. Despite the noise and obstruction from the right wing, the government has managed to pass two constitutional amendments, 34 laws, and 40 royal decrees in three years. After the summer, the government faces new court rulings on corruption cases affecting the PSOE, as well as a presumably fruitless negotiation on the regional financing model and a 2027 budget that will determine the date of the elections’. elDiario.es has the story.
Just for fun, someone at El Huff Post counted ‘Every time (or just about) that Feijóo has called for early general elections: a warning; it's happened quite a lot. It's become a tradition. The leader of the Partido Popular calls a press conference. Immediately afterward, he calls for Spaniards to go to the polls. And so it goes, again and again and again…’
From the official PSOE webpage here: ‘The PSOE once again extends an olive branch to Feijóo's PP to sign a national pact against the climate emergency. PSOE spokesperson Montse Mínguez urges the Partido Popular to listen more to science and less to the far-right's denialist rhetoric’. From RTVE here: ‘The PP calls for working together against wildfires but rejects the state pact and warns: "Anyone looking for trouble is mistaken."’.
From Google AI: ‘The leader of the Partido Popular, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, promised that "appointing decent ministers" would be his first action if he were to reach the Moncloa Palace. He made this statement on July 22, 2026, during a press conference at the party headquarters on Calle Génova (Madrid), convened to review the political year…’
The fires are all the fault of Pedro Sánchez, says Santiago Abascal from Vox. ‘Climate fanatism’ or the insistence on Global Warming would be the reason for this ‘national disaster’. The story at Europa Press here.
Valencia: ‘The Pérez Llorca and Vox government cuts fire prevention budget by 10% amid wildfires. The budgets approved by the PP and Vox parties on Wednesday last week reduce investment by 10 million euros. This difference is due to extraordinary allocations for repairing forest infrastructure damaged by the recent storms, according to the Environment Ministry, although there are also cuts in Environmental Education’. More at elDiario.es
Ayuso is strongly against the new smoking rules – although come to think of it, there may be a few less fires as a happy consequence.
…...
Crime and Punishment:
One of the sneakiest of the corrupt businessfolk is Victor Aldama, who managed to get out of peril from the courts by telling stories (true or not?) on his accomplices José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García, and others. From RTVE here: ‘The Supreme Court lifts the precautionary measures against Aldama, convicted in ‘the face mask case’. The court released the businessman from four and a half years of prison because his cooperation was "especially decisive" and "relevant." The measures had included the confiscation of his passport, a travel ban preventing him from leaving Spain, and the obligation to appear in court every 15 days’.
When (from the far-right’s point of view) would be the best time for Begoña Gómez’ show trial? Step forward the appalling OKDiario, who says, during the elections next summer.
‘Pedro Sánchez confronts lawfare more clearly than ever: "It's not an opinion, it's a fact." The President has directly pointed the finger at private prosecutions, asserting that they are driving political causes’. No punches pulled at El Plural here.
It’s odd how the PP investigations take so much longer to work their way through to a trial. From La Vanguardia here, ‘The prosecutor Rubén Rus has extended the investigation into former Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro, which began in 2018, for another six months, deeming it "extremely complex." The investigation currently focuses on bribery, fraud against the public administration, abuse of power, influence peddling, prohibited negotiations, corruption in business, and falsification of documents…’
From Google AI: ‘The PP Almería plot refers to a major corruption scandal in southern Spain, widely known as the "Caso Mascarillas". It involves an alleged institutionalized network of kickbacks, rigged public contracts, and money laundering centred within the Provincial Council of Almería (Diputación de Almería), which was led by the Partido Popular. The investigation by the Guardia Civil’s elite unit (UCO) has led to more than 40 official suspects and forced the mass resignation of the province's top political leadership’.
Note: the media aren’t pleased with Google AI, as hitherto Google had sent readers to their webpages rather than just providing a distillation of the news item in question.
…...
Media:
From El Plural here: ‘The New York Times praises Spain for the "cultural and economic resurgence" thanks to Sánchez. The prestigious American newspaper describes the Prime Minister as "a global liberal icon for positioning the country as a left-wing oasis"’. That New York Times article ‘Spain celebrates both a soccer win and a sense of wider success’.
From The Telegraph here: ‘Climate change is real – and the Right needs to get serious about it. The evidence is stacking up – we only have to look out of our windows’.
From Cadena Ser here: ‘The five biggest lies about the fires in Spain: from the prohibitions in the forestry law on managing the countryside to the "terrorist network". While the forests burn, disinformation takes hold’.
From El País in English here, comes ‘Javier Negre Inc, the hoax multinational’. A lot of Spanish media (and social media) is based on 'bulos', fake news, and Negre is the top dog. It's popular, because it's often believable (even when it isn't). There's a long list on newspapers and websites that try and manipulate us (OKDiario, El Debate, Libertad Digital, El Español…), but one group stands out: Javier Negre's EdaTV. ‘…EdaTV has been funded with money from PP administrations, as well as money from politicized businessmen and private advertisers. Negre had found his place in the far-right news market, where fratricidal fights for audience and money can be ruthless…’
From RTVE here: ‘The World Cup intensified racism and Islamophobia on social media, especially towards Lamine Yamal. The Spanish Observatory Against Racism recorded more than 40,000 hate messages on social media in June alone. People of North African origin account for almost 90% of the insults and hateful comments’.
A new TV channel is due to begin in November called La Séptima (here). Since it comes from the left (an ex-directive of Prisa is in charge), Vox is attempting to cut it off at the pass by making a complaint to the National Audience court arguing that it "does not comply with the law".
…...
Ecology:
El País brings: ‘Ayuso says the fight against climate change favours communism and that the left is going “against scientific evidence”. The president of Madrid argues that the phenomenon is cyclical “since the Earth has existed” and accuses the left of imposing a reform agenda to mitigate it “against scientific evidence”’.
‘Vox demands deregulation of fire protection and an end to “worshipping the god of climate change”. José María Figaredo (he’s the nephew of Rodrigo Rato) accuses recent governments of being guided “by a kind of almost religious conception regarding climate change.” More at El Boletín here.
From The Guardian here: ‘As France and Spain battle some of the worst wildfires in recent history, experts have warned of an unprecedented phenomenon that could exacerbate the effects of the blazes: pyrocumulonimbus, or “fire clouds”. Wildfires often spread when hot, windy and dry conditions coalesce, but severe wildfires can generate their own unique weather systems. One of the most striking examples of this are pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or fire-generated thunderstorms, which are the most severe form of fire clouds…’
VozPópuli considers the military fire-fighting force, the Unidad Militar de Emergencias here: ‘The UME, the “pharaonic whim” that divided Congress twenty years ago and is now rescuing Spain from the flames. Few military projects have generated so much resistance in political circles. This year, the unit celebrates two decades of service responding to disasters of all kinds’.
From 20Minutos here: ‘How to reduce forest fuel? There are more than 2.3 million hectares unused due to the abandonment of agriculture and livestock farming’.
As of Wednesday morning, 14 people had died in the Los Gallardos / Bédar (Almería) fire plus one other in Manises in Valencia. This rather shows how important the ES-Alert is.
…...
Various:
A sinister note from I Am Expat here: ‘The European Commission has begun investigating a system using satellite navigation that would automatically intervene if a car is travelling over the speed limit. If the proposed system were to be approved, it would most likely be introduced in 2030’. My best car was a comfortable old Mercedes 180D which wouldn’t go over 110kph (except maybe, going downhill).
My first vehicle here in Spain (maybe I was sixteen) was a Vespino, a moped. The story of this marvellous scooter with peddles and how it was invented in 1968 is told here.
SwissInfo visits Almería here: ‘The era of cheap tomatoes from Spain may be over’.
The Instituto Cervantes in Gibraltar was closed down by the previous PP government’s foreign minister José Manuel García-Margallo back in 2015 ‘because everyone except the monkeys there speak Spanish’. Better news comes from El País this week at the annual meeting held on Wednesday this time in Jerez de la Frontera where the director of the Instituto Cervantes met with eighty chiefs from different branches scattered around the world. One point of order was to reopen the Gibraltar offices. Queen Letizia was present.
From Xataca here: ‘Today we measure a room in metres, weigh coffee in grams, and calculate distance in kilometres. And we take this for granted. For centuries, each kingdom, and sometimes each guild, used its own unit of measurement. The Castilian codo was not like the Aragonese codo. The Galician vara had nothing to do with the Castilian vara. A fanega could vary between 4,300 and 7,000 square metres, depending on the region. Trade was chaotic, and science was best left unmentioned. Someone had to bring order. And among those who did was a Galician farmer from Lalín who, it is said, possessed a brilliant mind. His name was Pedro Xosé Rodríguez González. History remembers him as ‘the Mathematician of Bermés’, after the parish of Lalín where he was born on October 25, 1770. He was the seventh child of a farming family from Pontevedra. Without money, without connections, with the options that fate reserved for the children of 18th-century Galicia: the countryside, emigration, or the Church. How does a peasant boy come to redefine the way the world is measured…?’
Well, here we go: The Guardian has found the perfect horchatería in Valencia.
…...
See Spain:
From El Confidencial here: ‘Discover the most spectacular Parador in Spain, according to 'Viajar' magazine: in a beautiful medieval village in Castilla-La Mancha. Staying here means sleeping within medieval walls and immersing yourself in the magic of one of Spain's most beautiful villages’. El Parador de Sigüenza (promo here).
El Periódico brings: ‘The village declared a Site of Cultural Interest: a jewel of slate roofs in a natural paradise. The village of Seceda, in the heart of the Serra do Courel (Lugo), has preserved its traditional architecture almost intact since the 19th century’. Nice photos.
…...
Finally:
Mano Negra (Manu Chao’s earlier group) - Indios De Barcelona (1988) on YouTube here.
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