BoT 643
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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August 13 2026 Nº 643
Editorial:
There apparently aren’t enough homes in Spain for all of us, and thus we must read the daily scare-stories of the okupas, of frustrated house-hunters, of those poor souls renting (or even buying) just a single room, or living in a caravan or a car, or I suppose, slumped somewhere on a park-bench surrounded by a few plastic bags of possessions.
We also know full well that there are plenty of empty houses, abandoned blocks, rotting urbanisations and so on (we see them every day), but not perhaps located precisely where we want to live, or even if we did, the town hall, the regional authority, the lending bank, the owner or even perhaps some squabbling inheritors have ruled that the place must stay empty for whatever reason there might be. Usually of course it’s to do with greed.
Some owners of a perfectly usable block of apartments – these things happen – might leave them empty or unsold for speculative reasons. Sooner or later, thanks to demand, they know that the price will go up.
The main problem in Spain – or anywhere else – is location. An ambitious young banker or accountant wants to live in Madrid, not in Sigüenza (as beautiful as it may be). A dentist or a lawyer would prefer to hang his shingle in Barcelona than in Cuenca and the best discotheques, restaurants and museums are not necessarily in Teruel.
Or Tossa del Mar. Good beaches though.
But now there’s a new system coming from the USA, which never misses a trick when it comes to screwing money out of the less fortunate. You may be one of those who live in the sticks to save on city-rentals while you practice teleworking. Hunched over the computer each day while wearing nothing more than a tee-shirt with the cat and a cold Martini both waiting for your undivided attention. Rather like I’m doing now.
It seems that clever landlords are charging extra rent if you do that. An apartment is just for sleeping in, showering and watching Netflix. Working from your couch is apparently ratable.
There are more homes in Spain than we like to imagine, although not all are located within the boundary of the M-30. Google says there are 27 million dwellings in España and with 49,700,000 people living here: which works out at a little less than two people to a home.
Whether this figure refers only to functional residences or anything which vaguely has a roof is unclear.
There are those, of course, who have two homes. The usual residence in – probably – the city and then a second one, that has either belonged to the family for ages and can be found in some forgotten pueblo and is availed of during August, or perhaps an apartment near the beach. The second option being preferable to the young’uns.
I buck the trend by living alone. You can blame me for all the panic stories listed at the beginning of this essay. But, while I’m alone, I’m not alone, since there are 5.6 million of us. A whopping 28% of all dwellings in the country are unipersonal. Shopping for one.
Well, we could get together, maybe on a Facebook chat, and share and loosen up some property. However, says Infobae, ‘A study suggests that splitting an apartment with people with whom you don't share a romantic relationship has worse consequences for mental health than living alone and not having a partner’.
Right now, what with all the visitors making whoopie and making it largely impossible to go out either for supplies or for a gargle, I’ve been staying home and reading.
There are just a few more weeks of this summer frolic to go. Then, once my hibernation is over (the word I was looking for apparently is ‘aestivation’), and the fiestas patronales just a noisy memory and a sticky taste, and when I can park the car in the village rather than having to take the bus, then I'll be able to go out once again and see my friends. Come the end of the evening, I'll head for home, glad to be living alone with my books and my cat.
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Housing:
From the Majorca Daily Bulletin here: ‘Spain's 'bad bank' to hand over almost 600 properties for social and affordable renting in the Balearics. Sareb, the bad bank, is due to be dissolved in 2027’.
From El País in English here: ‘Madrid, a laboratory for evictions. Companies dedicated to expelling tenants proliferate unchecked and use coercion. In the capital city region, six homes are emptied a day’. Their photograph shows some bruisers from Desokupa CyL, Horus Desokupa and Bastión Desokupa.
From elDiario.es here: ‘Spain has almost eight million non-primary residences, 30% of the total dwellings in the country. Only four European countries have more vacant homes and second residences than Spain, which could cover part of its housing shortage’. This in part is down to families maintaining their village homes (those that have them), in part because they are difficult to sell, in part for nostalgia and a useful bolthole for the summer-break.
The Olive Press says that ‘More British pensioners are leaving Spain than arriving for the third year running, official figures show’.
‘Següesal Golf Resort, the massive urban development project in Andalucía is back in the hunt to build a complex in Barbate (Cádiz) larger than the town itself. After the regional government's environmental rejection in 2022, the company isn't giving up, and the town council is awaiting a new assessment of the three-million-square-meter mega-complex located next to La Breña Natural Park. The project includes three hotels, 635 tourist apartments, 450 homes, and a golf course…’ More at elDiario.es here.
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Tourism:
Ah, tourists. Sometimes though, they buck the trend by not spending enough. Take the visitors sleeping on the beach for example. From El Periódico here: "I prefer sleeping on the beach to paying for a Barcelona hotel": tourists find an alternative to high prices on the sand. Young Europeans, travellers passing through, and long-stay tourists are turning to the sand due to the price of hotels and apartments, lack of availability, or to avoid paying for a last night before catching a flight’.
‘Spain imposes border checks on Italian travellers in tit-for-tat move over Ceuta migrant row. The diplomatic spat between Spain and Italy over migrant arrivals at Ceuta has escalated after Madrid announced border controls on Italian travellers after Rome had earlier imposed similar sanctions on visitors from Spain’, from ABC News here. The Italian Government – Says 20Minutos here – criticizes Spain after the suspension of Schengen: "Unacceptable, it is Sánchez who has dramatized the situation".
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Finance:
Sareb, the Bad Bank. From Bilbao Hiria here: ‘In 2012, the Rajoy government promised that the bank bailout wouldn't cost a single euro and would yield a 15% return; today, 90% of the deficit is being borne by public funding. The Sareb, the bad bank created during the financial crisis, is carrying accumulated losses (realized and unrealized) of €25,386 million through 2025, according to economist Carlos Sánchez Mato's calculations based on the company's own data. Thirteen years after its creation, the figures contradict, point by point, the promise on which it was founded’.
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Politics:
What is the issue over Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s roof-top apartment? Google AI answers: ‘The controversy surrounds the regional government's purchase of a luxury 485 square metre penthouse in Madrid's Chamberí district for €6.3 million through a public company, Planifica Madrid. Critics and opposition parties questioned the opaque purchase and its intended use as a temporary office for Ayuso, prompting the government to announce its resale. Domócrata (in English) has: ‘The Community of Madrid paid 6.3 million for the penthouse that was going to be allocated to Ayuso's office’. At the same time, Ayuso enjoys a 211 square metre apartment with her boyfriend, plus the upstairs ático, in the upscale Vallehermoso neighbourhood. From El Mundo here: ‘The PSOE to file a complaint with the Madrid Prosecutor's Office for Economic Crimes regarding the purchase of the penthouse in Chamberí: "It's a colossal bungle." Minister Óscar López is calling for legal action and announces that they will also request all documentation related to the property acquisition’.
"Abascal is Israel's preferred candidate for president of the Spanish government," says the former vice president of Castilla y León Juan García-Gallardo, who left active politics last year although he remains a member of Vox, was quoting an Israeli television program. ‘The links between Vox and Israel have been steadily growing since 2023’.
‘Vox and the Partido Popular has agreed to a non-aggression pact with an eye on the general elections: "We must avoid controversy". Both parties seek to avoid conflicts in the regions where they govern in coalition so as not to hinder national strategies and to demonstrate that they can work together’. El Huff Post has the story.
From El Plural here: ‘Spain has the best solar resource in Europe, the technology to harness it, the public demand to accelerate its development, and even an official target of reaching 19 GW of self-consumption by 2030’. However, the Partido Popular is studying a plan – if they reach office – of returning the Sun Tax, the Impuesto al Sol, under another name: ‘System Equilibrium’. A handy boost for the large energy companies. The article asks: Why is investment cooling down in our sun-drenched country? Because nobody invests in solar panels if they suspect the government will change the rules again tomorrow. And that suspicion has a name’.
‘The millionaire and former Ciudadanos deputy Marcos de Quinto has taken to Twitter to reflect on... a kind of property-based suffrage. Pure 18th-century nostalgia, of course. In a tweet published this Friday, De Quinto concocted an absurd argument to defend the removal of voting rights from "those who are currently receiving unemployment benefits or a minimum living income, as they are supported by other taxpayers."’. The next (logical) step would be – stop women from voting too… the story is at Público here.
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Ceuta:
The brief invasion of Ceuta at BoT Backup here. My article looks at the event and offers a few reasons as to why this suddenly, and massively, occurred.
‘The PSOE criticizes the PP for not standing "on the side of the State" and opting for "political opportunism" in the Ceuta crisis’, says Europa Press here right after the event. Since then, it’s gotten worse, with the Italian Prime Minister Meloni obliging Spanish visitors to be passport checked on arrival (and a couple of days later, Spain answering with the same formalities for Italian visitors). The PP and Vox taking the Italian side. Of course. From El Mundo here: Sánchez and Meloni undermine four years of institutional balance on Europe's southern border with migration. The governments of Spain and Italy have engaged in the most bitter clash between EU countries in decades in just one week’.
‘The crisis in Ceuta, far from being resolved after almost two weeks, has "thousands of people wandering" through its streets’ says 20Minutos here. The mixture appears to be either ‘los menas’ (an unkind word for minors coming from menor extranjero no acompañado) being largely looked after either by the local ceutíes or the State, plus the ‘sub-Saharan’ immigrants who understandably don’t want to return to Morocco which, at best, is only a half-way house.
‘Vox again calls for "hunting one by one" the migrants who entered Ceuta’. The slightly ridiculous deputy ‘José Maria Figaredo won’t back down and insists on using terms that dehumanize the people who recently entered Spanish territory’ says El Huff Post here.
From RTVE on Tuesday (with video) here: The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares met with the President of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, to coordinate actions in response to the ongoing migration crisis in the autonomous city, where hundreds of people are on the streets waiting for emergency services to assist them.
Albares focused his remarks on guaranteeing that all those who entered irregularly on July 30 and 31 will be returned to their country of origin, primarily Morocco. He stated that he is in daily contact with his Moroccan counterpart, who has conveyed his willingness to cooperate to ensure that all migrants leave Ceuta. For his part, Juan Jesús Vivas welcomed the position of the minister and Morocco regarding the return of the minors and adults who remain in the city. "The best way to prevent a similar situation from occurring again is for everyone to lose hope that coming to Ceuta will grant them legal status and asylum; the only solution is return," he said’. However, Spain can’t by law chuck out asylum-seekers, nor minors either says Público here: ‘Spain cannot return to Morocco all the people who crossed into Ceuta because the law prevents it’.
El Mundo here has: ‘Vox proposes investigating Sánchez for possible crimes of treason and against the security of the State for the "invasion" of Ceuta. Such an accusation must be brought by a quarter of the members of Congress and approved by an absolute majority to proceed’.
From ABC News here: ‘Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s migration policies have weathered withering criticism as leaders from across the European Union met Tuesday last week following the late July rush of migrants to the Spanish territory of Ceuta in North Africa…’
The Washington Post says: ‘Chaos at Spain’s border underscores how migrant flows can be weaponized. Authorities have not said who organized a suspicious border breach in Ceuta. Social media posts in Morocco are urging another push’.
From The Guardian here: ‘Drowned the day her visa came through: the tragedy of a Moroccan footballer trying to reach Ceuta’.
Join The Olive Press editor Jon Clarke as he visits Ceuta: ‘with thousands of migrant children on the pavement – and thousands more in the hills’.
From Military.com here: ‘Spain’s Ceuta crisis follows years of Israeli and U.S. rhetoric and pressure toward Madrid as Morocco’s border failure remains unexplained’.
The Guardian’s take here: ‘Pedro Sánchez is a progressive outlier in Europe – and over Ceuta, he is being made to pay for it’. It says: ‘The Spanish PM has been one of few European leaders to stand up to Trump. He now faces coercive diplomacy and an emboldened far-right at home’.
Found at El Mundo: ‘…Some reports prepared in Beijing interpret the events in Ceuta as a hybrid warfare operation intended to increase pressure on Pedro Sánchez's government. According to this interpretation, the manoeuvre involved the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, which is interested in promoting a destabilization campaign against Spain…’
You can’t have a good story without a few bulos. Maldita looks at 30 of them here.
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Health:
‘Andalucía Laica and Marea Blanca Andalucía denounce the expenditure of 7.4 million euros of public health funds on Catholic chaplains following an agreement between the bishops and the regional health service, the SAS’. The story at laicismo.org here.
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Media:
We saw last time how the Google Artificial Intelligence saves us from having to visit different news sites. The news sites, understandably, are losing traffic (and advertising revenue). From Periodísmo here: ‘What if the media considered closing the door on Google? The expansion of AI-powered responses is accelerating the decline in traffic and forcing publishers to re-evaluate a relationship that was essential for years’.
Opinion at Nueva Tribuna here: ‘Is this the end of democracy in Spain? The tense and unrestrained belligerence of the PP and VOX parties opens an inextricable path in Spanish public life and society, with unpredictable consequences’.
An interesting article at Menéame dissects Vox in twenty points. It begins: ‘What's really behind Vox? 1) Vox was founded by ten people in 2013. Now there is only one left. The other nine didn't retire: Santiago Abascal purged them, expelled them, or they left, fed up. And now all nine are talking. All at once. A coincidence, no doubt’. The article looks at the funding of the party, mostly Israeli (via the ‘Tehran opposition’), or from Hungary’s Orbán. In Spain, the main supporter is the ACOM, a pro-Israeli group called Acción y Comunicación sobre Oriente Medio (their webpage in English here). Another secretive group, says the article, is also found to be behind Vox: El Yunque (Wiki).
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Ecology:
From Spanish Property Insight here: ‘Thoughts on how to cut your air conditioning bill during a heatwave’. Some useful advice!
An interview with Javier Martín Vide, climatologist: "Summers in the coming decades will be warmer, earlier, and longer." Público speaks with the director of the Fabra Observatory in Barcelona here about the city model and how the Catalan capital should adapt to what he calls the "new climate reality".
‘July 5. Spain records its hottest day since 1940 during the second heat wave: the Aemet warns of ongoing temperatures “well above normal” since mid-May. The episode coincided with the second heat wave of the summer, which brought temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius to 38 provinces and broke several historical records’ says Infobae here.
From The Guardian here: ‘Climate change kills: Pedro Sánchez speaks plain truth to Spain’s deniers. PM has long history of speaking out on realities of global heating, but political opponents remain unmoved’.
From As here: ‘An aristocrat released thousands of American red swamp crayfish into the Guadalquivir River in 1974: 50 years later, the situation has reached a point of no return. Fifty years after Andrés Bores introduced two tons of American cangrejo rojo from Louisiana into the Guadalquivir River, the crustacean has reshaped the ecological and economic landscape of the Doñana National Park.
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Various:
As we watch the plans for the Madrid motor racing circuit, a journalist from elDiario.es went down to see the Valencia circuit that, like Madrid, wouldn’t cost the public a céntimo. ‘The abandoned circuit is now used as a settlers’ camp says the article. ‘What happened to Formula 1 in Valencia: the circuit is now a shantytown, and the project a public money pit. A thousand people live forgotten on the track inaugurated by Francisco Camps, which was supposed to be "zero cost." 300 million euros were wasted. In happier news, the plot, one of the most sought-after in the city, will soon house a new neighbourhood of 3,200 homes’.
From October 17th, all commercial phone-calls must carry the 400+ prefix.
The interesting story of how Business over Tapas collaborator José Antonio Sierra prepared the first bilingual dictionary of football. Cádiz Directo recalls that José Antonio was the director of the Instituto Cervantes in Dublin for many years. Now retired and after many years living in Málaga, he has just moved to Ávila, the city where he was born in 1936.
El Debate recalls who invented the board game Trivial Pursuits. ‘Aaron, a British subject and current owner of The Cave, greets visitors with a knowing smile to this corner of El Capistrano in Nerja (Málaga). He knows his bar is much more than just a place with stone walls and good food. Here, over beers and conversation, the story of one of the best-selling board games of all time began: Trivial Pursuit…’ The two inventors were the Canadian expats Scott Abbott and Chris Haney – but they needed an enthusiastic investor. ‘Phil Donnason, the owner of The Cave back in 1980, a South African raised in Canada and living in Nerja, decided to risk 1,000 Canadian dollars on that seemingly unprofitable project. "I've always been lucky," Donnason recalled years later…’ Fancy a game?
‘The Almería Provincial Council is promoting bullfighting among children with games to teach them how to use the two types of capes (capote and muleta). It maintains that it is part of the "culture" and "customs"’. A report from El Huff Post here 😮.
The earliest flamenco was a singer backed – if at all – by clapping or drumming out a rhythm on a table or a board. It was known as ‘cantes al palo seco’. The guitar came later says an interesting Facebook post here.
A Ceuta woman tells a reporter that, thanks to the endless propaganda from the Spanish right-wing about how well immigrants are treated by the socialists once they come to Spain, known as el efecto llamada, it’s no wonder that there is a large number of folk willing to risk the crossing.
The eclipse on Wednesday evening is fun – the first full solar eclipse in Spain apparently since 1905 (Wiki). The next solar eclipse will be in just one year’s time on August 7th 2007. I didn’t have any special glasses and the hill on the other side of the plain from my home cuts the sunset. So, (writing this on Wednesday afternoon), I shall miss it. Sort of. Interestingly, since we are writing about stars and planets, El Independiente tells us that there are no less than two million Spaniards – that’s 5% of the country – who are sure that the world is flat. These folk are known as terraplanistas: flat-earthers.
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Finally:
The Flamenco Guitarist Pepe el Habichuela died this week (El País here). Here he is playing at the Recoletos Jazz Club on YouTube.
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