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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Editorial:
I drove up to Granada this weekend: surely one of the most beautiful cities of them all. My passenger commented on the evident kindness of the people there (she’s from Germany, where, apparently, life is much more serious).
We ate well, and stayed in a converted palace just up from the ayuntamiento. From there, we walked up the hill to overlook the city from the lush comfort of a large private estate open to the public.
One bar we found in the Sacromonte district had developed the tapa theme into bringing out a plate of ‘Número Uno’ or perhaps ‘Número Dos’ with the understanding that whatever came, it would be fresh, delicious, and newly prepared.
Spain is so full of pleasant surprises, as readers will know well enough. It’s a good life.
At the same time, there are also some trivial disadvantages to living here as we are also aware. A post on Facebook from Expats in Spain highlights a few of these:
*The paperwork. Oh, goodness yes – the bureaucracy can be a pain. So complicated and often silly. We suppose that it’s because that vast army of public servants must find something to do to fill their days.
*The traffic police and their parking and speeding fines. I don’t notice this much in the south, but my friend Colin from Pontevedra appears to rarely enjoy a peaceful day without finding a multa lying malevolently in his letterbox.
*The number of Walter Mitty clones. This refers to a book by James Thurber about a man who claims a false history of his life before he moved over to Spain. We have all met plenty of these characters, and we know to always take anything they say with a pinch of salt.
*Then there was an answer I gave to the Expats post which reads: ‘To be wary of your fellow countrymen abroad’. Indeed, another well-visited page on Facebook called ‘Named and Shamed, Costa Blanca’, with over 41,000 members, deals with exactly this subject.
My post above has received (so far) sixty two ‘likes’, showing that many of us have been taken by a glib ‘I speak the lingo’, or ‘let me help, I can get it for you cheaply’ and so on.
In my own case, I’ve been caught out innumerable times over the years, almost always by fellow-Brits. I’ve written a snarky piece about it which I shall publish someday.
During my time, I’ve been ripped off by burglars, thieves, con-men, carpet-baggers, scoundrels, drunkards and dopers; and to keep a balance, also by cantamañanas (fantasizers) here and there and of course leguleyos (dodgy lawyers).
I think there are three basic ways for a foreigner to survive in Spain: either by having an income from abroad, or from working here, or by living on his wits (at the inevitable expense of others).
But these are experiences – and each person will collect their own. I certainly don’t regret one moment of my life in this splendid country.
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Housing:
‘Spain: house purchases reach 69,418 transactions in October, highest figure since May 2007’. Item from The Corner here.
From Expansión here: ‘A severe legal blow to the so-called ‘mobile-homes’ and luxury resort-type campsites, which are increasingly common on the Spanish coast and far removed from the classic concept of a campsite. The Supreme Court has rejected the appeal filed by a campsite in Tarragona and established that ‘mobile-homes’ require a planning license for land use because they are similar to prefabricated houses and not to trailers.
From The Olive Press here: ‘Spain’s Airbnb crackdown continues: the Government to investigate companies that manage hundreds of tourist flats – for misleading practices and other consumer law violations’.
‘Why we bought a Spanish cave home (and would never live in anything else now)’. A piece from A Place in the Sun here.
Andalucía Informa brings us the four most dangerous barrios across the southern region.
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Tourism:
From El Economista here: ‘Brussels gives Spain an ultimatum over beach bar concessions. It takes Spain to the European Court for failing to comply with the public procurement directive’. Certainly, the granting of beach-bar licences has sometimes been a bit suspicious.
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Finance:
From El Confidencial here: ‘Spain overtakes Germany to become Europe’s largest exporter.
The surplus in the foreign market will contribute more than 4% to GDP this year, a historic figure, thanks to the growth of services. However, Trump’s arrival raises doubts about this dependence on the foreign sector’ (or here: https://archive.ph/DnreN ). The article goes on to say- ‘Now that Spain is the strongest European economy for foreign exports, along comes Donald Trump. With him comes the politics of protectionism and trade conflicts. This outlook is not favourable for any country with a high dependence on the foreign sector, but Spain is not, by far, the most vulnerable European country. Specifically, it has two shields: its main market is the European one and its most important sector is the services sector. In other words, markets in which protectionism will not operate…’
‘The Bank of Spain reviews the growth of the Spanish economy for the third time in a year and raises it to 3.1%. The factors that have surprised the organization in a positive way have been public spending, migratory flows and the strength of tourism’. From El Mundo here.
From Sur in English here: ‘High wage earners in Spain to be hit with new tax starting in January. In 2025 the ‘solidarity quota’ comes into force, and it will affect those earning over 4,900 euros per month’.
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Politics:
Sánchez announces a hundred events in 2025 for the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death under the slogan «España en Libertad«. From El Mundo here: ‘Experts are divided over the government’s announcement that it will mark the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death: «Historical memory involves a clear degree of subjectivity»’.
Opinion from Público here: ‘Until you have had a cup of coffee and Alberto Núñez Feijóo has come out with a new lie, you can’t say that the day has started. He has gotten into such a habit with this that one day he will surprise us all and say that he is Batman’.
The fib that has upset the writer of this comes from Feijóo claiming in a recent interview with La Razón that youth unemployment is up, when the reverse is true: November 2019: Youth (under 25s) Unemployment: 265,598. The current figure is 196,704 (Twitter).
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Europe:
From El Mundo here: ‘Even the Brexiteers want to get closer to Europe. 68% of Britons are in favour of returning to «freedom of movement» in exchange for access to the single market’ (or here: https://archive.ph/6rZlw ). The article quotes the ECFR and its study, ‘The cross-Channel reset: Trump, Putin, and shifting EU-UK opinion’ here.
‘As part of its efforts to meet the needs of the labour market, Spain has announced that it will extend the validity of the job seeker visa next year. Under the reformed immigration law, Spanish authorities said that the country will increase the job seeker visa validity from the current three months to one year’, Schengen News reports here.
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Health:
‘From next year, the Ministry of Health (Sanidad) will increase co-payments for medicines for high incomes to protect lower incomes. Pharmaceutical co-payments will be reformed to make them more progressive and establish new brackets that increase contributions by 5% for those with an annual income above 35,000 euros and by 65% for those above 100,000 euros’. Cadena Ser has the item.
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Corruption:
The current hot button for the PP is a businessman let out of jail (after a month, for his part in a large IVA fraud) who has ‘the goods’ on the PSOE. The proof, says La Cope here, seems to be a handwritten note with names and figures. ‘Victor de Aldama presents a handwritten sheet of paper without dates or specific works as «proof» of the contract rigging. He claims without proof (sic) that Ábalos, Koldo and even the PSOE shared up to 3.5 million in commissions for the illegal awarding of contracts in the Ministry of Transport. A contract rigging that the Ministry has refuted in two separate reports’. Of course, it all depends on who one believes.
There have been further arrests in the 182 million euro IVA scandal including an associate of Aldama who claims that she paid 90,000€ in cash to someone in the PSOE head-office.
Meanwhile, the PSOE intends to file a complaint against Víctor de Aldama for libel and slander presented ‘without a shred of evidence’, says EuroNews here.
A jolly pop group called Las Nenas has been found to be no more than a creation of Artificial Intelligence. There’s no sign of them on YouTube…
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Courts:
‘The president of the CGPJ comes out in defence of the judges against accusations of ‘lawfare‘: «There is no room for the widespread and permanent questioning of their work or in attributing political bias to them» Isabel Perelló’s words come days after Pedro Sánchez suggested that the Partido Popular is acting in collusion with the judges’. El Mundo reports here. ‘Let’s not generalize about judges, let’s be specific’ says elDiario.es, naming the worst offenders. The ex-judge Baltazar Garzón, himself a victim of lawfare, says in an interview “When you focus on the person and not on the facts, you fall into the criminal law of the enemy,” explains Garzón, alluding to a system where the investigation seems to persecute the individual, as in the recent case of Begoña Gómez, wife of President Pedro Sánchez. The instrumentalization of the law is not only evident in media cases, but also in prospective investigations that, according to Garzón, lack a solid legal basis. “There are judicial decisions that always go in the same direction, and that is not a coincidence,” he says.
Begoña Gómez was back in front of the judge on Wednesday, answering only questions put to her by her lawyer (!). She denied committing any irregularity. It seems that Judge Peinado is multiplying the fronts opened against the President’s partner, without making any progress on any of them. The current inquiry regarding Begoña Gómez’ use of a university computer program seems completely disconnected from the original complaint by Manos Limpias, but that’s how it goes…
From El País here: ‘The Public Prosecutor’s Office supports the investigation of the possible criminal responsibility of the Valencian president Carlos Mazón for his possible mismanagement of the Dana’. This follows from a number of complaints. A third public protest against Mazón has been called for December 29th.
The Caso Koldo opened on Tuesday with the advisor to the former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos, Koldo García, denying his accuser Victor de Aldama’s statement in the Supreme Court regarding the payment of commissions. García failed to admit to any crime in his two and a half hours of testimony says El Mundo here. ‘Koldo followed the line from his boss Ábalos’, says LaSexta here. Another view: ‘Koldo’s pathetic effort to cover up Ábalos and save Sánchez ends in an unacceptable mess’ says Periodista Digital here.
‘The courts overturn hundreds of fines for speeding as illegal due to the lack of proof of the presence of an operator. Dvuelta, an agency that has won a number of these lawsuits to date, explains how those affected can file a claim if they have been the victim of a mobile or static radar’. This comes from El País here. If you have already paid with the 50% discount, then you are out of luck says the article. Elsewhere, we read of a new kind of automatic speed-camera – so be on the watch!
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Media:
The PP apparently called for the removal of three of the best TV-journalists from the RTVE, but without success says El Huff Post here. These are David Broncano, Silvia Intxaurrondo and Xavier Fortes. The PP insisted on their removal as their price for supporting the public broadcaster’s board of directors. Silvia Intxaurrondo (a particular critic of the far-right), and recent winner of a press award in the Basque Country, says: “It is not ‘balanced reporting’ to put a charlatan and a scientist on the same level”.
From the secretary general of the consumer agency FACUA Rubén Sánchez: «There is a powerful machinery of hoaxes that seeks to bring far-right activists to power». In an interview with El Huff Post, the author of the book ‘Bulos. Manual de combate’ says, «Hoaxes are discourses that can very easily penetrate into the population, they go viral easily and are found in a population that is not very critical, that doesn’t stop to consider, or does so very little, in evaluating the veracity of certain messages. They are hoaxes – bulos – that reach us via things like WhatsApp, or are spread by the pseudo-media or interested parties to provoke certain effects at a political level…” Following with, ‘Spain’s left-wing government has just announced a bill extending a requirement to publish corrections to posts by digital platforms and social media influencers in an attempt to fight disinformation’ says The Guardian here.
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Various:
Brussels obliges Spain to raise the price of diesel by 11% from next year to make it more expensive than gasoline.
‘Three out of four young people resort to piracy to consume audio-visual content’ says Diario de Sevilla here. ‘Pirating video content is a method more common among young people, used on occasion by 65.3% of the population between 25 and 34 years of age’.
‘How medieval Islamic engineering brought water to the Alhambra’. Video and article in English at Open Culture here.
‘Passenger Nº 2,388 of the SS Stanbrook, the last ship to flee from Franco: “There were people who committed suicide because they couldn’t get on board”. María Egea Muñoz de Zafra is 90 years old, but she was five when she boarded the British freighter that transported Spanish Republicans into exile at the end of the Civil War in a feat that would go down in history’. The story at elDiario.es here. From Wiki here: ‘The SS Stanbrook was a British cargo steamship. She was launched in 1909 as Lancer, and was renamed Stanbrook in 1937. She was a blockade runner in the Spanish Civil War, in which she survived a number of Nationalist air attacks. One of these sank her in August 1938, but she was raised and repaired. In March 1939 she was one of the last blockade runners to leave Republican-held Spain before it fell to the Nationalist faction. In November 1939 a German U-boat sank her with all hands in the North Sea…’
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See Spain:
From The Olive Press here: ‘Spain is home to the most beautiful town in the world, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation – but have you visited it yet?’ The small pueblo is called Rupit i Pruit (or just Rupit) and is located in the northern zone of the province of Barcelona. From El Periódico here, some great photos of the village.
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Finally:
From YouTube here, a Galician song from Caamaño & Ameixeiras with Rodrigo Cuevas – Catro Cousas.
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