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:
No doubt like they do everywhere else, Spain hauls out its special gala TV shows on New Year’s Eve to help bring in the celebration. We must eat our twelve grapes and let off a firework.
This time around, the fierce competition between the national television and the commercial Antena3 channel (no one watched any of the others) came to a head.
La Una had David Broncano (host of the leading comedy chat show La Revuelta) and Lalachus (a jolly and overweight comedienne) to host the countdown from the roof of a building in Madrid overlooking La Puerta del Sol, while across the way, on another rooftop with another premium view of the square and its clock, were the Antena3 stalwarts Cristina Pedroche and Alberto Chicote. Cristina, for some reason, wearing a skimpy dress made from synthetic crystals containing real mother’s milk (no kidding).
And, it’s cold out there, on a Madrid rooftop, half naked, at half-past eleven at night.
At one point, as sensible folk stay home with the heater on high to watch the telly, Broncano is seen to break the unwritten rule as he shouts though a megaphone over to the rival team to ask ‘Say fellas, when do we get to eat the grapes?’ (Spaniards eat twelve grapes during the New Year chimes).
Well, I don’t know, but Antena3 promptly put up a screen so that their presenters could no longer be seen from the roof of their cheeky TVE rivals. Heh!
All good fun. Then Lalachus pulls out una estampita (a small card) from her copious bosom and waves it at the camera. It’s a representation of a popular TV show called Grand Prix – a version of It’s a Knockout: an affable looking cartoon-bull logo wearing a gold medal, only instead, this card has a bleeding heart around the bull’s neck – a joke that’s sure to offend the easily offendable: that’s to say, a small and extreme section of the Catholics.
Not that New Year’s Eve has anything to do with Christian tradition.
Duly offended, Hazte Oir and the Abogados Cristianos people were at the door of the juzgados bright and early the next morning to denounce the fat lady and her smarmy companion, along with the head of the Spanish television, and anyone else who may have laughed or sniggered. Blasphemy!
Cue the Monty Python joke (reworked): ‘Nobody laughs at the Spanish Inquisition!’
The Archbishop of Seville asks ‘How long will they take advantage of our patience?’ The senior Spanish prelate Monseñor Luis Argüello calls the joke ‘an intolerable offence’.
The opportunist Vox party calls for the presence of the president of the RTVE José Pablo López (a socialist appointee) to give an explanation of the affront in Congress.
Turn the other cheek, girls.
La blasfemia (or rather, its modern version known as el escarnio) is an offense that’s still on the books, although it will likely be removed this year says Félix Bolaños the justice minister. But first, presumably, we will have to suffer some lawfare from m’learned friends.
Some of those offended, says one editorial following the hateful affront to Catholics worldwide, are the very same people who regularly criticise Lalachus for being a fatty and complained about her appearing on the New Year’s Eve show (where the national TV beat out Antena3 in viewer numbers for the first time in fifteen years).
In the end, it’s not about religion, it’s about politics: where, of course, anything goes.
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Housing:
‘Julen Bollain on rentals: «Our cities cannot be parks where the vulture-funds play Monopoly». Julen Bollain (an economist and ex-parliamentarian) harshly criticises the Government’s management of housing in Spain. He recently highlighted the lack of public policies and the increase in rents while salaries have not increased, creating a major social problem’. The story is at LaSexta here.
VoxPópuli says that the larger landlords ‘…are withdrawing their rental apartment renewals from the market in Catalonia, intending to sell once the current contracts expire, which explains the drop in supply’. This appears to be a reaction to the government’s rental price controls. Mark Stücklin at Spanish Property Insight shares similar misgivings here. Indeed, the new rent-controls are now nationwide says Mark Stücklin here: ‘A new Spanish law, effective 1 January 2025, introduces a new index to limit rental price increases for housing contracts signed after 26 May 2023’.
By contrasting cities with or without high visitor numbers (Sevilla and Málaga on the one hand and Jaén and Teruel on the other), Xataca says that those destinations with lots of tourist-apartments (known in Spanish with the acronym of VUTs) have made ordinary rentals increase in price by 30% to keep up. The Director of the Andalusian Institute for Research and Innovation in Tourism says: «We can confirm that there is a significant correlation between the rental price and the concentration of tourist housing in Malaga».
From El Español here: ‘The PP planning law will free up land to build cheap housing, give tax incentives for rent and guarantees to young people for mortgages’. The last time they did that (during the Boom which abruptly ended in 2008), we suffered huge corruption issues, over-valuation, land-grab, wealthy profiteers, property fraud and a slew of bankrupt savings banks.
From elDiario.es here: ‘The Valencian Community returns in 2025 to the macro-urbanism of the 20th century despite the recent warning from the DANA. Beyond some cosmetic announcements by the regional Government headed by Carlos Mazón aimed at enabling the transfer of industrial estates, the truth is that in the midst of the crisis, the construction of hotels just 200 metres from the coast has been approved and the reactivation of 18,000 homes on the coast of Cullera, Benidorm or Burriana is maintained’.
From the GBNews site here: ‘Expats in Spain share their experience of moving abroad – ‘it’s so refreshing to see older people enjoying life’’. We read that ‘Living in Spain has many positives such as sunny skies and nice beaches which is what a pair of expats have experienced’. Good stuff.
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Tourism:
The Junta de Andalucía confirms the increase of more than 30 new routes from Andalusian airports during 2024, with more destinations being added in 2025 says EuropaPress here.
One of the problems of over-tourism is that it becomes a bother for the residents (especially those who don’t own souvenir shops or hotels). Then there’re the pilgrims… Colin Davies lives in Pontevedra and his Thoughts From Galicia says here: ‘The total number of Camino de Santiago pilgrims who passed through Pontevedra city on the Camino Portugués this year has been confirmed as 500,000. This is exactly 100 times more than 15 years ago… So, it’s not much like it used to be, even if the thrill of arriving in Santiago de Compostela is the same. On the upside, I guess you can meet a lot more people. In truth, these days you can’t really avoid them’. The Olive Press says that three popular destinations in Spain are now so overwrought with visitors that one should think twice about visiting them (or maybe just buy a well-illustrated guide-book instead). These are Mallorca, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands: ‘coveted tourist spots which are collapsing under the weight of their own prominence’, says the Fodor Travel Guide.
Hand-luggage measurements on flights are changing (Smaller aircraft? Less room? Corporate greed?). 20Minutos has the new sizes here.
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Finance:
From Sur in English here: ‘Spain created 500,000 jobs last year, mostly thanks to the tourism boom. More than 21 million people are now in work while the number of unemployed has dropped to 2.7 million after the Christmas surge in December’.
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Politics:
‘The PSOE criticises Feijóo for being «silent» about Spain’s economic growth. The party spokesperson Esther Peña reminded the media recently that Alberto Núñez Feijóo predicted that Spain was going to enter a «very deep economic crisis» when he took over from his predecessor in 2022’. She also criticised the PP leader for his submission to Vox and its policies. There’s more at 20Minutos here.
Despite good economic news, the Government continues to face political problems – sometimes (but not to say always) originating from bulos from the far-right. No doubt, since it is achieving the desired effect of weakening support, these bulos will continue. Meanwhile, though, the PP has its own problems with some of their supporters moving towards their sinister partner to the right – Vox. El Huff Post editorialises here.
The regional leaders are meant – hopefully – to be in line with their party presidents. In Castilla–La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page is a thorn in Pedro Sánchez’ side, and – as we read in Público here – the Andalusian leader Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla is apparently keeping a distance from Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Together with (the also suspect) Isabel Díaz Ayuso, Juanma Moreno is a possible successor to Feijóo (when the time comes).
The first of a series of events to note the fiftieth anniversary of the death of General Franco in 1975 was held on Wednesday in el Museo de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Pedro Sánchez and all his deputies were present, but the event was boycotted by the opposition PP and Vox parties. Sánchez: «The fascism that we thought we had left behind is now the third political force in Europe,» he lamented, stressing that «if history teaches us anything, it is that freedom is something that can be lost. It can happen again and you don’t have to be of a certain ideology, neither left, nor centre, nor right, to look with sadness, with enormous sadness and also with terror, at the dark years of Franco’s regime and fear that this horror could return». The report plus a video is at RTVE here.
Feijóo will meet with his barons on January 11 and 12 in Asturias to address the housing problem says RTVE here.
A motion of censure in the city-hall of Jaén has switched power from the PP to the PSOE.
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Catalonia:
From El Periódico (pay-wall) here: ‘Tourism continues to reach its peak in Catalonia, which welcomed 18.9 million international visitors in the first eleven months of 2024. This figure represents an increase of 9.9% compared to the same period in 2023 and makes it once again the leading Spanish autonomous community in terms of international tourists…’
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Europe:
From AS here: ‘The complaint from a Finnish pensioner living in Málaga after the cut in pensions by her country: “It is impossible to live here on 600 euros” she says. The Government of Finland has said it will stop paying pensions to citizens residing abroad from February 2025. The story also appears in Finnish at Helsingin Sanomat with the line ‘In order to make it as harsh as possible, 79 year old Liisa must return to Finland at the coldest possible time…’ The worry is – would any other country suddenly find this a good idea…?
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Health:
Those detox pills and drinks we see in advertisements, and sometimes swallow, says Maldita here, are all a scam and there is no scientific evidence to prove otherwise.
According to this Government report, around 55% of us are too fat: men more than women.
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Corruption:
‘Hackers are selling at least two million details of Asisa customers (the private health insurer) that they could have obtained from a database of this company. Judging by the announcement, the amount of information obtained is very large and the data obtained is very sensitive…’ An item from El Grupo Informatico here.
Vito Quiles is the ‘journalist’ (he is unlicensed) who operates in upholding and supporting the far-right Alviso Pérez from the Se Acabó la Fiesta party. He is active in EDATV (here).
Vito is currently in hot water after calling for donations to help those affected by the floods in Valencia as he advertises his own private bank account rather than using a special one.
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Courts:
As we all solemnly look anywhere rather than at the Scandal of the Boyfriend, ‘Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s Chief of Staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (known by the Media as MAR), acknowledged this Wednesday in his statement as a witness in the case regarding the leak of emails about the alleged crimes of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s boyfriend that he was the one who leaked the distorted information about these alleged criminal offenses, the denial of which by the Prosecutor’s Office has led to the opening of a case for disclosure of secrets against the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, and the Chief Prosecutor of Madrid, Pilar Rodríguez…’ InfoLibre has the story.
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Ecology:
From Inspain News here: ‘2024 was Spain’s record-breaking year for heat. Spain is no stranger to high temperatures, but 2024 has set alarming precedents. Data from the Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (AEMET) reveals that last year was among the hottest in recorded history for 34 provinces. Temperatures consistently exceed historical norms, which points to the pressing reality of climate change.
From Infobae here: ‘The importance of conserving Doñana: “There is no other wetland in Europe capable of feeding so many waterfowl for six months a year”. With a rich biodiversity and variety of ecosystems, December marked thirty years since the Doñana National Park was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO. A recent study shows how its deterioration impacts waterfowl throughout Europe’.
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Various:
From The White House January 4th here, ‘President Biden announces recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom’. We read that the nineteen include: ‘José Andrés, the renowned Spanish-American culinary innovator who popularized tapas in the United States. His World Central Kitchen provides large-scale relief to communities affected by natural disasters and conflict around the world’. 20Minutos also carries the story about the chef, active among other disaster places, in Gaza.
‘Desokupa Universe: the ultra-right company (the one that started out by busting okupas) that wants to teach self-defence to the public. Daniel Esteve’s firm has signed sundry agreements to train police and military personnel while his ‘Club’ teaches adults and minors to defend themselves from attacks with knives, a danger that according to Desokupa threatens all Spaniards on the streets’. elDiario.es has the story.
The Triver Rana: ‘The quirky Spanish car that almost changed everything’ found on YouTube here. This 1954 car is as close to insanity as it gets.
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See Spain:
Laujar de Andarax, The beautiful pueblo of Almería that was the final capital of al-Andalus is at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. This town in the Almerian Alpujarras was the refuge of Sultan Boabdil before finally leaving the Iberian Peninsula after the Fall of Granada in 1492’. The story, plus pictures, are at Infobae here.
The six pueblos with the cutest (funniest, oddest?) names, plus a few more, are here.
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Finally:
Hortelano, a song off the new album from the agro-rock performer El Koala on YouTube.
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