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:
What a marvellous thing the Internet is. Now we can throw out the set of encyclopaedias, talk to all our friends for free, save a fortune on subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, download (pirated) films, check our bank account and order a smashing looking shirt advertised on Facebook for just nine ninety five.
Or two for fifteen, if we are quick.
And then, when you unwrap the package – if it ever gets to you – you find that the shirt is made of polyester. See, the Internet is service, information, and increasingly, opportunity.
Opportunity for scammers, hackers, fraudsters and crooks. Many of whom don’t even exist: that’s right, the woman with the large chest who wants to be your friend either on Facebook (‘I love your posts, you seem such an interesting person’) or in your Messenger (here’s one I just got from Busty Emma: ‘Hi Dear!’). They are both bots, like the empty phone calls or the get-rich-quick adverts.
I’m reading on Facebook this morning, in a paid-for advert, the following (in Spanish): ‘Donation of 544,000 euros. Please contact me to benefit’. I’m also getting tarot-reading and offers by Pedro Sánchez, Amancio Ortega and other Spanish household names to invest in a get-rich-quick scheme. Ya think?
Even in my private paid-for email account, I get scam adverts like, f’rinstance, ‘Get your free Oraal B Series 9 from Uniited Heallthcare’ – what’s with the misspellings, is it to fool the spam-guard?
Then, beware of anything that starts with ‘Congratulations…’ Indeed, I was offered a free Trump tee-shirt only yesterday, just pay for the postage and send us your details.
Besides emptying your bank account, or taking your ID or your online-presence, or pushing extremist views down your throat (with a nod to the anything-goes policies of Elon Musk and The Zuck), the Internet can provide misleading information (The old joke of – ‘All climate scientists agree on global warming, but on the other hand and to be fair, Sandra on Facebook says that it’s all bollocks’).
The Guardian notes, ‘…it is possible to conclude that Zuckerberg has always cared more about his company’s proximity to power than to its proximity to truth’. Indeed, his reversal of the fact-checkers has prompted the joke site El Mundo Today to announce that it, too, has removed its ‘protocols of verification’.
Revealingly, the word “enshittification” has just been crowned as Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year. The dictionary defined the word as follows. ‘The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking’.
Luckily, there are several fact-checkers out there, Snopes, Maldita, Wikipedia (currently under threat from Musk), and of course Russia’s bogus Global Fact-Checking Network…
By the way, Invermectin, which reputedly cures both cancer and Covid if you believe the Internet, is in reality a horse laxative.
Besides misinformation, or rather disinformation (used a lot in the recent American elections, and indeed, with anything to do with Trump); there’s the danger of cyber-warfare, hijacking, bluesnarfing (you should switch your Bluetooth connector off to avoid piracy); malware – (viruses, spyware, worms and so on); denial-of-service attacks which can break down a network; phishing and password attacks.
And note that, these days, only amateur hackers bother to break into your account – the professionals are busy hacking the hospital, or the bank, or the electricity company.
Twitter has meanwhile become notoriously toxic, and some people are moving to an imitator called Blue Sky. The main advantage of this platform is that it doesn’t carry far-right posts along the lines of Elon Musk and his support for the AfD, the German fascist party (‘Jawohl, Hitler was a communist’), or his suggested invasion of the UK.
These days, it must be acutely embarrassing for anyone who owns and drives a Tesla.
We have rather taken to no longer following the news – neither buying newspapers any more (El País now prints around 52,000 copies daily – as against 470,000 just twenty years ago), or even watching the Telediario (75% of Spaniards now have a streaming service – Netflix, Disney and so on). Instead, we get our news from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, where it has little or no editorial control. Don’t believe me? Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI and Uber have all given Trump a million dollars for his inauguration fund (sic!) and Elon Musk pumped 277 million dollars into the Donald Trump candidacy. The incoming president’s goals will become clear enough in the weeks to come.
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be too sure of investing in Bitcoin: like fairies’ promises and happy endings, it ain’t necessarily so.
Our phones – if we are important enough – run the risk of being spied on by the Israeli Pegasus – or for that matter, being blown up by the Mossad.
The Dutch professor Geert Lovink in an essay called ‘Extinction Internet’ explains that there will come a time when everyone will get tired of being connected to the Internet, because the disadvantages of sharing opinions online will be so great – the negative aspects far outweighing the good – that people will simply turn away. The Spanish news-site Infobae ‘consults experts on the implications of a web increasingly dominated by bots and artificial content’. They find that ‘the Golden Age has passed and now most traffic is either bots (no relation) or synthetic AI-generated content’. One advantage to this is that it’s a cheap alternative to paying journalists. As Forbes notes, ‘Beyond news generation and consumption, AI is improving the business and operation of journalism, which is important given the high cost and low revenue usually associated with the news media industry. Journalism can be a resource-intensive business…’
As for the Spanish Government’s plan to punish the media who publish bulos (fake news), we can only await events (as the Partido Popular and its allies criticise the proposals).
In short, corporate greed and Internet fraud between them will one day outweigh the social advantages, certainly for the ordinary consumer. Could it be happening right now?
Are we seeing the Internet die? Not for Industry as a whole, but rather as we – humble users and customers – might understand it? Maybe soon we will have to return to Telefónica and writing postcards?
It might not be such a bad thing.
So, where am I going with all this? Oh Hell, let’s see what’s on Facebook.
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Housing:
From the American Robb Report here: ‘In a hurry to move out of the country? Head to Spain—before it’s too late. The European nation has seen a mass migration of Americans pouring into its cities in recent years thanks to its popular Golden Visa program, which lets individuals gain residency through real estate investments, Bloomberg reported. Quickly though, as the Spanish government has confirmed that it would be terminating its residency-by-investment program for non-EU nationals on April 3, 2025…’
From El Confidencial here, Pedro Sánchez announces his twelve measures to alleviate the housing crisis. These include building more social homes; finding more residential building land, providing 30,000 empty homes owned by the Sareb (‘bad bank’); guaranteeing ‘public-owned’ properties (VPOs) to stay public; adopting plans to build homes faster and more efficiently, guarantees for both landlords and leasers, the rehabilitation of damaged empty properties; Government aid to be granted to those who renovate an apartment to make it available for affordable rent for at least five years; some tax relief for landlords; an increase in the IVA from 10% to 21% in some cases on short-term rentals (VUTs); increase penalties for fraud in the housing market; and to provide aid for certain disfavoured sectors in rentals and acquisitions.
And lastly: ‘To impose a limitation on the purchase of housing by non-resident non-EU citizens. The tax that non-EU citizens who do not reside in Spain must pay when they buy a house in the country will be increased up to 100%, prioritising the availability of housing for residents’.
elDiario.es has ‘According to the data presented this Monday by the President of the Government, in 2023 alone, 27,000 purchases of houses and flats were made by non-EU buyers. “Not to live in them, not for their relatives to live in. They did it, mainly, to speculate, to earn money from them, something that, in the context of housing shortage, we cannot afford,” said Sánchez. These houses, according to sources from Moncloa (the Presidential palace), are concentrated in “very clear and tense” areas, such as large urban and tourist centres. The Government indicates that this tax penalty will not be extended to non-European resident foreigners due to the “many legal limitations”’. The Guardian also covers the story here. 20Minutos brings the Partido Popular’s view on the threatened super-tax here: ‘The PP complains that Sánchez wants to limit the purchase of housing to foreigners when they only represent «4% of these transactions»’. El País has some cartoons.
Spanish Property Insight says ‘A recent report by PwC challenges the widespread belief that short-term rentals (VUTs) are the primary driver of Spain’s escalating rental prices. The findings reveal that VUTs make up a negligible portion of the housing market and their role in rental price increases is minimal. Instead, the report points to deeper structural issues in Spain’s housing market as the main culprits…’
The Majorca Daily Bulletin brings us ‘The Mallorca Hoteliers Federation and the Forum for Civil Society, who have held direct talks separate to the government’s sustainability pact, are in the process of signing an agreement document on the conversion of obsolete hotels into social housing and on tackling illegal holiday rentals…’
Regarding the demise of the Golden Visa, the Majorca Daily Bulletin has ‘…But there is an alternative, the Non-working (Non-lucrative) residence visa which is expected to prove popular with British and American citizens (and other non-European Union citizens) planning to retire to Spain. There has been a massive growth in the number of U.S. citizens moving to Spain over recent years…’
A complication for squatters, says 20Minutos here, as ‘the okupas face a new law that allows them to be quickly evicted’. The piece says that ‘this will allow the crimes of breaking and entering and house usurpation to be processed under the procedure of fast-track trials, so that these can be held within an estimated period of fifteen days’. Those who are in arrears in rent, says The Olive Press, could perhaps be charged with fraud to help landlords get them evicted quickly. The Supreme Court Judge Vicente Magro believes people who stop paying rent should be criminally prosecuted for fraud, rather than going through a lengthy civil court process’.
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Tourism:
From Sur in English here: ‘Málaga Airport welcomed close to 25 million passengers by the end of a record 2024. The gateway to the Costa del Sol saw an 11.5% increase in flyers, marking its best year in history’.
From Diario de Mallorca here: ‘The world press reports on the damage caused by the Fodor’s Guide to Mallorca as a destination. The island suffers a reputational impact on a global scale for being included among «The European destinations where residents do not want you as a tourist»’. Other destinations to avoid, says Fodor, include Barcelona, the Canaries and Mount Everest (seriously – have you seen the pictures of the queues?).
Another tourist artifice is the ‘Most Beautiful Pueblos of Spain’ – a list of charming destinations that currently runs to 122 – or rather, 121. This is because one of them, Pollença (Mallorca), has thrown in the towel says HostelTur here (without giving any reasons). El Huff Post however says that ‘The reason is that the Council believes that the network no longer contributes anything to the municipality and wants to better select its own tourist promotions’.
Another place ruined by tourism (according to Trendencias here) is Mijas in Málaga. The story begins: ‘It used to be one of the most charming white villages in Spain, but now it seems like a showcase for tourists only. It is so beautiful that everyone wants to see it. And, apparently, everyone has been going to see it, at the same time and continuously’. It makes the point (true of many tourist destinations): ‘Mijas has been the victim of excessive tourist overcrowding. Because it has so many visitors, the shops and restaurants have geared their business towards them. And they have all been convinced of this, because the endless souvenir shops and «tourist menus» have now replaced traditional meals and local stores’.
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Finance:
Colin from Thoughts from Pontevedra came up with this question for his AI engine: ‘Having read that Spain had overtaken Germany as the EU’s largest exporter and that services were a major part of these, what are these and where do they go’
The answer:
SPAIN’S EXPORT OF SERVICES
Spain exports a wide range of these, with the top categories being:
Miscellaneous business, professional, and technical services ($25.8B in 2020)*
Personal travel ($17.3B in 2020)
Transportation ($16.2B in 2020)
Financial services ($3.9B in 2020)
Royalties and license fees ($2.93B in 2020)
Other significant service exports include:
IT and telecommunications services
Construction services
Insurance and pension services
Services related to goods maintenance, processing, and repair
The main destinations for Spanish service exports are:
The EU: 47% of total non-travel service exports in 2022
The USA: Particularly for services related to intellectual property rights and IT/telecommunication
South America: Notable for construction services exports
Spain’s service exports have shown strong growth, with non-travel services exports growing by 16% in 2021 and 29% in 2022 in real terms. This growth has contributed significantly to Spain’s economic recovery and has led to an increase in its share of international markets for non-travel services exports
*Miscellaneous business, professional, and technical services. These encompass a wide range of specialized activities provided to other businesses or clients. They are characterized by their high degree of expertise, specialized knowledge, and predominantly intellectual nature and are typically provided by professionals with advanced education and training in their respective fields. Areas include:
Consulting
Legal
Accounting and financial
Engineering and architectural
IT and computer
Marketing and advertising
Research and development
Human resources
Creative: Graphic design, content creation, and copywriting
Specialized technical services: Data analytics, QA consulting, and software engineering.
The 2024-2025 Income Tax campaign officially begins on April 2, 2025: one day earlier than last year says La Opinión de Málaga here.
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Politics:
From elDiario.es here: ‘Feijóo harangues his barons for an “opposition without quarter or rest” against a Government that “is finished”. The leader of the PP does not present any new measures in the ‘Declaration of Asturias’, signed in silence by the regional presidents of the party, while he launches Venezuela-scares and corruption against a Sánchez who he sees as through and whom he challenges to call fresh elections: “Let’s see if he can win the next one”’.
The main focus from both the Government and the Opposition is housing. There aren’t enough homes available (above all) in the cities, the prices are too high and rentals are becoming both scarce and expensive. The Government’s proposals to alleviate this issue are spelled out above, in ‘Housing’. The Opposition PP meanwhile has its own list of ideas, including lowering house-taxes. EFE says: ‘The PP announces its housing plan and the Government believes that this will simply lead to another real estate bubble’.
From El Infiltrado here: ‘Alberto Núñez Feijóo returns to Valencia to support Carlos Mazón, an autonomous baron increasingly reviled both inside and outside the Valencian Community. This move is seen by some as ill-advised, not so much for the visit itself, but for the form and the reason, which seems to be none other than «supporting Mazón and criticising Sánchez for the umpteenth time, forgetting about the poor and disastrous regional management of the PP and Mazón». Thus, Feijóo not only joins his destinies to that of the Valencian president, but also shows an erratic and risky strategy that seeks to reverse the stagnant polls, supported only by the possibility of governing with VOX. «He had a poor and disastrous management of the DANA,» they point out from the Popular Party…’
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Catalonia:
‘The Spanish city that tourists say is “not worth the trip”. Many travellers seem disappointed after visiting Barcelona’ says El Periódico gloomily.
From Cinco Días here: ‘Big funds (known in Spain as fondos de buitre) leave Catalonia with the selling off of hundreds of homes due to the rent cap. Blackstone, Vivenio and Cerberus decide to get rid of houses as and when the lease contracts end’ (Thanks to Jake).
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Europe:
To remember or quietly forget one’s fascist past. elDiario.es says that ‘Germany, Portugal, Italy and Greece refute the PP’s frontal rejection of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death. Other Western democracies celebrated the fall of their dictatorships before Spain with the same chronological milestone used by Sánchez’ government, the presence of their heads of state and all political forces and without a hint of political confrontation’. Video program of ‘España en Libertad’ on RTVE Play here.
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Health:
Concern is raised that some sleeping pills, Ambien and Stilnox are mentioned, could increase the risk of neurological diseases including Alzheimer’s.
The Olive Press reports that ‘From face transplants to robot surgeons, Spain has achieved many medical discoveries and innovations in the last year. The country is becoming a world leader in scientific research and last year, it overtook Germany as the European frontrunner of clinical trials. Spain is proactively investing in research centres, healthcare structure and commercial partnerships, leading to this rise in medical research…’
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Corruption:
From ABC here: ‘The entire board of directors of the Seville airport taxi drivers are arrested for criminal organisation. The operation has already resulted in sixteen arrests for alleged membership of a criminal organisation and crimes of damage and coercion’.
‘Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (‘MÁR’) testified last week before the Supreme Court judge currently investigating the attorney general. Nine months after the events, he finally confirmed that it was he who had sent to the media an email from the prosecutor investigating Ayuso’s boyfriend…’ (more here). When the smoke finally clears, perhaps the judiciary can concentrate on the original fraud.
From El Confidencial here: SIM-swapping ‘Find out how a new phone scam in Spain could be affecting the performance of your mobile phone’.
From elDiario.es here: ‘The PSOE registers an anti-ultra law that reforms the popular accusation and forces the inadmissibility of complaints with press clippings. The PP compares Sánchez with Maduro and attacks the modification of the law of the Judicial Power that repeals the crime of offenses against religious feelings and opens the door to the recusal of judges for making statements of political content’. El Huff Post has ‘The PSOE proposes a law to end accusations based on press clippings and prevent parties from being popular accusations’ (We are thinking Manos Limpias and other peculiar agencies and their regular and usually spurious politicised attacks). What is ‘la acusación popular’? Wiki says ‘it’s a criminal procedural figure that grants active legitimacy, that is, the right to be a plaintiff or accuser in a trial, to any person who invokes the violation of the law by the accused, without needing to justify his procedural interest in having suffered particular harm caused by the agent of the reported conduct’ Got it? Spain is the only European country to use this device says 20Minutos here.
‘Imagine my expression as Pedro Sánchez pulls out of his hat a bill for protection «against harassment resulting from abusive legal actions.» What an outrage, what incredulity, what frustration. In other words, what the PSOE intends is to restrict popular action and prohibit trials based on press-clippings. Well, half of the historical trials in this country are going to go to hell. Although the worst thing, is that if this bill goes ahead, the cases of Begoña Gómez, Pedro Sánchez’s wife, and David Azagra, Pedro Sánchez’s brother, will automatically be archived. Put that in your pipe!’ (Editorial from El Español here).
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Courts:
Like everything else – the judiciary is divided into conservatives and socialists (‘progressives’). As the PSOE-appointed State Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz is called to declare in the Supreme Court later this month as ‘investigado’, ‘the minority progressive association of prosecutors (UPF) attributes to the Supreme Court a “witch hunt” for the case against García Ortiz. The UPF denounces a “direct” and “unprecedented” attack against the public ministry for the judge’s decisions after the complaint from Isabel Diáz Ayuso’s boyfriend’ according to El País here (paywall).
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Media:
From The Guardian here: ‘Pedro Sánchez hit out at Elon Musk and his allies for “openly attacking our institutions, inciting hatred and openly calling for people to support the heirs of nazism”, saying the politics of division, disinformation and hatred risk ushering in a new age of authoritarianism. Speaking in Madrid last week as Spain prepares to mark the 50th anniversary in November of the death of General Franco and the country’s subsequent return to democracy, the Spanish prime minister said hard-won, basic freedoms could not, and should not, be taken for granted…’
‘…Next, the expats bring investment and jobs. Spain has managed to expand significantly faster than the rest of Europe over the last few years, with a 2.7% growth rate last year. The money the expats bring into the country has not been the sole explanation for that. But it has certainly helped Spain modernise and internationalise its economy, especially given that it is globetrotting investors who have been moving to Spain in recent years, and not just retirees looking for some sunshine…’ The Spectator is critical of the plan to increase tax on non-EU property buyers. The article failing to note that the ‘globetrotting investors’ (or ‘fondos buitre’ as they are known here) are seen as part of the problem.
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Ecology:
Global warming crossed the border in 2024 and with 1.6ºC more it was above the limit of no return for the first time says 20Minutos here, and The Huff Post (US) here has ‘Earth records hottest year ever in 2024 and the jump was so big it breached a key threshold’
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Various:
‘Pedro Sánchez: «You don’t have to be left-wing or right-wing to look back with sadness and terror on the dark years of Franco’s regime and fear that this regression will be repeated. It is enough to be democrats». The President of the Government of Spain has announced that, throughout 2025, conferences, exhibitions and cultural activities will be held under the slogan «Spain in Freedom»’. Item from the presidential website La Moncloa here.
‘Historic ruling by European justice: families will have to install a system for domestic workers to clock in’ says Sur here. We shall have to watch this one develop.
‘The Sahrawi people have the right to self-determination, freedom, and dignity. They’ve been violently denied those rights. The world is watching in silence. I want to add my voice for Western Sahara liberation’: Greta Thunberg speaking from the Saharawi refugee camps.
‘Torrevieja, the fifth most populated city in the Valencian Region, has more foreign than Spanish residents’ says elDiario.es here (Ukraine, Russia, Colombia and UK in 4th place).
Garden birds at Nightingale Trails here.
Here we go: ‘The Beloved Siesta’ at Eye on Spain.
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See Spain:
A sculptured fake village in Quintanilla del Agua, Burgos, called Territorio Artlanza.
Albarracín in Toledo: ‘A village that whispers legends’ at Eye on Spain here.
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Letters:
Strange, I hadn’t noticed Lalachus’s supposedly blasphemous estampita. But neither did I catch on to the camp «Last Supper» tableaux at last year’s Paris Olympics. I suppose I should have paid more attention at Sunday school.
Jake
(Finland says it will stop paying pensions to citizens residing abroad from February 2025)
‘Sweden did the same thing a year or so earlier, only affecting their retired expats. The pension concerned was a sort of extra cost of living top up for the elderly. Those in Sweden still get that supplement. Sweden alleged that the EU had forced that elimination upon the government. An appeal to the Swedish courts failed. How many Swedes will now head back to their frozen land now remains to be seen’.
Chuck
Have to say that your digest of Spanish news is far more informative and entertaining than the dry old prose of the Spanish press. I’ll be renewing my subscription.
Maura
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Finally:
No Quiero Verla Más with Estopa and Macaco on YouTube here.
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