Business over Tapas Nº 548

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:

For some reason, we are getting lots of telephone calls in these times from unknown numbers. My Android phone is good enough to say: ‘watch out, this is probably a spammer’ which is ammunition enough for me to press the ‘refuse call and block number’ button.

It used to be someone from a cheap-energy company wanting you to switch out of Endesa, or maybe a salesperson from some dodgy newspaper or magazine hoping for your business. These days, it’s likely a robot which is checking to see if anybody is on the other end of a phone-number. If you do pick up, it lets out a cheerful little beep, and hangs up.

Yes Boss, we’ve got a live one here.

The numbers are collected and sold – either to spammers, crooks, thieves, con-men, or that fellow who wanted to sell you a cheap health insurance.

In my phone memory, I have several calls refused by me in the last few days as ‘Llamante no deseado (sospecha)’ and others as ‘Fraude (possible)’.

There’s a new service I’ve found, a kind of reverse phone number directory for fraudulent callers called ListaSpam. They say they have a list of over a million crooked phone-numbers between Spain and Latin America. You can download their app – free – and your phone will automatically bounce any of these bogus callers.

ListaSpam is a simple dot com, so let me look up some of the calls I’ve had recently:

The number 951125163 from Málaga has been checked 23 times by unwilling victims.

The number 624156344 has been checked 207 times, and has four complaints.

The number 613592067 has been checked 300 times, and has four complaints

The number 613889843 has been checked 339 times, and has two complaints.

The number 625028220 has been checked 510 times, and has seven complaints.

But the prize goes to 951823073, checked 6,152 times, with seventy-four complaints.

All these numbers, plus others, have called me in the past week, even though I’m on the Lista Robinson – a useful register of numbers not to be called by importune sales-folk or telemarketers. It has saved me a large number of calls, and if they get through to me and I say I’m on the Lista Robinson, they’ll say they’re sorry and hang up. If they don’t, then I hang up. It’s evidently not fool-proof, but it helps. If you do speak to them, tell them that you intend to make a denuncia to the AEPD – the Spanish protection of data agency (they are acting outside the law). They’ll disconnect soon enough.

Computer Hoy has a full list of useful sites to combat spam-callers.

So how do they get my number? Maybe someone at the electric company or the town hall is making a few euros on the side selling a list of phone-numbers to people with wonky accents.

These spam calls are something new, probably starting – in my case – about a month ago.

Right now, between Facebook (‘Oh, I do love your posts, would you please be my friend?’), sundry texts about small debts I’m said to owe to Tráfico or the electric company or my bank (what was your pin number again?) as sent to Messenger, and then the email spam (I now get 20 or 30 of these each day – usually to tell me I’ve won a prize), I’m getting more junk than real calls from friends and family. 

Today (Wednesday) I got a call at 2.00pm, as I was settling down to a sandwich, and then another at 3.00pm, just as I switched on the news. It’s like they have a sixth sense to call at an inconvenient moment. The phone warned me both times and I blocked the numbers at once.

Say, that wasn’t you calling was it?   

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Housing: 

From Spanish Property Insight here: ‘The Golden Visa, reasons to apply. Lawyer Raymundo Larrain reviews the outstanding advantages of the Spanish 'Golden Visa', which can still be obtained despite government plans to abolish it’. Indeed, the Government on Wednesday announced that it is working on its plan to go ahead with the abolition of the Golden Visa says El País here, without providing any final date as yet. 

‘West Costa del Sol property market report’ from Spanish Property Insight here. 

From El Mundo here: ‘The Government asks city councils to track illegal tourist apartments. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs (Sumar) is fighting with the Ministry of Housing (PSOE) to lead the offensive and sends the mayors a letter asking for "lists"’. 

Infobae has ‘Anything up to 400 illegal advertisements for tourist apartments per month are detected in Barcelona, where the city council is designing a plan to eliminate tourist flats over a period of the next five years with the aim of converting them to residential use and alleviating the housing problem’. 

From LaSexta (with video) here: ‘Economic journalist José María Camarero has given clues about what squatting is like in Spain and has clarified concepts to understand what it is and how usurpación - usurpation (such as non-payment) differs from allanamiento de morada – breaking and entering. Data from the article suggests that both of these – popularly known as okupación – have fallen in recent years to around 0.6% of homes (15,000 complaints in 2023). 

‘Almería remains among the cheapest options to buy a house on the coast. A comparative study of the Spanish coast places the Almeria strip among the most affordable in the real estate market’. Item from El Diario de Almería here. 

‘Andalucía begins its plan to eradicate shanty towns found in Huelva and Almería: “There are people living today under plastic at 40 degrees”. The Junta de Andalucía has launched an initiative to which it invites the Government and which already has the involvement of the Huelva town councils of Lepe, Moguer and Lucena del Puerto, in addition to the Almeria town hall of Níjar’. The tactics so far seem to be to bulldoze flat the bidonvilles and somehow hope for the best afterwards. elDiario.es has the item here. 

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Tourism: 

From El Confidencial here: ‘Turismofobia: since when has Spain had problems with its visitors? Local governments in the most visited areas of Spain are taking measures: tourism taxes, bans on new accommodation and strict regulations on tourist apartments’.

The tourists have worked all year long and they need (and demand) a holiday – a little booze, some fun and who is going to mind? After all, the Spanish are making a lot of money from tourism.

But the money isn’t spread out evenly – most of it goes to the hotel chains, the airlines, the agencies and the tax-man.

The scarcity of ordinary homes to rent (thanks to the short-term holiday apartments).

The noise, inconvenience, mess, queues and bother of teeming crowds of tourists.

From The BBC here: ‘The Spanish fight back against record tourism’. It begins ‘If you can elbow your way onto one of Majorca’s sunspots this summer, you will witness two unstoppable forces. The first, as old as time, the waves of the Balearic Sea, methodically erasing the day’s lovingly crafted sandcastles. The second, a more modern phenomenon, the tsunami of tourism threatening to consume all in its path.

Every inch of beach is taken. Finding a parking space is like striking gold.

If you leave your sunbed for too long, your possessions are unceremoniously turfed to make space for the long queue of would-be usurpers…’

It was certainly more fun to travel when there was just you and me… 

From Deutsche Welle (in English) here: ‘Barcelona to up tourist tax as Mallorca seeks visitor cap. Locals in Spain's tourism hotspots are increasingly frustrated about mass tourism. Authorities are clamping down’. 

A European ruling states that any mainland airport with over twelve million passengers per year must be connected with a high-speed rail link. In Spain, that would be Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga and Alicante. El Huff Post reports here. 

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Politics: 

Begoña Gómez – see Courts below. 

The Government has been enveloped this week in the debate over los menas, the immigrant minors mostly currently held in Tenerife. The plan was to share them around the different communities, but the Vox/PP partnership in five regions broke a couple of weeks ago under the strain of extending a hand to these unaccompanied minors (children mainly, says Tele5, from Senegal, Mali, Gambia and Morocco). Now, the PP appears to have backtracked (sorry, Vox) and has voted against the measure together with Vox and Junts per Catalonia (who couldn’t care less, but want to punish the PSOE for plotting with ERC to put Salvador Illa in as president of Catalonia). The journalist Antonio Maestre says on LaSexta that they are playing with political opportunism over the lives of these minors (video), and the PSOE deputy Luc André Diouf speaking in Parliament told the opposition benches that “None of you will have ever experienced the type of suffering common to these children”.  The ABC explains that the present masterful plan over at the PP is to vote against any and all initiatives from the Government so as to weaken it.

So, for the time being, los menas remain the responsibility of the Canaries government (er, run in coalition with the PP).

One Voxxer, a councillor from Paiporta (Valencia), reckons the answer to an illegal immigrant is go back or be shot dead. There’s evidently still some work to be done. 

Another vote lost – thanks once again to Junts, Vox and the PP, is the preamble to the 2025 national budget, where the limit on the national deficit would be set. Directing her remarks to the PP, the first Vice-President and Minister of Hacienda, María Jesús Montero is quoted by elDiario.es here: ‘“Your only goal is to overthrow Sánchez. You don't care about the IVA on food or the effects on the families' pockets. As you know, Spain will continue to lead in growth among the main economies of the euro zone,” she stressed. “The data reveal, although some want to deny it, the structural transformation of this country,” she added’. 

Following the ruling from the Constitutional Court, Manuel Chaves wants to get back into politics. From 20Minutos here: ‘Chaves asks to return to the PSOE and predicts the "beginning of the end" of the PP in Andalucía after the Court’s ruling on the ERE’. 

The town hall of Sueca (Valencia) has suffered a moción de censura (usually where some councillor crosses the floor for some, no doubt, compelling reason). In this case, the local party Sueca per Davant have left the PSPV to join an alliance of the PP and Compromis. This gives the rebels the office of mayor says La Cadena Ser here. 

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Gibraltar: 

Gibraltar Español? There’s a page on Facebook with this title. ‘Piratas fuera’, it says. I was trolling it earlier for fun: ‘When Gibraltar becomes Spanish, will English (el gibraltareño) become another co-official language, like Catalonian and Basque?’ There would be a huge sigh of relief all the way from Estepona to Benidorm if this were so. 

Gibraltar Español also became something of a catch-phrase following the Eurocopa finals between England and Spain. Two Spanish players, Rodri and Morata, are now facing disciplinary action following their, er, victory comments the other day.    

On a more serious note, from ABC here: This will be the new Schengen controls at the Gate for Britons and Gibraltarians if there is no Treaty with the EU: Citizens residing in El Peñón (Spain’s nickname for ‘the Rock’), will be treated as third-country nationals for the purposes of applying the regulations on border control of the Schengen area. According to the Gibraltarian Government, these controls will come into force from November and it assures that Spain is already preparing the customs area to apply them’. 

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Europe: 

El Huff Post brings us ‘All the Spanish athletes in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and their test schedule. 382 Olympians, more women than men and the largest representation in any Games (not counting those of Barcelona 1992 when Spain was the host). Spain has many medal options until Sunday, August 11’. The Paris Olympics: July 26th to August 11th. 

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Health: 

From El País here: ‘Doctors preserve the pregnancy capacity of a patient with cancer by using Uterine transposition which temporarily moves the reproductive organ and ovaries from the pelvis to the abdominal cavity in order to avoid the impact of radiation therapy on a rectal tumor’.

 …...

Courts: 

Depressingly, the merciless campaign against Begoña Gómez continues apace. 

From LaSexta here: ‘This past Friday, Begoña Gómez took advantage of her right not to testify in front of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, who is investigating her for alleged influence peddling and corruption in business. Her lawyer explains: "Since the passing of the inquisition, the possibility of someone being called to testify without knowing what was being investigated disappeared and that is precisely what is happening in this procedure. We spent the month of July presenting briefs for clarification regarding the object of the procedure, without success". Cadena Ser has a similar story: ‘What exactly is being investigated? What signs are there? The keys to the trial against Begoña Gómez after her non-statement on Friday. Gómez's lawyer had recommended that she take advantage of her right not to testify "not because she has anything to hide" but because the "sacrosanct" right to the presumption of innocence is being violated with a "prospective" investigation’. 

From LaSexta here (with video): Baltasar Garzón speaking on the case of Begoña Gómez: "It is based on false facts and the judge should have expelled 'Manos Limpias' (who originally made the complaint) from the proceedings". Garzón believes that "the target has been Begoña Gómez since the beginning", and has criticized that a popular accusation based on false facts and incorrect publications has been "admitted by the Court"’.

LaSexta again (with video): ‘The PP redoubles its offensive against Begoña Gómez: "She uses the contacts she has as the president's wife". Party spokesperson Cuca Gamarra has once again accused Begoña Gómez of "influence peddling" and has attributed her entrepreneurial ability to "her contacts gained through her position. They will both end up assuming the consequences," she said’. Diana Morant, the PSOE Minister of Science, replies that ‘the PP can give courses on corruption, but it can’t give lessons’. 

Público wonders- ‘Is it the 'Begoña Gómez Case' or the 'Judge Peinado Case'? In this video we examine the performance of the judge investigating the president's wife, how the magistrate ignores both the Prosecutor's Office and, above all, the UCO (the Guardia Civil fraud squad), which has ruled out any irregularities’. 

We remember this all came about, fortuitously, just a few days before the European elections… 

On Monday – things got worse for the accused, after Judge Peinado agreed to a petition from Vox to ‘interrogate’ President Sánchez as a witness against his wife. elDiario.es says that the magistrate will visit the president at his official residence (La Moncloa) on Tuesday July 30th. VoxPópuli reports that Alberto Núñez Feijoo, the leader of the PP, says “I must remind Sr. Sánchez that he will have to tell the truth, and that is something he is not used to”. The spokesperson for the PSOE Patxi López, said “All socialists are today more than ever behind Pedro Sánchez because he represents the dignity of democracy. The PP and Vox are not going to get their way because democracy is stronger than them and all their strategies”. López has also denounced a “political hunt” against the president's wife due to the fact that she is married to Pedro Sánchez. “Of course there is something unethical, immoral and indecent in this case, which is this whole setup. It is a setup by the extreme right against the President of the Government. It is an intolerable political persecution of those who seek to win in the courts what they failed to win at the polls". Infobae was reporting here. This whole thing is ‘grotesque’ says LaSexta, citing sources at La Moncloa, adding that this is all nothing more than a prospective inquiry – a fishing expedition. Does Peinado even know what he’s doing, citing two separate laws which don’t even exist? 

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A video from Público looks at the judges who are most active in practicing lawfare. 

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Media:  

‘This week the long-awaited democratic regeneration plan that Pedro Sánchez promised to present finally arrived. Here you have the main points. The opposition's response? About what we expected. In the opinion of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, this is the “greatest attack on the freedom of information of Spanish democracy”, which seeks “censorship” and putting “commissioners within the private media”. For Vox, it is even worse: it is “a gag law”, “a witch hunt” and “a coup d'état”.

Of these two opposition parties there is only one that is at least coherent on this subject. Almost all of the measures on the press that the Government has presented come from European legislation, to whit, from the Freedom of the Media regulations, a rule that is mandatory and will come into force in August 2025. It was approved by a very large majority in the European Parliament: 464 votes in favour, 92 against and 65 abstentions. Almost all Spanish MEPs supported the rule, including all those from the PP.

Only the extreme right voted against this regulation.

So what kind of criteria does the PP maintain? What is their standard? Why, faced with the same measures, can they be in favour in Europe and against in the Spanish Parliament?’

-Ignacio Escolar, director of elDiario.es, here.

However, if you prefer your steak overdone, the right-wing Hispanidad says: ‘The 'pseudo-journalist' Ignacio Escolar becomes Sánchez's instrument for the new socialist censorship’. 

From El Huff Post here: ‘Is Sánchez going to close down hostile news-sites? The eight things you should know... to avoid swallowing any bulos. Last week, the President of the Government presented his plan for democratic regeneration, which involves combating fake news and putting a magnifying glass on the public financing received by the media. In short, who owns (or is behind who owns) the news-sites, their readership and their partnerships with the authorities through institutional advertising and other financing or sponsorship. 

From an eccentric site called The RAIR Foundation USA here: ‘Explosive: Whistle-blower Military Colonel Unveils Secret List of Media Outlets the Left-Wing Spanish Government Plans to Silence’ (with video). 

From the official La Moncloa site here (in English): ‘Pedro Sánchez presents the Democracy Action Plan to achieve "more transparency and accountability"’. 

As for whether fake-news exists – see Maldita here or Newtral here for endless examples. Some other places to go are EFE Verefica here, Snopes here and AFP Factual here.    

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Sur in English celebrates its fortieth anniversary. Liz Parry looks back here.

The paper began as a page within the Diario Sur edited by Gerry Davies and his wife Joan. It soon became an independent newspaper which was the main (only?) competitor during the eighties and nineties to my own The Entertainer on the Costa del Sol. Well, there was Lookout too (a full colour monthly magazine). Sur in English had the advantage over us of its own printer, sales-team, distribution and accountants (although we had better features).  

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Ecology:  

From El Salto Diario here: ‘Andalucía faces another summer of drought without a proper water plan while subsidizing tourism for its water management. The Andalusian Government still does not carry out water policies that address the “priorities” of the territory while it subsidizes hotels with 40 million euros for water management as thousands of Andalusians have problems accessing it’. A visitor to Seville, says the article, typically uses three times as much water as a normal resident. 

…...

Various: 

At one point, says El Español, the British held both Menorca and Gibraltar. Gibraltar fell to an Anglo-Dutch force in 1704 and was ceded in perpetuity to the United Kingdom with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 (Wiki). Menorca was in British hands between 1708 (then ratified as part of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713) until the Spanish regained control in 1782 and the final signing of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 (Wiki). El Español says, ‘In the Treaty of Amiens, Britain agreed to return Menorca to Spain. However, Gibraltar was not negotiated due to its strategic importance to Great Britain and their decision not to give it up under any circumstances. More than two centuries later the situation remains changed’. 

Motoring news: From 20Minutos here: ‘How the Traffic Police can tell if you like to drive too fast’. Apparently, it’s down to the wear on the back tyres. We also read that Tráfico will be carrying out spot ITV checks on vehicles during the summer months. La Cadena Ser reports that the DGT will be making it harder to renew (or obtain) one’s driving licence from next year with a list of medical complaints that will bar us – such things as suffering from apnea, dementia (!), depression, cancer, epilepsy (!), kidney transplants and so on. The same news-source says here that old people should be obliged to renew their permiso de conducir more often, and that ‘Around 30,000 people are denied license renewal each year. To this we must add the more than 320,000 annual restrictive conditions that set requirements for some users to be able to drive. "Just because it can be renewed for five years does not mean that it is always renewed for five years," explains an expert in this field....’ if we do lose our driving licence – there is at least one way forward – a small car without a full licence (un cuadriciclo ligero – a small four-wheeler that weighs under 350k and has a top speed not exceeding 45kph) and there’s a video about them -en castellano- here. 

Some puff from Moncloa here: ‘The magical corner in Almería: get to know the dream town that reminds us of Disney’. No, they are not talking about Mojácar and its claim that Walt Disney was born there, but rather Vicar, a pueblo which has taken to decorating itself with Snow White, Puss in Boots and other illuminating street-art. At least, they haven’t painted the place blue like somewhere we know. 

Hot Summer Nights are over at Spanish Shilling here. 

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See Spain: 

Vejer de la Frontera is Andalucía’s definitive frontier of food, says The Olive Press here. ‘The small hillside town has more good restaurants per capita than perhaps San Sebastian, and is easily up there with nearer rivals Marbella, Ronda and Seville. Its amazing mix of culinary talent coupled with its variety of quality ingredients, makes for a genuine culinary melting pot…’ 

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Letters: 

Spam phone-calls

An alternative on Android, which blocks any number not in your contacts, without the need for any 3rd party apps, is to switch on Phone app > Settings > Caller ID and spam protection.

Steve 

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Finally: 

Radio Futura (wiki) with Escuela de Calor on YouTube here.

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