Business over Tapas Nº 551

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: 

Well, let’s see, the Catalonian parliament was having its debate and vote to invest Salvador Illa as president of the region (good news for the party back in Madrid), as, out in the street, the long-exiled Carles Puigdemont suddenly appeared like a puff of smoke from a Arabian lamp, gave a speech to some 3,500 supporters, and abruptly disappeared again.

Right under the noses of endless numbers of mossos (the Catalonian police), sundry snitches, journalists and members of the Vox and PP – all failing to know how he did it.

He had even warned us that he’d be coming, and yet, with Barcelona closed tighter than a drum, he still reappeared the next day back in Waterloo, Belgium.

I wrote a little poem. Baroness Orczy fans may recognise it. Ahem. 

They seek him here,

They seek him there,

Those mossos seek him everywhere.

But they can't find

That man they want,

That demmed elusive Puigdemont!

Everyone is running around in a panic, looking for someone to blame. It must have been that Perro Sanxe (Pedro Sánchez) back in Madrid (although in reality, the president and his wife are on holiday in some secret location – By Jingo! This whole disappearing thing is getting out of hand. No, he’s not in his apartment in Mojácar he bought back in 2001– I looked through the window yesterday).

The next worry, after the PP and Vox spokespeople have shouted themselves hoarse calling for the President to appear in the Senado and explain how Puigdemont made the whole country look foolish (just as he did the last time he escaped – in the trunk of a car – back in 2017… when Rajoy was president), will be to see if Puchi’s party the Junts per Catalunya will continue to support the government once it returns to political business later this month… or go over to the opposition (where it will find some highly uncomfortable allies).

From Pedro Sánchez’ point of view, everything worked out well – Ol’ Puchi in prison as a martyr to the Independence Cause would not have helped Spanish Constitutionalism much.

Meanwhile, back in the Catalonian parliament, the new president Salvador Illa, hopelessly upstaged, is now apparently the one in charge. 

…...

Housing:

Those pre-fabricated homes – and wooden huts – which appear in the media as being a cheap alternative may not be so cheap after all. You still need a building permit. A piece in La Verdad de Murcia says ‘Installing a prefabricated house on land without planning permission, either in an orchard or on a plot in the countryside, can have important consequences for those responsible’.

From Sur in English here: ‘Regional bureaucracy keeps 1,120 tourist flats in business despite Málaga city's veto. The Junta de Andalucía is still waiting for a complete list of these rental properties from Málaga city hall in order to initiate the cancellation procedure of the tourist licence for each in turn, a job that could take months’. Over in Seville, the ayuntamiento says it will cut off the water to irregular tourist flats. 20Minutos has more. 

‘What’s happening in the property market of the North Costa Blanca including Javea, Denia, Calpe and Moraira? Download this free report by Spanish Property Insight to get all the key numbers and market trends for informed decision-making’. 

The Schengen 90 in 180 days deal – that affects thousands of British (and other) property owners, obliged to sit out three in every six months, leaving their property in Spain for half the year vacant, rented or even besquatted. To say nothing of the extra money not spent here. A useful Facebook page called 180 Days in Spain with 8,000 members seeks a partial solution here. 

Rent-a-pool. Apparently in Madrid, there’s money to be made says ABC here. According to the article, you can talk to Swimmy, the private pool-renting agency, and take a few hours of splashing about off a neighbour.  

…...

Tourism: 

From The Guardian here: ‘Protests over mass tourism could spread beyond Spain, says Unesco official. The situation is ‘out of balance’ as local people are priced out of housing and frustrated by hordes of selfie-seekers’. 

From Sur in English here: ‘Mojácar, Almeria's most saturated tourist destination. The seaside resort receives an average of 31.5 visitors per inhabitant per year, one of the highest rates in the country’. A full list of ‘saturated’ destinations – led by Sant Llorenç des Cardassar, Mallorca (73.2) is at El Periódico here (Calvià comes in at 11th, Benidorm 12th and Mojácar is 15th). 

The Guardian writes of ‘Drunk visitors, rocketing rents and homogenised cafes: living in Europe’s tourist hotspots. Locals say swelling visitor numbers are distorting housing markets and have changed their area’s character’. Hosteltur (Premium article) by the way says that they are seeing an increase in September bookings (I guess the idea goes that it’s not quite as hot, and there won’t be as many fellow-tourists – or will there?). 

From The Olive Press here: ‘Spain does NOT hate tourists: New poll shows majority of locals ‘value’ the key industry’. I think it rather depends on who you ask… 

"Are they going to hurt us?" The concern of tourists who call Spanish hotels because of anti-tourism protests. The movement against mass tourism has caused thousands of foreign visitors to rethink their holidays in Spain’. From Infobae here (with video). 

…...

Politics: 

From the official Government website La Moncloa here (in English): ‘Pedro Sánchez presents a new edition of 'Cumpliendo'. The report contains an analysis of the commitments made by the Executive in this legislature, in an exercise of transparency and accountability to the public’ (31/07). 

…...

Catalonia: 

From Spain in English here: ‘Spain’s ruling socialist (PSOE) party regained control of Catalonia’s regional government as a new cabinet led by the Catalan Socialists (PSC) was sworn in on Monday, ending over a decade of pro-independence parties’ rule in the region. The 16-member cabinet is led by Salvador Illa, who was Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s health minister during the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘I want to assure you that the government will govern for all, this is a real obsession,’ Illa said during the swearing-in ceremony...’ 

The Guardian likens Puigdemont to Trump. A sore loser. ‘An egotistical and polarising right-wing election loser addresses his adoring supporters in a speech, casting himself as a victim and questioning democracy, just hours before parliament is set to vote for the formal investiture of the actual winner. The crowd held aloft pictures of the loser’s face, chanting that he was their rightful president, and then turned their anger on the media, harassing reporters who were covering the event. Chaos ensued as some of the leader’s supporters attempted to assault the parliament building. Sound familiar?’ 

El Huff Post says that Carles Puigdemont escaped while wearing a straw hat as a cunning disguise. His supporters, see, were all wearing the same kind of hat. 

elDiario.es says in an opinion piece that, while it was without doubt a jolly trick which left egg on everybody’s faces, his rapid departure was the political end for both Puigdemont and the Catalonian Independence movement. 

And what say the PP? Elías Bendodo, one of their spokespeople accuses the Ministry of the Interior over the non-arrest of Carles Puigdemont, who – he says – ‘…escaped with the "connivance" of the Government of Spain, adding that Pedro Sánchez's "clamorous and deafening" silence makes the opposition party suspect that he "knew everything and allowed the legacy and escape of Puigdemont"…’ The story is at 20Minutos here. 

…...

Health: 

From Diario de Sevilla here: ‘Since the beginning of summer, 1,308 deaths attributable to excess heat have been recorded, with 765 in July and 543 in the first seven days of August alone. As someone says about the politicians discussing (or discarding) climate warming – ‘For those with power and rich donors – the air-conditioning is always on, even if it’s melting outside’. 

The National TV news warned on Wednesday of the likely arrival of Monkey-pox (viruela del mono) in the days or weeks to come. It’s now called Mpox – presumably so as not to offend monkeys. The World Health Organisation has the details on the virus. 

…...

Corruption: 

Having squeezed all the juice from the Begoña Gómez thing for the time being, we return to Isabel Diaz Ayuso’s boyfriend and the (connected by an illegal stairwell) upstairs apartment. From elDiario.es here: ‘Babia Capital, the owner of the penthouse used by Ayuso and her partner, bought the 186m2 ático with cash and received 955,000 euros from a third party. Babia Capital, managed by Alberto González Amador's lawyer, bought the apartment in July 2023 without resorting to any bank loan, and an unidentified company or individual lent it 955,000 euros’. So who paid for the apartment, and in exchange for what…? The article suggests a possible answer, to do with a major private health company that seems remarkably active these days… 

Another leftie news-source, Público, takes a look at Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s sister’s business activities in Galicia here. 

From La Cadena Ser here: ‘An entrepreneur is investigated for taking water from illegal wells for the past seventeen years to irrigate a golf course in Lorca (Murcia). He appears to have extracted underground water from fifteen illegal wells and five springs without authorization’.  The Guardia Civil talk of two million cubic metres of water annually being taken. Environmental damages are figured to be valued at around 65 million euros.  According to La Opinion de Murcia here, the golf course in question is in Purias, Lorca. 

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Media:  

An AI (Wordware) piece found at Así Va España (a joke and meme page): ‘Ah Alberto, the eternal runner-up of Spanish politics. You’re like the guy who always shows up to the party but never quite makes it to the VIP section. Your tweets scream ‘I’m relevant, I swear!’ louder than a toddler throwing a tantrum in a toy store. But hey, at least you are consistent – consistently second place, that is’.  There are lots of good jokes on this page.    

Freelance journalist Guy Hedgecoe seems to contribute little more than one essay a year to his blog – and I’ve just found his latest, from June. It’s about how the Spanish, thanks perhaps to bad television, lowbrow punditry and ‘the unfiltered op-ed sewage that fills Twitter’, are losing their edge.  

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Ecology:  

Chemtrails? We get a couple of complaints every year about them, says a prosecutor dismissively. They never prosper. Video and article at LaSexta here. 

…...

Various:

‘The Spanish delegation ends its participation in the Olympic Games with a total of 18 medals. It does not surpass Barcelona 92, but it did do better than the two previous games of Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 and equals London 2012’. Infobae has more here. 

ECD on swinging doors, says that the ex-minister (and vice-president for Rajoy) Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría is now on the board of Cepsa, the oil company. 

The aqueduct in Segovia is the subject of an interesting video at YouTube here. The Roman aqueduct has – so we learn – hardly a single stone left as the whole structure was rebuilt several times following its total demolition in 1072 by Al-Mamún, the King of Toledo (Wiki). Alfonso XIII ordered the rebuilding in the 13th century, and later repairs occurred in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, plus a few more in more modern times.   

The latest population numbers are now available. Spain had 48,797,875 souls as at July 1st says El Economista here (as reported last week). More people are evidently moving to Madrid – either from abroad or from the countryside… La Razón brings us: ‘Madrid has gained more than 100,000 inhabitants so far this year and has already surpassed seven million. It is at the top of Spain in population growth. In the last quarter alone, it increased by 23,198 inhabitants’. It’s fiddly, but the Junta de Andalucía has the data on each municipality, including the number of hotel places, voters and the number and percentage of foreign residents (the ones on the padrón, ¡claro!). In Mojácar, the foreigners are 58% of the total population, with the Brits alone standing at 2,213 out of a full population of 7,527 souls (working out at 29%). From The Olive Press here: ‘Expats accounted for 98% of new residents in Spain’s Balearic Islands in the first half of 2024’. It says that ‘Some 4,424 people moved to the islands during the first half of 2024, but only 75 were Spanish’. 

‘The search for the remains of 451 international brigadiers in mass graves in Madrid.  Arqueoantro begins prospecting work in a plot of Montecarmelo (Fuencarral, Madrid) where the bodies are supposed to have been dumped, after the desecration of the cemetery in 1941 by order of the local town hall’. From La Cadena Ser here. 

Today, Thursday August 15th is the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary – with the Traffic Police expecting 8.2 million cars on the road during the Puente (long weekend). There’ll be extra radars, alcohol tests, camouflaged vans… all those good things… Plus some rain to keep us on our toes (Wednesday night – it’s pouring here in Mojácar).

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