Business over Tapas Nº 563

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:

Last summer, I developed an ambitious plan for 2025. I would buy a house near the beach. I’d get a fancy new SUV, maybe that new American one which does seven miles to the gallon. I thought long and hard about acquiring a kangaroo from my Australian cousin as a house-pet, but after consideration, I was worried that it might lose its cool and punch the butler.

One has to make small sacrifices when planning one’s life following a windfall.

Of course, I’d continue writing my weekly Business over Tapas, with all those useful items about Spain, even if I spent half the year staying in a vacation-home in Hawaii with last-year’s Miss Milwaukee.

However, and inexplicably, my Christmas lottery number didn’t come first past the post; in fact – as usual – the damn thing was something of an also-ran.

So, OK, the Sunday celebrations were tearfully cancelled and I stayed in bed gloomily reading a book about home-economics.

I think it’s a pretty-good investment, though. For anything up to six months, one can enjoy a flutter of hope in winning a massive prize which, even after paying back 20% to the Government in tax – the self-same folk who print up and call the lottery in the first place – is going to see you back on top.

Now, that’s not a bad bet for just twenty euros.

The mathematical probability of winning the jackpot is precisely zero. But, who cares about that? The chances of me finding five euros down the back of the sofa yesterday were about the same, but here I am today, enjoying café and una tostada up at the High Table.

If you want to double your investment, by buying two decimos and thus having twice as big a chance of winning el Gordo, well sad to say… the same odds apply: zero again.

The only prize that does come along – sometimes – is to get un reintegro: your money back if the winning number ends in the same as your ticket. One chance in ten.

And yes, I was lucky enough to win such a prize (it probably comes from me diligently not walking under any ladders since last August, from tossing a cupful of salt over my left shoulder every now and again and saying ‘white rabbits’ in a commanding voice at the onset of each calendar month).

So, back I go to the expendería and with the money won, I buy a new ticket for Los Reyes, the Three Kings. But perhaps I’ve been setting my sights too high and should be more reasonably aiming for the second prize.

Let me see: a second-hand car, a subscription to Netflix, maybe a weekend in Marbella…   

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Housing:

From El Economista here: ‘Home buying returns to boom levels and prices could rise by 10% in 2025’. We read – ‘Specifically, home sales soared by 51.3% year-on-year in October, totalling 69,418 transactions. This is the largest increase since August 2021 and the highest number of transactions since May 2007, when more than 75,000 transactions were made…’

From IMI Daily here: ‘Spain’s Congress has approved the Law for the Efficiency of Public Justice Service on December 19, overturning the Senate’s earlier veto and ending the country’s Golden Visa program. The Official State Bulletin is expected to publish the law this week, which would trigger the program’s termination by “March 23-24, 2025”’.

From El País in English here: ‘Madrid’s Latino population surpasses one million. A significant milestone has been reached: the census reveals that 1,038,671 people born in Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas now reside in the region. Just 25 years ago, this number was only 81,552, highlighting the rapid pace of a wave that is reshaping the community’. If they were all made up into one city, says the article, ‘…the size of this hypothetical city would be comparable to that of Málaga, which, with 1.03 million inhabitants, is the fifth largest urban area in Spain, and would be larger than either Bilbao or Zaragoza’. (We Brits would roughly equal the size of the population of Alicante).

‘The world of megacities: in the future, only six Spanish cities will compete. Agglomeration is one of the most powerful economic forces in the world. The sum of high value-added jobs, human capital and economic capital is unbeatable’. El Confidencial has the story (or here: https://archive.ph/A4FX5 ). These are (unsurprisingly), Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Málaga and Seville.

‘“I live in a caravan because I can’t afford to pay rent on an apartment”: The housing crisis that challenges Spain’. LibreFM has the story here and there’s a video at YouTube here.

From Spanish Property Insight here: an article on the Pensioner’s Visa explained.

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Tourism:

‘Spain's tourism sector is in good health. The desire to travel and get to know the world is on the increase and, as a result, the forecasts are for continued growth. But what factors will determine the future of tourism..?’ Item from Sur in English here.

From 20Minutos here: ‘British tourism is leaving Spain and has already found a replacement, warn tour operators’. Egypt, apparently. Apparently, the prices here are the issue, although those with deeper pockets will no doubt continue to arrive – and after all, it’s not the numbers of tourists, but how much they spend. Also, this, er, worrysome item started life in The Mirror. EuroNews has: ‘From street protests to an Airbnb ban, all the ways Barcelona said no to tourists in 2024’.

The tunnel link with France via Somport has reopened to traffic says Cadena Ser here.

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Finance:

The Ministry of Labour has sealed an agreement with the major unions to reduce the working week to 37.5 hours by the end of 2025 says 20Minutos here.

El Huff Post has a full list of all pension rates for 2025.

El Economista says that ‘The number of millionaire bankers in Spain is growing: 286 of them earned more than a million euros each in 2023’.

From EUReporter here: ‘A London law firm launches an initiative against ‘predatory’ Spanish tax assaults on ex-pats’. The firm, Amsterdam & Partners, has a website to help tax-worried expats at Spanish Tax Pickpockets here which introduces itself with ‘You moved to Spain based on a promise. After you settled, they changed the rules. Fight back against unfair taxation’. The story is covered by El Economista, with ‘The prestigious international law firm Amsterdam & Partners LLP, with offices in London and Washington DC, has launched a campaign against the Spanish tax authorities and against the Spanish Government itself, considering that its international clients are being deceived in our country. The firm maintains that Spain has arbitrarily changed its tax system and that foreigners who pay taxes in our country are now being pursued by Hacienda through "a wave of audits based on shooting first and asking questions later"’.

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Politics:

The year summed up on RTVE here and here:

‘The PP sees 2024 as the year of "political, economic and moral corruption" and sums it up in Sánchez's "12 betrayals"’.

‘The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, attacks an opposition led by the PP and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which bases its strategy "on hoaxes and destruction". He insists that he has no intention of calling early elections and says that the current legislature will last until 2027’.

‘Polls close 2024 with a clear right-wing majority and a far-left party at odds with the Government. The polls conclude the year with the PP and PSOE on the decline, a rising Vox supported by the far-right wave and a consolidated Podemos outside of Sumar, which would lose half of the votes of the June 2023 elections’. More at Público here.

The Guardian enthuses: ‘Pedro Sánchez has remained a rare bulwark of social democracy in an increasingly right-leaning continent’. It says – ‘For the past six years, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), led by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has defied expectations by remaining in power during some of the most turbulent times in recent Spanish and European history, making it a rare bulwark of social democracy in an increasingly right-leaning continent. What’s more, as The Economist recently noted, Spain now looks to be the best-performing rich-world economy of 2024, according to measures such as GDP growth, unemployment and the performance of the stock market…’

The PSOE has made a complaint to the courts over Vox’s evident improper party financing.

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Gibraltar:

From Spanish News Today here: ‘The European Commission is preparing a new regulation to introduce the Schengen Area Entry-Exit System at Gibraltar’s border with La Línea with a phased roll-out planned. The system, aimed at strengthening border security, will apply to all non-EU travellers, including Gibraltarians and British nationals entering Spain…’

From The Olive Press here: ‘Madrid’s claim is weak and has no legal basis’: Gibraltar invites Spain to an international tribunal to settle the centuries-long territorial waters dispute ‘once and for all’.

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Europe:

From elDiario.es here: ‘Elon Musk launches support for far-right in Europe. The billionaire and Trump adviser is considering donating millions to Nigel Farage's party in the UK while backing Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini in Italy, and the AfD ahead of elections in Germany’. And what about Spain’s Santiago Abascal from Vox? This item comes from a year ago: ‘Santiago Abascal talks with Elon Musk at the annual Brothers of Italy event’.

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Health:

‘The Government will ban sugary drinks in school canteens and only water will be allowed. Spain has a 15.9% rate of childhood obesity and 20.2% overweight, a phenomenon that has fallen slightly in recent years but continues to affect mainly families with lower incomes, with relatively constant indicators since 2011’ says elDiario.es here.

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Courts:

Judge Peinado up to his tricks? ‘The Minister of Digital Transformation and Public Service, Óscar López, has accused the judge in charge of the case against Begoña Gómez, Juan Carlos Peinado, of being a "quibbler" and of having "lied in court" says El Mundo here. In his apparent thirst to catch Begoña with something, anything, the judge is accused of putting words into a witness’s mouth. ‘…López says that things are being revealed that are "very, very worrying in a State of Law", such as the fact that Judge Peinado has admitted a complaint by Manos Limpias "without any evidence, with four newspaper headlines", and then with "clearly prospective" instructions that "keep changing the subject, that drag on for months, and for which anything goes"…’. All this for a legal or a frankly political reason?

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Various:

‘Spain’s population increased by 534,334 inhabitants during 2023 (1.1% more) and stood at 48,619,695 inhabitants, an increase that was mainly due to foreigners, whose number grew by 412,662 people, exceeding 6.5 million for the first time’. Item from Europa Press here. VozPópuli has thirty municipalities with more foreigners than Spaniards here.

Spoken Galician – el galego – is approaching the "threshold of collapse" with fewer than 35,000 speakers between the ages of 5 and 14 says InfoLibre here.

From El Salto Diario here: ‘Agricultural companies continue to fail to comply with seasonal workers: attacks and non-payments in Huelva and Almería. Labour exploitation in the Andalusian countryside increases while thousands of migrant workers live in more than one hundred shanty towns without electricity or water that are found in both Andalusian provinces’. From Diario de Almería here after a dozen migrant workers were hit by a car earlier this month: ‘…Imagine that you have been working for months for more than sixty hours a week, with wages well below the minimum SMI, without a contract, or social security registration, including the summer months with high temperatures under the plastic in the fields of Almeria. Then, after the permanent promise to regularize the situation in the country with a legal contract, twelve workers from the company were abruptly let go. They claim that when they asked for explanations and did not receive them, the migrants phoned the Guardia Civil, and then, "one of the businessmen, to escape," decided to "ram" the workers with his car, causing various injuries’.

Two violent inmates managed to force the window-bars on their adjoining cells, slide down some knotted sheets, and make their escape from Picassent prison (Valencia) last Saturday.

Almost half of the first prize for la Lotería de Navidad remained unsold says 20Minutos.

Blogs about Spain: there are a large number of English-language blogs written about every subject under the Spanish sun by people living here over at Eye on Spain.

In Franco’s time, they used to build and sell Dodge motor cars. Here’s a 3700 GT seen recently in Madrid (there are lots of jokes about Carrero Blanco, but that’s another story).

From Catalan News here: ‘The Three Kings, los Tres Reyes Magos, recently travelled to the Sant Corneli coal mines near Cercs, north of Catalonia, to collect coal before the presents are given out for January 6. Giving coal is a tradition among Catalans for those children who have not behaved properly during the year, and instead of receiving gifts, the Three Kings leave bags of coal for them…’ Spanish kids have it good, with both Santa Claus and los Tres Reyes Magos – although the three kings’ timing is off, as school starts right away following the Twelfth Night and there’s little time left to play with the new toys...

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See Spain: 

Eight little-known museums in Madrid, with photos at 20Minutos here. ‘Madrid boasts some of the most important art galleries in the world. The Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza make up the Paseo del Arte and are essential visits in the city. Beyond these, the Spanish capital offers a huge variety of museums, many of them little known, but full of gems from different disciplines, from art to archaeology, geology and history…’

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Letters:

Granada is definitely amongst the most beautiful in Spain. We may have to include it in our late Spring road trip, it's been a while.

Not being on social media, I was quite surprised to hear there is a name and shame page. Luckily in Galicia, there are not too many British immigrants or expats and we don’t face the same issues as in Andalucía. At least not for now. Tourism in Galicia has seen a massive spike, but for the most part they are Spanish escaping the heat of other areas in the summer. As in other regions this has led to a huge rise in legal and non-legal holiday lets. The stock of long term rentals has reduced enormously.

David

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Finally:

José Feliciano with Feliz Navidad on YouTube here.

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