Business over Tapas Nº600

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:

Two points: there are a lot of people searching for a home – either to rent or to buy. Also, despite the apparent lack of available properties, Spain has more than 3.5 million vacant homes, representing some 14% of the total housing stock. Around half of these homes are in those smaller municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants.

I once shared an apartment in Seville with four other students, me and a British school-friend in bunks in what must have been a converted bathroom, with white tiles on the wall. The other three were studying at the university and came from Montefrío in Granada. The next term, I shared a three-bedroom 8,000 peseta apartment with two students.

It’s fine when you are young and running around the city all night - but not when that single room (share the kitchen and bathroom) costs 1,000€ a month as, increasingly, it does now.

We look at the problems of the renters and the buyers – but part of the whole must be the sellers, the landlords and the owners: having a property portfolio is good business.

This is partly why, following the Covid when we all worked from home (often in a charming village two hours away from the city), they wanted us to return to the office: taxes, office blocks, investors and city politics. My old mate Cheap Pete once told me (with his New Jersey accent) – for a million dollars you can buy a giant property in North Dacota or a parking lot in Washington DC. You might wait a whole year to sell that beautiful mountain, or less than a day to sell the city plot.

Which one was the better investment? Evidently, the second choice, but only if there’s a demand.

No wonder the property barons want to see a certain scarcity – prices (and profits) must go up. In Madrid, some old factories and warehouses, shops and abandoned outlets are now being switched to residential homes, or maybe into single 1,000€ rooms with ‘coliving’ . There’s the exciting advantage of city life, interesting flatmates and maybe a downstairs eatery, if your wallet can still manage the menu del día.

I live in a village on the coast. There’s a giant abandoned hotel taking up a chunk of the local infrastructure. It was closed in 2008 and now belongs, for some reason, to the Madrid regional government. It could become fifty apartments. In the back of the next-door port of Garrucha, there’s a large unfinished block of flats, rotting in the sun and covered in graffiti. That’s another fifty potential homes. The scarcity then, is in the city – although there are still a number of empty residences even close to the Puerta del Sol.

Many of those who live in the city came from elsewhere, and they may still own a place in the country, a casa del pueblo they’ll visit during the summer or the local fiesta – maybe to show off their success, or perhaps just to take it easy for a while and share a noisy lunch with the cousin who stayed behind. Other people who own a couple of houses might leave one empty. One day the children will live there. Others still will rent, or sell, or turn it into an Airbnb, put a funny lock on the door, and create a cleaning job for Encarnación.

Digital nomads (doesn’t that sound fun?) will rent for a while, working from their laptop, while idly planning their next move to Khartoum or Bucharest. Foreigners will buy the house, and maybe the one next door, and try and put in a swimming pool. Others still will take the week-end option and then leave a cigarette burn in the mattress.

Maybe put in a security system (like it says on the telly) to defy the okupas.

Then there are the millions – apparently – of people who want to rent somewhere half decent for a little bit less than their entire salary, eating rusks and asking their parents for a few extra euros (until either the wage or the rent, whichever one comes first, is raised by a fraction). The Government talks of making (or building) more cheap homes or closing down illegal rentals, or helping the under-thirties buy a house in the smaller towns. Some local governments are considering forcing the sale of empty homes.

After all, the Spanish Constitution Article 47 gives us all the right to una vivienda decente.

The influencers in their YouTube videos meanwhile are talking about investing in their wares (from their bases in low-tax Andorra), and one day soon, you too will be able to afford to buy and rent out houses like the best robber landlords.

Gloomily, we read: Spain’s record housing market is far from peaking – ‘prices will reach unprecedented levels’. Hey, the higher the price, the happier the owner.

Maybe the foreign Vulture Funds will come and pick up another entire city block: they are here for the opportunities.

A left-wing politician sums up the problem: “People with money in this country invest in gold, the stock market, and real estate”. They buy in the city (Cheap Pete’s parking lot) or on the coast, leaving many thousands of Spanish municipalities by the wayside.

El País has a story about a thirty-year-old who has finally given up on Madrid and moved to the town of Ponferrada – in search of a quieter life, escaping job insecurity and housing prices. “Life moves on and priorities change,” he says blithely.

Then there any many people living in extreme poverty, or in shacks or under bridges. Local guiri Richard Gere may have the answer – he says in a TV interview that "My wife and I have set a goal to end homelessness in Spain within six years". I think that this may prove to be a larger challenge than he imagines. Caritas puts the number of the dispossessed at 37,000.

In all, there are 48 million people living in Spain and 27 million homes – which works out at a house for every 1.8 persons. That’s not so bad…

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Housing:

‘The lack of new construction and the non-resident demand are driving up second-hand housing to record levels. Only one in ten homes sold in Spain is brand new, while second-hand prices exceed pre-2008 levels, fuelled by foreign demand, investment, and tourist and seasonal uses’. The story comes from elDiario.es here.

One reason for the shortage of new construction, says Spanish Property Insight here, is ‘The ageing workforce in construction adds another bottleneck to Spain’s housing supply’. We read that ‘The demographic imbalance is stark. Industry sources estimate Spain needs between 700,000 and 800,000 new workers to meet current demand, but far more are retiring than entering the trade’.

From Bloomberg here: ‘Spain Wants to Save Rural Areas — and It’s Finding Creative Ways to Do It. The country is selling villages and offering subsidies to live in sparsely populated towns to lure the wealthy back to the countryside’. It notes: ‘While 84% of Spain’s territory is rural, only 16% of people live outside cities. Population density maps show vibrant clusters around the coastline and big cities, and empty stretches across the country’s interior’.

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Tourism:

La Manga was – when first built – an impressive and delightful place to visit or live, built on a causeway between a lagoon (the Mar Menor) and the Mediterranean. There’s golf, boating, nature, hotels and apartments. All very cozy. However, the resort has fallen over the years, primarily because the lagoon is now a dead and soupy mess following all the fertiliser run-offs from the nearby pig farms. From elDiario.es here, we read of an additional problem: ‘Extreme seasonality is leading La Manga to abandonment: "You can't live off the summer season all the year round". The Murcian sandbank is suffering one of the most pronounced summer phenomena in Spain. From a fixed population of just over 5,000, it receives over the season some 300,000 visitors. But now comes the autumn void, with businesses fearing they'll have either have to close down or find more investment from the authorities’.

Diario As says that Barcelona has been oddly quiet this year, perhaps the ‘Tourists Go Home’ campaign has worked only to well.

The Daily Express here: ‘Spanish PM vows to 'remove' 53,000 flats in latest war against tourists. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has announced plans to remove 53,000 tourist apartments from rental platforms across Spain’. Ah, yes: ‘the war against tourism’. The story is treated slightly more soberly by El Mundo: ‘Where are the tourist apartments banned by the Government: a full third of them are in Andalucía. Tourist rental platforms must remove listings for more than 53,000 homes in Spain’ (with a rather useless map).

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Finance:

From La Vanguardia here: ‘S&P raises Spain's rating to A+ due to economic improvement and low exposure to tariffs. The S&P rating agency also projects strong growth in employment and domestic demand’. From El Plural here: ‘The Spanish risk premium falls below 55 points for the first time in 19 years. Markets have more confidence in Spain and are demanding less interest to lend it money. The Minister of Economy Carlos Cuerpo says: "This improvement in the rating reflects the strength of our economy"’. 

From El Confidencial here: ‘Personal income tax revenue (IRPF) soars by 12%, giving the government room to negotiate the budget. Spain is on track for its first primary surplus in 18 years. The deficit reduction is compatible with an acceleration in spending, thanks to soaring revenue’.

From Business People here: ‘the Spanish Social Security doubles its surplus through July reaching 7,540 million euros’.

‘Spain is preparing for a major shake-up in the way small businesses and freelancers issue invoices. From 2026, almost all entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals – autónomos – will be required to use VeriFactu, a digital invoicing standard created by the Spanish Tax Agency (AEAT). The aim is to stamp out tax fraud and move all bookkeeping into a secure, traceable digital system…’ InSpain News has the story here.

Some advice for newcomers from Think Spain here: ‘Relocating to Spain offers an enriching lifestyle and new opportunities, but careful financial planning is essential to making the most of your move. As an expat, understanding how residency status, tax obligations, and managing foreign income will impact your finances can help you build a stable foundation…’ It does it in a non-partisan way.

‘A snapshot of low-cost airlines and public aid: More than 100 contracts and almost 90 million since the pandemic: a quarter for Ryanair. Cantabria and Asturias lead the way in contracts with airlines to attract traffic to their airports’, says El Mundo here (with map).

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Politics:

Vox’s Santiago Abascal had the boys over this weekend. From Público here: ‘Reconquista 2.0, a tribute to Charlie Kirk and with Javier Milei's absence: Madrid hosts a new ultra-right coven. The theme of the weekend's Patriots for Europe summit was "The Reconquista (wiki) Begins" and included a tribute to the far-right US pundit who was assassinated last week.

The September CIS survey (post regional fires and other issues) has seen the PSOE bounce back to almost 33% in intention of vote. The PP has fallen to 24% and Vox is currently at 17%. There are those who say that the CIS is run by a socialist and therefore can be safely ignored…

El Mundo sees the PP voters moving towards Vox with ‘The million-vote war on the right’. It says: ‘Abascal soars at the expense of the PP and Feijóo sees the transfer from the PSOE to his own party dwindle. Abascal capitalizes on his opposition role and increases the transfer of former PP voters to his party to a record high. Feijóo's shift on migration doesn't stem the flight to the right, but it does drive away former PSOE supporters’. On Wednesday, the same source had this silly item: ‘The PP goes on the attack against the pincer movement (my italics): "Sánchez angers the Spanish people only to benefit Vox". Feijóo's party seeks to change course with measures to confront "the two extremes": agriculture, housing, birth rates, migration, youth employment, and Ukraine, the main axes’. Well, he can hardly talk about the economy…

Castilla y León will likely hold their regional elections next March 15th. El País reporting.

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Catalonia:

La Diada: ‘The pro-independence demonstration collapses: it plummets to 28,000 attendees, less than half of what it was in 2024’. In 2014, there were 1,800,000 marchers! 20Minutos on the Independence Day march here.

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Gibraltar:

A short item from The Washington Post here: ‘The Brits who beat Brexit: Gibraltar celebrates its return to Europe. Nearly a decade after Britain quit the E.U., British residents of Gibraltar on the southern tip of Spain, will regain travel and commercial access under a treaty’.

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Europe:

From La Vanguardia here: ‘The 'European Metro' project: a 22,000-kilometre network to connect 39 cities with trains traveling at 400 km/h. An ambitious initiative by 21st Europe proposes a continental rail network that will operate like a European metro’. One day!

A story from Radio Cable here: ‘Villepin and the French press emphasize that Spain "saves the honour of Europe" and is on the front line against Israel’.

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Corruption:

Two key Customs officials appointed by the ex-minister Cristóbal Montoro resign following the scandal surrounding the former minister's alleged misconduct. The two, both senior directives within the aduanas who are very close to the PP and had held the position for almost 23 years, resign "at their own request" following several controversies and after the UGT union reported "suspicious" contract awards from this key department of the AEAT. The story is at elDiario.es here.

One of ‘Europe’s most wanted fugitives’ is a Spaniard called Enrique Arias Gil. The story in Sunday’s El País here is that ‘The Police are looking for this hacker for providing a pro-Russian group with information to launch half a thousand cyber-attacks against Spain’. Apparently, he’s been working with NoName057 and is now hiding in Russia.

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Courts:

‘75 million in bribes, 100 wind farms, and 15 defendants: the trial in the massive corruption case from Castilla y León. Ten years after the Wind Farm Scheme was uncovered, the trial begins and will continue until the end of January. The prosecution is seeking a total of 138 years in prison and 848 million in fines’. Headline from El Confidencial here.

Anyone making a joke or an insult to the potty judge Peinado could end up in court. From La Razón here: ‘Judge Peinado goes on the attack: sues Minister ‘Óscar Puente and others.  The judge accuses the minister, Pablo Iglesias, plus some journalists and commentators of libel and slander’. Puente said last week that “Hurtado and Peinado are clear cases of judges who like to play politics” (Judge Hurtado is the judge who – with no proof whatsoever – is trying to put away the Attorney General).

Óscar Puentes was interviewed by elDiario.es here (with the same title as quoted above): ‘"Hurtado and Peinado are clear cases of judges playing politics". The Minister of Transport also argues that "someone who goes to karaoke and calls the Prime Minister a son of a bitch is unfit to lead the country" (as Feijóo notoriously did last week) and he accuses Feijóo of "bullying." He further warned that "anyone who believes the PSOE will surrender and hand over its powers and the government doesn't know the PSOE and doesn't know Pedro Sánchez"’. On the question of the investigations and trials over Sánchez’ wife, his brother and the Attorney General, he says- ‘My opinion on these lawsuits is pretty well known. They're not there for what they accuse them for. They're there so that those who say the government is in an untenable position can provide arguments to back up their claims. They have no other purpose’. Elsewhere, at El Plural here, ‘The former judge José Castro is highly critical of Peinado: "There are many ways to make a fool of yourself, and Sr. Peinado has chosen all of them, absolutely all of them"’, he told a TV interviewer on Malas Lenguas.

On Tuesday, Judge Hurtado halved the Attorney General's bail to just 75,000€ shortly after Álvaro García Ortiz had brought the 150,000€ to the court. We can only hope that he got home safely.

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Media:

The main right-wing news-source might be El Español (out of a large number of contenders). The director is Pedro J Ramírez – who started El Mundo all those years ago – later moving to a more radical title (one which has no print version, which helps wondrously in costs). From El Salto Diario here: ‘Madrid’s Ayuso and Almeida have injected more than 2.2 million euros into Pedro J.'s El Español in the last five years. In 2024 alone, the two Madrid administrations controlled by the PP paid 780,000 euros of public money to the digital media outlet produced by the former editor of El Mundo'. 

Opinion: ‘The Vox paradox: the party that is growing among the groups that would be most harmed by its policies’.

It comes down to this – how many visitors would you like to your site? Jot Down explains here: ‘It's no secret that in the digital environment, audience figures can be moulded, inflated, or outright distorted through all kinds of traffic acquisition strategies. These techniques, while not necessarily illegal, do raise ethical and methodological questions…’ Would you like 100,000 hits per month? It’ll cost you just $100 paid every 30 days to a Spanish company… This, needless to say, is useful when you are looking for advertisers!

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Ecology:

ABC reports here that ‘The Aemet forecasts a warm autumn after the hottest summer in 64 years. The hydrological year closes with more precipitation than usual, but with a summer season 2.1 degrees above average’.

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Various:

Should there be an age control on porn sites? Well sure, the pornocalypse is coming, and here in Spain one will soon need a Carta Digital Beta (already known as el pajaporte) to guarantee that one is old enough for this stuff. The British have already brought in their own system, and the European version is on the way. I guess we older folk can count ourselves lucky that we grew up before the Internet with its porn-sites came along.

Protests on the Tour. From The Guardian here: ‘Vingegaard wins Vuelta de España after final stage cancelled amid pro-Palestinian protests in Madrid. Protesters threw barricades into the street on the Gran Vía’. Whether the mass protest over the Israeli approach to Palestine trumps Spain’s love of sporting events, the message went out. Feijóo, Ayuso and the mayor of Madrid might claim to be pro-Israeli but the mob follows Pedro Sánchez who says “We would like to express our gratitude and absolute respect for the athletes but also our admiration for the Spanish people who mobilise for just causes, such as Palestine”.

Sánchez makes his case here (video). The ERC spokesperson Gabriel Rufián summed up the feeling of most Spaniards: "Murdering children is very wrong. Even worse than knocking down a metal barrier". 20Minutos provides the opposing viewpoint: ‘Feijóo considers the government's lack of support for the police "unacceptable" and blames Sánchez for "encouraging" the protests at the Vuelta a España’. It seems to me that the Israeli cycling team should evidently have been sent home by the Union Cycliste Internationale.

‘In Egypt, Felipe VI denounces the "unbearable humanitarian crisis" and "total devastation in Gaza" amid Israel's ground offensives. The King and Queen begin a state visit to the country, a key element in peace in the Middle East’. El Mundo has the story here.

Sánchez has formally requested Israel's exclusion from international sports competitions, as is the case with Russia. "Sports institutions must consider whether it is ethical to keep Israel in international competitions. Until this barbarism ceases, neither Russia nor Israel should be in any competition," he said. Meanwhile, El Huff Post says that Spain joins the growing list of Eurovision countries who 'won't if they do'. Later, from The Canary here: ‘Eurovision officials tell Israel to either resign or fly neutral flag – or be banned’.

‘Vicente Molina Foix once wrote about riding in the Madrid Metro: “I like to see the juxtaposition of various skin colours, and hear the melody of incomprehensible languages, as the train of the future approaches on the rails of life.”

Here is a man at ease with one of the biggest changes to Spanish life in the last few decades. He realises that this country is becoming one great human paella with a tasty mixture of ingredients…’ From First Thoughts (Brett Hetherington) here.

The risible Vox deputy José María Figaredo was called Señor Frigodedo in a comic lapsus in Parliament the other day. I fear he’s now stuck with it… This and other political humour can be enjoyed at Miguel Charisteas’ weekly video.

From InSpain News here: ‘Portmán Bay disaster: Spain’s toxic legacy resurfaces. From Mediterranean jewel to industrial graveyard. On Murcia’s southeastern coast lies Portmán Bay, once a thriving fishing hub and postcard Mediterranean cove. Today, it is remembered less for its beauty than for one of Europe’s most staggering ecological disasters. What was once clear blue water is now smothered under decades of industrial waste — a scar so deep Greenpeace has called it “the greatest ecological assault on the Mediterranean”’.

There’s the fact that neither Feijóo nor Abascal are linguists, while Pedro Sánchez speaks good English and French (a handy trick when you are in Brussels), but Spaniards are in shock with the video of the Minister of Commerce Carlos Cuerpo speaking in perfect Japanese to a group of investors during his visit to Tokyo. The story at 20Minutos here.

There’s the story of Carlos III who in 1768 said that he didn’t want ‘...ni gitanos, ni murcianos, ni gente de mal vivir en mis ejércitos (…neither gypsies, nor Murcians nor scallywags in my army)’. The quote is often used in Spain, but El Español says that murcianos ‘referred to the activity of murciar, which in the old criminal slang came to be synonymous with stealing’.

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See Spain:

An American travelogue called Flight to Spain. Video dated 1951 on YouTube here.

‘La Vereda de la Estrella: the hiking trail you absolutely must do in Granada: a historic 19th-century route used by miners. A mountain trail in the Sierra Nevada combines unforgettable landscapes with the imprint of a mining past that still surprises. Between forests, rivers, and viewpoints, it has become one of the most iconic routes.

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Letters:

The better way to see Granada. We live 30 minutes from Granada, perfect for transport Except NO Flights!! Such a wonderful city to visit and the airport is Pathetic!! Who wants to come for a holiday when it starts in Málaga.

As mentioned, we only use local bars as well.

Torsas.

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Finally:

Argentinian singer Maggie Cullen performs El Cosechero on YouTube here.