Business over Tapas Nº 608

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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Story: (a moment of levity this week)

I needed a rag to check the oil on my old banger so I was looking under the kitchen sink for a discarded tee-shirt.

There’s a pile of them down there, maybe my wife thought slinging them under the sink was easier than chucking them in the washing machine. Especially the sillier ones which I appear to have collected over the years.

This one was from some restaurant and had a large black diagonal stripe on it, looking like – if one was driving – a seatbelt. A treasure from back in 1975 when the new law came in.

I took it down to the restaurant to tease them, but it fell apart in my hands. After a mere half a century of neglect plus the work of a few moths: I call it poor quality.

Since I was there, I stayed for lunch.

Had a few drinks with the owner, Juan, and a couple of others.

Driving home (yes, yes, with my seatbelt fastened), I thought I’d take the secret back-route that only I (and a handful of local drunks) are familiar with. It’s a bit bumpy some of it, and I know I need to slow down on a particularly nasty stretch, but I got home safely, while my friend Ángel (not his real name, he’s actually called Eluterio) who took the main road got charged by the cops for driving with his eyes crossed. In Spain the legal limit is 0.5mg of alcohol per ml of blood (they want to drop it to 0.2mg). To compare, in the UK the limit is 0.8mg. I know, they claim Spain is a tourist paradise. Poor Ángel: five hundred euros, (250 if he pays up sharpish) and four points docked from his driving licence.

He’s a changed man these days…

Indeed, we sometimes call him up to be the designated driver. These days, he sits there in the corner twitching gently while playing with his mobile phone looking for the WhatsApp police-control warning page.

One day, they’ll invent self-driving cars and I’ve started a savings jam-jar in the kitchen to be ready. Imagine: ‘Helloo Car, my old mate (hic!), take me home via the liquor-store’.

Up in the City, the traffic-tzar is an old blue-stocking who has been tightening the screws on all aspects of driving for several decades. Right now, as far as he’s concerned, a capful of una clara (beer with lemonade) will pretty much do the trick.  

It’s all right for him though – he has a chauffeur. He can loll around in the back singing some popular number from Manolo Escobar (perhaps his catchy 'Somebody's Stolen my Donkey and his Cart') while the driver grinds his teeth and negotiates the M-30 in the rush-hour.

Mind you, and to make a point – there’s no reason to drive ‘under the influence’ or indeed even completely sober for that matter if you live in Madrid or any other city in Spain. They have buses, taxis, trams and metros. You don’t even need to own a car.

And besides, there’s always a bar downstairs. Just use the lift (it’s free) to get home.

No, it’s us country-folk that have to take our lives (and everybody else’s) in our hands every time we go out shopping or to have lunch with a friend… and answer me this – how are the country-restaurants, with their reduced number of clients and their high social security outgoings, expected to make a dollar on their cheap menu del día and a glass of water?

So before you go drinking, always remember to plan ahead for your trip home.

…

My niece, who is a lawyer, tells me I must put a postscript here to say that I created the whole above story out of the cloth of fiction and that I don’t associate with drinkers and indeed I haven’t myself had a drop myself since the English won the World Cup: an admission which (except for the bit about the diagonal tee-shirt) I am happy to do. 

…...

Housing: 

A puff from Prop News Time here: ‘Spain's sustained economic strength has continued to fuel its property market, supported by consistent GDP growth and falling unemployment. Revised figures from the National Statistics Institute indicated a 3.5% GDP rise in 2024, while Caixa Bank lifted its 2025 forecast to 2.9%. With strong demand and property prices rising, developers such as Taylor Wimpey España have highlighted the present as an ideal time for both domestic and international buyers to invest in Spanish homes’. 

From Spanish Property Insight here: ‘Foreigners blamed by both extremes of Spanish politics for the housing crisis’. It makes the point that ‘Foreign buyers do play a visible role in certain markets—coastal resort areas in particular—but they are not the reason housing has become unaffordable in Madrid, Barcelona, or Seville…’ I might argue that most of the vulture funds who buy up entire buildings are foreign – and looking for profits. 

“Every time we read a headline claiming ‘Spanish house prices rise 15%’, the same question arises: which Spain are they talking about?” An interesting breakdown of city, country and resort sales at Spanish Property Insight here.  

El Mundo brings us: ‘More single-person households, a low birth rate, and an aging population: Is Spain building the homes of the future for families of the past? In the midst of a crisis, Spain is building the same type of housing as twenty years ago, failing to adapt to the market and an irreversible demographic shift’. With graphics. 

‘The top ten worst places to live in Spain. Spain is often ranked amongst the best countries in the world for quality of life, but like any country, some places are considered less desirable to live in than others’. Idealista, writing in English here, slightly misses the point: most foreigners are either here to retire (they often choose small and obscure pueblos) or to work (they must stay – for better or worse – in the cities). Torrevieja is mentioned (Brits: 5,000) as is Marbella (5,500 Brits). In all, there are 290,000 Britons officially living here. 

Avoiding the Idealista hit list, here’s The Olive Press on Calpe in Alicante: ‘The town recently crossed a quietly astonishing milestone: foreign nationals now make up over half of its population. More than 53%, to be exact – meaning Spanish residents are technically the minority in this stretch of the Costa Blanca. It’s the only town in Spain with more than 20,000 people to reach that level of international mix…’ Judging from the article, it sounds very pleasant there. 

‘The Llíber property scandal: A summary of two decades of deception. The mess made by the sale of illegal homes in Llíber and other Alicante towns is only just starting to be sorted out, but it has left a terrible human toll’. It begins: ‘For nearly two decades, the small Spanish village of Llíber in Alicante was at the centre of one of the most extensive and damaging property frauds ever to target foreign buyers. This is the story of how hundreds of expatriates, mostly elderly couples seeking a dream retirement home in the sun, had their life savings systematically stolen in a sophisticated and calculated scheme involving corrupt officials, unscrupulous developers and complicit lawyers…’ From Alicante Today here. 

From Idealista here: ‘Andalucía surpasses Catalonia in number of squatting lawsuits.

Lawsuits involving okupas in Spain fell 24% this spring (April through June) to 487, though Barcelona remains the province with the most cases’. What to do with all these squatters – build more bridges for them to live under? A recent article (en castellano) from The BBC: ‘Why are there so many empty houses in Spain if the country is experiencing a "housing emergency"? According to the INE, there are 3.8 million empty houses in Spain, 14.4% of the total, and many have been unoccupied for years…’ From elDiario.es here: ‘80% of complaints about occupied properties in Catalonia involve vacant apartments owned by large property-owners and banks. According to data from the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police), occupations have decreased by 18.1% between January and October of this year, but thwarted attempts are on the rise’. 

…...

Tourism:

Sonder, a US chain with 180 hotels and 9,400 rooms, has abruptly declared bankruptcy, leaving thousands of customers stranded without warning. The chain also has hotels in Madrid, Barcelona and Málaga (clients were abruptly told to leave their hotel). Preferente has the story here. More on the collapse with Business Insider here.

…...

Finance:

The Banco de España is considering imposing limits on the granting of risky mortgages to prevent a bubble. The regulator is analysing the lending market and plans to intervene, but without causing an excessive restriction of credit says El País here. 

From Infobae here: ‘Spain positions itself as China's "reliable partner" in Europe: ten agreements to gain access to its market. King Felipe VI concludes his state visit there with the signing of up to ten economic commitments together with agreements to strengthen the Spanish language’. The King was accompanied by businesspeople and the Minister of the Economy Carlos Cuerpo who wowed both the media and the Chinese business-folk present by speaking to them in their own language. Amazing! 

…...

Politics: 

El Mundo reports here: ‘Junts announced last week its veto of all government laws: "The legislature is blocked". The pro-independence party emphasizes that the only option left for Sánchez's government is to form a coalition with the PP and Vox. Puigdemont's party continues to rule out a vote of no confidence’. 20Minutos has ‘Junts per Catalunya is asking "Sánchez to open his eyes" because they will not back down: "The PSOE has ruined the legislature" they say’. However, they won’t join the PP and Vox in a motion of censure. One is free to wonder just what they want. ‘The governability of Spain is not Junts' objective; we are at the service of Catalonia’, says the party spokesperson. Nope, we still don’t know what they want. A government in Madrid with Vox as a partner would certainly not be helpful to an independence Catalonian group.  

From Demócrata here: ‘Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is the most highly regarded leader in Spain's democratic history, according to a poll conducted by the consulting firm Opina360. 22.8% of Spaniards consider the Socialist leader to be the best president since 1978, almost four points ahead of Adolfo Suárez (19.2%), who comes in second. José María Aznar is in third place with 15% of the vote, followed by Felipe González (11.7%) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (11.2%). Mariano Rajoy brings up the rear with 7.2%, making him the least popular president among the public…’ 

From elDiario.es here: ‘The PP ties its fate to Vox on the eve of a new election cycle. While the Partido Popular attempts to consolidate the conservative vote in Extremadura, where the first elections will be held just a week before Christmas, Feijóo's leadership is leaving the replacement of Mazón in the hands of the far right, amidst a rise in Abascal's party in all the polls’. From El Mundo here (Tuesday): ‘Feijóo appoints Juanfran Pérez Llorca to replace Carlos Mazón as head of the Valencian Generalitat. Currently the spokesperson for the Valencian PP in the Cortes, Pérez Llorca is the PP-approved presidential candidate who must now receive Vox's support’. ECD says: ‘The PP prioritizes a pact with Vox to avoid losing Valencia, even if it hurts them in Extremadura. The party headquarters in Madrid wants to avoid at all costs being accused of electoral opportunism by Valencians if they decide to postpone the election of a new president’. 

Wednesday is the weekly debate in Las Cortes. From El Mundo here: ‘Sánchez asserts he will resist until 2027 (the limit for the next general election) against a "destructive opposition," while Feijóo predicts a future in the courts for him and warns: "I won’t be granting him amnesty". The president urges Junts to reconsider its decision to block all legislative initiatives and focuses his speech on attacking Ayuso and Moreno Bonilla: "They are profiting from people's rights", he says, regarding the privatisation of services in those two communities’. (From the other extreme, the lefty elDiario.es) here: ‘Sánchez accused the PP and Vox parties of dismantling public services, despite the fact that the autonomous communities have received an additional 300,000 million euros—47% more than the previous period—since he took office. Sánchez accused the PP and Vox parties of engaging in “destructive opposition” and asked the Catalan separatists not to join in this obstruction, appealing to the “spirit of agreement.” He also asserted that privatizations (particularly in the heath sector) ultimately become a form of corruption by “cutting public services in exchange for political favours”…’ 

From The Times here: ‘50 years after Franco’s death, is Spain’s democracy in danger? Polls suggest the dictator’s ideas are not as ‘dead and irrelevant’ as some might like to believe’. I was in Mojácar when Franco died (20 November 1975) – I’ll write up the story next week. 

…...

Catalonia: 

From El Mundo here: ‘A snapshot of crime in Barcelona: 91% of those arrested for theft and 83% for robbery with violence are foreigners. In total, almost eight out of ten arrests made in the Catalan capital in 2024 were of people from other countries, according to data from the General Directorate of Police in response to Vox. Police arrested a total of 21,808 people on the streets of Barcelona throughout last year: 17,158 from other countries and the remaining 4,650 Spanish, representing 78.67% compared to the remaining 21.3%...’ Maldita, the fact-finding site, has checked with the above and is in agreement. 

……

Europe:

Quite horrific: from RTVE here, ‘Italy investigates 'death safaris' where civilians were shot for sport in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. The investigation into these 'death safaris' was launched following a complaint filed by a writer and two lawyers. The 'hunting of civilians' in Sarajevo by foreign millionaires has been denounced on other occasions’.

…...

Corruption:

An interesting figure in the courts is Victor de Aldama, who was accused of major fraud (184 million euros) and sent to preventative prison… yet immediately released (more than a year ago) because he claimed to have dirt on several PSOE politicians and others (The impartial Spanish judicial system OK). From Público here: ‘Aldama, almost a year of television appearances and provisional release in exchange for a "cooperation" that never materializes. The businessman requested to voluntarily testify a month after entering prison and expressed his desire to "begin a new line of cooperation in all the cases" in which he was being investigated, including the 'Koldo case'. "The risk of flight has not disappeared. We don't know where the money attributed to him in the hydrocarbons case is. He hasn't cooperated in locating that money," insist sources from the PSOE's defence team, who filed an appeal against his release’. 

…...

Courts: 

The current kangaroo trial against the Attorney General – a case that comes from a complaint from Alberto González Amador (better known to the public as ‘Ayuso’s boyfriend’), along with the enthusiastic participation of a couple of right-wing judicial associations APIF and ICAM with the added private denuncias (as usual) from Vox, Manos Limpios and Hazte Oir – continues after several journalists told the court that they had received the bogus email claiming that the boyfriend had made a deal with Hacienda from someone (journalists never reveal their sources) days before Álvaro García Ortíz published the story. All this has been tying the Supreme Court (and any number of politicians) in knots since October last year.

In short, the Attorney General García Ortiz is accused of the crime of revealing secrets by leaking an email about the case of the alleged tax fraud of Alberto González Amador, partner of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. He is facing up to six years in prison.

From EFE here: ‘European prosecutors and judges on Sunday conveyed their "great concern and worry about what is happening in Spain" regarding the "unprecedented" trial against the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, and warned of the risk of "opportunistic" prosecutions.

A piece from elDiario.es makes the point that ‘It is the prosecution that must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. Not the other way around. Of course, the defence will maintain that the accused is innocent and even a wonderful person, but the strategy that a journalist must analyse is fundamentally that of the prosecution…’ Tied to all of this is the trial of Alberto González Amador now set to go ahead (despite his threats in front of the court to either head for the hills or do away with himself). The TV pundit Antón Losada suggests a third way forward for the boyfriend on Twitter: "There is a third option that you may not have considered: paying your taxes. If you pay your taxes, if you don't issue false invoices, if you don't create shell companies, if you don't collect commissions that you then don't declare and send to tax havens, you can stay peacefully in Spain and there is no need to commit suicide". You’d be pardoned for thinking the Court would ask for the Boy-friend’s passport…

On Wednesday – the last day of the trial, both members of the UCO (the Guardia Civil’s judicial police wiki) and the Attorney General were able to put their case.

The UCO had visited García Ortiz’ offices last year in search of incriminating evidence, but – we are told – the wily AG had cleared his phone of all WhatsApps.

So to the Supreme Court on Wednesday: From Cadena Ser here, ‘The UCO agents who searched the Attorney General's office testified today: "We literally didn't know what we were looking for". The UCO agents confirmed to the court that they performed a complete data extraction from all of Álvaro García Ortiz's devices and that the court clerk took "a copy of the defendant's personal email"’.

“What we did was to post the emails after they had been revealed to the public,” says García Ortiz, the only defendant, whose testimony marks the fifth session of the hearing.

With no proof to the contrary, and heavy political baggage hanging on the judicial ruling, the seven magistrates in the Supreme Court must now decide.  

……

‘Feijóo blames Sánchez for "breaking judicial independence" by saying the Attorney General is "innocent"’ – following from an interview by Sánchez given in Colombia last weekend. 

El Mundo says that ‘The brother of Pedro Sánchez and the leader of the Extremadura PSOE, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, will appear in court from February 9 to 14. David Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, along with ten other defendants, is accused of administrative misconduct and influence peddling’. 

A small number of judges are regularly accused of being partisan. One such is ‘Almudena Lastra, the favourite prosecutor of the right-wing who boasts of yelling at García Ortiz while remaining silent about the Madrid nursing homes scandal. The magistrate has been highly critical of the Attorney General's actions regarding Isabel Díaz Ayuso's boyfriend, whose handling of the pandemic she defended’ says El Plural here. 

…...

Media:

Most of the private and regional TV stations (if not all) are owned, controlled or run by those of a conservative mind, but many of the staffers are lefties. From El Salto Diario here: ‘Staff at regional television stations rebel against the political control of the Partido Popular. The employees at À Punt, RTV Andalucía and Canal Sur, IB3, RTPA, RTV Aragón, RTV Canarias, RTV Castilla-La Mancha, Canal Extremadura, Telemadrid, CSAG and TV3 have endured years of pressure on journalists and the privatization of news services. Now, the platform of Spanish public media is preparing a major joint mobilization for journalistic independence’. They’ve formed a group called ‘RTV’s Públicas en Lucha’. 

The TV humourist and political commentator El Gran Wyoming in an interview on LaSexta here, was emphatic about Judge Peinado: "His case is an immeasurable farce and an astonishing stupidity". The same as with the Attorney General, says Wyoming, there’s simply nothing there (with video). 

From The Telegraph, a populist view: ‘Spain’s booming economy relies on migrants. Now they threaten a political earthquake. As anti-immigration riots break out and the radical Right make hay, the country’s growth miracle is at risk’. 

From The Times here: ‘Juan Carlos spills secrets on Franco, abdication and killing his brother. In the much-awaited memoir, Spain’s former king attempts to ‘dispel misunderstandings’ after years in exile following scandals’. 

…...

Ecology: 

El País here: ‘Pedro Sánchez, speaking at the COP30 on Thursday: “Climate change has claimed more than 20,000 lives in Spain in the past five years”. The Spanish leader stated at the summit in Belém, in the Amazon: “We are showing that it is possible to grow while reducing greenhouse gas emissions”’. The 20Minutos headline says: ‘Sánchez, speaking from COP30, attacks climate change "deniers" and insists on further taxing private jet flights’. On Saturday, Sánchez was in Colombia at a meeting between EU and CELAC leaders to discuss the US threat to Venezuela. 

Spain’s Partido Popular votes alongside the far right (and against the vote of most of the European People’s Party) in the European Parliament against the 2050 emissions target. The abandonment of the Green Deal is one of the conditions Abascal has set for negotiating the investiture of the new Valencian president says El País here.

El Trasllambrión, the last glacier in the province of León, is no more. 

…...

Various: 

‘Valencia: PP officials and supporters launch a social media harassment campaign against victims of the Dana storm. The testimony of victims' families before the congressional committee, which has dismantled much of the PP's narrative regarding the Dana, has triggered a barrage of attacks from various members and supporters of the Partido Popular attempting to link them to political interests’. Item from elDiario.es here. 

‘Núcleo Nacional offers its 28,500 Telegram followers a Hitler Youth indoctrination manual. The neo-Nazi group inaugurates its "reading club" with a text written by Nazi leader Helmut Stellrecht, who performed military training duties for young people’. *Sigh!* Público here.

From Spain in English here: ‘55 arrests as Spanish police smash seven ‘highly violent’ crime groups on the Costa del Sol’.

(Regardless of the high crime with foreigners in Barcelona above) From Público here: ‘The profile of the offender and the type of crime: data that dismantles the link between migration and crime. Forcing a connection between migration and crime distorts the data and prevents us from seeing the real problems, according to experts. The profile of the offender, the type of crime, and Spain's demographic evolution are variables that refute the narrative linking the arrival of migrants with crime’. The article says: ‘In fact, according to the latest available data, the migrant population in Spain has increased over the last 20 years while crime rates have decreased. The conventional crime rate (excluding cybercrime) in Spain stands at 40.6 offenses per thousand inhabitants (at the lower end of the historical average), one of the lowest in the world…’ Since we are on the subject, here’s Sur in English: ‘Organised crime's new strategies on the Costa del Sol: underage hitmen, military grade weapons and state-of-the-art drones. One of the most concerning developments is the hiring of younger individuals to execute the murders, as they often charge less. "They used to ask for 50 or 60,000 euros and now they do it for 20,000," a police investigator says’.

The INE has one of those fiddly tables which show by year how many – and what sort of – crimes were committed and by who – foreigners or Spaniards here. 

‘The Spanish Armed Forces have 227 generals but are short 9,500 officers and 3,000 soldiers: “The focus is on expanding weapons, not personnel.” Active military personnel number 116,739, just 329 more than a year ago. The Observatory of Military Life laments that the current geopolitical debate seems to be shifting the focus to modernizing and expanding weapons systems and equipment’. Item from Infobae here. 

A farmer completely razes the ruins of Torre Mocha Castle in Salamanca, a listed Cultural Heritage Site. The total demolition of the Leonese fortification, built in the 12th and 13th centuries in Naharros del Río (in the municipality of Pelabravo in the Tormes region) as part of the defensive line of the Kingdom of León against Castile, has sparked outrage among local residents, and a complaint has been filed with the Public Prosecutor's Office for looting’. Item from ileón here. 

An interesting story from The Times here: ‘Rafael de Paula obituary: the celebrated and singular bullfighter. An unorthodox gentleman torero who was imprisoned for a crime of passion that transfixed Spain, dies aged 85’. (Our thanks to Colin) 

Some alarming stuff on Charles II of Spain (1651 - 1700), the last of the Hapsburgs, who is best remembered for his deformities due to being heavily interbred (incestuously) in the best Royal tradition of the times. Wiki is here and an nsfw description is on Facebook here. 

From Infobae here: ‘Spain is closing in on 50 million inhabitants: the birth rate is plummeting, but migration is growing and reaching record levels. The INE's Continuous Population Statistics show an increase of 105,488 people during the third quarter of 2025’.

In all, Spain has 49.4 million inhabitants of whom 9.8 million were born abroad. 

…...

See Spain: 

From Viajar here: ‘Ciudad Rodrígo, the beautiful medieval town in Spain that has it all: a Gothic cathedral, a medieval wall, and a Parador hotel in a castle. This town has lived through wars, houses museums, and is steeped in a local culture that we have rarely seen’. 

José Antonio Sierra sends me a useful guide to what’s on in Málaga called Malaguear. 

…...

Finally: 

I’m returning to Rosalia this week as her latest album, Lux, breaks records (not vinyl ones). From El Huff Post we find: ‘Lux is finally here! After weeks of anticipation and leaks, Rosalía released her fourth album, Lux, this Friday. A four-movement work with a strong mystical, orchestral, and classical music presence, in which the artist dares to sing in no fewer than 13 languages…’ 20Minutos says ‘Rosalía places 12 songs from her Lux album in Spotify's global top 50 in one day’. Here’s her La Rumba Del Perdón on YouTube.