😎 This Week in Spain: Even the Prime Minister Is on Vacation

Also a Dani Alves trial, Tarifa tourism woes, and La Infamia's infamous cancellation.

Aug 03, 2023

By @IanMount and @AdrianBono | August 3, 2023 | Madrid | Issue #26

🎉 Welcome to The Tapa, an English-language, weekly newsletter about all things Spain!

🚫 Before you read, a message from Ian and Adrian: As you all know, August is a slow news month and even with the political uncertainty hovering above all our heads, people (i.e. politicians) just want to go on vacation, man. And so do we. So we will be taking a few weeks off for a little R&R and will be back closer to the end of the month, ready to cover the mess we all know it will be. And don’t worry. If there’s a huge story going on (like, maybe, aliens), we will write about it.

🥜 This Week in a Nutshell: We’ve finally made it to August (aka the month where nothing happens) so even Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is on holiday and completely checked out.

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Closed for summer holidays

In Politics, Minor Updates, but Nothing’s Changed

Overseas vote shocker! (Okay, let’s not exaggerate.) After the count of 233,688 ballots cast by expats (yes, it takes a week to count them), it turns out that center-left PSOE has one fewer seat in Parliament and the center-right Popular Party has one more. The PP now has 137 MPs. If you take into account far-right Vox, with 33, and the one seat of the Navarrese People's Union (UPN), the conservative side has 171 and is tied with the likely left-wing coalition.

The PSOE socialists asked for a recount, but it looks like the Central Electoral Board will dismiss the request.
This means that now it’s not enough for Catalan separatist Junts to abstain, like we explained last week, but in fact they need to vote “yes” if the PSOE’s Pedro Sánchez intends to repeat as prime minister.

PP boss Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Sunday sent a letter to Sánchez “as the winner of the elections” requesting a meeting with him this week. Saying that Spain “cannot afford a deadlock”, he demanded that the PP “must govern”.

Not surprisingly, Sánchez said no. Not only because he was going on vacation (more on that below) but also because he said he would rather wait until after the new Parliament is inaugurated on Aug. 17 and the King has designated a PM candidate.

On Monday, a day before going on vacation, Prime Minister Sánchez posted a video message to his supporters on social media.

He said he can put together a grand coalition on the left so he can be re-appointed prime minister, and he appealed to people who have distanced themselves from the progressive government over the parliament’s last few combative years, in an implicit nod to the Coalición Canaria party (and its one seat).
The Canary Islands party, led by MP Cristina Valido, still hasn’t expressed who it will support but its vote could end up breaking the tie between both blocs. For now, it looks like it’s leaning towards Sánchez.

Yolanda Díaz, leader of the leftist party Sumar, proposed that MPs be allowed to use the co-official languages from their communities (aka Catalan, Basque and Galician) on the Parliament floor.

This option already exists in the Senate, where limited use of Basque, Catalan, and Galician is allowed.
Her proposal comes as negotiations between the PSOE and Sumar negotiate with regional nationalist parties, and is clearly an appeal to them.

That’s all. Get to the beach!

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💬 Five Four things to discuss at dinner parties this week

1.🇲🇦 Pedro Sánchez’s vacation in Morocco

Things are so slow this month that even Pedro Sánchez is away on vacation. Curiously, the Prime Minister chose to spend a few days with his family in Morocco and, oh boy…he probably knew backlash from conservative groups would come fast and loud (maybe he’s just trolling?).

Sánchez flew commercial to Marrakech on Tuesday and will stay there for a few days in a trip that Moncloa sources said was “strictly private” and “self-funded”. He apparently won’t be having any bilateral political meetings there either.

Why is his trip so controversial? PP and Vox are not happy with cozying up to Morocco’s king following the Spanish government’s change of position on Western Sahara and the Pegasus spy scandal case (which has recently been closed). Oh, and there’s the little fact that Spain is currently in a political deadlock and we may have to head to the polls on New Year’s Eve.

PP bigwig Miguel Tellado called the trip a "clear provocation” that reflects “Sánchez’s arrogance”. He said the Prime Minister should return from Morocco, “accept his electoral defeat”, and meet with the PP’s leader to negotiate.
Cuca Gamarra, the center-right party’s secretary general, stated on ~~Twitter~~ X that only Sánchez "can go on vacation calmly" while Spain is experiencing "the third worst unemployment data in July since 2008.”
Vox even took it one step further and ~~tweeted~~ x’d (?) that Sánchez “liked Morocco more than he likes Spain,” which is sort of what you’d expect Vox to say.

2.🏖️ Government to tourists—don't visit Tarifa

You know over tourism is a thing when the area around Tarifa is so inundated that the local government has one request: stay away.

Seriously, the central government’s sub delegate for the province of Cádiz, where Tarifa is located, asked travelers to stay away from local beaches last weekend, while Tarifa’s mayor, José Antonio Santos (PP), said, “We do not have infrastructure for the tourism we’re dealing with and on weekends like this everything comes together… Sometimes there are lines so long that people take hours to get to the beach."

But doesn’t Spain love tourism? Why yes we do, in fact (at least until it eats Barcelona, and then we wonder…). Analysts expect tourism income this year to beat pre-pandemic 2019. In May, it set a record of arrivals (8.2m) and spending for the month. And Tarifa’s population of 18,000 usually triples during the summer tourist season. But this is something different.

So what’s the problem? Last weekend saw one of those weird confluences (the “everything comes together” Santos was referring to ☝️), like when Barbie and Oppenheimer come out the same weekend and you discover that tons of your friends are obsessed with both a-bombs and pink-wearing dolls. But in this case…

A big tourism changeover coincided with the Operación Paso del Estrecho (OPE). What’s OPE, you ask? That’s the summer travel flow when North Africans living in Spain pass through Spain’s Andaluz port system to visit their home countries. It is such a big deal, in fact, it has its own government web page.
And last weekend saw big OPE! Over 100,000 people and 25,000 cars passed through the ports of Algeciras and Tarifa in just 72 hours.
Making things worse—The N-340 highway between Algeciras, Tarifa and Vejer has been waiting—without action—on a widening for years.

But as you wait in a Tarifa traffic jam, at least you can thank your lucky stars that you’re not in Benidorm, where Spaniards are apparently rushing to beat the Brits to prime beach spots by setting up parasols before dawn. “And you thought the Germans were bad!” hyperventilates the Daily Mail.

3. 🤐 The infamous cancellation of La Infamia

Spanish ~~Twitter~~ X is aflame over the cancellation of the Toledo production of La Infamia, a prize-winning theatrical monologue by Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho. The play, which was scheduled to be performed on Dec. 15 in Toledo’s Teatro Rojas, was canceled ostensibly for a "lack of budget." The culprit? It seems a change in government (you can probably guess which one).

What is La Infamia and who is Lydia Cacho? Cacho is a Mexico City-born investigative journo who wrote about child sexual abuse rings for the Yucatán newspaper Por Esto. She then wrote a 2005 book about the subject, Los Demonios del Edén (The Demons of Eden) in which she accused local hotelier Jean Succar Kuri of being involved in a ring of child pornography and prostitution. Succar Kuri is currently in jail for the pederasty Cacho exposed.
After the book’s publication, Cacho was kidnapped by Puebla police and then threatened and tortured on a 900-mile drive to the city of Puebla, where she was to be brought up on defamation charges. The kidnapping/arrest was apparently part of a deal between Puebla and Quintana Roo authorities, and Puebla governor Mario Marín was later arrested for the incident.

Cacho’s autobiographical book about the police kidnapping and the modus operandi of a government complicit in corruption and violence—Memorias de una infamia—forms the basis of La Infamia, a play that premiered in Madrid’s Matadero in December 2021 and has traveled across Spain in the almost two years since.

La Infamia won the Max award (like a Tony in the U.S.) for best actress (Marta Nieto and Marina Salas) in 2023.

So why would you cancel a showing La Infamia? That’s a very good question, and one that, unfortunately, seems easy to answer.

The PP and Vox formed a government in Toledo on July 15. And as part of that, they replaced the Department of Equality with a Department of Social Matters, run by the PP.
The new government wrote to the producer of La Infamia to say there was no budget for the work, but considering that the budget was €7,400 out of Toledo’s annual budget of €144m, that’s hard to believe.
Still, the PP’s new head of the Department of Social Matters, Marisol Illescas, did a yeoman’s job deafening the decision. There were just other more important line items, she said, and the play could even be rescheduled "at some other time in the future.”

Considering that La Infamia premiered in a Madrid city theater while the city was run by a PP mayor, this feels like one of those Vox impositions that the PP will regret agreeing to in its coalitions with the far right party.

Earlier “censorships” by these coalitions have been equal parts ridiculous and worrisome: Like canceling the showing of Lightyear in Cantabria because it features a same-sex kiss that “sexualizes” children.

But this one doubles the ante on both counts. It seems to be as self-defeating as it is chilling, because while the play is a denunciation of violence against women (which Vox is sorta not into), it is also very much against child abuse and government corruption, which Vox is at least in theory against.
In Cacho’s words on Tuesday (video here): “The seed of all violence—gender violence, violence against sexual diversity… they all begin in childhood. Those adults who attack girls and boys are sowing the seeds of inequality, violence and all values against democracy. That is why we are truly concerned."

4. 🧑‍⚖️ Dani Alves trial is finally going to happen

The long, sad tale of former FC Barcelona star Dani Alves’s presumed rape of a young woman in a Barcelona disco is finally on its way to a day in court.

A Barcelona judge ruled Monday that there was sufficient evidence to send the case to a trial, seven months after the presumed rape on Dec. 30, 2022 in the Sutton nightclub.
As part of the indictment, the judge imposed a €150,000 bail—not to let Alves leave prison—but to pay eventual compensation to the victim. This is high, court watchers say, and that’s because the medical investigators ruled that the victim "meets the criteria for a post-traumatic stress disorder" of "high intensity", "with functional repercussions and deterioration in various areas of functioning" that can be "significantly" related to the presumed rape. The young woman is still off work and under psychological care.
Alves appeared in the court Wednesday to be processed. The ex-Barça player said he disagreed with the story of the rape laid out in the indictment because it "does not fit the reality of what happened", but nonetheless would not appeal in order to expedite the legal process.

So how did we get here? Alves, who was playing at the Mexico City team UNAM at the time, was back in Barcelona after Christmas 2022. During a visit to the Sutton nightclub, he and a friend has club staff invite three girls to their table in a VIP area.

Alves began to hit on the girls, especially one 23-year old. He gave them champagne, danced very close to them, and then, apparently, twice put the 23-year-old’s hand on his crotch.
Several minutes later, he called her to come with him down a small hallway. At that point, he apparently maneuvered her into a small restroom,

What happened next is the crux of the trial. The woman says Alves shoved her into the bathroom, pushed her to the floor and, when she refused to perform oral sex on him, slapped her and then raped her. It’s the same story she’s told since she came out of the bathroom and, crying, told her tale to a Sutton employee, who called the Mossos, Catalonia’s regional police force. In Alves’s version, well…

Let’s just say his version changed. First, when he came back to Spain to answer police questions about the report, he claimed he didn’t know the women. Then he said she came into the bathroom when he was inside but nothing happened. And then he said there was oral sex. Finally, he said they had sex, but it was consensual.
His justification for the changes? He didn’t want his wife Joana Sanz to know he had been unfaithful (she’s since separated from him).

Ultimately, Alves does not appear to be holding a winning hand, because the evidence is not on his side. Forensic evidence shows they had sex, and an injury to the woman’s knee as well as fingerprints support her story.

When will the trial start? Only god knows. A date should be set in September, but the Spanish justice system moves slowly. If convicted, Alves faces up to 15 years.

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