⛓️💥This Week in Spain: The Shawshank Reduction
Begoña's troubles continue, Israel is really mad at Spain and a scathing article on The Economist about Pedro Sánchez.
By @IanMount and @AdrianBono | October 10, 2024 | Madrid | Issue #73
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🥜 This Week in a Nutshell: Big and bad scandals are back this week and boy, is it messy. It looks like former ETA terrorists in prison are getting their sentences reduced and everyone is angry at, well, everyone. How did we get here, you say? We’re on it.
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Let the blame game begin
ETA terrorists are seeing their prison sentences reduced and no one wants to be responsible for it
Aaaaaaand we’re back to having one big political scandal dominating the headlines, the airwaves and your social media feed. Woo-hoo!
Get out of jail free card. This Monday, thanks to an article published on El Confidencial, we all learned the (very shocking) news that thanks to a legal reform validating prison sentences served in France, over 40 ETA leaders, including Francisco Javier García Gaztelu (aka “Txapote”) and José Javier Arizkuren Ruiz (aka “Kantauri”) could be released as early as next year.
History lesson. ETA was an armed, far-left terrorist group that wanted the independence of the Basque Country. They operated from 1959 to 2018 and killed over 800 people (340 of whom were civilians). Many ETA terrorists hid in France (where many were thrown in prison) and were later handed over to Spain.
Now in government. After ETA announced that it was ending armed activities in 2011, many members of its political arm, Batasuna, went to form EH Bildu, the current separatist Basque party in Parliament which — you guessed it! — backs Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s coalition government.
How did we get to the prisoners getting out early? Well, it’s all thanks to a legal reform bill that was approved by all parties in Parliament on Sept. 18 without a single amendment, and that will allow ETA members currently in prison in Spain to deduct the years they served in France, speeding up the release of many.
Not much to be done. The bill, already passed in Parliament, completes its legislative process on Tuesday in the Senate, so having it reversed now looks pretty unlikely. The thing is that center-right PP and far-right Vox, who pride themselves on repeating that EH Bildu is the political heir of ETA, both voted in favor of the bill.
Confused? You bet. You see, it seems both parties failed to read the fine print when voting and are now up in arms saying that they were unaware at the time of voting that this would happen and are claiming it was an amendment included in another law.
Who’s to blame? Well, we could say everyone has screwed up but we’re looking at left-of-center party Sumar. It all started back in 2014 after a proposal to amend the organic law that “regulates the exchange of criminal record information and consideration of judicial rulings in the European Union.”
The then-PP government led by PM Mariano Rajoy (which had an absolute majority) approved this legal text which, as El País explains, “intended to standardize the enforcement of sentences in EU member states so that a person would not serve multiple sentences for the same crime in different states”.
But not for ETA. However, back then the Spanish government also said this wouldn’t apply to sentences before Aug. 15, 2010, which meant that 69 ETA prisoners in Spain who had served time in French prisons would not be eligible.
Sumar ammendment. The bill approved last month in Parliament includes an amendment from Sumar that repeals that provision, meaning that it now includes everyone, no matter when they were sentenced to prison. Boom. (There is some suggestion that this outcome was intentional, though the use of misdirection is unclear.)
The amendments introduced by Sumar in theory aim to “update and improve legal certainty” related to the enforcement of sentences in relation to the EU directive on the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), something that PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, denied: “The European directive did not specify this”.
And to be fair, while many of the ETA leaders in prison tried to appeal the pre-2010 provision a few years ago, not only all instances of the Spanish courts rejected their plea but so did the EU’s Strasbourg human rights court.
Damage control on the right. As expected, PP and Vox voters are not happy with the fact that their parties completely missed this.
The PP leadership is doing some heavy damage control, saying that they are “all responsible” for such oversight, but that Sánchez and his government are to blame for this. Still, there’s the feeling that somebody should resign (three PP MPs in the parliamentary Justice Committee who revised the bill have offered their resignations but so far they have not been accepted).
Feijóo’s party has also said they will do anything in their power to stop the implementation of the bill, including voting against in in the Senate (which will amount to nothing) and challenging it in court.
Yesterday, it was a full-blown war in Parliament. As the scandal continued to grow, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez hoped to discuss immigration (and Spain’s fast-growing anti-immigration sentiment) but God the PP had other plans.
PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said the reduction of sentences was “a moral disgrace” and went for the jugular.
Sánchez yelled at. Feijóo spent his time in Parliament accusing Sánchez of “lying”, of deceiving the victims of ETA, and of making deals with Bildu to put terrorists on the street, calling it “a moral disgrace”.
Nothing will change. While the coalition government has the option to withdraw a legislative initiative at any time during its processing, it’s unlikely it will happen and will be eventually become law next week.
Still trying. “You have five days left (to withdraw the bill)”, Feijóo told Sánchez. “If you have any conscience left, reconsider it… I would be disgusted to stay in power in exchange for releasing the murderers of my colleagues from prison.”
The highlight of the day came when Sánchez was speaking on immigration and PP MPs began cheering the arrival of PP senator and former MP Marimar Blanco, sister of Miguel Ángel Blanco, a PP politician from the Basque country who was kidnapped and murdered in 1997 by Txapote (see video above).
Sánchez was not having it. He insisted that the Sumar amendment does not involve sentence reductions for ETA members and repeated that following the EU directive is “mandatory”. And he mocked Feijóo:“Do you know what you’re voting for or not?” he asked the PP boss, adding that “there’s no one at the wheel” in the opposition.
The clock is ticking, with only a few days before the law is made official after publication in the official gazette. According to the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT), around 40 ETA prisoners — 23 of whom were convicted of violent crimes — could benefit from it and leave prison as soon as 2025.
More news below. 👇👇
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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties this week
1.😪 Begoña still has a legal case—but not a master’s
We were going to title this story “Blue Monday” because we like New Order—and because Begoña Gómez, aka PM Pedro Sánchez’s wife (whom he loves very much), had the crap Mondays of all crap Mondays this week.
There’s no getting around it. On the same day a Madrid provincial court ruled that most of the influence-peddling investigation into her could continue, the last of the master’s programs she ran at the UCM (Madrid’s Complutense University) was dropped—apparently because of lack of student interest. Sad!
You remember this case (because we write about it a lot). It’s the one that started when Manos Limpias (clean 🤲), a group with far-right ties, filed a complaint based only on news clippings claiming that Gómez has somehow traded her influence on Pedro for corporate contributions to the academic programs she ran. And the biggest imagined payoff—that a donation of €1,700 in plane tickets (note: which was meant to be part of a larger donation) from Globalia got Pedro to give Globalia’s airline Air Europa a €475m bailout—does sound silly. Right?
So Pedro’s goverment got on the case. The prosecutor’s office came out against it as baseless and Sánchez launched his frighteningly named “democratic regeneration” plan to fix things. More recently, government spokeswoman Pilar Alegre memorably said the case’s judge, (the not-confidence-inspiring) Juan Carlos Peinado, had spent six months on it “pedaling nowhere.”
Screech… All this saber-rattling came to a screeching halt Monday when the court Gómez appealed to said (more or less), “You’re right, that Globalia thing’s got no legs” and threw that out—but also said the judge could look into (and this is from the ruling) “any activity carried out by the person under investigation in relation to the launch of her professional activity” related to her academic chair and those who helped her.
Maybe not totally pedaling nowhere? It’s still just an investigation launched by a dodgy group and could be nothing, of course (innocent until proven guilty). But business folks aiding the family of a national leader, and her writing letters of recommendation for one, well, you can see how they’d wanna take a deeper look.
The day did not get better. Also on Monday, the UCM announced that it was canceling the last master’s program Gómez had there (on fundraising, which is a bit too much right on).
Gómez criticized the move as “surprising and unilateral” and apologized to the 50 students pre-registered but the university said actually there were only 12 pre-registered and four signed up. The cancellation comes a week after the university dropped her other masters, in Continuing Education in Competitive Social Transformation, and the academic chair associated with it.
Blue Monday!
2. 🇮🇱 Israel calls Spain a ‘paradise of hatred’
Spain-Israel relations are not doing so great as of late, as you probably already know (because we write about it). In fact, they seem to be at their lowest point in, like, ever.
There’s been no Israeli ambassador in Spain since May. Why? Spain was one of the first countries to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Also, Podemos politicians called for Israel PM Netanyahu to face war crime charges; Spain recognized the Palestinian state; and Spain accused Israel of committing genocide in the region at the UN.
Then something new this weekend. On the eve of the first anniversary of the attack, an event took place in Madrid that made the Israeli government even angrier.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted on Sunday about how mad they were at Spain over the recent hosting of the annual conference of the Palestinian movement Basar Badil in Madrid (which, fyi, rejects a two-state solution and pretty much wants the destruction of Israel).
To wrap up the event, attendees marched through the streets of Madrid on Oct. 6, which the ministry said was “a celebration of the brutal massacre of October 7”.
The Israeli ministry said it was “outraged and saddened that Spain has become a paradise to sow hatred and incite […] the destruction of Israel”.
Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares was quick to respond, explaining that these claims are “completely out of place because Spain is a country of tolerance”.
Albares called for the “unconditional release” of the hostages, an immediate and permanent ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and an end to “this horrible war that is taking thousands of innocent lives, first in Gaza among Palestinians, and now in Lebanon.”
Albares emphasized that Spain respects the freedom of expression, but where “any form of incitement to hatred, including antisemitism, is not only widely rejected by Spanish society but is also part of the Penal Code.”
Then Deputy Vice President Yolanda Díaz also took to Twitter/X, urging the international community to impose “maximum sanctions” on Netanyahu’s government, stating that “there is no time to lose.”
And because everything is polarized now, Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso said during a PP rally this weekend that even though “nobody wants war” you can’t ask for the end of Hamas or Hezbollah by giving them flowers.
3.🗞️ Newspaper fight! Sánchez is pissed at The Economist
“Pedro Sánchez clings to office at a cost to Spain’s democracy”. That’s the Economist headline this week that set off a barrage of phone calls from the Moncloa to journalists (and between journalists), as the Sánchez government, which dismisses most domestic criticism as the product of the far-right “mud machine”, faced a hit not only from abroad, but from one of the cherished fountains of anglo wisdom.
How tough was it? While the headline was harsh, the article itself was marginally less so. Let’s call it critical, but not vicious. After complimenting Sánchez in a way (the “great survivor of European politics, a wily and ruthless tactician”) it goes on to note that his “minority coalition government rules at the pleasure of Catalan and Basque radical nationalists, and at a growing cost to the quality of Spain’s democracy and its institutions.”
Is that so bad? Well, it does go on to tell the election story, where the PP won the most seats but Sánchez was the one able to put together a majority of seats (which is democracy). It went on the note that as part of that deal Junts bossman Carles Puigdemont demanded broad amnesty and Sánchez, “complied, ramming it through parliament by five votes.” Also democracy, but many people not happy.
Really, the issue is it went on. It talked about how the amnesty was the only real legislation of note to be passed; that Sánchez’s wife Begoña Gómez is being investigated; that Sánchez took a five-day period of “reflection”; and that one socialist says that the PM “has an iron grip on his party which resembles a fan club.”
It wasn’t all bad. To be fair, the Economist also noted that since 2018, Sánchez’s government had boosted the minimum wage and “cut the abuse of temporary contracts” while keeping employment growing fast, and said the economy has grown at more than double the euro-zone average since 2023. Plus, they made fun of PP boss Nuñez Feijóo’s many stumbles, noting he had, um, “struggled on the national stage.” So that’s good, right?
Well, no. You see, the Economist is one of the favored purveyors of truth of the Spanish government, along with the FT, WSJ and NYT, and there is a strong interest (even obsession) with PM Sánchez’s image overseas. (This is not just here—we lived in Argentina for many a moon, and there the country’s biggest newspaper Clarín for years ran a feature called Como Nos Ven—How They See Us.)
Attack! Faced with the Economist’s betrayal, the Sánchez government went on the attack. Economy minister Carlos Cuerpo said he rejected the characterization and “we all know” that in Europe, Spain is a leader not only economically and democratically but also as a barrier to the far right.
Bring out the sociologist! The veteran sociologist Jesús de Miguel published his own (government circulated) rebuttal in Agenda Pública, in which he accused the Economist of “fake news” and adopting arguments of the “Spain right and far-right” and noted for good measure that the Economist Intelligence Unit rated Spain the 23rd best democracy in the world (We’re 23!). And in a call with El Español, he said the Economist article, “seems to have been written by Feijóo, and it responds to a disinformation strategy.” Zoinks!
Skin a little thin? Ultimately, the article didn’t say Spain was losing its democracy, but rather that Sánchez stayed in power with a bizarre (though totally legal and democratic) coalition and passed almost no legislation this term except something that few people wanted.
Bit of trivia? We call the Economist a newspaper in the headline because it calls itself that even though it comes out once a week and looks like a magazine. We call it a magazine though.
4. 🏡 So those new rent-control rules worked! Or…they didn’t
Catalonia reported its first quarterly number since it imposed rent control laws in certain areas and the results are…mixed.
Catalonia set price caps on properties in certain “tense” housing markets 😥—including Barcelona—back in March. Detractors said owners would take their properties off the market if they couldn’t make money, while renters’ activists said prices would drop. And guess what? Both are right! So let’s call it a tie and move on. Nah, we’ll tell you the story.
Glass half full: Local gov and renter activists. Catalonia’s government reported a 5% price drop in new contracts filed in Q2 with Incasol (the market regulator) compared to Q1—including a 5.2% in the city of Barcelona after 11 straight quarters of rises. That, according to Catalan government spokesperson Sílvia Paneque, “supports the impact of the price cap in tense areas."
Glass half empty: Property industry and owners. The number of new contracts in the areas covered by the rules dropped 17.2% in Q2, including 19.2% in Barcelona. This drop, sector and government spokespeople said, came from people taking their properties off the long-term rental market.
So why take your apartment off the market? A mix of reasons. Many are shifting their properties onto the unregulated short-term market—just look at the Idealista listings in Barcelona, where most offer rentals for 1 to 11 months. And others are ignoring the caps and just not filing their contracts with Incasol (which only covers about 80% of the market).
What’s next? Catalonia has just added 131 more municipalities to the rent control scheme, which means now 90% of the Catalan population will live in such areas. And there is talk of bringing back a bill to eliminate short-term contracts, which Junts (to piss off Sánchez) joined the PP and Vox to shoot down in September. If that passes, expect it to be implemented in Catalonia, but for other autonomous communities to wait and see. There will likely be massive unhappiness among owners in Catalonia if that comes to pass—and lawsuits! 😡
Other prop news this week. Catalonia’s socialist president Salvador Illa promised to build 50,000 units of public housing by 2030 (see video above), and the Supreme Court established that condo boards can ban tourist rentals with a ⅗ majority vote. So expect some fun juntas de propietarios as the pros and cons battle it out!
5. ⚽ Valencia CF fans learn some jokes don’t land in Singapore
When you think of Singapore do you think of a very clean state with weird draconian rules, like the banning of chewing gum? Or of Michael Fay, the American teen who was caned for vandalizing cars? If you do, it means a) you’re probably Gen X and b) you’re definitely not Dani Cuesta and Mireia Sáez.
Who, you say? Dani and Mireia are a recently married couple from Valencia who traveled to Singapore on their honeymoon. They are also big fans of Valencia CF, the city’s main football (soccer) team (sorry, Levante). Put this all together and…they (or at least Dani) had their passports confiscated and were stuck in a hotel as the Singaporean authorities investigated their actions in Singapore.
Excuse me? You see, Dani’s huge Valencia CF fandom means that he despises Peter Lim, the Singaporean billionaire business magnate who has majority-owned Valencia CF since 2014.
Why? Because the excitement of having a billionaire owner quickly turned to anger as Lim gutted the team of its best players and churned through coaches. Besides winning the Copa del Rey in 2019, it’s pretty much been terrible since Lim’s arrival.
Lots of protests. This anger at Lim has inspired a series of big protests by Valencia CF fans, at which they hold up big yellow signs with the words “LIM GO HOME” and “LIM OUT”. Lim was even the object of mockery in Valencia’s famous Fallas celebration in 2023, replete with satirical images of him—and a fan carrying a “LIM GO HOME” poster.
🤦Yup, you guessed it. Dani and Mireia (especially Dani) went around Singapore holding up the “LIM GO HOME” sign Dani brought—and posting the photos and videos on social media.
Oh, wait for it… In one, that had over 190,000 reads before it was taken down, he held up the sign in front of Hotel Abelia, the building where Lim supposedly lives, and stuck a discrete “LIM OUT” sticker on it.
This did not go unnoticed. When Dani and Mireia got to the airport on Friday for their flight to Bali, they were, um, redirected back to their hotel. They were meant to have a kind of chat with authorities on Tuesday. Indy journo Héctor Gómez apparently was the first to report this.
But who noticed what Dani did? 🤔Asking for a friend. Former VP of Valencia CF Miguel Zorío told El Español that he spoke to the Spanish ambassador Monday and that Peter Lim was behind the police intervention. Zarío also claimed that not only did Lim have the police called, but also sent two of his own security detail to talk to Dani and Mireia.
Waiting… After their conversation with police, Dani and Mireia are reportedly stuck in Singapore because Dani’s passport is still confiscated.
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The Economist is a poorly-written conservative rag. Amazing that this is being taken so seriously!