Jumanji - Sánchez' Ordeal in the Senate

El Senado de España, the Senate, is the Upper House – although perhaps more in the spirit than the reality: ‘…with more limited functions than elsewhere, as it is a chamber of second reading. Currently, it is composed of 208 elected senators and 58 senators appointed by the legislative assemblies of Spain's regions’, says wiki. In consequence, the senators – fine people all – are not necessarily in Spain’s front-rank of politicians.

Pedro has glasses!

Over at El Senado, the Partido Popular has the majority, and the president of the house, Pedro Rollán, is from that august party. Indeed, of the 266 senators, only 92 are members or supporters of the Socialist Party, the PSOE.

Thus, the scene was set on Thursday in the Senate for a parliamentary committee hearing – something that is not a parliamentary debate and the questions are not those of a critical interview. A parliamentary committee hearing is an interrogation where the questioner's objective is not so much to seek the truth but rather to showcase their own skill in the fine art of tearing apart the person being questioned. So, on Thursday 30th October, for five hours, Pedro Sánchez was obliged to simply keep his composure while being asked, cross-examined and bullied regarding the various affronts of him, his family and his party – towards the Gracious and the Good.

Questions like – ‘answer ‘yes or no, did you…’ – straight out of a Peter Fauk TV show.

We remember last week’s delirious anticipatory remark from Feijóo: ‘if he lies, he’ll end up in court: if he tells the truth, then also’.

And yet… and yet… Pedro Sánchez came away after the ordeal, untouched. ‘This isn’t an examination, this is a circus’, said Sánchez at one point, making his opinion clear regarding the Senate's Commission of Inquiry into the Koldo case and other supposed issues.

Here's Gabrial Rufián on the interrogation: ‘The PP's handling of the Senate investigation went so well that the real news is that Sánchez has reading glasses. Yes, at 53 years old, our presi has to use spectacles (unless it was just a cunning ploy to distract us all along).

El Mundo (a leading conservative newspaper) writes: ‘Sánchez emerged unscathed from the circus; there was noise, but no wild beasts. The President's appearance before the Senate to answer questions from the Caso Koldo commission turned into an embarrassing political quagmire where the PP squandered the opportunity to shake up the PSOE’.

One question from a UPN senator was about the trips in his car with (the three villains) Koldo García, José Luis Ábalos, and Santos Cerdán. "Are you asking me how many people were riding in my Peugeot? Really? Well, Your Honor, it depended on the day", he answered to general laughter.

As somebody says – it was like an early and unwelcome Halloween for the opposition.  

 

All Change

Last weekend we were obliged to put our clocks back, perhaps for one final time. Pedro Sánchez is the champion of those who don’t want any more time-changes and now the debate is advancing towards whether we citizens would prefer a permanent summer- or winter-hour clock. Indeed, Sánchez says that the European Commission had voted to change the system six years ago.

The Junts per Catalunya (the Government’s unwilling Catalonian conservative partner) was claiming last week – with some clever rhetoric – that rather than ‘change the hour’ it was ‘the hour of change’ with a plan to perhaps abandon their loose alliance with Pedro Sánchez (they have seven deputies in the Spanish parliament) unless he sweetened his deal with this rather disagreeable party. On Monday, their exiled leader Carles Pugdemont, meeting with party members in Suresnes, France, finally ruled to drop any support for the now minority government in Madrid, unless it was over something ‘that favoured Catalonia’. He however appears to have ruled out a Motion of Censure (the only other game in town being a PP/Vox combo which would be far more aggressive towards the independentists).

Some king-maker Carles will turn out to be.

Politics is often centred around criticism, and how the opposition could do things so much better. Feijóo is a great practitioner of this, and he has now called on Pedro Sánchez to explain himself in a long and no doubt tedious session to be held on Thursday in the PP-controlled Senate. Feijóo’s bon mot: "If he lies, he'll go to court, and if he tells the truth, he'll go to court too".

We shall be watching to see how that goes.

Spain has seventeen regions (plus Melilla and Ceuta). Most of these ‘autonomías’ are controlled by the PP either with or without apparent backing from Vox. Four of these are currently in deep water. All four – Andalucía, Castilla y León, Madrid and Valencia – are Partido Popular governments.

Andalucía particularly has a scandal centering around scans for breast cancer. Over the past few years – indeed, since April 2021 – the SAS (the Andalusian health service) has neglected to warn their patients of possible issues arising from the scans, and it now appears that a couple of thousand women (or maybe as much as ten times this number) were not told by the health service that they had complications of one sort or another. The president, Juanma Morales, telling the cameras that, see, they didn’t want to alarm the womenfolk. The issue is more to do with Andalucía’s ongoing push towards private hospitals and insurance. The public service being now generally considered as deficient.

The public prosecutor is reviewing the claims received from Amama, an understandably irate women’s association of victims of breast cancer.

Andalucía has regional elections coming up in June 2026.

Castilla y Léon has the issue of the fires last summer, which were hopelessly faced by their president, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, who failed to invest in prevention and even now, is cutting back on current levels of fire-services. 166,000 hectares were burnt there this summer (around 640 square miles). Another headache: there’s currently the Wind-farm trial going on in Valladolid – ‘considered the largest corruption case in the region’ – going back to earlier PP regional governments, with the court seeking some 250 million euros in fines and prison-time for the fifteen politicians and industrialists accused.

They have regional elections in CyL in March next year.

In Madrid, any number of scandals are in the news – from the president’s boyfriend’s tax-avoidance scams, to her waste of public funds (including the planned ‘won’t cost a penny’ Formula One racing circuit) and her participation in a publicly funded agency called Madrid Network that had generously paid large sums to PP stalwarts in the past. Isabel Díaz Ayuso is (or at least, she was) the likely successor to the inept Feijóo to lead the Partido Popular. However, we shall see…

Alberto Núñez Feijóo comforts Carlos Mazón 

Finally, there’s Valencia, still indignant over last year’s October 29th and its catastrophic flooding with the loss of 229 people. Where was the president that day? Having a long and leisurely lunch with a pretty journalist. Avoiding phone calls and failing to send out a warning alert until it was all over (He arrived back at his office around 8.00pm, having apparently gone home to change clothes, only to be greeted with: ‘Presidente, hay muchos muertos’). Every final Saturday in the month since then, Valencia has turned out en masse to call for Carlos Mazón to resign.

On Wednesday, 29th October, yesterday, there was an official State Funeral presided by Felipe VI. Give him his due, Carlos Mazón, squeezed into a black suit, was there.

The first regional election on the calendar – for Extremadura – has just been announced for December 21st. The president there is María Guardiola (PP) who is frustrated because the opposition parties, including Vox, won’t accept her 2026 budget. Will she win an outright majority this time around? Probably not.

Change is in the air, and not only in the provinces. The 64-dollar question being, will Pedro Sánchez be forced to call for early general elections? It’s certainly getting tight.

Co-ownership is Not Always a Good Idea

Co-ownership is becoming quite the thing these days, and it all works beautifully if you get along with everyone and no one pulls out or dies and leaves his share to a cousin. Indeed, if one of the co-owners dies, their share of the property passes to their heirs, who become the new co-owners or "co-heirs," requiring a legal process to define and adjudicate the inheritance.

Let us look at the case of several children inheriting a single property – to be divided up peacefully, but then in time, maybe the children of the children become involved. It’s a mess. Should you buy a property with, as it were, a bit missing (now owned by a cousin who lives in Argentina)? Certainly not. Google AI says: ‘A property with multiple owners is legally known as ‘un proindiviso’, a joint ownership or co-ownership, where the property is not physically divided, but rather each owner has a share or percentage of the entire property without a specific, delimited portion. This situation commonly occurs after an inheritance or a joint purchase. To sell, modify, or enjoy the property, the agreement of all co-owners is generally required, although any co-owner can request the division of the property’.

Many years ago, I was living with a girlfriend in a large house (with three kitchens) divided into five shares by the grandfather. We had two fifths. When the old auntie died (she lived upstairs), my companion became the owner of another chunk of the house: closing off a door, it became a rental. This after the old girl had failed to leave a will, but the other relatives had agreed to waive their share (of the three rooms in question).

A fourth fifth belongs to some company, and they had never used or claimed it. We knocked a hole through the wall and used it for an office.

The fifth fifth, that’s to say, the remaining bit, belonged to a cousin who rented it out to African field workers.

A house like that is largely unsaleable, unless my friend were to previously buy the cousin out (no doubt he would be after a sizeable chunk of money) – and probably ratify the two rooms she took from the company who had ignored them ever since they were sold (along with a piece of land) by another cousin some forty years previously. No doubt the abogados could help.

So, the lesson here is – don’t buy a house with various owners – even if one of them ‘never shows up’. If you inherit a property, or rather part of one, then maybe insure it heavily against a surprise fire.

I used to know an English poet (and his elderly mother) who would spend a few months each year in Bédar (a charming village in Almería) endlessly searching for something that rhymed with ‘orange’ (or for that matter, naranja). They had a gypsy family living in the same small and rather cramped house – since they owned a share. Rather a large gypsy family as I remember.

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t have much in common with John and his mum.

In answer to all of this, I was intrigued to find an advertisement from some outfit that can solve your co-ownership problems by buying you out. They say: ‘Not owning a home in its entirety is difficult, but being able to sell your portion doesn't have to be. Find speed and security with a company that buys your share’ (I’ve got their address if you’re interested). One can only imagine how they turn a profit.

As for getting rid of the Argentinian co-owner, perhaps it’s for the best to hope that he never shows up. If you still want to buy, then – says the always helpful Google AI – ‘to purchase a property with multiple owners (a joint ownership), you must obtain the consent of all co-owners for the sale, sign the purchase agreement with all of them, or have one co-owner sell their share to another owner, and process the purchase through a public deed before a notary…’. Good luck with that. If on the other hand, you are thinking of just buying one share, or maybe winning it at cards, then I would say you need to think again…

Divorce, inheritance, another usufruct co-owner, a fellow with a guitar with dibs on the bathroom… all these and other reasons make a quiet and enchanting little house in a forgotten pueblo – or maybe a flat off La Gran Vía – an utterly hopeless proposition.

Catch Begoña, You've Caught Pedro

There are certain subjects which are based on cast-iron certainties which through experience, prejudice and tribalism, leave us convinced of the integrity of our own opinion. Belief in a flat-earth is a good example of this – as is anything to do with politics.

Is Begoña Gómez, the wife of Pedro Sánchez guilty of some wrongdoing, yea or nay? Well, you know, everyone in Spain has already decided.

As to what she may have done, or law she might have broken… Nobody can answer that, but anyway: ‘to the guillotine with her’!

Despite any evidence after 18 months of looking under stones, Judge Peinado has failed to uncover anything, but give him his due, he will keep on gamely searching until Sánchez is out of office and the whole exercise will lose its purpose.

I mean, there must be something. None of us is perfect. I once stole a chocolate bar from Woolworths (come to think of it, perhaps that’s why they went broke).

The original complaint came from Manos Limpias, an association of unrepentant Francoists that are rarely taken seriously by anyone placed anywhere to the left of Atila the Hun. ‘With more than 6,000 members, Manos Limpias does not submit accounts or hold the meetings required by its by-laws. Furthermore, it has no representation in any workplace, and its representation in the civil service is unknown…’ Them.

Early last year, Manos Limpias had handed in a wad of press-cuttings from outfits like OKDiario and El Debate suggesting that Begoña was a bad ’un. One particular complaint, about obtaining a credit under false pretences, turned out to have been a woman from Cantabria with the same name. Manos Limpias by the way was the group that complained about the Infanta Cristina (she was later absolved) and let’s see, ‘… They are known for appearing as accusers in high-profile political court cases. Although most of them never come to fruition’.  By accident (or design), their complaint against Begoña fell into the hands of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado – of whom Gabriel Rufián said last week ‘Everyone knows who he works for’ – that’s to say, the conservatives (his daughter is a PP politician). ‘Since that first complaint, almost a year and a half ago, this investigation has grown relentlessly. Nothing has been closed, even though Peinado's accusatory theories are failing due to a lack of evidence. The case has grown with more alleged crimes, each one more difficult to justify…’

There are better than 9,000 pages compiled in 19 volumes, four people under investigation, and more than thirty witnesses questioned, including Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, his Minister of Justice Félix Bolaños, and several Ibex company presidents. These are the key figures in the case that Peinado has been pursuing for almost eighteen months against Begoña Gómez. We read that ‘Peinado sends Begoña Gómez to trial with a ruling lacking evidence of any crime’.

Last Wednesday, he told her that if she finally faces trial for a charge of embezzlement attributed to her for the work performed by her assistant, ‘a jury will determine her guilt’.

Juries in Spain are nine people ‘chosen by chance’.

As we saw above, everyone these days has made up their mind about their politics and nothing, certainly not any essay of mine, will persuade them differently – and we also know that the jury will be composed of people from Madrid, where at least 55% are conservative voters. Does anyone believe that a jury chosen from among Madrid residents to judge Pedro Sánchez's wife would not be tainted? Faced with such a controversial and politicized issue, which occupies hours and hours on every radio and television channel, are there any citizens left who don't already have a preconceived opinion?

So, what is this all about?

Embarrassing Pedro Sánchez for as long as possible, with his wife, his brother (another Manos Limpias case without merit) and his Attorney General (yet another one). We can’t catch him for his economic policies – Spain is getting full approval from the credit agencies – but we can wear him down and open the door to the prospect of an undoubtedly inept future PP/Vox combination.

A case like this, says the Google AI, can take about ten months before the jurors (and the reporters) arrive. What if she loses (La Cope, the bishops’ radio, kindly reckons her chances of losing the case stand at 92.8%)? One newspaper, the ABC, says she could get between two and six years of prison, although ‘the crime of embezzlement (Peinado’s current accusation), can only be attributed in principle to a public official (un funcionario): a condition that Gómez does not hold’.

Would Pedro Sánchez then have to quit?

Probably.

But I’m just venting here – Begoña shouldn’t think of this as ‘lawfare’, more as an historic example of the vengeful masses clamouring for her husband’s head.