Toros en Albox

There is a bullfight in Albox (Almería) on November 3rd at 5.00pm - apparently the first to be held in that locality in fifteen years. The three bullfighters are two matadores Julio Benítez 'El Cordobés' and the Murcian Filiberto Martínez; the third participant is the rejoneadora Ana Rita, who fights from horseback.
Tickets are available at the Agencia de Viajes Tagili, the Bar Whynot and in the Ayuntamiento in the offices of Cultura y Festejos.

While excitement is building in some quarters, other local citizens are not so enthused. A Facebook page with the rather emotive name of Albox without animal torture (here, enjoy!) had, by Monday 22 October, 416 members. Those who enjoy seeing gruesome pictures should feel right at home here. I've already been told about the Vaseline in the eyes, cotton wool in their nostrils (!) and squitter-drugs to weaken the bulls (who cost, by the way, some 6,000€ each) - but, with a bit of luck, the spectators, the media and the bullfighters will never find out about this rather improbable sabotage.
Meanwhile, will the protestors be happy to merely vent on this Facebook page of theirs, or will they escalate their indignation and protest outside the bullring on the day?
The Albox fights will be the last held in Spain this year as the season ends and many matadores head for Mexico and South America. 

The 2019 Budget - almost

Some exciting news this week – potentially – as the two main parties of the left agree over the details of next year’s budget. So far, the PNV regionalist party has agreed to support the plan. El País in English leads with ‘Spain’s PM and Podemos leader sign deal for biggest wage hike in 40 years’. Well, yes, that’s certainly a part of the deal. Spain’s minimum wage would go up from 736€ a month to 900€ (France, by contrast, is 1500€). A meme on Facebook says ‘900€? I’ll be able to realise my life’s ambition of eating an avocado’. Funny, because, avocados are a bit overrated, and funny too, because with 736 euros, or even 900 euros, one still isn’t exactly wealthy.

How many people working – at least in the orbit of us wealthy foreign residents (er, mostly) – earn 736€ a month for a full-time job? Not many, we hope. Fruit packers and some other agricultural jobs… cleaners perhaps…? It’s a slave wage certainly and we probably shouldn't worry too much

about the lowest paid sending their money off to Offshore Tax Paradises.

Not everyone agrees. The two main opposition parties think that raising the minimum wage is a bad idea. Albert Rivera from Ciudadanos (4,800€ a month) and Pablo Casado (5,700€ a month) are both against the idea (although Rivera was campaigning for 1,000€ per month not so long ago). El País again: ‘...The CEOE employers’ association has already talked about “the negative effects” of such a move on collective bargaining, wages and the economy in general. If implemented, it would be the biggest rise in 40 years...’.

There is much more in the budget that the raising of the minimum wage, and the availability of avocados.

However, and who knows – it could even make sense – as the figures are balanced here.

Top-earners, those who earn more than 130,000€ a year, can expect a rise in their income tax and ‘large fortunes’ would pay more tax as well. Rents would be controlled in certain cases. As El Huff Post says - ‘...While the Partido Popular, Ciudadanos and Vox are fighting for the same ground on the right, the PSOE and Podemos are laying the foundations of an agreement that behind the numbers hides the principle of a close and lasting collaboration in the medium and long term...’. From Valencia Plaza comes a note on another useful subject: ‘...under the heading "Health is a universal right and not a business", the signatories of the pact argue that "The excuse of the economic crisis has been used to weaken public health and encourage its progressive privatization, which is why it is still necessary to shield our health system against privatization flows and attacks by interested sectors.”...’. Furthermore, and again quoting Valencia Plaza, ‘...the Government and Unidos Podemos have also agreed to reform the ‘stamps’ system of self-employed workers to link it to their real income, guaranteeing that those with lower incomes pay a lower contribution...’. El Huff Post has a full list of the accords here.
But the success of the socially progressive budget plan depends on uncertain support from the Catalan separatists who understandably ‘...request the Prosecutor's Office to withdraw the charges against their imprisoned and exiled leaders to support the General Budget. The government view on this is that such a solution is impossible given the separation of powers in force in Spain’, and, secondly, on the approval of the EU. To thwart this second condition, the PP leader Pablo Casado has flown to Brussels to put his oar in the deal, much to the amazement of his fellow Spaniards...

If all goes according tp plan, the budgets should finally be approved in February or March.

Women's Rights in Spain

As we read of the furore regarding Judge Brett Kavanaugh over in Washington and his alleged behaviour towards women, the broad picture remains and once again spikes: women are treated to a different standard. In Spain, relieved, we see that we live in ‘the fifth country in the world where women feel the safest’ (behind Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Slovenia), but even so, we have had 58 women killed by their companions so far this year in Spain. The #MeToo movement, the heart of the new feminist wave that focuses on sexual violence, has called for a general strike across Spain for the International Women’s Day on March 8th 2019 (following their successful protest last year).

Spain is nevertheless moving forward rapidly in women’s rights. We read ‘Spain’s Supreme Court has ruled that any and all physical contact of a sexual nature, where deliberate, and irrespective of how brief it is, counts as a criminal offence. This ground-breaking and necessary verdict means grabbing someone's bottom, breast or legs in a pub, a crowd or on public transport, for example, is no longer simply a tort or civil offence but attracts criminal charges on the grounds of 'sexual abuse'...’.

We also read of a specific case here, as ‘a man is sentenced to a year in prison for touching a woman on the bottom’ outside a bar in Almería.

Spain then, is moving forward in its respect towards las españolas. This is a worthy thing.

Following Brexit, Who's a Resident?

I found this the other day, it's a two-year padrón renewal from the town hall for someone with an American passport. She owns property here in our pueblo, but she is still an 'extranjera no comunitaria sin autorización de residencia permanente'. A non-EU foreigner without authorization of permanent residence.
Now, residence give you rights. As EU citizens, we Brits don't need a work permit, we can vote in local elections, we don't need a visa and we have automatic rights to enter Spain (I have a visitor staying with me from Canada who, despite a two-week return ticket, was asked to provide either a receipt for a hotel booking or a confirmatory letter from me before being allowed entry at the Madrid airport).
But, we British residents have Residencia - some of us.  Those that don't will of course be out on a limb. Don't think that owning property will save you, any more than it saves the American above.
But, those that do, (and check your police green card) will find that we are, since the dreadful Interior Minister of Spain Rubalcaba in 2008 removed our tarjetas de residencia and gave us the dreadful passport/green-card combo, actually have a 'Certificado de Registro de Ciudadano de la Unión': a certificate of registry of an EU citizen.
But, following Brexit, we British will be in breach of the above.
Will the Spanish let it go, or will they offer to re-register us as 'Residents' after some extra formalities have been completed? Perhaps having a certain monthly income from abroad? Perhaps the 240,000 Britons registered on the padrón, and rather less Britons in possession of a proper residencia, will find that Brexit will be bringing some unwelcome change.

Censorship Only Works when It's Your Side Doing It

Stung in some way by the hostility of the mainstream media against the government (President Sánchez is known in some circles as the ‘okupa’, the ‘Squatter in the Moncloa’, following his successful vote of confidence despite only having 84 deputies in the 350-strong Parliament), we read of further socialist moves (see here) towards censorship.

‘The Vice President of the Government, Carmen Calvo, said that "freedom of expression does not resist everything, does not welcome everything" and therefore believes that the EU will have to start reviewing jointly the legislation on this matter. Calvo made these considerations at the opening of the XVI Journalism Day of the Association of European Journalists, which this year asks "who pays for the lie? Is the truth paid?". "We need security", said the Spanish Vice-president, who recalled that certain European countries are taking decisions on regulation in the area of freedom of expression and the right to information...’.

But, while the right-wing media may be all in favour of protecting its product from smaller news services, it doesn’t want to be itself muzzled: ‘The Government's announcement of trying to limit the freedom of expression of the media, coinciding in time with journalistic information that puts different members of the Executive in check, has caused surprise, anger and indignation among journalist associations and opposition parties. The Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain (FAPE) rejects any attempt to modify the right to freedom of information. The PP and Cs denounce an attempt to "muzzle" journalists and "kill the messenger"’... El Mundo here. From another source, we read an even more worried reaction from the press: ‘The FAPE rejects any attempt at modification because "every time governments try to regulate freedom of expression they in fact only limit it"’.

And finally, from eldiario.es comes ‘Let's not get confused. What the mediatic arm of the plot against the Government does is not journalism. Its end is not service to society. It's dirty work for the client...’.

The Anti-taurino Agenda in the Brit Media

It's an odd thing about the local ex-pat press - the only time they mention bullfighting is when something goes wrong and a bullfighter gets hurt or killed (The Weenie is currently harping on about an incident at Madrid's las Ventas).
Are we to understand that the ex-pat press, printed and run by foreign journalists (and, er, other people), look down on the Spanish and their traditions?
Or perhaps they would like their readers to emulate them.

Dodgy University Titles

It all started with an arrest for shoplifting. It wasn’t much, just a couple of pots of face cream from the local supermarket, and the whole thing was hushed up afterwards. A couple of years later, the shoplifter, Cristina Cifuentes, president of the Madrid Community (and of some 6.5 million souls) was found by a then obscure left-leaning news-site, eldiario.es, to have fudged her Master’s degree. Not much happened as a result, since Ms Cifuentes, being a politician, had ‘immunity’, and anyways, her party – the Partido Popular – didn’t see it as anything of special importance.

In fact, she only resigned – four months later – when a far-right news site, OKDiario, published a copy of the Eroski video of the embarrassing theft by Cifuentes of the two pots of cream (RTVE video here).

Ms Cifuentes had obtained her Masters from the University of King Juan Carlos, and it gradually became clear that she was only one of a group of politicians (and, one can assume, captains of industry) who had earned themselves Masters without the formality of having properly studied for one.

The first name that came up was one of the leading candidates to take over the Partido Popular from Mariano Rajoy following his departure from politics (a motion of censure over the PP’s infamous corruption had seen the end of his presidency) Pablo Casado, who took over the leadership of the PP, and made light of his masters degree. Again, he had immunity, and his supporters frankly didn’t care what he might have written on his résumé.

Within a couple of months of the PSOE taking over the running of the country, the Minister of Health Carmen Montón was found to have also been a recipient of the URJC’s particular policy regarding titles. She quickly resigned.

Following this, Pablo Casado attempted to show that Pedro Sánchez also had a dodgy masters (from another, rather more reputable university), and when that proved false, that he had improperly copied some text – plagiarised - from another source in a book he had written.

Then it came out that the leader of Ciudadanos was changing his own profile regarding his titles. The only political leader who seemed safe from this witch-hunt being the fellow with the pony tail Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, because his other job is a university don.

The URJC, by now looking a bit tawdry, was then found to have sold titles to five hundred Italian engineers for the modest price of 11,000€ a pop.

Pablo Casado, the PP leader, was threatened with an interview with the Supreme Court, but – as the eldiario.es has suggested a shade waspishly – several of the judges there were placed by the last PP government. Casado, we hear, and to the relief of the Populares, has no case to answer. Nevertheless, and despite support from every newspaper from El País sideways, Casado is quickly slipping into a difficult position regarding his reputation.

We think he’ll be gone within the month.