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Spanish Politics

MonicaHolmeir

Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 22nd February 2023

European Parliament Commission has no answer: Why does Spain downgrade offence of embezzlement while receiving EU funds?

The delegation of MEPs will return from Madrid to Brussels on Wednesday with the feeling of having failed to get “answers” to the main questions that caused their “serious doubts” about Spain’s management of the NextGenerationEU recovery funds. The government has boasted of co-governance, but the Autonomous Communities do not ratify it,” explains an internal source within the mission. “We asked Nadia Calviño and José Luis Escrivá about the reduction…

Renfe CAF

Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 21st February 2023

Renfe president and ADIF former president leave posts over scandal of trains too big for tunnels

The president of Renfe, Isaías Táboas, and the Secretary of State for Transport, Isabel Pardo de Vera (former president of ADIF, the company that owns the railway network) have left their posts yesterday, after the major scandal that Renfe, to cover the service of the Spanish north coast, had ordered 31 trains with such dimensions that they did not fit through the tunnels of the route: https://bit.ly/3YSJvIj The fact was…

Europe SMEs

Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 17th February 2023

SMEs: with the odds stacked against them

Francisco Vidal | Covid, inflation and the new minimum wage hike are just additional problems for SMEs that suffer “a regulatory burden that suffocates them: a commercial establishment opening its doors in 2021 in any Spanish city would be affected by more than 3,000 regulations, from European to municipal”. SMEs make up the heart of Spain’s productive fabric and, in fact, by the end of 2022 there were 2.9 million…

spanish PM pedro sanchez

Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 16th February 2023

Pointless interventionism

J.P. Marín-Arrese | It is not surprising that on the eve of elections, government coalitions should be breaking up, with each partner distancing itself from its former allies in an attempt to improve its election results. What is surprising in our country is the deliberate intention of publicly banging each other’s heads together while at the same time pretending not to get out of the official car. It is understandable…

Congreso

In Spain, Spanish Politics 13th February 2023

Spain loses its bearings: up to 18 months in jail for killing a rat

The Animal Welfare Law promoted by Minister Ione Belarra and approved in Congress with the votes of PSOE, Podemos, ERC and Bildu has introduced an important change in the Spanish Penal Code by changing the term ‘domestic animal’ to ‘vertebrate animal’. A vertebrate animal is any animal that has bones and an articulated skeleton or backbone. Now, under the new law, striking, injuring or killing a vertebrate animal will be…

tunnel light end

Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 9th February 2023

Wide trains as a symptom

Fernando González Urbaneja | The case of the trains that do not fit in the tunnels is a significant anecdote both of a huge, astonishing error in design and commissioning, and of the absence of explanations and a coherent account of what happened. What we do know is confusing and the laments of the regional presidents affected are insufficient to understand the case. The comments from the ministry and ADIF…

LNG regasification ship

Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 8th February 2023

Spanish imports of Russian gas up 54% in 2022

Natural gas imports from Algeria to Spain plummeted by 40% in 2022, with Algeria falling to second place among suppliers and representing 23.9% of Spain’s total. These figures, according to sources in the sector, will continue to fall during this year, 2023, as “orders placed during the first months of 2022 for natural gas, before relations between Moncloa and Algiers broke down, have yet to be deducted”. And if this…

Renfe CAF

Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 7th February 2023

New commuter trains for northern Spain too big for tunnels

Renfe is delaying by up to three years the construction of 31 commuter trains for 258 million euros, to be used on ‘Cercanías’ lines mainly in Cantabria, but also in Asturias, Euskadi, Galicia, Castilla y León and Murcia. The thirty or so trains that Renfe promised in 2020 will be delayed by at least three years due to a miscalculation in the dimensions of the convoys, which means that they…

escriva

Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 7th February 2023

Public administration does not work

Fernando González Urbaneja | Public systems are not working; waiting lists in hospitals are lengthening; primary care services are collapsing; and Social Security and SEPES offices are not responding… Miguel Valverde one of the best informed journalists on pensions and labour relations describes in Monday’s Expansión what he calls the “Colapso de la Seguridad Social”. It is impossible to get an appointment by telephone or in person. This has been…

pedro sanchez

Relevant News Item, Spanish economy, Spanish Politics 6th February 2023

A government opposed to employers and profits

Fernando González Urbaneja | This is nothing new. Placing successful entrepreneurs and corporate profits as targets of electoral political debate has been part of the agenda of more than a few political parties, especially the most extreme ones, both on the right and on the left. The novelty now in Spain is that the president of the government and of the socialist party is taking up this argument as one…