Fernando González Urbaneja | What we have been hearing and reading these days about Ferrovial’s change of headquarters from Madrid to Amsterdam is astonishing; both the round of interventions by members of the government and some reports and editorials in very reputable media. For example, the front-page headline in Friday’s El País: “Ferrovial was awarded contracts worth 1 billion in the Sánchez era” requires you to read it twice and…
J.P. Marín-Arrese | When the Spanish elections in 2016 delivered a hung Parliament, Pedro Sánchez stubbornly challenged the only potential right-wing candidacy able to set up a minority Government. His resistance led to a protracted stalemate, leaving another fresh poll as the only way out. Fearing a crushing defeat in that bid, the Socialist party ousted Sánchez and allowed Mariano Rajoy to snatch the Premiership. Only a handful of loyal…
The digital newspaper El Debate publishes today an interview with Cesar Antonio Molina, Minister of Culture in the PSOE government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Q -It has come to our attention that several former PSOE ministers and deputies, both from the time of Felipe González and from the time of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, have signed a manifesto against the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who is also…
Yesterday morning, Isabel Rodríguez, the government’s minister spokesperson, complained that what is highlighted in the press “has nothing to do with what has been adopted in the Council of Ministers”. And she concluded that “just as we have a space for the weather, to find out if it is going to rain, given the need for the public to have access to accurate information, we should reserve a space for…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The ECB’s non-binding considerations on the “temporary levy on banks (an economic benefit that is not a tax) could have merited a silent response from the government, an “informed but not concerned” or something similar, but they have produced an irritation with disqualifications and scorn that can only be the result of irresistible arrogance. It is well known that this government, especially the president, does not…
The coalition government led by Pedro Sánchez has decided to implement a 4% pay rise for next year, above the 3.5% planned for civil servants and MPs. With this, Prime Minister Sánchez’s annual salary will be 90,010.20 euros a year, which means a monthly salary of 7,500 euros. The Ministry of Finance agreed with unions Comisiones Obreras and UGT a salary increase for civil servants of up to 3.5% in…
“Sánchez is capable of competing with Johnson in his race of compulsive liars” says the former editor of El País. Hours before the debate on the State of the Nation begins in the Spanish Parliament, Juan Luis Cebrián, the former first editor of the well-known “government newspaper” – El País – has published a very harsh article (“Las cenizas de la Nación”). In it he points out, for example, that…
In Spain “there are dark powers” that try to boycott the government because it is “annoying”, “uncomfortable”. These powers “yearn for an old order”. And they have “media and political terminals”, which they do not hesitate to use to “demobilise the electorate” and “strike” at the coalition government, until “the progressives give up”. We do not know their faces, but they are “gentlemen with cigars” meeting in the “cenacles of…
The war in Ukraine has changed everything. So has the relationship between Spain and the United States. The ‘Rota Pact’ has been key for Biden to speak of Sánchez now as a “friend” and for the two to exchange confidences. But it has not been easy to make concrete. Months, even years, of work have been done behind the scenes on this 180-degree turn in Spain’s relationship with the United…
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will finally receive the President of the United States, Joe Biden, this Tuesday at the Moncloa Palace. This will be with a view to staging what the Executive has endeavoured to ensure is a solid bilateral relationship after the failed meeting a year ago that ended in a brief chat lasting barely 30 seconds. The US president is travelling to Madrid for the NATO summit, an…