Feijoó Has to Try Again & more –28th Sep 2023

Buenos días from Gracia! This is the Rorshok Spain Update from the 28th of September twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Spain.

Leader of the Partido Popular or PP Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been called to the chopping block this week.

The investiture debate started on Tuesday the 26th. Normally, it's a two-day affair, but the debate is guaranteed to last longer because Feijóo doesn't have the 176 seats that represent the absolute majority needed to become president.

For the first time in his political career, Feijóo spoke in Congress to make his case for the presidency, and after three votes, he didn’t gain enough support.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Pedro Sánchez who replied to Feijoó’s speech but PSOE member Oscar Puente. While some congratulated him for his way of criticizing the PP, others said his reply was pretty harsh.

Now he will have to wait until Friday when Feijóo must restate his case and will need only a simple majority of more yeses than nos to be elected.

If this fails, a two-month cycle starts, where King Felipe VI can propose a new candidate, and Feijóo can try again. If Spain is still without a President by the 27th of November, re-elections will be held around the 14th of January.

Moving toward social politics, the infamous case of Luis Rubiales has entered a new chapter - Francisco de Jorge, the National Court judge, opened proceedings into the non-consensual kiss on Monday the 25th.

The prosecutor's office is looking to charge Rubiales with two alleged crimes, one for sexual assault for the non-consensual kiss of the player and another for coercion. Hermoso maintains that Albert Luque, the national team director, and marketing manager Rubén Rivera pressured her and her fellow team members to go out in public and show support for Rubiales. Luque, as well as Hermoso’s brother, and one of her close friends have been called to testify.

While the World Cup win blew up in the media, a quieter storm was brewing.

On Tuesday, the 5th of September, after market hours, state-owned Saudi Arabia Telecom Company announced it had amassed a 10% shareholder stake in Spain's Telefonica company, becoming the Spanish telecom giant's top shareholder.

Still, the Spanish government announced they are reviewing the purchase. They're investigating the national security implications of having Saudi Telecom as the primary shareholder.

As Yolanda Díaz, vice president and Sumar party leader, pointed out, Telefonica manages a lot of people's data, which could be bad news in the wrong hands.

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A shocking event on Thursday the 28th rippled the city of Jerez de la Frontera in the early morning. The Elena García Armada Institute was evacuated after a fourteen-year-old student spontaneously stabbed two fellow students and two teachers. According to local police, the student suddenly got angry during morning class, took out two large knives from his backpack, and tried to stab everyone who went near them.

The student is in police custody, and medical staff quickly took care of the victims. According to the Ministry of Interior, over the past year or so the crime rate in Spain has reportedly increased by around 5%, so this case only adds to the unfortunate statistics.

Still, despite increased cases, Spain's overall crime rate between twenty twenty-two and twenty twenty-three is forty-eight percent, lower than the UK's seventy-nine and Germany's fifty-three.

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Spanish singer Shakira is awaiting trial in November for tax fraud charges, accusing her of tax evasion between twenty twelve and twenty fourteen. However, this week, a Spanish prosecutor lodged a second tax charge against the singer, accusing her of defrauding the state of 6 million euros in twenty eighteen. She is facing up to eight years in prison for the first count of evasion, so with the additional charges, she could potentially face even more severe legal consequences.

Meanwhile, there’s been a worldwide media uproar over the Spanish bullfighting tradition, after a man died on Saturday the 23rd because a bull heavily injured him at an annual bull festival run in Pobla de Farnals, Valencia. According to the Humane Society International, around 180,000 bulls are killed in bullfights around the world, and in almost every fiesta at least one person is injured with frequent fatalities.

Speaking of dangerous animals, on Friday the 29th, the list of potentially dangerous dog breeds will be scrapped as part of the reformed Animal Welfare Law.

The old law stipulated that a specific list of dog breeds like Pit Bulls Terriers, Dogo Argentino, and Staffordshire Bull Terriers were potentially dangerous, meaning they had to wear a muzzle and a leash in public. Dog owners were also required a specific license and insurance to have these breeds. With the new rules, the list will be scrapped. Instead, dogs showcasing aggressive and violent behavior and who are reported or have been in incidents will go through a sociability evaluation test and be classified as dangerous, regardless of their breed.

Now dog owners have to register their dogs on a central database of pets. The aim is to help owners locate missing animals and aid government bodies in charging owners with mistreatment. If a pet owner fails to register, they could be fined, and - in the worst-case scenario- the pet could be taken away from them.

Among other new rules, you can’t leave any pet unattended for more than three consecutive days, and even less, twenty-four hours, for dogs. Pets can’t be left inside locked vehicles, exposed to the heat or the cold, and shouldn’t be tied up in front of a shop and left unattended.

Moreover, there are animals that you can’t have in your home. You can’t have poisonous reptiles or any reptile that weighs more than two kilograms (four pounds) when it reaches maturity—except tortoises. Primates aren’t allowed, and you can’t keep wild mammals who weigh more than five kilos (or eleven pounds) when they become adults either.

Since we mentioned vehicles, you may recall a few episodes ago we mentioned that EU member states are introducing tighter vehicle limits and low-emission zones in their busiest centers to improve air quality. While it's a great initiative, Italy, France, and the Czech Republic have pushed for weaker rules after the Commission proposed further restrictions known as the Euro 7 —namely new standards on particle emissions from brakes and tires. However, many member states are concerned that adding more restrictions could divert resources, development work, and investment away from producing more electric vehicles. Or that is what they are saying at least, in close cooperation with car manufacturers.

In light of these concerns, on Monday the 25th, Spain, currently in charge of the rotating presidency of the EU, presented the revised draft Euro 7 standards. It's now up to The Council, the European Parliament, and the European Commission to negotiate them.

On the topic of Europe, Spain and Britain are at loggerheads this week after a diplomatic row over illegal migration.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insists that illegal migration should be a top priority for the upcoming European Political Community summit in Granada on the 5th of October - asking Spain to change the agenda. Spain, however, has decided that AI, Ukraine, graduate mobility, like Erasmus programs, and the Euro 7 standards are more important topics, and doesn’t really care what the UK has to say about anything.

Moving to green initiatives, chef Ada Parellada’s initiative called GastroRecup is making strides in the fight against food waste. Nearly twenty chefs and seventeen restaurants have joined the movement and will be creating delicious meals from the 26th of September to the 8th of October. The meals will all be made from perfectly good ingredients that would otherwise have been thrown in the trash. Prominent restaurants like Sempro-niana in Barcelona and Normal in Girona are participating.

Link to the Ada Parellada TedTalk on GastroRecup in Spanish in the show notes.

Another hugely popular waste food app worldwide is Too Good To Go, founded in Denmark in twenty nineteen. The Danish company purchased Spanish start-up weSAVEeat in the same year and, according to the Too Good to Go statistics, has since saved around one hundred and fifty million restaurant meals from being put in the bin worldwide.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

This Spain Rorshok Update is one of the country-specific podcasts we do.

But we've been experimenting with other topics, and we have a new show about the Arctic, where we update you on everything going on North of the Arctic Circle. The Arctic Update is the third of the new series, along with the Ocean and Multilateral Updates.

You can look for them in your podcast listening app of choice or follow the links in the show notes! Tell your friends!

¡Hasta la próxima!