SPAIN: A Fatal Fire & more – 19th Feb 2026

Buenos días from Gracia! This is the Rorshok Spain Update from the 19th of February twenty twenty-six. A quick summary of what's going down in Spain.

First up this week, some updates from our previous shows. On Tuesday the 17th, Spain ordered prosecutors to investigate social media platforms Twitter, Meta and TikTok over AI-generated child sexual abuse material.

President Pedro Sánchez announced the move as part of a broader crackdown on online harms and addictive platform design. A government report warned that algorithms may amplify illegal content, threatening children’s safety and dignity.

Data cited from the charity Save the Children suggests one in five young people in Spain have had fake AI nude images of them shared online.

Separately, Ireland’s regulator has opened a probe into Twitter’s chatbot Grok, while the European Commission is investigating several social media platforms under the Digital Services Act.

Also on Tuesday, the 17th, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the President of the Community of Madrid, fired her Education Minister Emilio Viciana, causing upheaval in the regional government.

Viciana was dismissed because of repeated failures to advance her controversial higher education funding law and to secure agreements with universities. Following his departure, several key officials resigned or were fired, including Partido Popular deputies.

Many of these figures belonged to the pocholos, a young, upper-class circle influenced by the performing arts advisor Antonio Castillo Algarra, whose ideological input had shaped the regional education agenda.

According to El País, Viciana’s dismissal reflects Ayuso’s frustration with a so-called inexperienced team that could not deliver on her priorities.

On Tuesday the 17th, King Felipe VI attended a ceremony at the Congress of Deputies honoring Spain’s nineteen seventy-eight Constitution, now the country’s longest-lasting fundamental law at forty-seven years old.

In his speech, the King emphasized the Constitution’s enduring values and legitimacy, saying that Spain’s democratic future depends on citizens continuing to write it together.

The event brought together former presidents Felipe González and José María Aznar, and surviving drafters of the Constitution, Miguel Herrero and Miquel Roca.

Some political figures, including Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right party Vox, and representatives of other nationalist and separatist parties, were absent, criticizing the Constitution’s centralist structure.

Next up, on Tuesday the 17th, the government imposed a temporary cap on hotel prices in fourteen towns following the devastation caused by Storm Leonardo.

The unprecedented week-long measure aims to protect residents left without safe housing after severe flooding and storm damage. It mainly targets hard-hit areas in southern and western regions such as Andalucia and Extremadura, including towns like Grazalema, Ronda and Jerez de la Frontera, where many evacuees require emergency accommodation.

Flooding remains critical after an exceptionally wet winter, with rainfall roughly 38% above average since October twenty twenty-five, triggering widespread evacuations, infrastructure damage and agricultural losses.

In other news, on Monday, the 16th, a fire in a five-story apartment building in Manlleu, Barcelona, North Eastern Spain, claimed the lives of five young people and left five others with injuries.

The blaze began in a storage room of the building, located north of Barcelona, though the exact cause remains unknown. The five victims were not residents of the apartment block, and it is unclear why they were trapped in the storage area.

The police have opened an investigation into the incident to determine the fire’s origin and the circumstances surrounding the fatalities. Salvador Illa, Catalunya’s regional leader, expressed condolences to the victims’ families.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the 16th, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling setting strict limits on wolf hunting, emphasizing that culling may only occur as a last resort to protect livestock.

The Administrative Litigation Chamber clarified that any decision to kill wolves must follow a review of alternative preventive measures farmers can reasonably implement, ensuring hunting is not used as routine population control. The court reaffirmed that all Spanish wolf populations are under Special Protection in the List of Wild Species.

The ruling has sparked mixed reactions. Conservationists praised the strict protections and emphasis on non-lethal measures, while farmers and rural communities expressed frustration, arguing that it limits their ability to protect livestock from wolf attacks effectively.

In art, on Tuesday the 17th, Madrid’s crown jewel, the Museo Reina Sofía, unveiled a major rehang exploring fifty years of contemporary Spanish art since the death of dictator Francisco Franco in nineteen seventy-five.

Opening with Juan Genovés’s painting of a shackled detainee, the new fourth-floor display traces Spain’s transition to democracy and the rapid social change that followed. Through over 400 works, with many of them never being in a permanent collection, curators have connected artistic movements to events such as the AIDS crisis, feminism, environmental awareness and the cultural explosion of the post-Franco era.

This week, the University of Córdoba released a scientific study that revealed a ten-centimeter (four-inch) cube-shaped ancient bone that may have been linked to the war elephants used by Hannibal Barca during the Second Punic War.

Researchers in Southern Spain dated the bone using carbon dating techniques, placing it around 200 BCE when the Carthaginian general and statesman Hannibal controlled much of Spain. To identify its origin, scientists compared it with bones from modern elephants and extinct mammoths. Excavations at the dig site began in twenty twenty, and since then, researchers have also uncovered artillery, coins and ceramics, strengthening evidence that the area was once a battlefield.

Academics argue that, as large non-native animals, elephants would have been transported alive by ship, making it unlikely that the bone was moved after death.

In sports news, over the weekend, powerful winds disrupted major cycling races across Spain, forcing organizers to cancel and shorten stages for rider safety.

According to Cycling Weekly, extreme weather protocols were activated as strong winds blew riders off the road. At the Vuelta a la Región de Murcia in South Eastern Spain, stage one was halted and then later restarted further along the route, cutting the race by more than half the total length.

Despite the disruptions, later stages continued—but with heightened safety monitoring—and prizes were awarded. Organizers warn that worsening weather and climate pressures may cause further race disruptions this season.

The literary world is ablaze this week following the posthumous discovery of unpublished works by writer José María Pérez Álvarez, known as Chesi, who died on the 24th of December last year.

Chesi, who passed at seventy-three years old, was celebrated for his refusal to prioritize commercial appeal, producing complex and experimental works. His novel Nembrot garnered critical acclaim, with writers like Juan Goytisolo praising its literary depth amid a market dominated by mass-produced books.

His daughter, Beatriz Pérez, together with cultural associates and childhood friends, is overseeing the publication and archival process of Chesi’s stories. A tribute is scheduled for the 9th of May at the Liceo de Ourense, Galicia, in the northwest, honoring his enduring influence on Spanish literature.

And to finish off this episode, last week we reported on Sánchez’s decision to open Spain’s doors to half a million immigrants. Since then, many voices have added their opinions to the mix.

Columnist Asbel Bohigues argues in news outlet Obrero that Spain’s plan is neither radical nor unprecedented. He argues that Spain has a long history of mass regularizations, with at least six since the nineteen eighties, including the largest in two thousand five, when 578,000 people were granted legal status.

Bohigues emphasizes economic drivers, such as ageing demographics and persistent labor shortages in agriculture, domestic work, and construction, as key motivations for the policy.

He writes that past amnesties increased social-security revenue without creating significant pull factors when border controls were maintained. Similar episodic regularizations are common in Southern Europe, including Italy, Portugal, and Greece.

Link to the article in Spanish in the show notes.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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¡Hasta la próxima!