Spanish Shilling

El Senado de España, the Senate, is the Upper House – although perhaps more in the spirit than the reality: ‘…with more limited functions than elsewhere, as it is a chamber of second reading. Currently, it is composed of 208 elected senators and 58 senators appointed by the legislative assemblies of Spain's regions’, says wiki. In consequence, the senators – fine people all – are not necessarily in Spain’s front-rank of politicians.

Over at El Senado, the Partido Popular has the majority, and the president of the house, Pedro Rollán, is from that august party. Indeed, of the 266 senators, only 92 are members or supporters of the Socialist Party, the PSOE.

Thus, the scene was set on Thursday in the Senate for a parliamentary committee hearing – something that is not a parliamentary debate and the questions are not those of a critical interview. A parliamentary committee hearing is an interrogation where the questioner's objective is not so much to seek the truth but rather to showcase their own skill in the fine art of tearing apart the person being questioned. So, on Thursday 30th October, for five hours, Pedro Sánchez was obliged to simply keep his composure while being asked, cross-examined and bullied regarding the various affronts of him, his family and his party – towards the Gracious and the Good.

Questions like – ‘answer ‘yes or no, did you…’ – straight out of a Peter Fauk TV show.

We remember last week’s delirious anticipatory remark from Feijóo: ‘if he lies, he’ll end up in court: if he tells the truth, then also’.

And yet… and yet… Pedro Sánchez came away after the ordeal, untouched. ‘This isn’t an examination, this is a circus’, said Sánchez at one point, making his opinion clear regarding the Senate's Commission of Inquiry into the Koldo case and other supposed issues. 

Here's Gabrial Rufián on the interrogation: ‘The PP's handling of the Senate investigation went so well that the real news is that Sánchez has reading glasses. Yes, at 53 years old, our presi has to use spectacles (unless it was just a cunning ploy to distract us all along).

El Mundo (a leading conservative newspaper) writes: ‘Sánchez emerged unscathed from the circus; there was noise, but no wild beasts. The President's appearance before the Senate to answer questions from the Caso Koldo commission turned into an embarrassing political quagmire where the PP squandered the opportunity to shake up the PSOE’.

One question from a UPN senator was about the trips in his car with (the three villains) Koldo García, José Luis Ábalos, and Santos Cerdán. "Are you asking me how many people were riding in my Peugeot? Really? Well, Your Honour, it depended on the day", he answered to general laughter.

As somebody says – it was like an early and unwelcome Halloween for the opposition. 

So, ahem, here's a picture.

The Mojácar village square in 1970 - the old Hotel Indalo, where it cost 60 ptas a night to stay, and about 5 ptas for a beer, 12 for a gin and tonic (Green Fish or Larios were the two brands in those days). 

Last weekend we were obliged to put our clocks back, perhaps for one final time. Pedro Sánchez is the champion of those who don’t want any more time-changes and now the debate is advancing towards whether we citizens would prefer a permanent summer- or winter-hour clock. Indeed, Sánchez says that the European Commission had voted to change the system six years ago.

The Junts per Catalunya (the Government’s unwilling Catalonian conservative partner) was claiming last week – with some clever rhetoric – that rather than ‘change the hour’ it was ‘the hour of change’ with a plan to perhaps abandon their loose alliance with Pedro Sánchez early this week unless he sweetened his deal with this rather disagreeable party. On Monday, their exiled leader Carles Pugdemont, meeting with party members in Suresnes, France, ruled to drop any support for the now minority government in Madrid, unless it was something ‘that favoured Catalonia’. He however appears to have ruled out a Motion of Censure (the only other game in town being a PP/Vox combo which would be far more aggressive towards the independentists).

Some king-maker Carles will turn out to be.

Politics is often centred around criticism, and how the opposition could do things so much better. Feijóo is a great practitioner of this, and he has now called on Pedro Sánchez to explain himself in a long and no doubt tedious session to be held on Thursday in the PP-controlled Senate. Feijóo’s bon mot: "If he lies, he'll go to court, and if he tells the truth, he'll go to court too".

We shall be watching to see how that goes.

Spain has seventeen regions (plus Melilla and Ceuta). Most of these ‘autonomías’ are controlled by the PP either with or without apparent backing from Vox. Four of these are currently in deep water. All four – Andalucía, Castilla y León, Madrid and Valencia – are Partido Popular governments.

Andalucía particularly has a scandal centering around scans for breast cancer. Over the past few years – indeed, since April 2021 – the SAS has neglected to warn their patients of possible issues arising from the scans, and it now appears that a couple of thousand women (or maybe as much as ten times this number) were not told by the health service that they had complications of one sort or another. The president, Juanma Morales, telling the cameras that, see, they didn’t want to alarm the womenfolk. The issue is more to do with Andalucía’s ongoing push towards private hospitals and insurance. The public service being now generally considered as deficient.

The public prosecutor is reviewing the claims from Amama, an understandably irate women’s association of victims of breast cancer.

Andalucía has regional elections coming up in June 2026.

Castilla y Léon has the issue of the fires last summer, which were hopelessly faced by their president, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, who failed to invest in prevention and even now, is cutting back on current levels of fire-services. 166,000 hectares were burnt there this summer (around 640 square miles). Another headache: there’s currently the Wind-farm trial going on in Valladolid – ‘considered the largest corruption case in the region’ – going back to earlier PP regional governments, with the court seeking some 250 million euros in fines and prison-time for the fifteen politicians and industrialists accused.

They have regional elections in CyL in March next year.

In Madrid, any number of scandals are in the news – from the president’s boyfriend’s tax-avoidance scams, to her waste of public funds (including the planned ‘won’t cost a penny’ Formula One racing circuit) and her participation in a publicly funded agency called Madrid Network that had generously paid large sums to PP stalwarts in the past. Isabel Díaz Ayuso is (or at least, she was) the likely successor to the inept Feijóo to lead the Partido Popular. However, we shall see…

Finally, there’s Valencia, still indignant over last year’s October 29th and its catastrophic flooding with the loss of 229 people. Where was the president that day? Having a long and leisurely lunch with a pretty journalist. Avoiding phone calls and failing to send out a warning alert until it was all over (He arrived back at his office around 8.00pm, having apparently gone home to change clothes, only to be greeted with: ‘Presidente, hay muchos muertos’). Every final Saturday in the month since then, Valencia has turned out en masse to call for Carlos Mazón to resign. Today, 29th October, an official State Funeral presided by Felipe VI will be held in Valencia.

     In my picture, Mazón is comforted by Feijóo.

The first regional election on the calendar – for Extremadura – has just been announced for December 21st. The president there is María Guardiola (PP) who is frustrated because the opposition parties, including Vox, won’t accept her 2026 budget.

Change is in the air, and not only in the provinces. The 64-dollar question being, will Pedro Sánchez be forced to call for early general elections? It’s certainly getting tight.

I’m not certain about the attractions of electric cars, but the fact is – they are getting better every day. Now the Chinese are coming to Europe and usurping the leadership of Tesla (with all its disagreeable political baggage).

Still, in an accident, a fire, it’s not much good if the doors won’t open.

My father-in-law would tell of the demise of the steam-car a hundred years ago. They were slow to start, but evidently cheap to run. The regular petrol car manufacturers put out a series of adverts – ‘our cars never explode’ – giving one the impression that the Stanley Steamers often did.

Well sure, if you forget to loosen the steam-valve.

They had electric cars a century ago as well, we see them on the social media – top speed: 10kph. Just the thing for city use.

If I wasn’t so set in my ways (and had enough money) maybe I would buy an electric car. They charge up quickly now (the reason no one would buy a second-hand Tesla today is because of the progress in re-chargeable batteries), and I could run a long cable from the plug by my bed down into the orange-orchard below which doubles as the parking lot.

The European Commission wants to end new petrol and diesel cars by 2035, leaving us with zero-emission vehicles, which will be fast and efficient and no doubt feature a special knob to pull when they catch fire and the doors won’t open. Driverless cars too.

Not all of the car manufacturers are pleased. They talk of ‘stubbornly sluggish consumer demand’. Put it another way: vroom vroom!

They are probably the ones who put out those stories on social media about the electric cars blowing up at the drop of a hat. Competition being a many-edged sword.

Luckily, and despite the occasional hiccup – somebody getting into the Jaguar and Range Rover company computer this summer, or Volkswagen and others making false claims about their emissions control – we still trust our automobile manufacturers, and ‘built-in obsolescence’ is now just a bad dream – or maybe not with that Lada that I once owned.

Then, along come the visionaries, who will save the world, clean up the environment, and annoy a lot of people involved in either pumping oil, making dirty cars and trucks, or even running a petrol station or an overpriced parking garage.

Burning fuel is bad for the environment, and ordinary gas-guzzlers cost more to repair at the mechanics (they have more bits to go wrong than an electric car), but what if the fuel was dirt common and had no emissions whatsoever?

I’m not talking here about a solar-powered vehicle, shut down on the motorway in the middle of a rainstorm.

Two inventors showed us the way forward many years ago. One was Stanley Meyer and his Water Powered Car which – he claimed – ran on tap-water and an electrolysis producing fuel-cell. There’s a red beach-buggy with ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ on the side, which was his.

We read, ‘…Then, on March 20, 1998, Meyer met with Belgian investors interested in his invention. Stanley Mayer didn't know it, but that would be his last meeting.

In the middle of dinner, a toast was proposed, after which Stanley quickly left the table, clutching his throat. He reached the parking lot and collapsed to the ground. His last words are said to have been: "They poisoned me"’. Poor chap. His car and papers disappeared too.

Wiki is uncharacteristically unkind: ‘The water fuel cell is a non-functional design for a "perpetual motion machine" created by Stanley Allen Meyer (August 24, 1940 – March 20, 1998). Meyer claimed that a car retrofitted with the device could use water as fuel instead of gasoline…’

Another interesting inventor was a Spaniard called Arturo Estévez Varela, who, says the National Geographic, was ‘a modest inventor from Extremadura who, in the midst of Franco's Spain, was the protagonist of one of the most fascinating and at the same time conspiratorial stories of the time: Arturo claimed to have developed an engine capable of running solely on water…’ 

In front of some startled journalists, Arturo drank some water from a jug and then poured the rest of it – four litres of tap water – into the tank of his special 49cc motorcycle and took off for a journey of 900 kilometres. All very odd, and the Franco regime soon scuppered any more stories about the eccentric inventor – perhaps to appease the Americans. The motor, possibly, was tricked with a piece of boron: in other words, it wasn't a water engine, but a hydrogen engine generated using an expensive and non-renewable material.

Although he registered over a hundred patents, Arturo died in obscurity in Seville in the nineties.

As for me, I’m working on a system whereby my car runs for free, by putting a modest sign on the rear: ‘Give us a push, mate!’  

Donald Trump took a swing at Spain last week, describing this country to (for some reason) the Finnish prime minister as being behind on its military spending. The American agency AP reports that Trump told Alexander Stubb in a meeting at the Oval Office that “You people are going to have to start speaking to Spain. You’re gonna have to call them and find out why they are a laggard. They have no excuse not to do this, but that’s all right. Maybe you should throw them out of Nato, frankly”.

In fact, Spain spends just 2% of its GDP on defence. The recommended level in these difficult times is 5%. The arms manufacturers would probably agree with this figure.

The leader of the Partido Popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo says he would raise the spending accordingly if the party were to win an election (the next one, all being well, is planned for 2027). He says: "The problem isn't Spain; the problem is Pedro Sánchez. Spain has always been a reliable and credible partner within Nato, and it will continue to be so".

This at the same time as lowering taxes for the wealthy and – inevitably – reducing spending in health, wages and pensions.

Spain joined Nato (they call it the OTAN) back in May 1982. In those days, the people had been largely against joining (except that nobody had asked them) until Felipe Gonzalez agreed four years later to hold a referendum on the subject and then, surprisingly, performed an ideological flip and told his bemused supporters that ‘We must say ‘Yes’’ – apparently because he was worried that Morocco might have taken the opportunity to annex Melilla and Ceuta (with its current combined population of 160,000 souls). The question asked was "The Government considers it convenient, for national interests, for Spain to remain in the Atlantic Alliance, and agrees that such permanence be established in the following terms: (1) Non-incorporation into Nato's military structure; (2) Prohibition on the installation, storage or entry of nuclear weapons on Spanish territory; (3) Gradual reduction of the United States' military presence in Spain. Question: In your view, should Spain continue to be a member of the Atlantic Alliance subject to the terms agreed by the national Government?" Around 57% of those who understood the question answered with a resounding ‘Sí’.

Membership of Nato is getting expensive and while 2% is a commendable figure (how does one say ‘I surrender’ in Russian?), 5% is certainly way over the limit. A Guardian article from June this year says ‘Spain rejects Nato plan for member states to spend 5% of GDP on defence. PM Pedro Sánchez says he wants a more flexible formula that would make the target optional or allow Madrid to opt out’.

In broad terms, the farther left one goes, the louder is the call to leave Nato. The Izquierda Unida, for example, says: ‘We encourage Trump to accelerate Spain's expulsion from Nato and the withdrawal of its two military bases’. That’s right, the US military bases in Morón de la Frontera (air-force base) and Rota (naval base), in the provinces of Seville and Cádiz respectively. Mind you, there’s always Gibraltar and the Lajes base in the Azores if needs must. The leftie Diario-Red wants another referendum on Nato, which would, with little doubt, achieve nothing. Vox on the other extreme says that Sánchez with his short-term savings is ‘seriously harming our national security’.

In the middle, we think 2% sounds about right and we hope that neither the USA or indeed the Russians will (violently) disagree with us.

How dangerous is the world in 2025? Ben Hodges, the former US Army chief in Europe: "We are naive if we believe war will never touch Spain", he says.

But what about a future Nato without the USA? It wouldn’t be good says the CNN: ‘Europe is staring down the barrel of a stark new reality where the United States being the backbone of Nato – the alliance that has guaranteed the continent’s security for almost 80 years – is no longer a given…’ it adds: ‘But Nato without the US is far from impotent, with more than a million troops and modern weaponry at its disposal from the 31 other countries in the alliance. It also has the wealth and technological knowhow to defend itself without the US, analysts say’.

Phew! You had me worried there for a moment.

Oddly, not everyone is happy with the choice from the five members of ‘den norske Nobelkomité’ for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. As you must already know, it went to the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy".

She’s the current thorn in Nicolas Maduro’s hide. She’s popular, supported by many foreign powers as the energy behind Venezuela’s slightly ridiculous candidate for president, the doddery Edmundo González (now living in some considerable comfort in Madrid), and she lives in fear of being arrested by Maduro’s thugs.

The Magats and their leader Donald Trump are of course furious that the prize wasn’t awarded to humankind’s finest example – after all, he has resolved a dozen wars already.

On Friday, following the announcement, the White House blasted the Nobel Committee for not awarding the Peace Prize to Trump (says the BBC), noting that ‘…Trump has been outspoken about his desire for the award, taking credit for ending several global conflicts. He regularly brought it up, including during his address to the UN General Assembly in September’.

I think many of us would have blown a fuse if Donald Trump had of been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (even if it might balance the choice of Barack Obama back in 2009).

Even odder than Trump’s rage at being thus slighted, we also heard from Politico that ‘Donald Trump deserved the Nobel prize, says Vladimir Putin.' (Yikes!). '...The Russian president insisted that the Nobel committee has lost credibility’. 

Thanks for that mate, says Donald: ‘The US President expressed his gratitude to Putin for his recent public support for his Nobel Peace Prize bid’.

That’s right, you couldn’t make it up.

Indeed, here’s María on Friday (she knows on which side of her toast has the butter) on accepting the honour: “I dedicate my Nobel Prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”.

María Corina Machado may be a popular choice, but she is also something of a handful. A Vox video on YouTube has her speaking – via video-link – to a recent meeting of the Patriots for Europe in Madrid:

"Dear presidents, dear Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox and organizer of Europa Viva, dear friends of freedom. From Venezuela I want to send my warmest greetings to each one of you, our great friends from Vox and Patriots for Europe…”

Personally, I’ll take vanilla.

Some other candidates who lost out to María include Francesca Albanese, plus Elon Musk, Donald Trump and some other luminaries who haven’t made it onto my radar.

Two candidates missing from the official list were the magnificent Greta Thunberg and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez. Either one would have been a better choice.

Co-ownership is becoming quite the thing these days, and it all works beautifully if you get along with everyone and no one pulls out or dies and leaves his share to a cousin. Indeed, if one of the co-owners does pass away, their share of the property goes to their heirs, who become the new co-owners or "co-heirs," requiring a legal process to define and adjudicate the inheritance.

Let us look at the case of several children inheriting a single property – to be divided up peacefully, but then in time, maybe the children of the children become involved. It’s a mess. Should you buy a property with, as it were, a bit missing (now owned by a cousin who lives in Argentina)? Certainly not. Google AI says: ‘A property with multiple owners is legally known as ‘un proindiviso’, a joint ownership or co-ownership, where the property is not physically divided, but rather each owner has a share or percentage of the entire property without a specific, delimited portion. This situation commonly occurs after an inheritance or a joint purchase. To sell, modify, or enjoy the property, the agreement of all co-owners is generally required, although any co-owner can request the division of the property’.

Many years ago, I was living with a girlfriend in a large house (with three kitchens) divided into five shares by the grandfather. For some reason, we had two fifths. When the old auntie died (she lived upstairs), my companion became the owner of another chunk of the house: closing off a door, and with an outside staircase, it became a rental. This after the old girl had failed to leave a will, and the other relatives (about twenty of them showed up for a meeting) had agreed to waive their share of the three rooms in question.

A fourth fifth belongs to some company, and they had never used or claimed it. We knocked a hole through the wall and occupied it as an office.

The fifth fifth, that’s to say, the remaining bit, belonged to a cousin who rented it out to African field workers.

A house like that is largely unsaleable, unless my friend were to previously buy the cousin out (no doubt he would be after a sizeable chunk of money) – and probably ratify the two rooms she took from the company who had ignored them ever since they were sold (along with a piece of land) by another cousin some forty years previously.

No doubt the abogados could help.

So, the lesson here is – don’t buy a house with various owners – even if one of them ‘never shows up’. If you inherit a property, or rather part of one, then maybe insure it heavily against a surprise fire.

I used to know an English poet (and his elderly mother) who would spend a few months each year in Bédar (a charming village in Almería) endlessly searching for something that rhymed with ‘orange’ (or for that matter, naranja). They had a gypsy family living in the same small and rather cramped house – since they owned a share. Rather a large gypsy family as I remember.

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t have much in common with John and his mum, although they would all enjoy an occasional evening with John’s guitar.

In answer to all of this, I was intrigued to find an advertisement from some outfit that can solve your co-ownership problems by buying you out. They say: ‘Not owning a home in its entirety is difficult, but being able to sell your portion doesn't have to be. Find speed and security with a company that buys your share’ (I’ve got their address if you’re interested). One can only imagine how they turn a profit.

As for getting rid of the Argentinian co-owner (and his seven children), perhaps it’s for the best to hope that he never shows up. If you still want to buy, then – says the always helpful Google AI – ‘to purchase a property with multiple owners (a joint ownership), you must obtain the consent of all co-owners for the sale, sign the purchase agreement with all of them, or have one co-owner sell their share to another owner, and process the purchase through a public deed before a notary…’. Good luck with that. If on the other hand, you are thinking of just buying one share, or maybe winning it at cards, then I would say you need to think again…

Divorce, inheritance, another usufruct co-owner, a fellow with bagpipes and dibs on the bathroom… all these and other reasons make a quiet and enchanting little house in a forgotten pueblo – or maybe a flat off La Gran Vía – an utterly hopeless proposition.

Huh! We didn’t even get to time-share…

There are certain subjects which are based on cast-iron certainties which through experience, prejudice and tribalism, leave us convinced of the integrity of our own opinion. Belief in a flat-earth is a good example of this – as is anything to do with politics.

Is Begoña Gómez, the wife of Pedro Sánchez guilty of some wrongdoing, yea or nay? Well, you know, everyone in Spain has already decided.

As to what she may have done, or law she might have broken… Nobody can answer that, but anyway: ‘to the guillotine with her’!

Despite any evidence after 18 months of looking under stones, Judge Peinado has failed to uncover anything, but give him his due, he will keep on gamely searching until Sánchez is out of office and the whole exercise will lose its purpose.

I mean, there must be something. None of us is perfect. I once stole a chocolate bar from Woolworths (come to think of it, perhaps that’s why they went broke).

The original complaint came from Manos Limpias, an association of unrepentant Francoists that are rarely taken seriously by anyone placed anywhere to the left of Atila the Hun. ‘With more than 6,000 members, Manos Limpias does not submit accounts or hold the meetings required by its by-laws. Furthermore, it has no representation in any workplace, and its representation in the civil service is unknown…’ Them.

Early last year, Manos Limpias had handed in a wad of press-cuttings from outfits like OKDiario and El Debate suggesting that Begoña was a bad ’un. One particular complaint, about obtaining a credit under false pretences, turned out to have been a woman from Cantabria with the same name. Manos Limpias by the way was the group that complained about the Infanta Cristina (she was later absolved) and let’s see, ‘… They are known for appearing as accusers in high-profile political court cases. Although most of them never come to fruition’.  By accident (or design), their complaint against Begoña fell into the hands of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado – of whom Gabriel Rufián said last week ‘Everyone knows who he works for’ – that’s to say, the conservatives (his daughter is a PP politician). ‘Since that first complaint, almost a year and a half ago, this investigation has grown relentlessly. Nothing has been closed, even though Peinado's accusatory theories are failing due to a lack of evidence. The case has grown with more alleged crimes, each one more difficult to justify…’

There are better than 9,000 pages compiled in 19 volumes, four people under investigation, and more than thirty witnesses questioned, including Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, his Minister of Justice Félix Bolaños, and several Ibex company presidents. These are the key figures in the case that Peinado has been pursuing for almost eighteen months against Begoña Gómez. We read that ‘Peinado sends Begoña Gómez to trial with a ruling lacking evidence of any crime’.

Last Wednesday, he told her that if she finally faces trial for a charge of embezzlement attributed to her for the work performed by her assistant, ‘a jury will determine her guilt’.

Juries in Spain are nine people ‘chosen by chance’.

As we saw above, everyone these days has made up their mind about their politics and nothing, certainly not any essay of mine, will persuade them differently – and we also know that the jury will be composed of people from Madrid, where at least 55% are conservative voters. Does anyone believe that a jury chosen from among Madrid residents to judge Pedro Sánchez's wife would not be tainted? Faced with such a controversial and politicized issue, which occupies hours and hours on every radio and television channel, are there any citizens left who don't already have a preconceived opinion?

So, what is this all about?

Embarrassing Pedro Sánchez for as long as possible, with his wife, his brother (another Manos Limpias case without merit) and his Attorney General (yet another one). We can’t catch him for his economic policies – Spain is getting full approval from the credit agencies – but we can wear him down and open the door to the prospect of an undoubtedly inept future PP/Vox combination.

A case like this, says the Google AI, can take about ten months before the jurors (and the reporters) arrive. What if she loses (La Cope, the bishops’ radio, kindly reckons her chances of losing the case stand at 92.8%)? One newspaper, the ABC, says she could get between two and six years of prison, although ‘the crime of embezzlement (Peinado’s current accusation), can only be attributed in principle to a public official (un funcionario): a condition that Gómez does not hold’.

Would Pedro Sánchez then have to quit?

Probably.

But I’m just venting here – Begoña shouldn’t think of this as ‘lawfare’, more as an historic example of the vengeful masses clamouring for her husband’s head.

I’ve always been a big fan of the United States of America. I’ve spent a total of at least three years there during my life so far and have been to 45 of the 50 states (the remaining ones are too cold, too small or too hard to reach).

Plus three months in Washington DC, which for some reason is its own territory.

I was married to a fine woman from California whose parents, like mine, settled in Spain in the sixties, and we had thirty years together before she died. We have three children – two of whom are now living in the American mid-west (the third one stayed home here in España).

I was brought up (until I was thirteen) in Norfolk UK, near an American airbase. My parents were friendly with some of the officers, and I would be gifted (sic) lots of comic books (I was one of the earliest British fans of Batman, Superman and Casper the Friendly Ghost). Then came books (with writers like Jack Schaefer, Zane Grey and O. Henry), finger paints and Hershey Bars.

From the age of nine onwards, I knew that I wanted to spend as much time as I could in America. Those cars!

Studying in Seville when I was seventeen, I took college entrance exams, and was all ready to go, when some friends of my parents warned them (erroneously, I’m sure) that I would end up in Vietnam being shot at by fellows wearing black pyjamas.

I finally crossed ‘el charco’ when I was 22, arriving in Florida to stay with the Franzen boys in Pompano Beach – a place with no pavements, bad colour television, beautiful girls and amazing cocktails. Gayne and Ted’s parents were neighbours of my family in Spain. I remember to this day consuming my first Whopper.

I love the opportunity that the USA has, plus the enormous and sparsely populated hinterland. My two kids live in a state that is 40% larger than the whole of Spain.

I’m a huge fan of American culture: its writers, musicians and artists who have brought so much pleasure to the world. 

Nowadays, I tend to go every November and visit the grandchildren, the local Wal-Mart and the breathtaking countryside (when I can afford to) and to eat the Thanksgiving turkey, but I shan’t be going this year. 

Sadly, the USA that I know and love is undergoing a Once in a Hundred Year collapse (think the October Revolution or Brexit) thanks to the insidious MAGA philosophy. I can put up (more or less) with the guns and the iced tea, but Donald Trump’s second term, surrounded as he is this time with people who are evidently even thicker and nastier that him (mostly fished from the water treatment plant of Fox News) is for me a step too far.

There’s Pete Hegseth with his alarming Christian tattoos and his alleged love for a bottle of scotch who runs the reassuringly renamed ‘Department of War’. The worm-brained Robert Kennedy: the ludicrous secretary of health who doesn’t believe (‘believe’!) in vaccinations. The top two officials at the FBI, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who have no previous experience at the law enforcement agency. The eccentric Christian extremist Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel… and so on: a plethora of inept and dangerous appointed. Then there’re the current purges against ‘the radical left’ Democrat party – a damp and strangely feeble group that could kindly be described in European terms as centre-right. The late Charlie Kirk said of them: ‘the Dems believe everything that God hates’.

Such a young country run by such old-fashioned conservative values!

Of course, I can still visit the USA (after all, I’m tall and pink and have a nice anglo-sounding name, plus I’m too old to be much of a nuisance anyway). Just remember not to say anything silly and make a point of glaring sternly at anyone who looks even slightly Latin.  

Anyway, I’ve decided – I’ll be staying home this year. I wish to avoid the threat of ending up in Alligator Alley or Guantánamo.

I'm told I'm not the only person who thinks like this.

On the bedside table, I’ve got Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath to re-read.

I’m pretty sure that I will manage just fine without a Hershey Bar.

Two points: there are a lot of people searching for a home – either to rent or to buy. Also, despite the apparent lack of available properties, Spain has more than 3.5 million vacant homes, representing some 14% of the total housing stock. Around half of these homes are in those smaller municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants.

I once shared an apartment in Seville with four other students, me and a British school-friend in bunks in what must have been a converted bathroom, with white tiles on the wall. The other three were studying at the university and came from Montefrío in Granada. The next term, I shared a three-bedroom 8,000 peseta apartment with two students.

It’s fine when you are young and running around the city all night - but not when that single room (share the kitchen and bathroom) costs 1,000€ a month as, increasingly, it does now. 

We look at the problems of the renters and the buyers – but part of the whole must be the sellers, the landlords and the owners: having a property portfolio is good business.

This is partly why, following the Covid when we all worked from home (often in a charming village two hours away from the city), they wanted us to return to the office: taxes, office blocks, investors and city politics. My old mate Cheap Pete once told me (with his New Jersey accent) – for a million dollars you can buy a giant property in North Dacota or a parking lot in Washington DC. You might wait a whole year to sell that beautiful mountain, or less than a day to sell the city plot.

Which one was the better investment? Evidently, the second choice, but only if there’s a demand.

No wonder the property barons want to see a certain scarcity – prices (and profits) must go up. In Madrid, some old factories and warehouses, shops and abandoned outlets are now being switched to residential homes, or maybe into single 1,000€ rooms with ‘coliving’ . There’s the exciting advantage of city life, interesting flatmates and maybe a downstairs eatery, if your wallet can still manage the menu del día.

I live in a village on the coast. There’s a giant abandoned hotel taking up a chunk of the local infrastructure. It was closed in 2008 and now belongs, for some reason, to the Madrid regional government. It could become fifty apartments. In the back of the next-door port of Garrucha, there’s a large unfinished block of flats, rotting in the sun and covered in graffiti. That’s another fifty potential homes. The scarcity then, is in the city – although there are still a number of empty residences even close to the Puerta del Sol.

Many of those who live in the city came from elsewhere, and they may still own a place in the country, a casa del pueblo they’ll visit during the summer or the local fiesta – maybe to show off their success, or perhaps just to take it easy for a while and share a noisy lunch with the cousin who stayed behind. Other people who own a couple of houses might leave one empty. One day the children will live there. Others still will rent, or sell, or turn it into an Airbnb, put a funny lock on the door, and create a cleaning job for Encarnación.

Digital nomads (doesn’t that sound fun?) will rent for a while, working from their laptop, while idly planning their next move to Khartoum or Bucharest. Foreigners will buy the house, and maybe the one next door, and try and put in a swimming pool. Others still will take the week-end option and then leave a cigarette burn in the mattress.

Maybe put in a security system (like it says on the telly) to defy the okupas.

Then there are the millions – apparently – of people who want to rent somewhere half decent for a little bit less than their entire salary, eating rusks and asking their parents for a few extra euros (until either the wage or the rent, whichever one comes first, is raised by a fraction). The Government talks of making (or building) more cheap homes or closing down illegal rentals, or helping the under-thirties buy a house in the smaller towns. Some local governments are considering forcing the sale of empty homes.

After all, the Spanish Constitution Article 47 gives us all the right to una vivienda decente.

The influencers in their YouTube videos meanwhile are talking about investing in their wares (from their bases in low-tax Andorra), and one day soon, you too will be able to afford to buy and rent out houses like the best robber landlords.

Gloomily, we read: Spain’s record housing market is far from peaking – ‘prices will reach unprecedented levels’. Hey, the higher the price, the happier the owner.

Maybe the foreign Vulture Funds will come and pick up another entire city block: they are here for the opportunities.

A left-wing politician sums up the problem: “People with money in this country invest in gold, the stock market, and real estate”. They buy in the city (Cheap Pete’s parking lot) or on the coast, leaving many thousands of Spanish municipalities by the wayside.

El País has a story about a thirty-year-old who has finally given up on Madrid and moved to the town of Ponferrada – in search of a quieter life, escaping job insecurity and housing prices. “Life moves on and priorities change,” he says blithely.

Then there any many people living in extreme poverty, or in shacks or under bridges. Local guiri Richard Gere may have the answer – he says in a TV interview that "My wife and I have set a goal to end homelessness in Spain within six years". I think that this may prove to be a larger challenge than he imagines. Caritas puts the number of the dispossessed at 37,000.

In all, there are 48 million people living in Spain and 27 million homes – which works out at a house for every 1.8 persons. That’s not so bad…

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Some of these stories end up as editorials in my Business over Tapas briefing about Spain (no adverts, no fluff and no Leapy Lee). Find them here.