Spanish Shilling

Do you remember ‘the Twinkie Defence’? This was the story of some lunatic who ran into the mayor of San Francisco’s office many years ago and shot several people to death, including Hizzonor. The Californian police, failing for once to shoot the ‘alleged perpetrator of this heinous and unprovoked attack', carted him off to clink instead.

Well, the pesky defence lawyers got hold of him and discovered that he had munched on a couple of cup-cakes before bursting through the doors of City Hall. Their defence was based on this simple meal – the sugar in the cup cakes (or ‘Twinkies’ as the Americans call them) had gone to his head.

Imagine what he might have done if he had eaten an entire box of them.

Here in Spain, traditional cakes – found above all either at the village fiesta or behind glass at the back of a roadside restaurant – are to be seen and admired, but, at least until recently, never eaten. They would vary from the ones created from sugar, flour, lard and some confectioner’s kreme, drizzled with cheap honey, while the better ones might have had a glass of sticky rum splashed over them to make them even more scrumptious…

No, I’m kidding. They were (and are) horrible.

We had to buy one in the pueblo the other day for a child’s birthday. ‘Hapy Birhtday to Jhonahton’ was lovingly picked out in vermillion paste across the top of this monster. Luckily Jonathan isn’t much of a reader and failed to notice the errata. He nevertheless picked up a valuable lesson after finishing his second piece of the confection:
Always sit near the door.

At home, we disagree about cakes. I like a fruit cake prepared several months before, stuffed with cherries and whatever else it is they put in those things and covered with marzipan and icing, while my wife prefers something chocolaty with nuts.

But the Andalusians veer from this, preferring to use oils and lard (that’s to say, rendered animal fat) to butter. The best place to start with genuine local cakes is at the village fiesta where you can admire a range of er, sweet things usually covered in enthusiastic if incautious wasps. Ask for a media-luna – a marvel of the cakemakers' art which is usually designed more for show than for tell.

Other varieties might be tooth-breakingly hard and maybe stuffed with ‘angel hair’, also known as sugared pumpkin mush. The icing will be generous, but free from milk or butter. I think it’s fair to say that the entire cake, built to both look good and to last during the several days of the fiesta, should never be eaten on an empty stomach.

There’s a notorious cake made in the south called Torta de Chicharrones. it’s made with pork-fat, flour, yeast, an egg and small chewy bits which turn out to be chicharrón – pig’s crackling. 

The best time for cakes (apart from during the village fiesta), is the Christmas Season which brings polverones, which are cookies made of crushed almond-dust. The also popular roscones are round cakes made with cream, milk, sponge, with bits of angelica root and other dried fruit and they will follow the erstwhile British custom of the sixpence in the mix by putting a small metal virgin or the representation of one of the three kings, a collectable, somewhere in the confection.

A fashion no doubt introduced by dentists.

In all, Andalucía, under the control of the Moors for many centuries, enjoys something a bit heavier than a sponge cake covered with icing. The usual fillings (which in Morocco or the Middle East can be quite delicious) include dates, nuts, dried fruit and lashings of honey.

But the most likely place to find a cake is with one’s breakfast. We have ‘Napolitanas’ which are buns filled with cream or chocolate. They vary from warm and good to dry and old. You can dip them in your coffee – sometimes, indeed, you are obliged to.

The most popular bun is the ‘Madalena’ which is a simple and rather tasteless sponge scone. Well, spongy anyway. It comes wrapped in plastic. The ‘Cruasán’ is the Spanish croissant, made with pork fat rather than butter. Not very good as a rule, especially when it’s been on the cake-shelf for a couple of days. There are a few brand-name cakes in their eye-catching packets, chocolate Swiss-roll types of things, including a frightening looking pink one called ‘Pantera Rosa’ which I both imagine and hope is banned in the Greater San Francisco area. Lastly, the ever popular and industrial doughnut, the ‘Donut’, which comes in assorted flavours and a truly alarming collection of chemicals, food additives, colourings, flavourings, preservatives and conservatives. Personally, I love ’em.

It's hard to escape the fact that the best places where lumps of sugared sponge-drops are served with your coffee are usually heavily patrolled by diabetic sparrows, destined to die at an early age in a blissful sugar-rush.

As our area has enthusiastically grasped the nettle of the Twenty-first Century, where you can no longer find a simple salad on the menu, or pig n’ chips without an endless complication of sauce and adornment (I had slices of strawberry surrounding my lamb chops the other evening in a Mojácar hostelry), so, too, our coffee shops have improved in the cake department. We have Italian, French and British cakes, scones, pies and bonbons which are a far cry from an earlier age when the aerodynamic ones were prized by discerning customers above all others.

I think that the new trend started with the introduction to Spain of the Italian tiramisu (a soft and chocolaty little number).

The other day, I rounded off my dinner with a delicious ‘Grannie’s Cake’ (‘pastel de la abuela’) – very good it was, although packed with around 1,000 calories.

Cakes, ice cream (delicious in Spain), chocolates and sticky things in plastic cups. I wonder if they have an effect. Perhaps they’re just there to make us fat.

Bédar is a small white village in the high hills of the Sierra de los Filabres, overlooking the wide plain of Los Gallardos, Antas and Turre which is rimmed on the other side by the concurrence of a few descending mountains, the final one covered by the white cubed houses of Mojácar, with the Mediterranean Sea beyond. Bédar was a mining village, peopled in its day by the Moors, and re-discovered by the British in the 1880s when they set about opening up a number of hills between Águilas and Bédar looking for iron, copper, silver and other minerals.

It's so magnificently 'orrible that it's worth a posting here. 

Europa Press tells of this idea to build a truly gigantic metal toro in some strategic location. ‘The Spanish Bullfighting Academy is seeking a municipality to erect a 300-metre bull as a major tourist icon’. Somebody says Guadalajara (since Madrid has already gone with niet).

I wonder if we will all be asked to chip in.

‘It’ll be like the Eiffel Tower of Spain’ say the promoters of the plan.

We have black Soberano bulls dotted along the highways, and I think they are fun to see as I am driving hither and yon (especially yon). But a kind of Angel of the North or Eiffel Tower located - at least in the artist's rendition - on a giant roundabout may be a bit rich.

An iron bull with easily the largest pair of cojones in the world.  

Spain is different. 

It looks like the Partido Popular has – inadvertently – handed a reprieve to the PSOE and their current troubles following the discovery of (yet again) a nest of bad eggs in their own barn.

Recently, we were talking of the abrupt fall of the Socialists’ party organiser Santos Cerdán, after he was found to be taking bribes from some Ibex-35 companies. He’s now in prison awaiting events.

We always knew that the other lot was full of crooks – several still in jail and many others due to attend court in the months to come. Why, the last PP government of Mariano Rajoy fell thanks precisely to corruption.

Conservatives (if you will forgive the generalisation) are known to be more interested in money than they are in helping the underprivileged. We barely raise an eyebrow when one of their politicians is caught with his hand in the till. It’s all part of the game. There’s a difference though, when one of the progressives, the defenders of the workers, a syndicalist, a man of the people (and so on…) pulls a fast one on both his party and his country.

See, that’s not good.

Going back to the Felipe Gonzalez years, the PSOE have had a few ministers in jail (José Barrionuevo and Rafael Vera), or – do you remember the party member from Zaragoza who was promoted to be head of the Guardia Civil, Luis Roldán, and who ended up with a fortune in Switzerland and was forced to make a run for it in 1994, eventually being caught in Bangkok to eventually be jailed for 31 years? Not good. Later, the Andalusian wing of the party was found to be immersed in irregularities – two presidents of the Junta de Andalucía (Chaves and Griñán) plus a handful of others being found guilty in the ERE scandal.

But what of the Partido Popular? Aznar’s government at one time had a few bad eggs for sure: three of his ministers went to jail (Rodrigo Rato, Jaume Matas and Eduardo Zaplana), a couple of others managed to obtain pardons and now, after a secret judicial inquiry lasting several years (sometimes, these things are more secret than others), another minister from those and later times, Cristóbal Montoro, the long-time Minister for Hacienda, has been rumbled.

Montoro, who just a couple of weeks ago was seated up on the podium at the PP’s national congress, was a powerful party apparatchik who was not necessarily liked by his co-religionists: “He did a lot of damage, and now he’s going to do a lot more damage,” a PP council member says mournfully.

Montoro, the finance minister under both Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, now stands accused of the crimes of “bribery, fraud against the Public Administration, malfeasance, influence peddling, prohibited negotiations, business corruption and document falsification” for allegedly favouring, while he was Minister of Finance in Mariano Rajoy's government, gas companies that were clients of the law firm he founded in 2006’.

Along with some other stuff, like re-writing the worst excesses of the PP’s ‘black account’ before it reached the courts in 2020.

The Guardian says: ‘…It is alleged that Montoro established the “economic team”, a lawyer’s office linked to the finance ministry, which took kickbacks from gas and other energy companies in return for favourable government policy. It is further told that between 2008 and 2015 Montoro and 27 others accused, among them senior treasury officials, were paid at least eleven million euros by big energy companies. According to the police investigation led by the judge Rubén Rus, “the economic team received large commissions in return for its capacity to influence legislative and executive powers”’.

Montoro was evidently a big fish in the PP. He has now resigned from the party while maintaining his innocence. Over the weekend, two senior figures in Hacienda, both involved in the Montoro affair, were also dismissed.

In passing – well done the judiciary for keeping this inquiry silent for a full seven years!

The advantage for the PP was already beginning to slip from their fingers, the accusations from the eccentric Judge Peinado against the wife of Pedro Sánchez notwithstanding.

In the months to come, no less than thirty PP scandals will be brought to trial.

‘Public procurement rigging, bribe-taking, illegal urban development plans, influence peddling, irregular financing, even failure to provide assistance and negligent homicides; also the use of reserved funds for paramilitary operations…’ Plus the issues with Isabel Ayuso’s boyfriend (the Court is asking for three years and nine months) and the ongoing inquiry into Carlos Mazón in Valencia regarding his inactivity during the flood last autumn.

With the perhaps unfortunate timing of the release of the Montoro scandal, the aggression from Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been abruptly toned down: ‘Whatever needs to be investigated, let it be investigated’, he tweets.

And lastly, another headache for Feijóo – with a fact-checker reporting ‘Several senior officials from the Feijóo era in Galicia have been charged with corruption despite what the Popular Party leader claims’.

Which brings us to Vox. See, neither the PSOE nor the PP can claim that – unlike Vox – they’ve never had a crooked minister mortally embarrassed by the media filming him (or her) as he is admitted into the Soto de Real prison. Vox is the party that can claim the laurel (apart from the small issues of race, foreigners and so on, plus the current fraud-case against their erstwhile leader in Andalucía Francisco Serrano. The court is asking for eight years).

So, does the fall of Montoro trump the Cerdán scandal?

Better still, should we all be taking an enjoyable summer’s reprieve from politics?

If Pedro Sánchez can hold his government together: that’s the question, and will someone else . one of ours or one of theirs – be abruptly found to have been on the take?

It’s a dirty business, politics, but someone has to do it.

While I’m writing something silly about fruit juice, the foul Vox machine has been heating up the racism card. Last week, their spokesperson Rocío de Meer was on about deporting the eight million foreigners here (and turning Spain into, once again, a Christian nation, a bit behind the times perhaps, but with everyone knowing their place).

Now, in one of those towns where there are lots of North African labourers, in Murcia (a fertile province for those who hear voxes), there have been several days of riots in Torre Pacheco (population 41,600 of which around 11,500 are foreign workers).

The issue comes from local and imported troublemakers following an incident last week where an elderly local person was beaten by a local Moorish kid with a rock, with his two friends watching, to put something on TikTok. A video of a totally different event, occurring in Almería, found its way to the social media. ‘The person who was beaten and appears in the video released by the neo-Nazis Alvise, Desokupa, Frente Obrero, Vox, and their media apparatus is named as José Moya. He's a sin-techo (a beggar) from Almería which is where this event occurred. The two boys who beat him are Spanish and are in prison’.

But, back to Torre Pacheco. elDiario.es says ‘Over the weekend, brigades of dozens of extremists have deployed violently through the streets of this town with the intention of "hunting" immigrants. Their pretext? That a 68-year-old man was beaten last week. Initially, it was said that the attackers were a group of Moroccans; now, the story is more likely that the attacker was a young man (a Moroccan youth was later arrested while attempting to escape to France). With that, with a single action, denounced and xenophobically described by Vox as if it were almost an act of war, an entire operation of collective violence has been fabricated, which has received reinforcements from outside the town…’ By Monday, ten people had been arrested, another thirty had been fined and a further eighty identified by the police. Many of them coming in from elsewhere to participate.

Newtral wades through the various fictions here. A video of ultras attacking a kebab store while the police look on in Torre Pacheco is here. From El Plural here: ‘The Vox leader in Murcia, José Ángel Antelo, maintained that Spain should be a country "for those who come to work and respect its laws," and called for stricter enforcement and deportation policies. "We don't want people like that on our streets or in our country. We're going to deport them all: not a single one will remain. People come to Spain to work and generate wealth, not to commit crimes or spread terror," he added’.

For Santiago Abascal (seen here dressed as a concentration camp commandant in a mock-up video from minute 3.14 made with material from ‘Deport Them Now’ in an Italian exposé) and his extremist party, it’s all good. La Marea has more here. 

Deport Them Now is explained at EOLaPaz here: ‘On the fringes of social media, where algorithms reward outrage and misinformation, the "Deport Them Now" group emerged in 2021. This transnational platform quickly transformed from a mere hashtag into a structured xenophobic movement. With roots in Anglo-Saxon far-right forums and connections to European identity movements, its message is clear: the mass expulsion of immigrants is the only solution to Europe's "problems" of security, unemployment, and cultural identity’’…’

From elDiario.es here: ‘experts consulted by elDiario.es about the Deport Them Now group agree that it "is suspicious." They emphasize that it is "well organized," and one suggests that it could be the result of astroturfing, a manipulation strategy that consists of simulating a spontaneous citizen movement when in reality it is directed by those with specific interests. This is a common tactic in political and digital propaganda: feigning popular support for a cause, when that support is actually inflated or outright fabricated, in order to gain legitimacy and amplify its impact.’

From Robando Tu Tiempo here: ‘The bulo of the small government handouts and the selective memory of a country that also emigrated. Few hoaxes have penetrated the collective imagination as deeply as the one that immigrants come to Spain "to live off small allowances". A mantra repeated ad nauseam by the far right, amplified on social media and in bars, and defended without data by parties like Vox, whose discourse is based on fear, misinformation, and xenophobia. But when this narrative is compared with the data, there is no other possible conclusion: it is flatly false…’

Onda Cero says: This is what would happen in Spain if immigration disappeared. Spain is not experiencing an invasion, but rather a relationship of functional interdependence with the countries of the global south. In other words, what is presented as a problem is, in reality, a structural necessity’.

From El HuffPost here: ‘The impossible promise to deport eight million people: "It would be social and economic suicide". Vox's proposal violates fundamental rights and would lead Spain to ruin with a sharp drop in production and a blow to the pension system’.

Later: A far more disturbing attack by a recent Moroccan immigrant (he was already due to be returned to that country) occurred this Wednesday morning in Tenerife, where he set on fire an underage girl, who is now in hospital with 95% burns. The question for the Voxers, of course, is… is she Spanish or is she Moroccan? It will make a huge difference to them.

It’s so hot where I’m living, so very hot, that I’m thirsty all the time.

When I go shopping, I buy drinks. Water, horchata, beer, juice and Aquarius. If there’s room in the bag, and there won’t be, then maybe something to eat – cheese, bread and anything simple that my air-fryer can handle.

They’d run out of Aquarius yesterday, the drink that is an isotonic beverage made by the Coca Cola people. I’m told that it ‘helps with hydration and to replenish fluids and minerals lost during physical activity’, like tipping the shopping bag full of drinks straight into the fridge. Anyway, they had a special new version in the shop, red instead of grey, so I bought a bottle of that instead: Aquarius Melocotón Rojo: Red Peach! Google says they are far rarer than the ‘yellow-fleshed type’. Who would have guessed?

Anyway, cold, it slips down easily enough.

The beer too. 

I was wondering about ingredients. A water bottle will tell you it’s got all these interesting minerals and salts, but a beer will just say, Contents: agua, malts, hops and yeast, and then in smaller print, ‘Stop reading this stuff, I thought you were thirsty’. The vital ingredient which makes beer such a popular refreshment is mentioned elsewhere: Alcohol: 4.8% (I never saw the point of non-alcoholic beer, which anyway, says Google, is ‘high in calories, carbohydrates, and sugar’).

So, what sort of agua do they put in the beer? Where’s the list of minerals and salts for this leading ingredient that makes up 95% of my tinned cerveza? Is it maybe distilled water we’ve got here?

Back to the helpful IA that attends my every doubt. No, they use mineral water or even tap water. The water gives it taste, apparently. Works for me.

Water features as the first ingredient in any liquid in my fridge – even the horchata or the apple juice. Let’s see… what else did I pick up at the supermarket?

One of the juices I bought home – I’m a sap for anything new – comes from those good folk at Granini. It’s called Exotic Break (hard for a Spaniard to say) and it tastes like a banana and cherry combo I tried in Germany the other day. Better with a dollop of ice cream.

This juice, and I’ve drained the bottle already, says ‘Pitaya y Guayaba’ on the label, but (once again with my nose in the small print), the guayaba (guava in English) is third in the ingredients (behind apple) and the pitaya lies in fifth place, just behind sugar and in front of beetroot. Who makes these things up? It’s got to cost the manufacturer a fortune to push a new taste, and how on earth did they come up with the cunning addition of beetroot juice?

Pitaya, by the way, turns out to be dragon fruit (one of those fruit that turns up in the markets after a successful crop, like chirimoyas and membrillos – custard apples and quinces). Like I say, as long as it’s wet.

For those who think I should eat more, let me say here that I get my daily vits and roughage from the little gazpacho and salmorejo bottles available at Mercadona.

It’s odd though. None of those drinks, not even the beer, fail to refresh me as much as a nice cup of tea. Served hot with a squirt of milk and a spoon of sugar. Sometimes, my Englishness still peeps through.

Last Wednesday (July 9th), Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s answer to Pedro Sánchez’s plans to tighten up the anti-corruption laws was to say that Sánchez’s father-in-law ran gay saunas and that there was nothing worse than Sanchez and his family living from prostitution. The story is one of those exaggerations one finds in the far-right media (OKDiario says ‘Brothels, the word that destroys Sánchez among his colleagues around the world’). The original version of this drivel comes from ‘la policía patriótica’ (Wiki). 

Alberto could have talked about the dire economy (except, Spain’s economy is currently the toast of Europe), or maybe the endemic corruption to be found in politics (La Razón contrasts the high number of PP politicians passing through the Soto del Real jail in the last forty years or so against just one, Santos Cerdán, from the PSOE). He could have mentioned his party’s plans for Spain (although they don’t seem to have any). But to describe Sánchez as living off the ill-gotten gains of gay brothels probably brings Feijóo’s chances of taking over the country down to nil. From InfoLibre here: ‘Feijóo attacks Sánchez again on prostitution: "He participated in this abominable business"’, although, says the RTVE here, ‘The PP admits to having no evidence and relies on some journalistic information’. A bit like Judge Peinado with his ever-sillier investigation into Sánchez’ wife.

The PSOE is calling for a judicial investigation into whether Feijóo used bulos (fake news) from the ‘State Sewers’ (another unkind name for the last PP Ministry of the Interior fixers) to attack Sánchez. ‘"If Feijóo took to the podium of the Congress of Deputies with illegally obtained documents, we would be facing an extremely serious incident," the Socialists state’. Opinion from LaSexta here: ‘The dirtiest and most sleazy Feijóo. What will come next will be the usual media barrage of unfounded news, articles with half-truths, and some complete truths seasoned with the intention of linking the president to his father-in-law's professional activities...’. Long story short, Begoña’s late father rented out some locals to people who installed saunas. El HuffPost here says ‘In 2024, the Audiencia Nacional (High Court) ruled that the saunas linked to Sánchez's father-in-law were a "lawful private activity". The court also criticized the "deplorable partisan use" of this matter’.

The two main parties in Spain both had a busy weekend with the PP having a three-day congress (they called it a conclave for some reason) and the PSOE reduced to a single Saturday Federal Committee to determine who is to remain on the bridge.

"I am fully aware that these are difficult days for everyone", Pedro Sánchez began… They certainly are, with the senior ex-companion Santos Cerdán now in preventative prison (the judiciary can act fast when they want to).

The Partido Popular is riding a wave at the present time. They can’t say much about the Government’s efforts to improve the economy (since they’ve been most successful while keeping faith with the workers and the retired). But now, look, they’ve got the PSOE where they want them – caught with a massive finger in the till.

While the PSOE tends to eject from their ranks any trespasser (another one went on Saturday – as Franciso Salazar was accused of inappropriate behaviour with his female staff) – the PP is known to have a more laid-back attitude, with several barons (Ayuso, Mazón and Moreno for example) conspicuously failing to keep their house in proper order.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo was supported on the first day of the conclave by both José Maria Aznar and Mariano Rajoy – as they talked about the desperate corruption within the PSOE (the pots calling the kettle black – voters luckily have short memories). 

We remember the photo of Aznar with his cabinet, twelve of whom ended up in trouble.

M. Rajoy, whose Interior Minister is on trial in 2026 for Operation Kitchen.

The president whose police illegally investigated Podemos leaders with fake accusations and claims, as if they were the political police of an authoritarian regime.

The same Rajoy who enjoyed the comforts of the refurbished Calle Génova party headquarters, financed as it was with dirty money.

Indeed, the pair of them were positively Trumpian – give the enemy no quarter.

Feijóo in his speech to the party faithful stated that when it came to ‘lies, concessions, manoeuvres, propaganda, or opposing the Spanish people, then the PSOE have all the cards. But when it comes to values, convictions, projects, service, and democracy, then our solid project is going to crush them!’ La Vanguardia reported on Sunday that ‘Feijóo is already launching his presidential campaign and, without rejecting Vox, hopes to govern alone’. Two things there – first, the next elections are pencilled in for 2027 (yes, and with fingers crossed); and secondly, the likelihood of a majority of seats going to the PP, without recourse to the far-right, is disappearingly small.

To say that the PP did worse things while they were in power than anything that could have come from the PSOE is, of course, a mistake. All this does is undermine people’s confidence in their leaders and, with angry or careless voters ready to support the hungry and be-fanged little fishies lurking in the shadows of the coral reefs, we could still be in for some desperate times to come.

Indeed, one of those little fishies is a shark. On Monday, El País reported that ‘Vox openly advocates deporting eight million immigrants and their children. "It will be a complex process, but we have the right to survive as a people," argues Rocío de Meer, spokesperson for the far-right party. In Spain, including us foreign residents, there are around nine million of us. Maybe those of us who are suitably white (or pink) will be let off the hook.

The political season is more or less over, with holidays for the deputies and their families until the next emergency comes along, or – with luck – until September.

Politics, or course, continues the year round, and the PP will be having their XXI National Congress from July 4th to the 6th (with the special presence of both José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy). The Partido Popular says in a statement: ‘…While the Popular Party's conclave "will be one of unity" and will take place "in a context of absolute normality," the PSOE will hold its Federal Committee in a "diametrically opposite" situation, as a party that is "bleeding itself dry internally and cornered by countless cases of corruption".

Because, yes, the PSOE will be holding their own meeting on Saturday in their headquarters in Madrid, having changed the venue at the last minute from Seville. They will need to discuss the ongoing problems and corruption issues, plus find a substitute for the departed Santos Cerdán, who was abruptly jailed by Order of the Court on Monday.  

This week, Seville was the host for the United Nations Conference on Financing Development. At least fifty world leaders gathered in Seville to address global concerns, including hunger, climate change and healthcare. The Americans (having closed down most of their USAID programs) gave it a miss. The smiling quartet of Pedro Sánchez and his wife, Felipe VI and his wife, welcomed the attendees. Spare a thought for the citizens of Seville, which has been locked down with 6,000 extra police, drones and whatever version of robocop is currently in use.

The guests will be sure to notice that it’s bloody hot outside (42ºC on Tuesday). Perhaps some of those present will connect the dots and say: Eureka! Global Warming!

Then, finally, along comes the hols. Unless there’s a parliamentary recall of course. The senior politicians still have a way to go, since July is a kind of half-way month.

Normally, Pedro Sánchez and his family would be looking forward to their August break in the Government-owned estate of La Moreta in Lanzarote, and who could blame them, but the conservative president of the island Astrid Pérez has said (while no doubt playing to the gallery) that he’s not welcome there this year.

Not to worry. Around 2014, Pedro’s wife Begoña Gomez bought a flat in Mojácar Pueblo – and frankly, we don’t see enough of them here.

Mind you, taking a breather when you’re the boss is always tricky, even when the thermometers are shattering and, if there’s no one else, we can see that the Americans remain on the case. Right now, as Trump cooks up some fresh idiocy or other, General Greenway says he wants to transfer the 3,250 US military service-folk from Rota and Morón (plus their families) in favour of Morocco.

Público says that it’s not just Trump who is angry with Spain, there’s also the colourful Argentinian leader Javier Milei, and the bloodthirsty leader of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu. Between the three of them, plus their friend the Vox leader Santiago Abascal, maybe Sánchez would be wise to play it safe and remain in La Moncloa, the presidential palace in Madrid. Maybe hide under the bed. It’s also clear that he will be having to work (and plan) through his holiday if his government is going to continue until 2027.