Spanish Shilling

Alvise Pérez and his Se Acabó la Fiesta ('the Party's Over Party') got three seats in the recent European elections.

Simply put, he’s a kind of far-right version of the Monster Raving Loony Party: his main election-promise being to build a huge jail and put one person in it – namely Pedro Sánchez (video).

Another example of him on YouTube here or here in another video, where he supports the anti-abortionists Hazte Oir.

He is known, says Newtral, as a publisher of fake-news on his own YouTube channel.

Alvise is known in the social media world but has barely been noticed by the mainstream media. His arrival in politics and even more so, in the European parliament has come as a complete surprise to all pundits. His party has published no program and he seems to make it up on the spot. The media refer to him as an 'ultra-right agitator' which, eveidently, his followers see as a plus.

Now with parliamentary immunity, Alvise Pérez says he intends to remain in Spain. A subject that is picked up here by El Salto Diario: ‘Alvise Pérez's party (party) has just begun (and he will stay away from the courts). The extremist agitator has achieved his objective of obtaining judicial immunity to hinder the criminal cases pending against him. Currently, he faces two legal proceedings’.

‘Why did you vote for Alvise asks LaSexta here (notably, all the voters were male says the article). Well, to make a point, they say...

From El Mundo here: ‘Alvise's ideology: closer to Nayib Bukele (president of El Salvador) than to Abascal with "the largest prison in Europe on the outskirts of Madrid". The leader of Se Acabó La Fiesta is closer in his proposals to the Salvadoran leader than he is to Vox, with whom he shares the campaign against illegal immigration’.

From ECD here: ‘The PP does not recognize Alvise as part of the “centre-right bloc”’.

Onda Cero says it is hard to explain Alvise Pérez – whose party has leached 800,000 votes from Vox: ‘Defining Alvise Pérez from a political point of view is not an easy task. We are talking about a far-right agitator, with a certain influence on social networks and who has quite a few legal cases behind him, some for which he has been convicted. By the way, when Alvise Pérez enters the European Parliament as an MEP - in addition to pocketing more than 400,000 euros in the next five years - he will enjoy parliamentary immunity that would guarantee him, among other things, "to freely exercise his mandate without being exposed to arbitrary political persecution"…’ Plus he’ll take another million or so in government subsidies.

In short (in my opinion), a cockroach.

 Things became a little heated over the weekend, as we arrived at ‘el día de reflexión’ (when campaigning is over, the politicians traditionally go to the beach or stay home with the kids and the media must talk of other subjects) and then the Sunday vote for the European elections – where Spain will provide 61 of the 720 MEPs.

Not everywhere was quiet on the Saturday, as (unbelievably), the Madrid Superior Court of Justice allowed a type of prayathon outside the headquarters of the PSOE in Madrid – you know the drill, people wrapped in flags and calling for Christ the Lord …and the resignation of Pedro Sánchez.

The things which make Spanish democracy interesting.

On Sunday, a few anecdotal stories made the news. Pedro Sánchez and his wife being insulted outside the polling station. One of the list of Alvise Pérez’ Se Acabó la Fiesta (the party that makes Vox look soft and wet) Vito Quiles – a popular fake-news journalist – was asking for the vote on Sunday on his Twitter account. A gussied-up drag-queen called Pitita in charge of a Barcelona polling station (‘there wasn’t time to change for the evening gig’ she/he says).

One editorial over the weekend reckons that the Judge Peinado (the one chasing after Begoña Gómez) and Alberto Núñez Feijóo (I’ll be glad when I don’t have to type that name any more) were converting the European elections into a plebiscite against Pedro Sánchez. 

The PP candidate for Brussels Dolors Montserrat, here with Feijóo and Ayuso. The poster-man on the left appears to be sending us a warning.

In other news, the PP were found to have made an advert using the AI-created fake voice of José Luis Zapatero in an attempt to win over voters.

The European Parliament is important – it decides around three quarters of all laws, and one can only imagine where things would have gone if the far-right were running the shop when the pandemic hit. For a start, we would all be taking the horse-diarrhea drug ivermectin or worse still, denying that there was even a health issue.

So, the results (here in Spain): The PP got more votes than the PSOE, returning 22 MEPs to Brussels (against 20 for the socialists). Vox has six and the remarkable Se Acabó la Fiesta arrives with three seats (and very nearly 4.6% of the vote). The ongoing squabble between Sumar and Podemos did neither of them any good (just 3 and 2 MEPs respectively) and Ciudadanos – unsurprisingly – disappears.

Did the Begoña Gómez story make an impact? I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Across Europe, the big winners were the far-right anti-immigration parties. Nevertheless, the pro-European centre-right held.

Those poor immigrants – blamed by the left for allowing the racism of the right to flourish.

An American report sums up the situation in Europe: ‘For decades, the European Union, which has its roots in the defeat of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, confined the hard right to the political fringes. With its strong showing in these elections, the far right could now become a major player in policies ranging from migration to security and climate…’

The arrival of June means summer is here, which brings with it hot days and steamy nights, lots of visitors to dodge (or greet, depending on one’s age and inclination) and above all, lots of noise.  

There are fiestas and concerts plus, if you live anywhere south of Madrid, the Moors and Christians thrashes – which in our town’s case means three days of very noisy cap-guns, stunning outfits, parades and music from the marching bands.

I live in the campo, which has its own challenges. The visitors tend to have six legs, come out in swarms, and bite. A dab of repellent behind each ear usually keeps them away – or failing that, a green incense coil does the trick. The noise is provided by the hordes of brightly-coloured Argentinian parrots ('cotorras') who come and perch outside my window, the barking of the dogs who weren’t invited to the fiesta, and me shouting at the wild boar which have recently multiplied in my neck of the desert.

The pigs will come out at night and dig for grubs and the tender roots which are an unappreciated detail of my flower beds and modest fruit orchard. They will also pull down rocks from the stone terraces which are a fixture of southern Spain. They have noses like bulldozers. Sad to relate, I have found that putting the rocks back where they were doesn’t seem to work as it should. There must be a lot more to building a good terraza than meets the eye.

Oddly, the most destructive brute of all is a charming looking kind of wild goat called an ibex (or maybe it’s an arruí, a Barbary sheep, say some of the local naturalists doubtfully). It looks like a deer and it can stand on a thimble. Or, if there isn’t one to hand, then the top of a fruit tree will do. This cabra montes doesn’t just eat the fruit, or the geraniums when dallying in my garden; it breaks off the branches, or throws down heavy planter-boxes, while one of them even bit off an entire potted shrub the other day and then it pooped in the suddenly empty and unappealing flowerpot: a little souvenir of its visit, bloody thing!

There are about twenty of them local to me, and I’m told that they have moved, like the wild pigs, down from the hills and into the municipality. For most of my life, I had never seen a single one, but now I must rush outside and go ‘Hoo!’ several times a night.

Maybe I should get a dog to frighten them off, but the last one died of leishmaniasis, which comes from the no-see-ums – the tiny biting flies.

I was just talking on the phone with my son, who is in Missouri. There, they have a lake full of a kind of aggressive fish called an alligator gar which he tells me makes a barracuda look like a beginner. One simply can’t swim there and these things apparently reproduce at an amazing rate. They are from foreign-parts, he says, and thus an invasive species. A bit like the ibex and the cotorras, or maybe (to stretch a point), your humble correspondent.    

Isn’t it a grand thing when one can change one’s opinion? It doesn’t happen often in one’s adult life – beyond maybe discovering that some of those rock groups really weren’t that good after all – and yet, lookit, here we are today: fans of Spanish women’s football!

They’ve done awfully well in the last twelve months, breaking the records that men’s football can currently only dream about – championships, FIFA World Cup championships and more – indeed, the Barcelona women’s blaugranas team just beat the French Olympique Lyonnais team in the Bilbao stadium in front of 51,000 spectators to win The UEFA Women’s Champions League.  

This strange new world we live in: a proper televised women’s sporting event where a couple of fellows brought a pro-Palestinian banner on to the pitch at the beginning of the match, receiving cheers from the fans (and evident approval from the organisers).

I learned today that Women’s Football has been played in the UK since 1890 (at least) but that ‘some saw it as a threat to men’s football. The FA banned women from playing the sport at FA affiliated grounds between 1921 and 1971, with the governing body stating: “…the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged”’.

In Spain, the first club ‘the Spanish Girl’s Club’ dates from 1914 (‘twenty years before women could vote’, says an article I’m reading). From the Civil War until Franco’s death, the sport was dropped – call it chauvinism if you like.

I’ve never liked football – a long game interspaced once or twice in ninety agonizing minutes with a shrieked ¡gol gol gol! from the exited commentator on the TV on the shelf behind me. ‘Who won?’, I ask without turning round.

It’s probably to do with my early school life – the choices were either soccer or Latin (or, uh, smoking on the roof of the lavatories).

But look at the players! Somebody said unkindly a few years ago that you would never get eleven women to agree to wear the same outfit in public, but suddenly we saw that this whole deal wasn’t about sexy girls, like the ones playing volleyball matches – where nobody cares about the score anyway. This was about real ones: playing sport and playing to win: an inspiration for girls everywhere. Something to make society proud.  

Luis Rubiales was the one who discovered that the age of treating young women like giddy chickies was now officially over. ‘He didn’t respect me, neither as a player nor as a person’, said Jenni Hermoso.

Now that’s a mistake he won’t make again.

It seems to be an endless series of elections recently, with the Galicians, the Basques, the Catalonians and now along comes the Europeans. The three regional ballots threw up a few interesting results – the Partido Popular did well in Galicia, the two regional parties PNV and EH Bildu scored neck-and-neck in Euzkadi (the PSOE will be the decider) and the PSC (the regional name for the PSOE) took the largest vote in Catalonia, the two independent parties coming second and third, and the PP in fourth place. And, of course, the final disappearance of Ciudadanos – the oh-so-centrist conservative clone.

The news and opinion has been full of the results and the intrigues: how did our party do? Are we growing or sinking? Should we run another survey already?

Can we extrapolate the regional results for Europe?

Perhaps not. Spain only has 61 out of 720 MEPs.

But, on the other hand, the populists are doing well across Europe, so the chances are that both the PP’s Alberto Núñez Feijóo (whose platform seems to be more about destroying Spain’s government and the socialist party than providing any policies of his own), and the insufferable Santiago Abascal, may be rewarded come June 9th.

Abascal was entertaining his friend the Argentine president Javier Milei this week-end during the Vox ‘Europa Viva 24’ summit (‘the anti-human-rights summit’ says one lefty commentator), along with a number of other far-right leaders (a pity Trump couldn’t come, although of course he’s busy at the moment).

The conference, enthused La Gaceta, ‘brought together dozens of patriotic leaders from Europe and Latin America’. The future is ours, say the populists, or to put it another way, ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’.

‘Madrid became, this weekend, the epicentre of fascism’ said elDiario.es here.

Things then went a bit awry, when Milei told his captivated audience that Pedro Sánchez' wife was una corrupta. The Spanish president was not amused and has called the ambassador home from Buenos Aires. Unsurprisingly, the Partido Popular were careful not to defend the President of Spain, saying "Our job is to oppose the president of Spain, not the president of Argentina".

Meanwhile, the irrepresible Javier Milei has now tweeted from his flight home to his followers and admirers:  “I’m surfing on a wave of socialists’ tears. Long live Freedom, shit”.

Last month, Milei received the ex-president of Spain José María Aznar in Buenos Aires. The Argentinian bruiser also met several business-leaders on Saturday, including the chairman of the CEOE (the Spanish Confederation of Employers' Organizations) – Spain having major business interests in Argentina – but was not able to fit in time to visit the Spanish president (both leaders no-doubt releasing a satisfied breath over this breach of procedure).

As an aside – why do so many of the far-right have peculiar haircuts? From Trump to Boris to Geert Wilders to Milei? Is it a sign of their disregard for conformity?

The drift across Europe, say the editorials, is towards the right. We see that the conservatives are bedding down with the populists (a tactic that has so far seen mixed results here in Spain, as the tail so often ends up wagging the dog).

For the flag-wavers, illegal immigration is their cause juste, although the immigrants are needed to help pay the social security and thus the pensions of an ever-aging population. They’ll also do the jobs that none of us want to do, from picking strawberries to cleaning bathrooms. The other pin in the populist cause is Islam, since the suspicion is that they will one day rise up and murder us all in our beds.

Probably just to shut us up.

The threat of the European far right – and its possible acceptance – gets a timely reminder of what happened less than a century ago with the cover of Der Spiegel: a German flag draped over a disturbing symbol from the past.

So, what does the European Union do and why should we vote (those who can)?

We read that ‘All 27-member states hold inclusion, tolerance, justice, solidarity and non-discrimination as crucial pillars of the European Union’.

Unless – you see – the far-right gets in. 

And how are our friends the banks doing?

The banks used to – vaguely and no-doubt erroneously – be thought to be more of a service for citizens than their current behaviour - a kind of inspiration for the vultures, hyenas and other consumers of the dead, dying and the weak.

The banks make their money from the manager’s office rather than the teller’s desk, as the widow’s mite is placed into the drawer where it will start to earn interest – only, not for the widow, poor dear, but - down the line - for the share-holders. 

The bank isn't that interested. Small beer doesn’t make you a major player. You need some big investors with stories of major profits ahead.

So how did the banks become so unpopular? Less branches, more commissions and a diminishing service.

Now we have the case of the hostile bid from the second-largest bank in Spain towards the fourth. It started friendly enough, but the smaller bank said it wasn’t a high-enough offer. All this, right now, during the frenzy of the Catalonian elections. That fourth largest bank, that’s from Sabadell in Catalonia (although their head-office these days is safely in Alicante) with 19,213 slightly worried employees.

The putative pirate, the Borg as it were, is the BBVA (the name is an amalgam of distant banks). The head office is in Bilbao, and there are 121,486 employees. The president of the BBVA is Carlos Torres and last year he took home 7.6 million euros (not much by the standards of Amancio Ortega, who expects to pocket some 3,000 million euros in 2024, but still enough to keep the wolf from the door).

And those shareholders: wealthy leeches who can’t even claim a loyalty towards the company whose paper they hold, the employees, the traditions and the products it makes.

Although, of course it’s true that the banks only make the one product. Money.

My bank (I’ll send you my account details by separate cover) is a lot smaller. It’s one of those Cajas that used to be run by the Church.

These days, of course, it maintains a stand just inside the Cathedral door in case the Messiah returns unexpectedly.

But for the rest of us, it takes our moolah, charges us for the pleasure, and makes its real money from investments, projects, deals, the resale of homes it has expropriated from those who couldn’t meet the mortgage, and other worthwhile and marvellous devices too numerous to mention.

The politicians (well, those who don’t plan a future in la banca) are against the merger. There will be less banks. There aren’t many already with Santander, BBVA, Caixabank and Sabadell being the Big Four and taking up, between them, 75% of all deposits and, if there’s a fusion, why, there’ll be even less competition.

Fewer branches too. The widow will have to take a bus to get to the nearest counting-house.

Oddly, my bank was burgled over the May-day holiday. Two weeks later, it’s still shut.  

A local author has written a fascinating book about the revolt of the Moriscos in 1570. These were the times when the defeated Moors who remained in Spain had to become what was called by the Spanish the New Christians (eat pork, go to church and all the other things one must do to show one’s fealty). Even so, they were not allowed to own land and their children were obliged to be educated, thanks to strict rules from Felipe II, by Catholic priests. The Moriscos, descendants of Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity, faced increasing pressure. These ‘New Christians’ (many still with a copy of the Koran hidden under the bed) remained suspect in the eyes of the authorities, leading to latent tensions and conflicts. Between 1568 and 1571, the Moriscos in the Alpujarras and down towards the Almerian coast rose in rebellion against their treatment.

The book is called El Último Morisco by Diego Ramos.

It has been ably translated into English as ‘The Last Morisco’ (but yet to go to print) by Andy Mortimer, and I’ve been sent a proof to comment and correct as I see fit.

The problems we have found so far – I’m half way through it – are firstly to do with grammatical accents (does the English language accept the odd place or person’s name with an accent?). The British newspaper guides say ‘no accents’, but we are living here in Spain and, it seems to me, we might as well try and learn things right rather than wrong.  That said, we prefer Malaga to Málaga, Cordoba for Córdoba and for that matter, we use Seville for Sevilla and Lerida instead of Lleida.

But then, what of the Spanish ‘n-with-a-squiggle’: the ‘ñ’ that doesn’t even appear on our keyboard? We have decided that this, the most Spanish of letters, will stay. España, año, and Peñiscola indeed!

A second issue is measurement. Do we talk of leagues, kilometres or miles? What about yards? The Spanish measurements of the time were complicated and even varied between one place and another. La fanega, a land-measurement, changes violently according to both location and indeed meaning. It was considered in Castilla to be 1000x1000 varas, which were something smaller than a square metre. So, a sort of pint-sized hectare. However, in Galicia and Valencia, Andalucía, the Canaries and Extremadura, the range differed considerably. In short, anything from 5,707m2 down to a pocket-sized 833m2. In some places, it was merely the extent of land necessary to grow a certain amount of grain. The word comes from the Arabic faddãn. The word still appears in old escrituras in Almería.

So we think maybe to resort to old English measurements – a pace, a morning’s walk, a day’s ride and so on. After all, it’s not a text-book, it’s a fast-paced novel: indeed the blurb at Amazon says ‘…Focusing on the story of Khalíl and Dídac, two young people whose lives are shaken by the storm of war, El Último Morisco recreates with singular vividness the Spanish universe of the mid-16th century, populated with characters, some despicable and others heroic; with broken families and the corpses of innocent people half buried in wintry ditches…’

The tag says ‘Could history repeat itself?’

The English version will be in print perhaps by September. It is the story of a shockingly bloodthirsty time in Spanish history (although, perhaps not the most, since every now and again along the way, there’s been a revolution of some sort or another). By chance, I’m currently reading a novel about Madrid in 1936, on the eve of the Civil War.

Things are not looking good.

Perhaps the lesson here is that an occasional violent rebellion is in the nature of this most charming and welcoming nation.

At Business over Tapas, the subject of fake-news, media manipulation, lawfare and assorted bulos is often raised. The perpetrators are always the same. The target is always the same. Only the methods vary.

They can’t attack the Government on the economy – it’s the second highest growth in the Western world – so they must attack with invention, insults and calumny. Knife in the back stuff.

José María Aznar said in November last year in reaction to the new government: ‘"What can be done? Well, he who can speak, let him speak. He who can do, let him do. He who can contribute, let him contribute. He who can move, let him move. He who can try..." Just like that Aznar spoke directly and without a shadow of shame just after declaring Sánchez "a danger to Spanish democracy", with Feijóo sitting just next to him’.

One wonders what they want. Could they maybe do better and make Spain the strongest economy in the world? The last PP president Mariano Rajoy certainly couldn’t.

So we come to Pedro Sánchez and his bombshell last Wednesday evening: Sick of the attacks against him – and more importantly, against his wife, he threatened to quit come Monday.

Monday rolling around after a nail-biting five-day wait, with large demos calling on Pedro to stay, the president announced that he would follow the wishes of the electorate (well, slightly over half of it anyway), and stay on.

The straw that almost broke the donkey’s back had been the unfounded attack on his wife by Manos Limpias, a far-right organisation remembered without pleasure as being the creators of the fake PISA scandal (Pablo Iglesias and his supposed fortune in a Venezuelan bank).

Over the weekend, the PSOE allies in the Government had come out to back Pedro Sánchez, with the general coordinator of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, denouncing the “permanent lawfare” within the Spanish judicial system and the attempt to turn Pedro Sánchez into “little less than a criminal and a traitor who makes agreements with people of all kinds”.

The drama also coincided with the first few days of the Catalonian political campaign, leaving that important subject to an inner page.

There are a lot of dodgy journalists, scriveners and hacks, plus any number of bloggers and youtubers who will invent fake news, post inflammatory opinion or who simply write what they are told to. For example, the Tweet seen by 110,000 (Saturday) from one Alberto Caliu: ‘Pedro Sánchez should be arrested along with his wife and all of his government and partners and imprisoned, preferably without a trial’.

We remember how hostile invention got the better of both President Lula in Brazil, and President Silva in Portugal. In France, Macron is suing some ‘conservative commentator’ who claims that his wife is really a man. We certainly have seen the effect of these scurrilous attacks from the right and far-right in Spain with a number of honest politicians forced to resign through judiciously inserted false and misleading news.

Or are the Russians ultimately behind all of this deception?

At the same time, most reporters are honourable and working to find the news where and how it may come out; and several hundreds of them, plus many others, signed a letter on Friday calling for the end of ‘The Mud Machine’. Meanwhile, without backing down, Manos Limpias admitted on Friday that their complaint against Begoña Gómez ‘may be based on false information’.

The Corner, a conservative Spanish web-site, says ‘The PSOE denies the evidence and backs Pedro Sánchez, who, surrounded by corruption, speaks of “harassment” and lashes out against the right, the ultra-right, the judges, the press…’

And of course we believe what we want to believe, without allowing facts or common sense to get in the way.

In the days to come, the upset over this past weekend will be measured against its impact on both the Catalonian and the European elections – both by proper journalists and observers and also, inevitably, by the fantasists and the flat-earthers. 

A far-right agency called Manos Limpias has denounced the wife of the President of Spain for corruption (using newspaper-cuttings as proof). The Court, surprisingly, has taken up the charge.
Pedro Sánchez said late on Wednesday that he had had enough of the bulos and attacks from the far-right and is considering resigning as president.
His final decision on Monday.

I wrote about the background to this in my Business over Tapas weekly bulletin - 

‘The spreader of fake-news Pilar Baselga, a regular in the far-right media and circles, availed herself last week of her right to not testify before the judge investigating the falsehood she launched in November 2022, when she said that Begoña Gómez, the wife of Pedro Sánchez, is a transsexual and was part of a drug trafficking network. As elDiario.es has learned from sources familiar with the statement before a Madrid magistrate, Baselga has now preferred to remain silent…’ Nevertheless, and despite the above, Manos Limpias (a far-right Christian agitator group) has successfully managed to find a judge able to launch an inquiry into Begoña Gómez for corruption. Pedro Sánchez said in the Cortes on Wednesday that “Despite the news that I have just received, despite everything, I continue to believe in the justice-system of my country”.

......

But late on Wednesday Pedro Sánchez said that he was cancelling his engagements for the next few days and would give his answer on Monday.

He has written a letter to the Spanish public - 

 Madrid, April 24, 2024
Letter to Citizens
It is not usual for me to address you through a letter. However, the severity of the attacks that my wife and I are receiving, and the need to give a calm response, make me think that this is the best way to express my opinion. I thank you, therefore, for taking a little
of your time to read these lines.
As you may already know, a court in Madrid has opened proceedings of charges against my wife, Begoña Gómez, at the request of a far-right organization called Manos Limpias, to investigate alleged crimes of influence peddling and corruption in business.
Apparently, the judge will call those responsible from two digital newspapers that have been publishing on this matter to testify. In my opinion, they are media with a marked right-wing and ultra-right orientation (El Objectivo and probably OKDiario - Lenox). Logically, Begoña will defend her honour and will collaborate with Justice in everything required to clarify facts that are as scandalous in appearance as they are non-existent.
In effect, the complaint by Manos Limpias is based on alleged information from that constellation of ultraconservative headlines referred to above. I emphasize the 'supposed information' because, after its publication, we have gone to some length in denying the falsehoods expressed at the time while Begoña has undertaken legal actions so that these same digital companies rectify what, we maintain, are spurious information.
This strategy of harassment and demolition has been going on for months. Therefore, I am not surprised by the overacting of Sr. Feijóo (PP leader) and Sr. Abascal (Vox leader). In this outrage which is as serious as it is crude, both are necessary collaborators with the far-right digital 'news' galaxy and the Manos Limpias organization. In fact, it was Mr. Feijóo who reported the case to the Office of Conflicts of Interest, calling for me to be disqualified from holding public office for 5 to 10 years.
The complaint was filed twice by said organization, whose officials were later disqualified by the leadership of both the PP and Vox.
Next, they exploited their conservative majority in the Senate promoting a commission of investigation to, as they say, clarify the facts related to this matter. Logically, judicialization was lacking in the case. This is the step they have just taken.
In short, it is a harassment and demolition operation by land, sea and air to try to weaken me politically and personally by attacking my wife.
I'm not naive. I am aware that Begoña is being denounced not because she has done something illegal, they know there is no case, except for being my wife. As I am also fully aware that the attacks I suffer are not my fault as a person but what I represent: a progressive political option, supported election after election by millions of Spaniards, based on economic progress, social justice and democratic regeneration.
This fight started years ago. First, with the defence that we made of the political autonomy of the organization that best represents a progressive Spain:  the Socialist Party. A fight that we won. Second, after the motion of censure and the successive electoral victories of 2019, the sustained attempt to delegitimise the progressive coalition government in the heat of the ignominious meme of  '¡Que te vote Txapote!'. That couldn't break us either.
The last episode was the general elections of July 23, 2023.
The Spanish people voted overwhelmingly for progress, allowing the return of a progressive coalition government, against the coalition government of Sr. Feijóo and Sr. Abascal that the conservative media and demographic batteries predicted.
Democracy spoke, but the right and the extreme right, again, did not accept the electoral result. They were aware that political attacks would not be enough and now they have crossed the line of respect for the family life of a President of the Government and attacks on his personal life.
Without any embarrassment, Sr. Feijóo and Sr. Abascal, and the interests that they
move, have set in motion what the great Italian writer, Umberto Eco, called "the mud machine". That is, trying to dehumanize and delegitimise their political adversary through accusations that are as scandalous as they are false.
This is my reading of the situation that our beloved country is experiencing: a coalition of
right-wing and ultra-right interests that do not tolerate the reality of Spain, that do not accept the verdict of the polls, and that are willing to spread mud to: first, cover up their obvious corruption scandals and inaction before them; second, hide their total absence of a more political project beyond insults and misinformation; and third, to use any means at their disposal to reach and personally and politically destroy their political adversary. This is all about a coalition of right-wing and far-right interests that extends across the main Western democracies, and to which, I guarantee, I will always respond with reason, truth and education.
At this point, the question I legitimately ask myself is, is it worth all this? Sincerely I don't know. This attack is unprecedented, it is so serious and so gross that I need to stop and reflect with my wife. Many times we forget that behind the politicians there are people And I, it doesn't make me blush to say it, I am a man deeply in love with my wife who suffers with her the impotence of the mud that they spread on her day in and day out. I need to stop and reflect. I urgently need to answer the question of whether it is worth it, despite the mud into which the right and the extreme right try to turn politics into. My doubt is whether I should continue at the head of the Government or resign from this high honour. Despite the caricature that the right and the extreme right in politics and the media have tried to make of me, I have never been attached to the position. Yes I have it to duty, to political commitment and public service. I do not go through positions, I assert the legitimacy of those high responsibilities to transform and advance the country that I love.
All of this leads me to tell you that I will continue working, but that I will cancel my public agenda for a few days so I can reflect and decide which path to take. Next Monday, April 29, I will appear before the media and announce my decision.
Thanks for your time. Sincerely,
Pedro Sanchez

I was reading Laurie Lee, who left the UK at the age of 19 to walk across Spain from Vigo to Almuñecar, a town outside Málaga, back in 1935. All he had with him was a violin, and he lived by begging for his keep.

A peseta, a piece of fruit, a glass of brandy (it was cheap in those days), anything for a merry tune from his fiddle. He managed the trick and wrote his ‘As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning’, a book which ends with his rescue by a British naval vessel out of Gibraltar just as the uprising by the Nationalists starts in July 1936: the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

But we were talking about begging. Laurie Lee would play the tunes that worked the best with his audience, and knew to leave a few copper pennies in his open cap pour encourager les autres. He hadn’t caught on to the idea of looking sad and tragic, nor sitting slumped outside a supermarket, nor indeed of having a doggy to hand to awaken the charity of – at least - the British passers-by.

I look at these wretches – they are the same ones, at the same exits to the food-stores until death they do part – and think, if that was me sat on a cushion, staring tragically at my coppers in a plastic box, would they, passing by in my place, leave me a few pennies out of charity? Probably not.

But how to increase the yield? One American I knew told me he would wear a suit when begging, after all, how can you give a small coin to a panhandler dressed like a bank manager?

Another thing for beggars to know – never whip out an iPhone for a bit of quiet surfing. It sends the wrong message to the punters.

My late wife would say that she would only give to those beggars who were doing something. Like standing on their head or playing an instrument (happily, she never saw that Romanian who used to perform ‘Spanish Eyes’ over and over again, being the only tune he’d ever learned to play on the accordion).

Did you ever see the routine with a goat, a step-ladder, a trumpet player and a gypsy? Now that’s worth a few coins I reckon.

My favourite beggar of all is El Llorón, a man who lurks near the Granada cathedral and can turn on the water-works at will. This weeping fellow fires off a series of mournful shrieks as he thrusts his cap at you, evidently far too upset to give you the reason why, and then he joins his mates for a smoke and a laugh around the corner.

Most tiresome are the gypsy ladies – we are still in Granada – who pin a cutting of rosemary onto your shirt ‘for luck’ and then attempt to charge you for the trick.

In the resorts, most of the beggars appear to be Eastern-European. At least, in my local supermarket, each and every exit has its very own pordiosero (and for all I know, there’s one stationed outside the lavatory window).

‘How is Piotr doing over there in Spain?’

‘Yes, he has found a secure position in one of their food-stores’.

I’m sure most of them are nice, except for that bad-tempered fat lady who always shrieks invective at me when I pass her.

But I think I have more time for the tramps; although, come to think of it, I rarely see more of them than just the occasional glimpse of their legs sticking out of a full and indubitably ripe container.

I saw one of our beggars at the check-out the other day, buying three beers with a handful of one and two cent coins which were solemnly counted out by both him and the sales-girl. That fellow’s been sitting outside the door in the same patch for years; I mean, for all I know by now he’s on the town hall’s padrón. Perhaps he’s generally too drunk to stand.

I was next in the queue behind him looking impatient and going ‘tut tut’, while er, holding a six-pack and a bottle of vodka.

The writer Laurie Lee later went back to Spain, crossing over the Pyrenees in 1937 to join the International Brigades and fight on the Republican side. And yes, he took his violin with him.

Sad to say, most of those who live through begging these days don’t appear to have the same urge to give anything back.