Spanish Shilling

The Spanish have so many wonderful things going for them, that I can only lament that I spent the first thirteen years of my life living elsewhere.

My parents felt the same way, and loaded up the car in Norfolk for what would become a one-way trip south back in 1966.

And he we are - or at least, here I am (my parents having duly succumbed many years ago, surrounded by friends, to one of what used to be Spain's greatest attractions - coñac at five pesetas a tot).

I live quietly, having learned a few vital lessons about life here:

Never lend your money to friends, or start a newspaper - which comes pretty much to the same thing.

Steer away from brandy.

Never keep the nub end of a joint in your car's ashtray (long story).

Always order the tarta al whisky after a good lunch.

Spain's Whisky Tart is a sort of vanillery helado thing, with a few crushed nuts and a bit of sponge, and a miniscule squirt of hootch to add flavour. Imagine that - an alcoholic ice-cream!

When you order it in one of this country's one million better restaurants, then the maître will bring a bottle of scotch and either baptise your desert in that generous devil-may-care way so typical of the Spanish, or even leave the bottle next to your plate for you to drown your bowl of ice-cream a tu gusto.

As a young 'un, I used to have the flan with a tinned peach for pud; good in its way, but nowhere close to a whisky tart.

In fact, I think I'll indulge myself right now - the essay needs a picture, right?

On Tuesday, the judge and some private accusers, including representatives from Vox, were able to visit and attempt to interview the President of Spain in the Official Residence, about the apparent improprieties of the President’s wife.

Pedro Sánchez stood on his legal rights to not declare to the judge.

Imagine the scene. Imagine the image. Imagine the fallout. Imagine the jubilation of the far-right at this extraordinary – and defamatory – turn of events.

The Vox lawyer present at the brief event said afterwards: "The President was both impassive and arrogant".

-Afterwards: Vox lawyer with senior party member-

The Manos Limpias, usually described as an ‘ultra’ pseudo-syndicate, is the group behind the complaints against the President of Spain’s wife Begoña Gómez, for various causes of corruption as described (invented) in far-right news-sites and collected and presented by the group to an eccentric judge who has consequently spent the last few months on a fishing expedition to try and find something against his victim and – who knows – bring about the fall of the Government and the glorious revival of the conservatives (and their fascist allies).

The day after the denuncia back in April, Manos Limpias said ‘It will now be up to the judge to determine whether the news reports are true or not’.

All this, despite a 160 page study by the UCO (serious crimes unit of the Guardia Civil) showing that there was no case to answer.

The judge is Juan Carlos Peinado, described as ‘the head of the 41st court in Madrid. His daughter, Patricia Peinado, is a councillor for the PP in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid)’.

‘Is there anything normal in this witch-hunt?’ asks Ignacio Escolar in his weekly editorial.

‘No’, he answers himself.

All good fun, and sorry for my excitable tone.

Now the Clean Hands people – well, it’s just Miguel Bernad and his lawyers (…and bankers and political friends) have made another denuncia against the socialist hoards – in this case a complaint against the PSOE, ERC and Junts for using the term ‘Lawfare’ to describe political acts by the judiciary disguised as jurisprudence.

The Supreme Court says that the term, as used against several judges mentioned by name, may be considered as ‘a lack of respect’ but not as a threat. (The Supreme Court practically admitting here that ‘Lawfare’ is a thing).

Miguel, by the way, was named Knight of Honour by the Francisco Franco National Foundation for his "services in defence of the ideals of the Movement" in December 2011.

Manos Limpias was founded in 1995 and quickly began to make complaints against any left-wing agency or person until in 2006 the Supreme Court accused it of the crimes of repeated false accusations. The agency has also made complaints against same-sex marriages, the prime minister of Gibraltar, various politicians and left-wing judges.

The agency is accused of making denuncias, and then searching for a pecuniary solution – Miguel and the president of Ausbanc, Luis Pineda, narrowly avoided going to prison in 2021 for this impropriety (they were absolved in 2024 by another court).  

Wiki tells us that ‘With more than 6,000 members, Manos Limpias neither presents accounts nor holds meetings as required by its statutes. The Barcelona Court maintains that "it seems that the activity of this union is none other than filing complaints".

Most of their complaints over the years were later discarded by the Supreme Court and other lower courts, including the Pablo Iglesias PISA invention in 2016, the frustrated trial against Princess Cristina in 2017 and their complaint against a satirical magazine called Mongolia for a particularly tasteless cover in January this year.

A comment describes the Manos Limpias as ‘white-collar delinquents with dirty hands’, well, maybe so, but they will continue to seek to wound Spain’s progress and international reputation for some time to come.

Gosh, it ain’t half hot.

It’s so hot I’ve got a towel wrapped around the pillow. The window is wide open and the screen has been checked (somehow, the little buggers still manage to get in to the bedroom and bite. They probably carry wire-cutters within their dental array – the mosquito’s answer to the Swiss Army Knife).

The noise from the passing traffic and the odd summer concert drifts through the curtain and refreshes me – it’s come that I can’t sleep until I’ve heard that particular summer song at least twice.

It’s dark, apart from the moonlight and the little red and green glows from the television switch, the extension cords, the mosquito plug-in and the electric clock which winks throughout the night (it’s more trouble to get up and reset it following the regular power-cuts that plague the barrio). If I wake up for a pee, which I do around 3.30am, the room glows like the approach to a small provincial airstrip: and I half expect a small follow-me airport vehicle to escort me to the loo.

Maybe detour past the fridge to drink some cold water on the way back to Runway One.

I pull the fan a little closer to the bed and fall back into my pit, now damp with sweat. Try and get back to sleep, but maybe check the Facebook first. Maybe read for a spell (I much prefer books to the television). Maybe spray the room and scratch for a bit.

So hot. I’ve taken to having two (or even three) cold showers throughout the day. I haven’t done that since school all those years ago. At least there’s no one here to flick me with a towel.

An hour has passed, so I’ll try and sleep again. The concert has stopped, but there’s an owl on a nearby tree that lets out a liquid hoot every fifteen seconds. I noisily shut the window – maybe he’ll take the hint.

I look again and now it’s 7.00am. I’ll get up and make myself a toast and coffee.

While that’s going on, I’ll have another pee and brush my teeth.

I’m told by the fellow on the TV that I have bad breath, so I go for a quick gargle of mouthwash, making my tongue look like I’m a lizard-person. The product has a child-proof lid on it, which means that it won’t fall open by chance in the shopping-bag, or indeed in the bathroom. I too need both some wire-cutters and some patience, hard to do when I’ve just heard the toast-launcher eject my breakfast onto the kitchen floor.

Outside, it looks like it’s going to be another nice day. 

For some reason, we are getting lots of telephone calls in these times from unknown numbers. My Android phone is good enough to say: ‘watch out, this is probably a spammer’ which is ammunition enough for me to press the ‘refuse call and block number’ button.

It used to be someone from a cheap-energy company wanting you to switch out of Endesa, or maybe a salesperson from some dodgy newspaper or magazine hoping for your business. These days, it’s likely a robot which is checking to see if anybody is on the other end of a phone-number. If you do pick up, it lets out a cheerful little beep, and hangs up.

Yes Boss, we’ve got a live one here.

The numbers are collected and sold – either to spammers, crooks, thieves, con-men, or that fellow who wanted to sell you a cheap health insurance.

In my phone memory, I have several calls refused by me in the last few days as ‘Llamante no deseado (sospecha)’ and others as ‘Fraude (possible)’.

There’s a new service I’ve found, a kind of reverse phone number directory for fraudulent callers called ListaSpam. They say they have a list of over a million crooked phone-numbers between Spain and Latin America. You can download their app – free – and your phone will automatically bounce any of these bogus callers.

ListaSpam is a simple dot com, so let me look up some of the calls I’ve had recently:

The number 951125163 from Málaga has been checked 22 times by unwilling victims.

The number 624156344 has been checked 205 times, and has four complaints.

The number 613592067 has been checked 297 times, and has four complaints

The number 613889843 has been checked 337 times, and has two complaints.

The number 625028220 has been checked 504 times, and has seven complaints.

But the prize goes to 951823073, checked 5,835 times, with seventy-one complaints.

All these numbers, plus others, have called me in the past week, even though I’m on the Lista Robinson – a useful register of numbers not to be called by importune sales-folk or telemarketers. It has saved me a large number of calls, and if they get through to me and I say I’m on the Lista Robinson, they’ll say they’re sorry and hang up. If they don’t, then I hang up. It’s evidently not fool-proof, but it helps. If you do speak to them, tell them that you intend to make a denuncia to the AEPD – the Spanish protection of data agency (they are acting outside the law). They’ll disconnect soon enough.

So how do they get my number? Maybe someone at the electric company or the town hall is making a few euros on the side selling a list of phone-numbers to people with wonky accents.

These spam calls are something new, probably starting – in my case – about a month ago.

Right now, between Facebook (‘Oh, I do love your posts, would you please be my friend?’), sundry texts about small debts I’m said to owe to Tráfico or the electric company or my bank (what was your pin number again?) as sent to Messenger, and then the email spam (I now get 20 or 30 of these each day – usually to tell me I’ve won a prize), I’m getting far more junk than real calls from friends and family.  

Today (Saturday) I got a call at 2.00pm, as I was settling down to a sandwich, and then another at 3.00pm, just as I switched on the news. It’s like they have a sixth sense to call at an inconvenient moment. The phone warned me both times and I blocked the numbers at once.

Say, that wasn’t you calling was it?  

Last week we saw that the National Court had material to show from various police agencies (known under the general heading of ‘la policía patriótica’) that the previous government had spied on fifty-five deputies of the left-wing Podemos group and affiliates – including the party leaders (as were back in 2015 and 2016) Pablo Iglesias, Irene Montero, Joan Baldoví and Yolanda Díaz. The Minister of the Interior from the Rajoy government and Opus Dei supernumerary Jorge Fernández Díaz is already notorious for its actions against its rivals (when not honouring Nuestra Señora María Santísima del Amor – a plaster saint from a Málaga church – with the Medalla de Oro al Mérito Policial back in 2014).

The question must be – have things changed?

Yolanda Díaz on Twitter: ‘The PP has never accepted the rules of democracy. They spied on us massively to prevent changes in Spain. They didn't get it. Such serious news should push us to continue democratizing institutions. The PP must respond to Spanish society’.

Pablo Iglesias says ‘The dirty war has been enormously successful. I had to leave politics while our party, although it remains alive, has less electoral strength now than it did eight years ago’.

Joan Baldoví (Compromís) thinks that this is: ‘One of the most serious things that has happened in our democracy’.

Juan Carlos Monedero (co-founder of Podemos) claims in a TV interview that: "Worse things have been done to Podemos than were ever done to the Catalán independentistas".

Journalist Javier Durán on Twitter: ‘The PP has used the Ministry of the Interior and the Police to spy on political rivals. - The Guardia Civil has confirmed the party's meddling in several elections, including the last ones in which it came to government’.

From the beginning, it was a ‘dirty war against Podemos’, with the creation of the fake-news that Pablo Iglesias was financed by Venezuela and Iran through the Operación Pisa (‘Pablo Iglesias Sociedad Anónima’), as promoted in January 2016 by El Confidencial, OKDiario and other far-from-impartial sources. Then, as the Chief Inspector José Ángel Fuentes Gago said a few months later (after flying to New York to investigate another fake claim against Iglesias), ‘If it helps us prevent Podemos from getting into the Government, then so much the better for everyone’. One title chosen at random from OKDiario claims ‘The confession of the Narcodictudura Chavista (i.e., Venezuela) spy chief to Judge García-Castellón, that Maduro's assistant gave $600,000 to Juan Carlos Monedero at the Meliá Hotel in Caracas’.

Venezuela in those days was as frightening to a conservative Spaniard as Cuba was (and is today) to a conservative American.

How extensive were the police inquiries? A report says that ‘fifty-seven detachments, from special units to simple patrol cars, were involved in consulting restricted databases to find out the background, travel and accommodation of Pablo Iglesias and other party members’. Some 6,900 improper searches were made in the Ministry of Interior’s sensitive files in 2016 and 2017 by the national police says another source.

Following a complaint by Iglesias and others, we read that ‘Judge Santiago Pedraz agrees to investigate the dirty war of the PP Government against Podemos. The magistrate admits the party's complaint against Mariano Rajoy’s secretary of state for security together with the operational chief of the Police appointed by the PP and other commanders of the Corps for "alleged prospective investigations" and without judicial control’.

Ctxt, a Podemos supporting news-site, says that ‘…The determination of the PP and Rajoy to remain in power explains this dirty and illegal spying operation. It is probably the most serious affront to Parliament since the failed 1981 coup against Congress by Antonio Tejero. In both cases the goal was to subvert the popular will expressed at the polls…’

Like Podemos or not – one still needs to be seen to be abiding by the rules.  

Let’s talk about immigration. Not in the sense that some people might prefer to use this word over the out-of-fashion ‘expat’, but rather focus on those poor folk who make their way here in leaky cayucos from the coast of Africa, with an outboard motor and a larcenous captain wearing a life-saver.

Many drowning in the attempt.

People dream of moving to Spain. They come from Latin America (speaking Spanish and usually practicing Catholics). They come from the Orient to open a bazaar and make life cheaper, if more confusing, for the rest of us. They come from Africa, and work in the fields and the greenhouses, doing the jobs that no one else will do. Rate them for the Spanish as easy, middling and difficult (unless they’re good at football).

I don’t know where you stand on this subject – after all, there are one thousand five hundred million people living in Africa, and on a bad day, they might all decide to move to Spain, whether because there are no jobs there, or because of climate change, or civil war or rampant disease, or just a strong desire to see the Alhambra once in this lifetime (and anyway, granddaddy still has a key). And no, of course there’s not enough room for all of them – but there’s certainly room for some of them.

There aren’t many solutions to this – let’s call it a threat – and one of them, as proposed by the spokesperson for the Partido Popular last week, certainly isn’t the answer.

He says: send the Spanish navy to patrol the Mauritanian coast.

And then what – if they don’t stop (or politely wait until dark), then sink them with a judiciously placed artillery shell?

Admiral Teodoro López Calderón gave his answer to Pablo Casado back in 2020 on this very point: “If any Spanish warship encounters a boat in a situation where the lives of those on it are in danger, its obligation of all kinds, legal, moral... is to rescue them. And that's what would be done".   

I suppose we find those from Africa to be more of a threat to us, and this (with a little encouragement from the right-wing) will skewer us towards calling for protection from the nationalists. Whether Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, the AfD or (here in Spain), Vox, Alvise, Hazte Oir, Abogados Cristianos, Manos Limpias and a disturbing number of judges. So far, we have more or less dodged the bullet from these false prophets, but we can be sure that they will keep on banging that particular drum.

Somebody on Facebook says: ‘Let’s hope Le Pen wins. It’s about time Europe closes its borders and solves the migration crisis by moving millions of people out of Europe’. Maybe send them all to Ruanda – one place in Africa being much like another?

An editorial at elDiario.es says: ‘With few issues you can be more irresponsible and more incendiary, in exchange for a handful of votes, than with immigration. And the PP has decided that it does not want to give Vox even half an inch of advantage. Feijóo has launched his closest spokesperson to demand that we send the military to prevent migrants from reaching our shores by boat. Party spokesperson Miguel Tellado wants Navy ships, prepared for war and useless for small boat rescue, to be deployed off the African coast. It is unfeasible at many levels, even the head of the Navy says it, but it doesn't matter: what the PP wants is to match the xenophobic populism of both Vox and Alvise, in the hope of plugging the flight of young votes that are moving to even more radical options’.

The lure of the far-right perceived threat of the ausländer is a popular call. The more they come, the more we become angry or fearful, and the more we support the right-wingers. Whether the immigrants are going to both take our jobs (while going on benefits), move into five-star hotels paid for by our taxes and either disrespect our women, infect us with terrible diseases or perhaps blow us all up, the far-right will make gains. If the dreadful Madame Le Pen lost this time around, there’s always another chance somewhere.

We have elections in the UK, where no one will talk about Brexit. In France, there’s elections as well – with a likelihood of the far-right getting in (dare we ask: ‘Frexit’?). In the USA, following that dreadful televised debate between Mr Biden and Mr Trump (talk about Jekyll and Hyde) the chances for us all surviving to 2030 appear to be receding by the hour – unless someone pulls the plug on Brandon (Biden’s nickname) and they can find someone a fraction younger for November 5th. You saw – by the way – that the Supreme Court, packed with Trump appointees, just gave the Orange One presidential immunity?

Over here, we are about through with elections for the time being – the Europeans are over, the Basques and – hopefully – Catalonians are sorted (although they may have to try again in October) and the deadlock with the CGPJ (the judges’ citadel) is finally resolved, five years past its ‘best before’ date.

So let us tiptoe down to Castilla y León, a quiet and un-touristy bit of Spain run by the PP and Vox doing what they do best.

There are nine provinces in this unwieldy autonomous region (the largest in Spain): Ávila, Burgos, León, Palencia, Salamanca, Segovia, Soria, Valladolid and Zamora. Before it was gathered into one administrative chunk in 1983, it was understood that León, Salamanca and Zamora were in one region and the other six were in the other (a bit like the Kingdom of Granada being the eastern half of Andalucía: Jaén, Granada, Málaga and Almería). Then (since we are on the subject), there’s the Basque Country with three provinces, which claims Navarre and its capital Pamplona as its fourth province… plus three more currently located in France: the Greater Euskal Herria (they’ll keep the capital in Pamplona while they are about it). And for variety, don’t forget Catalonia…

León was also looking to be a uni-provincial autonomy (like Madrid) in the early eighties, as indeed – apparently – was Segovia (and don’t even ask about Cartagena which has spent the last 150 years trying to remove itself from Murcia – another uni-provincial autonomy). León likes to think that it has three provinces (counties maybe) which are Ponferrada, Astorga y León, while ‘Greater León’ might be as many as seven provinces (the other four being Zamora, Toro, Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo).

As for its larger and not entirely welcome senior partner, Wiki says that ‘Castilla is a historic region of Spain with imprecise borders located in the middle of the country’ (mind you, there’s also a Castilla-La Mancha down the road with Toledo and other fine cities and provinces). And anyway, don’t we speak castellano?

Still, easier to lump all the 14 provinces into two regions: Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha, and how many autonomous regions do we need anyway (there are currently 17 plus Ceuta and Melilla)?

Heading north again, we discover that CyL doesn’t have a recognised capital, but its government offices are in Valladolid.

And so to the issue of the day.

The leoneses want ‘out’. Not just out of Castilla, but preferably out of León as well. That’s right, ‘Lexit’ is a thing. Their plan is two separate entities: León being one, and Castilla y the Other Bits of León We Didn’t Want being the other. Do you think it could fly?

By the way, it’s Llión in Leonés (Leonian as it were).

We wonder why – well, it all goes back to a king in 910 who moved the Asturian court to León (giving the good people of that city presumptive airs). And yes, La Constitución Española allows for changes in the regions (although, they might not have foreseen this particular proposal). A plenary vote in the provincial diputación last week favoured the idea of a three-province Léon, with the PSOE and local party in favour and the PP and Vox voting against (while – for what it’s worth – the other two provinces, Zamora and Salamanca, remain unimpressed by the idea). The mayor of the City of León mostly agrees, but thinks the single province of León should join with Asturias (yet another uni-provincial autonomy).

The government says it would accept an eighteenth region of Spain (if it comes to this), made up of León, Zamora and Salamanca, but notes that there are not enough votes (they would need a two-thirds majority) neither in the three León provinces nor in Valladolid.

Scotland take note!