The last few weeks have been interesting, with the floods in Valencia (the regional president still hasn’t quit after 220 deaths through his inattention), the woeful attacks against the government by the PP leader Núñez Feijóo, and of course the disappointing results in the American elections of November 5th.
I am currently in the USA, enjoying a visit there and staying with two of my kids. The news here tends towards the parochial (bibles in the state classrooms kind of stuff – yes, I’m in the Midwest) and, frankly, if it wasn’t for the Internet… I would still be thinking that the world is flat (along with many millions of co-believers).
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Part of the future team enjoying burgers on Trump's aircraft
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As far as Trump goes, we will only know how bad things are going to become once he is sworn in on January 20th, and I am sure it is going to be terrible – whether thanks to an alarmingly ancient president with signs of dementia, or through his choices of a new department to eradicate Federal overspending (with Elon Musk in charge), or an anti-vaxxer for Health Secretary, a Fox newscaster for Defence, or a pro-Russia politician for Intelligence.
Then there's the forthcoming deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants using the military, under 'a National Emergency'.
In Spain, Feijóo has been trying to pass the blame for the many deaths in the Valencia flooding on to other shoulders than those of the regional president Mazón (who was busy having a very long lunch with a journalist on the day of the DANA and wouldn’t be interrupted). The main targets being both the Spanish weather agency (the AEMET) and the Minister for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera, now (and since) confirmed in Brussels as the new vice-president of the European Commission. ‘Her appointment, as you know, has been achieved overcoming lies and manoeuvres, over which truth and evidence have finally triumphed", said Pedro Sánchez.
Feijóo’s opposition to her ascendency was considered – even in Europe – as an anti-patriotic manoeuvre in his endless and rather futile struggle to take Spain in some new direction. After all, the economy is doing well, and there is little suggestion that it would do better with someone else in the engine room.
Otherwise, we are left only with opportunities (as allowable with a necessary alliance with Vox).
Fresh hope for Feijóo comes from a businessman convicted of an enormous scam – buying and selling petrol using fictitious companies which were then closed before the IVA came due – who has now been allowed out of jail after claiming that he had been giving bribes to various senior PSOE members. Victor Aldama has so far failed to provide any proof of his disbursements.
Fresh public protests in Valencia against Mazón are scheduled for November 29th and 30th. For the organisers, ‘the Valencian Executive, with Carlos Mazón at the helm, has demonstrated a "serious inability and inefficiency" in managing any type of crisis. Thus, they have condemned the fact that, one month after the catastrophe, "the basic needs of the people affected are still not covered"’.
In other news, the Council of Ministers has approved a reform of the regulations of the Immigration Law that reduces deadlines and simplifies requirements for regularizing migrants living in Spain without papers, which could benefit some 300,000 people each year over the next three years.