All posts by Carmen Gomaro

Carmen Gomaro - leading international news and investigative reporter. Worked at various media outlets in Spain, Argentina and Colombia, including Diario de Cádiz, CNN+, Telemadrid and EFE.

Storm Daniel has hit Libya hard, claiming the lives of at least 2,000 people and leaving 10,000 missing, wreaking havoc on a country already under tension.. Years of fighting between rival militias have weakened Libyan state structures to the point where there are two opposing governments at both ends of the country, operating with the support of local militias and foreign powers.. The chaos is a breeding ground for human trafficking networks, which have encouraged crossings into Europe through the Libyan coast, taking advantage of increased restrictions in Greece and Turkey.

The largest number of those crossing the Mediterranean to Italy from the west come from sub-Saharan Africa, but migrants taking the eastern Libyan route come from neighboring Egypt, as well as Pakistan, Bangladesh or Syria.. Several investigations indicate that the eastern government would be facilitating the entry of migrants into the country, allowing their stay through direct flights from Bangladesh and Syria.. To cope with the longer journey, smugglers are renting fishing boats to transport migrants. In June, a fishing boat from Libya capsized off the Greek coast, causing more than 700 deaths, mostly Pakistanis, Egyptians and Syrians.

According to UN data, Libya hosts more than 600,000 migrants of forty nationalities, including 40,000 registered asylum seekers.. Since 2015, it has repatriated more than 60,000 migrants, while an undetermined number of people remain in detention centers for illegal migrants, where human rights are seriously violated, according to dozens of humanitarian organizations.. A UN investigation revealed that there are indications that crimes against humanity have been committed against migrants, perpetrated by both state security forces and armed groups.. The harassment is not only carried out in the centers, but also in open waters and cases have been documented in which live ammunition was used against migrants and refugees.

In the last five years, the European Union and the Italian Government in particular have increased their cooperation with Libya to stop the departure of migrants from its coasts, with the training of the Libyan coast guard and investments in missions to support the authorities.. Italy has allocated at least 32.5 million euros since 2017 and the EU 59 million, according to data from the humanitarian organization Arci.

The king of Morocco visits those injured in the earthquake, more than 72 hours later

More than 72 hours after the devastating earthquake that shook Morocco, the king, Mohamed VI, went this Tuesday to visit the wounded admitted to the Marrakech University Hospital that bears his name.

It was his first public appearance on the ground since an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale shook several provinces in the country on Friday, causing almost 3,000 deaths and more than 5,000 injuries.

The gesture was longed for after several days of silence on the part of the monarch. Since the tragedy broke out, Mohamed VI took hours to react, unleashing all kinds of speculation. Finally, on Saturday, local media reported that he chaired an emergency meeting where he ordered the deployment of the Armed Forces to the areas affected by the earthquake, especially the provinces of Marrakech, El Houz and Taroudant.

Mohamed VI dedicated 20 minutes to the wounded at the Marrakech hospital, after arriving in a large security delegation made up of more than 40 vehicles and motorcyclists.. He visited the intensive care unit and the unit where the earthquake victims are admitted. Upon leaving the hospital, he extended his hand to the people who had gathered to see him, before leaving again.

The absence of the king had caught the attention of the population, who demanded a gesture from their authorities. According to information from several media outlets, Mohamed VI was on a private visit in Paris when the tragic landslide occurred.. Some in Morocco speculate that he was being treated for his ailments in a clinic.

Equally striking is the disappearance from the scene of the Prime Minister, Aziz Ajanouch.. The head of the Government only issued a statement of condolences on Sunday, while yesterday Monday he announced aid for the reconstruction of homes destroyed by the earthquake. In the towns affected by the wrath of nature, more actions were demanded from the authorities, but also a gesture of consolation by showing up at ground zero.

Mohamed VI donating blood for those injured in the Moroccan earthquake

“We need tents, blankets, food, but the most important thing would have been words of comfort and support from the Moroccan Government,” complained Samira, one of the neighbors who has been left homeless in the town of Mulay Ibrahim, in the High Atlas.. “All our politicians are asleep while we are on the street,” criticized Yasin Numghara.

It is said in Morocco that Achanuch was at a private party in Agadir on Friday night, where he danced until late into the night. Achanuch is the second fortune of Morocco, after the king. Owner of the most important companies in the country, Mohamed VI is estimated to have a fortune valued at 5 billion dollars. Forbes places him as the fifth richest person in all of Africa.

In the areas affected by the earthquake, troops from the Cherifian Phosphate Office (OCP) have been deployed to distribute food and tents to the most vulnerable. The OCP group is the main exporter of phosphates in the world, owned by the Royal Family. It is the closest to their king that the victims of the catastrophic shock have been.

Non-stop rise in 'liquid gold': the price of olive oil has skyrocketed by 115% since the rise began

The price of olive oil has become one of the main concerns of consumers when shopping at the supermarket.. With a liter approaching 10 euros, it is currently the product that is causing the most pressure on food inflation.. The pocketbook notices it and social indignation grows when it is confirmed that in neighboring countries it is much cheaper than in Spain, the main producer.

There are several reasons behind the price increase in our country.. Mainly, the achievement of poor harvests, reduced by the pressing drought that affects the countryside. In the last campaign, barely 663,000 tons were reached, 55% less than the previous year and far from the 1.4 million that Spain usually produces.

And this drop in production, in a market highly marked by supply and demand, is reflecting its consequences in the price.. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), olive oil has become more expensive by 52.5% in the last year, the largest annual increase since there are records.. It is the food that rises the most in the entire shopping basket.

A look at the evolution of the INE historical series reveals that this 52.5% increase is the highest in the current series and the largest since January 1996, when an annual increase of 35.7% was recorded in the category of edible oils (in the previous bases the subclass of olive oil was not included, as clarified by Statistics).

29 months of 'rally'

What's more, between March 2021 – when the rise of liquid gold began in an annual rate – until August 2023, the price has skyrocketed by almost 115% (114.8%, specifically). It has accumulated no less than 29 months of uninterrupted year-on-year increases.

And the price rally is also observed in the average spending per household on olive oil, which reached 97.7 euros annually in 2022, compared to 77.6 euros in 2021.. This represents an increase of 26%, much higher than the increase in consumption in liters, which does not even reach 3% (from 21.5 liters per home in 2021 to 22.1 liters in 2022), according to data managed by the INE .

Consequently, if we look at extra virgin (the variety that rises the most) the average price per liter currently reaches 9.67 euros, according to a study by the consumer association Facua that compares the prices of up to 50 brands in eight supermarket chains.

Differences between supermarkets

One of the main conclusions of the study is that the price difference in the liter of extra virgin olive oil reaches up to 68.1% depending on the brand and the supermarket.. And another revealing fact: the same brand of this product costs up to 45% more depending on the supermarket chain where it is purchased, a difference that in euros represents no less than four per liter.

Faced with this scenario, Facua demands that the Government investigate the escalation of prices and apply caps to profit margins in all phases of the chain, since “the increases are not only a consequence of poor olive harvests, but also of the speculation,” they say from the association.

However, the acting head of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, insisted yesterday in the press conference after the Council of Ministers that the current “context of high prices” is a consequence of bad campaigns.. And although he predicted that in the next year a higher production will be achieved and, therefore, a lower price of the product can be expected, he insisted that it is too early to be able to make an evaluation of the situation, pending the data provided by the autonomous communities. in October, as well as a price projection, since they will depend on both the rainfall and the prices set by the international raw material markets.

More expensive than in neighboring countries

The other aspect that would be affecting the price of olive oil in Spain is, directly, the level of consumption.. According to data from the International Olive Council, Spain is the largest consumer of olive oil, with 11.4 liters per year per person, compared to 7.1 liters in Italy, 5.8 liters in Portugal or 2.1 liters of France. Planas himself assured yesterday that this product is part not only of our shopping basket, but also of our culture, as an essential food of the Mediterranean diet.

Teresa Pérez Millán, managing director of the Interprofessional Organization of Spanish Olive Oil, recently explained to EL MUNDO that in Spain the price is higher than in neighboring countries because, by consuming more product, there is a greater turnover on the shelves of the stores. supermarkets and prices are more up to date. It thus justified that the price in Spain, the world's main producer of olive oil, is much higher than that reached in Italy (8.21 euros per liter on average), in France (7.52 euros) or in Portugal (6 .86 euros).

Breast cancer relapse could be triggered by chemotherapy damage to non-cancerous cells

Standard chemotherapy drugs damage surrounding non-cancerous cells, which can then awaken dormant or dormant cancer cells and promote cancer growth.

This is one of the conclusions of a study that has just been published in the journal Plos Biology, led by Ramya Ganesan of Emory University, in the USA.. The finding is important for understanding cancer recurrence and may open the door to new approaches and approaches.

Advances in cancer treatment, including new generations of chemotherapy, have significantly reduced mortality from many types of cancer, including breast cancer.. However, up to 23% of breast cancer patients experience a relapse within the first five years.. Treatment aims to destroy all cancer cells, but some cells often enter a state of dormancy, in which they stop dividing and stop responding to chemotherapy agents.. Recurrence occurs when dormant cells reawaken and begin dividing again.

Some studies have indicated that chemotherapy itself may promote escape from torpor, but the mechanism of this effect has not been clear.. To explore that question, the authors of this study worked with a cell model and a mouse model of breast cancer.

Importantly, the cell model contained both cancer cells and noncancerous stromal cells, connective tissue cells found in the breast and other tissues.

Damage to stromal cells

To carry out the research, they administered the chemotherapy drug docetaxel at physiologically relevant concentrations and discovered that even at very low doses, stromal cells were damaged, while cancer cells were not, and that the treatment induced cell cycle re-entry. in cancer cells.

What drives this awakening

The authors showed that the driver of this awakening of dormant cells was the release of two key cell signaling molecules, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) by the injured stromal cells, which acted on dormant cells to promote their growth, both in vitro and in vivo.

This finding provided potential anticancer targets, and the researchers were able to show that antibodies that neutralized G-CSF or IL-6, or a drug that blocked the mediator of those signals within cancer cells, inhibited awakening from dormancy due to to treatment with docetaxel.

These observations provide several important implications, according to the study's authors.. First, they highlight the importance of surrounding cells, not just the cancer cells themselves, in determining response to chemotherapy.. Furthermore, they provide a possible mechanistic basis for the observation that elevated serum levels of IL-6 are associated with early recurrence in breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, potentially strengthening the utility of that biomarker in treatment planning.. Third, they provide new targets for preventing recurrence.

Ramya Ganesan explains that her research reveals “a deleterious effect of cancer chemotherapy,” from the release of stromal IL-6 and G-CSF by taxane chemotherapy, which “awakened dormant breast cancer cells, a postulated mechanism for tumor relapse,” while highlighting that transient blockade of cytokine signaling during chemotherapy administration may prevent tumor recurrence.”

In his analysis of the work for Science Media Center (SMC) Spain Joan Albanell, head of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, highlights that the methodology is adequate “but limited to preclinical models so its translation to the clinic is determined”.

This study, according to Albanell, adds to the growing evidence that chemotherapy can damage non-tumor cells that are part of cancers and specifically demonstrates that it can reactivate the growth of dormant tumor cells.. Importantly, it describes mechanisms causing this tumor re-emergence in breast cancer that can be counteracted pharmacologically at an experimental level.. However, this expert points out that the translation of this research to the clinic “is still a question mark.”

For his part, Javier Cortés, director of the International Breast Cancer Center IBCC (Barcelona), founding partner of Medica Scientia innovation Research (MedSIR), a company dedicated to the development of clinical trials, and senior clinical researcher of the breast cancer research program of the Vall d'Hebron Oncology Institute has also pointed out to SMC Spain that we must take into account, first of all, that “cancer is a whole; there may be a negative interaction with one part, but a very positive one with another, the balance being absolute positive”. In that sense, he emphasizes that “there are studies that have compared giving or not giving taxanes [a type of chemotherapy] and the benefits in favor of giving them are very clear.”

Seismic studies underestimated the danger of the Atlas: it rose and narrowed too much

If in 25 million years there are any of us left here, we would see that Morocco has collided with Andalusia and the Strait of Gibraltar has been closed. The African tectonic plate would continue to push the Eurasian plate and, if geologist Christopher Scotese is right, the Iberian Peninsula will begin to rotate clockwise, and in another 25 million years, northern Spain will collide with the French coast.

For now, what is certain is that the Eurasian and African plates have been pushing each other for millions of years, like a plasticine puzzle in which the pieces mix, or rise, or submerge, causing thousands of earthquakes a year.. The last one, this weekend in the Atlas mountain range, with the epicenter more than 700 kilometers from the collision of tectonic plates. “It is not predictable, but not impossible”, points out seismologist Juan Vicente Cantavella, from the National Geographic Institute (IGN). The Agadir earthquake, at the oceanic mouth of the mountain range, and even further away from the Plate collision, was 5.8 and in 1960 left 12,000 to 15,000 fatalities.

At 11:11 p.m. on September 8, the earth shook 60 kilometers southwest of Marrakech, and in Spain the IGN received more than 500 warnings, most of them from Andalusia, but also from Madrid and the islands of La Palma and El Hierro.

According to a study of the Atlas faults published in 2006 by researchers from the Tectonics Laboratory of the Pierre et Marie-Curie University, the Paul Cézanne University of Marseille, the Mohamed V University of Rabat and the Cergy Pontoise, the Atlas faults They had “the potential to generate earthquakes of between 6.1 and 6.4” at most on the Richter scale.. They fell short, making it harder to predict if, when, and of what magnitude there will be more.

Itahiza Domínguez, a seismologist at IGN, explains on social networks that seismic hazard maps have “a problem”: they are based on knowledge of the past, but if this is limited, or the recurrence times of earthquakes are long, it can be “underestimate” the danger. And this is believed to be what happened with the Moroccan earthquake, since the pre-existing map gave a lower probability in the hypocenter area compared to other points in the country, and in North Africa in general.. In the Iberian Peninsula, the most dangerous points are in the provinces of Granada and Murcia. In the first, a 6.7 earthquake was recorded in 1884 with a death toll of more than 1,000.. Lorca's in 2011 was 5.1 and caused 9 deaths and more than 300 injuries. “The focal mechanism does not match, and could be a fault in the southern Atlas. We are using five stations, but the closest to the earthquake is 150 kilometers away,” explains Cantavella.

Nineteen minutes after the first earthquake, a 5.1 aftershock occurred. And at 1:21 in the morning the third, 4.6. The next one arrived at 8:38, 4.2. The next one 22 minutes later, also 4.2. And the sixth at 12:19 noon, 4.1. The earth trembled on both the northern and southern fault lines of the Atlas mountain range, as if they were having a seismic conversation, which left fatalities wherever buildings had been built: Al Hauz, Taroudant or Chichaoua.

Scientists from the University of Granada (UGR), belonging to the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences and the Department of Geodynamics in collaboration with the University of Jaén and Moroccan universities, believe that there is a “high possibility of aftershocks of the earthquake occurring during months”, and that of course they will feel again in our country.

These seismic movements narrow and raise the mountain range at a rate of 0.1 millimeters per year, according to the same study by Franco-Moroccan universities.. More recent geodetic measurements obtained with GPS records of millimeter precision show that the Atlas is narrowing at a rate of one millimeter per year, which according to UGR scientists, contrasts with its low seismicity.. At the same time, 700 kilometers away, the Strait of Gibraltar narrows at a rate of between 4 and 25 millimeters per year, as a result of the same plate movement.

The geophysical and geological studies carried out by his team show that under the continental crust they discovered an anomalous, hot and not very dense mantle that supports the relief of this mountain range, and is related to the Quaternary volcanism of the region.. In a few months we will know if textbooks should correct the 4,167 meters of Toubkal, the highest peak in the mountain range.

According to the model developed by the US Geological Survey, the Moroccan earthquake was caused by displacement on a fault surface about 30 kilometers long (horizontally) by 20 kilometers wide (in the direction of dip of the fault). fault towards the interior of the Earth). It produced a 1.5 meter rupture, which began about 25 kilometers deep, and propagated radially, until it stopped about 10 kilometers from the Earth's surface.

Only one of the five PSOE deputies who went with 'Tito Berni' to Ramses is still in Congress

“Not 10, not 15: only five deputies went to dinner and they did so at separate tables and respecting the curfew (…). There is nothing more, nothing, zero”. This is how the PSOE settled the internal investigation into the members of its parliamentary group who had gone to the Ramses restaurant in Madrid at the request of its colleague Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo – nicknamed Tito Berni -, forced to resign last February for his alleged involvement in the Mediator case, and other people whom he presented as businessmen.

Of those five politicians who ended up acknowledging that they had attended the aforementioned establishment in the fall of 2020, when the restrictions due to the Covid pandemic were still in force, but denying any link with the corruption plot, only one has repeated on the lists of the general elections of 23-J and has managed to retain his seat in the Carrera de San Jerónimo chamber. It was the national Ferraz leadership that, through the body that supervises the “proposals” of the territories and introduces the changes it considers appropriate, forced the reinstatement of its name accompanied by the promotion of the second to the first position that in November 2019 Margarita Robles had occupied.

“It can hurt us,” the general secretary of the Castilian-Leonese socialists, Luis Tudanca, then lamented about the impact at the polls that the Mediator case could have for his party, although he added that it was “something exaggerated and false.”. His voice had also been the only internal critic that was raised in the Federal Committee that definitively and unanimously approved the 23-J candidacies to say that he felt “outraged”, “defrauded” and “enormously disappointed” by the imposition of both the head of the list in Congress for Ávila and that of the Senate for Valladolid, Javier Izquierdo.

Of the other four deputies who attended the dinner with Tito Berni at the Ramses, one of them, Uxía Tizón, would have repeated on the socialist ballot of Orense by decision of the Provincial Committee, although without obtaining a seat, since she was number three and the party only achieved one seat in the Lower House for this constituency. In this case it was the regional leadership that chose to leave out its until now national representative and the Federal Executive limited themselves to endorsing his departure.

“The presence or absence of PSdeG candidates on the lists has nothing to do with any controversy in Madrid, but rather responds to the dynamics of the party in Galicia,” sources from the party stated yesterday.. In this sense, they point out that both Uxía Tizón, Guillermo Meijón and Ana Prieto, who had been parliamentarians for Pontevedra and Lugo, respectively, “completed a stage in the Cortes and now other people entered, without further ado.”

The fifth deputy who was in Ramses, Indalecio Gutiérrez Salinas, had made his debut in Congress in February 2020 as a representative for Almería after the resignation of the former Minister of Culture and Sports José Guirao. This newspaper tried to contact the Socialist Provincial Group this Tuesday, without success, to find out the reason for its exclusion from the lists.

Involved

In the Mediator case, two socialist politicians have been arrested and released on charges: the former general director of Livestock of the Government of the Canary Islands Taishet Fuentes, who had been dismissed in 2022 due to “loss of confidence”, and his predecessor in office and uncle, Fuentes Curbelo, who was forced by the party to renounce his title as national deputy before images of him in hotels with prostitutes and drugs with the intermediary Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, who gives its name to the plot, were made public.

What is being investigated in this network are the contacts with businessmen from the islands who were supposedly convinced that, in exchange for money or gifts, they would use “their influences” to obtain benefits.. The Prosecutor's Office places “at the apex of the network” Tito Berni, his nephew and Francisco Espinosa Navas, Major General of the Civil Guard when the events occurred.

Impact on the Canary Islands

The scandal of the Mediador case exploded, in turn, like a cluster bomb in the Government of the Canary Islands. Apart from Taishet Fuentes and two other former high-ranking public officials involved in the alleged collection of bribes in exchange for contracts and other types of aid, Navarro Tacoronte directly targeted the then regional president, also a socialist Ángel Víctor Torres, in an interview with EL MUNDO in February of this year: “I knew it, flat out.”

The aforementioned, in turn, firmly denied it and announced that he would appear in the case to defend his “honorability” in the face of “false statements without evidence from those who have been proven to have lied in court and are going to be sentenced as were on several occasions for violating the law. Three months later he won the elections with more votes than in 2019, although an agreement between the Canarian Coalition and the PP ended up removing him from his position.

Outcry against the "red carpet" for Josu Ternera at the San Sebastián Festival

The documentary in which journalist Jordi Évole interviews former ETA leader Josu Ternera, which will premiere at the San Sebastián Film Festival, has generated loud opposition even days before its broadcast. So much so that numerous intellectuals, politicians, former politicians and victims of terrorism have signed a manifesto in which they ask the management of the event to “exclude” this screening from its agenda for “whitewashing terrorism and trivializing very serious crimes” for which the ETA leader, “still a fugitive from justice , faces a tax request of 2,354 years in prison.

Specifically, 500 citizens – “the vast majority Basque,” says the text – have signed this complaint in the last few hours, which was devised by former activists of the Basta Ya platform in San Sebastián. At the forefront are prominent names from the political, cultural and intellectual scene, key in the fight against terrorism in recent decades: Rosa Díez, Fernando Aramburu, Fernando Savater, Andrés Trapiello, Maite Pagazaurtundúa, Carlos MartínezGorriarán, Carlos García Adanero, Marimar Blanco, Félix de Azúa or Rubén Múgica, among others. They demand that the festival – which takes place between September 22 and 30 – not broadcast the documentary.

The film, titled Don't Call Me Ternera, has been produced by Netflix Spain and will have its world premiere at the San Sebastián Film Festival.. «It is essential that the film serves on a pedagogical level for that entire generation that has decided to forget or not look towards that place in our history that is very recent.. “It is an exercise in historical memory,” declared Évole and Màrius Sánchez, co-directors of the documentary.

Carlos Martínez Gorriarán, professor at the University of the Basque Country, co-founder of UPyD and signatory of the manifesto, regrets the “showcase” represented by the broadcast of the documentary about Josu Ternera. Doing so, he reflects in conversation with this newspaper, is putting out “a red carpet” for the former leader of ETA who delves into “the constant attempt at normalization” of the terrorist group with the help of public organizations.. “There is a double standard, it is intolerable,” he considers.

“It represents the triumph of ETA's totalitarianism,” considers the writer and EL MUNDO columnist Andrés Trapiello, who has also adhered to the manifesto and denounces the “hypocrisy” and of Spanish cinema, which a few weeks ago criticized the withdrawal of films in some municipalities governed by the right but do not comment on a documentary that “whitewashes the murderers”. The manifesto serves, he explains, to “portray” the management of a festival that sees no problem, he says, in the screening of an interview with one of the big bosses of ETA while ignoring in 2020 the documentary by director Iñaki Arteta in which showed the trace of terrorism in the Basque Country.

The San Sebastián Film Festival responded yesterday to the manifesto, denying that it was going to exclude its broadcast and defending that the documentary “neither justifies nor whitewashes ETA because this Festival would not screen a film with those premises,” at the same time that it urged the signatories to view the film before judging it: “It must be seen first and subjected to criticism later and not the other way around.”

Who is the leader of Jumbo? "The strongest must win"

“I don't want them to give me the Vuelta, that's not a sport, the strongest has to win it,” admits without losing his smile Sepp Kuss, the gregarious man dressed in red, who on the ramps of Bejes, in the Liébana region , his dreams of conquering the Vuelta a España, which he still leads, began to fade.. And not because of the opposition a rival; It is his two companions from Jumbo Visma, whom the American climber helped so many times, who threaten his ephemeral reign. And here, the morbidity.

To know more
Back to Spain. Vingegaard wins in Bejes for the drama of Van Hooydonck and approaches the leadership of the Vuelta

Vingegaard wins in Bejes for the drama of Van Hooydonck and approaches the leadership of the Vuelta

To know more
Cycling. Jumbo cyclist Nathan Van Hooydonck, in critical condition after a traffic accident

Jumbo cyclist Nathan Van Hooydonck, in critical condition after a traffic accident

It is a strange Vuelta due to the unprecedented nature of the panorama.. The first three share colors, bus and guidelines. And, with Remco Evenepoel canceled (he came in second to last yesterday), it does not seem that Juan Ayuso and Enric Mas have enough power to discuss that never-before-seen podium. In any case, this Wednesday at Angliru everything will be much clearer. At most, on Thursday at Cruz de Linares. Two very hard stages at this point. “The third week is going to decide everything,” reasons Kuss, who showed some weakness in Bejes. Punished by his own teammate Roglic.

He gave up five seconds to the other roosters in the final meters, including Primoz, the one who was predestined to win on Tuesday. Those were the orders. But everything is so strange that no opponent came out to stop Jonas Vingegaard's early attack. And the Dane, increasingly in tune as the stages of the Spanish round progress, with his strength increasingly recovered after July's exhibition in the Tour, opened an unexpected gap. He dedicated the victory to his teammate Nathan Van Hooydonck – he suffered a serious car accident in Belgium in the morning, after suffering a heart attack – and also scratched the bonus at the finish line. Today, at the start of Ribadesella, only 29 seconds will separate him from the lead. From his partner.

Because that, who is the leader of Jumbo, seems the only thing to be decided in this Vuelta. If it will be the egos or the forces that clarify the panorama. If Roglic, who is third now at a minute and a half, will settle. If Kuss has any gasoline, self-love or freedom left. If Ayuso or Mas or Landa or Vlasov will be capable of some heroics that cast doubt on the tyranny of the Dutch squad. At least avoid the yellow and black photo on the podium in Madrid. “I want to enjoy this moment and not think about the general classification,” Vingegaard says, although everything indicates that he is the chosen one.

«I would like to win and I still have a margin, but I would also be happy if Jonas wins. “I'm going to face tomorrow's stage [for today] with good feelings,” Kuss counted on his impeccable Spanish.. The Vuelta has five stages left, three of them with slopes and enough distance to change any script. But none as feared as this Wednesday, in less than 125 kilometers, with the Colladiella and the Cordal for appetizers before facing the mythical Angliru (13.1 kilometers at 9.4%) and all, almost certainly, under the Asturian rain. It seems designed for the small Vingegaard, but Ayuso, who says that he already made the podium last year, that fourth place is not worth it and is willing to do anything, threatens: “The Angliru is a very special summit.”. I would love to be in contention for the stage and get the victory. I've lost time, but it's a new day. The last time the Angliru was reached, Alberto Contador, one of my idols, won, and I hope to be his successor.

The "relief" for De la Fuente: Yamal's "sparks", Nico's 'candy' and Ferran's premonitory tattoo

Winged, fast, shameless and extremely youthful players to bridge the gap that opened in the confidence in Luis de la Fuente. Lamile Yamal and Nico Williams have been the breath of fresh air that the team needed not only to straighten the path to the European Championship in Germany. If they put it together against Georgia to add to a historic rout, the weak Cyprus had to be dismantled in three blows to force it to pick up another bag of goals. “It has been a relief for everyone,” the coach admitted without hesitation.

De la Fuente took the children out to recess this time at the beginning. Impossible not to hear how his talent asks for passage. Spain does not have enough differential players and Williams, but especially Yamal, showed that they are. Nico during the 45 minutes before his injury, which hurt in Bilbao. They were enough for him to assist Gavi and Mikel Merino. “He gave me some candy,” the Basque admitted.

Lamile had a handful of more minutes. “He has those sparks of genius… What blocks others, they interpret normally. You have to protect him and take care of him. Be prudent and be calm,” claimed the coach. Prudencia also asked for another starter and scorer. “Sometimes we forget that he is 16 years old because he lives in a man's world, but he is a child. He has nerve, as well as humility and work. And with that he can go far,” Merino ventured.

Baena, in 72 seconds

“We have a star,” admitted Joselu, another protagonist of the night in Granada. Internationality came late but with added productivity. Since that debut in March against Norway, in which he scored a double in 4 minutes and 15 seconds, two more have arrived, one served on a plate by his brother-in-law Dani Carvajal. “We don't rehearse it at home, huh,” he joked.

Ferran Torres also shouted, who joined at the last minute for this duel after three long absences. You try, you make a mistake, you get up, it has been tattooed on his back since this summer.. And that's what he did, get up. He came off the bench to relieve Yamal and scored two goals in ten minutes. No matter how much they shake him, the Valencian showed that he resists like a reed. Álex Baena, who made his debut and scored the third fastest goal in the history of the national team in 72 seconds, will not forget the game either.

Enough for De la Fuente to smile for the result, the two wins, and for his bet. So much so that from Georgia to Granada he only made three changes, due to injury. Yes, the rival was very inferior and ended up beaten, but if something works, it is better not to change. And even less when you are still in the eye of the hurricane. “It is very difficult to achieve goals and we are happy to win with authority. Expectations have been more than met.” In the midst of the murky atmosphere, perhaps one cannot ask for more.