The PSOE intensifies contacts to tie control of the Congress Table. “There are many conversations,” said the deputy general secretary of the socialists, María Jesús Montero, during a visit to Campo de Gibraltar. The head of the Treasury is, together with Félix Bolaños, the person in charge appointed by Pedro Sánchez to negotiate with potential investiture partners the formation of the body that governs the Chamber. The flying goal is set on August 17, when the Cortes are inaugurated. And the fact that the vote is secret and in a ballot box makes it difficult for any amount to distribute the nine seats on the Board, which is key for a hypothetical PSOE and Sumar government to carry out its political action.. Or so that the opposition, if it controls the body, hinders the work of the Executive

The arithmetic that came out of the elections on July 23 has forced the PSOE to make full use of it to be able to articulate the sums that allow it to stay, with Sumar, five of the nine seats. There are voices in the left-wing coalition —especially in Podemos— that advocate giving a seat to one of the nationalist and pro-independence parties that should be part of the vote for a possible investiture of Pedro Sánchez. But the socialists are not for the work, at least from the outset. And there is a weighty argument that has to do with the problem of giving a seat to a group and depriving the rest of the members of the hypothetical investiture..

The counterparts that are being considered at this moment of the negotiation are those typical of a negotiation of the Table, points out a socialist source. This translates into the possibility of granting their own group to Junts and ERC, which due to their results on 23-J would not have the automatic right to do so. “We are not going to give details about the claims of the parties and the proposals of the PSOE”, Montero has settled in Cádiz, who has insisted on the need to maintain “discretion and prudence”. The public message is the same that Félix Bolaños gave after 23-J, although, after a few days, he did throw a dart at ERC and Junts to get them to abandon “maximum positions”. But, a week later, the term is shortened and there is a new ingredient to add to the menu, the march of Meritxell Batet, who has renounced being the socialist candidate to preside over the Lower House. The PSC leader, who headed her party's list in Barcelona, has expressed her “honour” for the position she has held and has shown her “gratitude” for the support. The former minister has also been convinced that a “progressive majority” will be formed in the Table and that it will be a comrade in ranks who is the third authority of the State in this XV legislature.

Montero has also had good words for Batet and the work he has carried out “in a difficult and complicated legislature”. The added complication that appears in this new mandate has been one of the reasons that have led the Catalan to resign from the position, according to this newspaper.. “She is one of the most important women in the Socialist Party and will continue to work,” said the Minister of Finance in Cádiz, who has puffed up the result achieved by the list headed by Batet in Catalonia.

The number two of the PSOE has not given clues as to who can be the substitute or substitute for Batet at the head of Congress, although there are names already on the fore, such as Bolaños himself. The current parliamentary spokesperson for the PSOE, Patxi López, who was also president of the Lower House in the short-lived legislature that came out of the general elections of December 2015, is also circulating. Other names such as Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis cannot be ruled out either. , Vice President of Congress for the last four years and member of the Federal Executive Commission of the PSOE.

The Civil Guard verified in January that a person residing in a town in Segovia was unloading trucks with palletized merchandise at his home. It was then that the investigation of the Canaleja operation began, which has now borne fruit: the agents have seized nearly 45 tons of lithium batteries accumulated in a clandestine warehouse in the home of the detainee in Otero de Herreros, a municipality of just 1,000 population. This person, supposedly, was engaged in the irregular introduction of this material into Spain without any type of control.. Then, allegedly, he manipulated it and sold it fraudulently.

It is estimated that the subject was able to collect up to one and a half million euros thanks to this illegal activity. The residents of the area were oblivious to the task that their neighbor carried out inside his home. Much less, of the risk situation to which they were exposed due to the high degree of danger of lithium.

The arrested person is accused of crimes of risk caused by explosion or other agents, against natural resources and the environment, against the Public Treasury and against Social Security. In addition, the Benemérita was also able to verify that he carried out suspicious transactions from other countries. Despite the security measures he adopted to avoid being identified, the lithium was later sold to national and foreign buyers through web pages or instant messaging..

a secret store

The detainee, according to the investigators, devised a plan to make his business more profitable. When the agents entered his home —in an urbanization on the outskirts of the municipality—, they discovered that the lower part had been excavated. In this way, he gained space to store the material. In fact, it was in this nook where the largest number of batteries were found, some of them in poor condition and clearly tampered with.. And to separate the lithium based on its quality, the alleged perpetrator installed a container in the patio of his house for the best preserved batteries.. In addition, in a room in his home he installed a workplace with the necessary tools for handling the devices..

Lithium is a dangerous chemical and can cause irreversible skin damage.. For this reason, the handling and handling of said material must be carried out with special care.. Its transfer from one place to another must be carried out with vehicles authorized for the transport of dangerous goods.. This did not happen: the detainee never informed the courier companies of the content of his shipment. The Canaleja operation is, so far, the most important at a national and European level in relation to stored lithium waste.

The president of the Second Section of the Provincial Court of Navarra, José Francisco Cobo Sáenz, was involved in a traffic accident on Saturday in which his car collided with another vehicle. According to reports to El Confidencial police sources, when the Civil Guard went to the scene, they subjected the magistrate to a breathalyzer test and he tested positive.. This 64-year-old judge presided over the court that tried and convicted the members of the San Fermín Pack in 2018 for a crime of sexual abuse, a ruling that generated widespread social rejection by not classifying the acts as rape..

According to the sources consulted, the events took place on August 5 at 8:45 p.m. at kilometer 59 of the LR-113 road, in the municipality of Baños de Río Tobía (La Rioja).. This newspaper has tried to obtain the magistrate's version of events, but has avoided making statements. He has limited himself to communicating that he assumes responsibility for what happened. The police sources consulted affirm that José Francisco Cobo addressed the agents in a polite manner at all times.

Before the members of the Civil Guard who went to the place, the judge introduced himself as president of the Second Section of the Provincial Court of Navarra, said that he had been practicing the profession for 40 years and also remarked that he had had the opportunity to intervene in connection with many accidents. Now it has been he himself who has been involved in a sinister road driving, in this case, under the influence of alcohol.

Legal sources specify that the Logroño court —to which that area corresponds— which was on duty on Saturday has not initiated criminal proceedings for a crime against road safety. Due to the rate of alcohol that it presented, the facts were settled through administrative channels, for which presumably it will be sanctioned with a fine.. In the accident, there was material damage, but neither the judge nor the driver of the other car had to suffer serious injuries, according to the first information.

José Francisco Cobo Sáenz is a veteran of the judicial career. One of the most publicized causes that he has had to face was the sexual assault perpetrated by five Sevillians on a young woman from Madrid during the Sanfermines festivities in 2016.. After the trial sessions, the section he presides over issued a sentence in March 2018. The resolution, in which Cobo Sáenz was a speaker, imposed nine years in prison for sexual abuse on each of the five defendants.

That was the controversial ruling that also had a dissenting opinion from another of the court magistrates, Ricardo Javier González González, who defended the acquittal of La Manada and came to use the word jolgorio to describe what happened in a portal in Pamplona in the one in which the five men surrounded their victim. After exhausting the appeal, the Supreme Court ended up establishing the facts as a violation and imposed 15 years in prison on each of the defendants..

The last decision adopted by the Second Section of the Provincial Court on this matter was to reject a sentence reduction for violators under the new sentence ranges established by the law of only yes is yes. This claim by the Sevillian lawyer has been, for months, in the hands of the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra.

He arrived to succeed because there were no more goals. His was not the trajectory of others, nor did he pretend to be; He arrived to climb the steps three at a time until he was at the top of the ladder.. But not. That is why now it raises doubts, as if they had already stopped seeing him as the leader they expected. Perhaps deflated or bottomless, between the heat, this heat, and the intensity of the two electoral campaigns in a row. It is Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the president of the Popular Party, who has consumed in one year the political stages that others develop for a decade. The doubts have come early and have spread, like the rash of indigestion, which is the worst thing that could happen to you.. Now Feijóo is playing it; now he is going to have to demonstrate the real depth of his leadership in the Spanish right. If he is able to get up and face the opposition legislature, in the event that the efforts of the socialist president are not cut short and he leads us to new elections.

For now, what we have all been able to see is that the bitter victory of the general elections on July 23 seems to have knocked out Feijóo. Some in the Popular Party affirm that, after that night, so disappointing, they asked him to get away, to get a few weeks out of the way. To rest, to breathe. Although it is impossible for him to disconnect, because the flashes of that Sunday are repeated in his head, when he was rubbing his eyes against the evidence of an unexpected puff. “We will arrive, we will arrive, you will see how we achieve it, this cannot end like this…”. How many times did the same thing have to be repeated? How many times did you hear it that night, as the election count progressed?

It is more difficult to recover from frustration than from defeat, and that is the burden that the president of the Popular Party has to overcome. “It is time”, they said emphatically, and it turned out that this moment had not arrived. The case of the motto of the Popular Party is worse because it delves into the wound, into the disappointment for the wasted moment, the lost opportunity after municipal and regional elections in which the right-wing candidates triumphed throughout Spain. They laid out a blue carpet for Feijóo to get to Moncloa, but he stumbled in the folds of euphoria and fell. The frustration, as was said before, is greater because his political career did not contemplate any fall. It is easy to appreciate if we look back and go back a decade, when he was president of the Xunta de Galicia and counted the elections by absolute majority victories, one after another.

In the Popular Party they had shuffled his name on many occasions, in each crisis that broke out, but Núñez Feijóo always managed to avoid them. His plan has never been to confront others to reach the national headquarters, that of fighting for support in each province and dodging the stab wounds at party congresses, the desertions and the lies of the endorsers… Simply, Feijóo was very well in Galicia and it was clear to me that the best way to achieve power for a political party is by acclamation. The expected moment came with the thunderous fall of Pablo Casado, and the Galician leader was finally able to achieve leadership without any opposition, longed for and expected. In a week he took control of the game and in a year he was already feeling the doors of the Moncloa. that was his plan.

From how events have unfolded, we can deduce that Alberto Núñez Feijóo's main problem at this time is that there was no plan B designed in the event that, as can happen, President Pedro Sánchez can revalidate his parliamentary alliances and continue ruling. The right-wing leader is doing well to claim his right to stand for investiture, as a party that has won the elections, even if he takes the podium with the certainty that he will not succeed. And that it will be Pedro Sánchez who will achieve it. But you must be clear that it is just about that, to comply with the democratic forms. The president of the PP should have assumed that, in reality, he has completely failed in the elections and, as such, begin planning a legislature that will be his first as leader of the opposition, in the Congress of Deputies. Continuing to lick the wounds of July 23, maintaining the electoral victory speech, without further ado, would mean a serious blindness about the challenges that lie ahead.

It is now, after the vertiginous year that he has lived since he left the Xunta de Galicia, when Alberto Núñez Feijóo has to demonstrate his true political stature. It is now, as was said before, when he is playing it, because what we are going to see, from the moment he steps on the rostrum of Congress, is whether he is capable of consolidating his leadership for the complete reconstruction of the center right in Spain, with options to re-opt for the government of the nation. Before him, José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy lost general elections and then managed to reach Moncloa, so the fiasco of July 23 should not be an impediment for Núñez Feijóo to continue leading the Popular Party and try again in the next electoral appointment. But he must be the one to dispel doubts about his leadership, about his political capacity, and start up the plan for one more legislature in the opposition that nobody had thought of..

Türkiye's interests in the Canary Islands multiply. The company Global Ports has set out to manage tourist cruises, where the powerful business of transit to passenger airports, waste and port handling is located, with an investment of 40 million euros for the construction and operation of terminals in the ports of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; Puerto Naos (La Palma); Los Mármoles (Lanzarote), and Puerto del Rosario (Fuerteventura). The country, in fact, already has a certain influence in four West African countries with which the Canary Islands have close and historical links for reasons of proximity: Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and Mauritania.

The board of directors of the Las Palmas Port Authority, until 28-M in the hands of the PSOE, has accelerated permits so that the Turkish company does not suffer delays with the project of a cruise terminal. The port of Las Palmas is a domain, in cargo, of the shipping company Mediterranean Shipping (MSC), which until July 2022 negotiated the purchase of Global Ports, owned by the Turkish businessman Mehmet Kutman.

MSC will have the supplier it wanted to buy in Las Palmas. The public body awarded the award to Global Ports, which, through its subsidiary GPH Malta Finance, launched in 2023 on the Malta Stock Exchange an issue of €25 million in 6.25% secured and unsecured bonds, with expiration in 2030.

Most of the funds raised in Malta are for the group's investments already committed in Spain in the ports of Las Palmas and the cruise terminals of Tarragona and Alicante.. The Ukrainian crisis has made the mid-Atlantic a refuge destination for cruise tourism. In fact, traffic has once again reached the figures prior to the pandemic, with 1.3 million passengers and 644 stopovers in Arrecife, Puerto del Rosario and Las Palmas.. Within each facility, passengers generate a business of moving luggage, land and air transportation, waste, food supplies, and other structural items..

next fishing

In terms of fishing, Turkey is the country that has the most licenses in Mauritania, which is supplied from the islands. The Turkish fishing fleet is made up mainly of purse seiners, although it also has trawlers. Currently, around 1,000 Turkish fishermen work in these two types of boats, while they have hired as many Mauritanians. In addition, there are four fishmeal and fish oil factories in the country belonging to the Turks..

The companies are currently executing an estimated investment of 200 million dollars, either in public or private Mauritanian fish firms. Mauritania rents its fishing ground in exchange for money that would be centrifuged in Las Palmas; but in anticipation of these capital outflows, after a very recent bilateral agreement on fisheries, from 2021, Turkish financial institutions are settling with business banking licenses in the African country.

It is not so much the trade balance of the Canary Islands, but the geographical framework with airlines such as Sun Express, an alliance of Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines, which transports tourism from Germany, or Corendon Group, a Dutch brand with Turkish capital.. Global Ports has been established fiscally from the ZEC, the low tax platform of the archipelago. Canarian imports from Turkey are in the hands of Vidrieras Canarias, owned by Apollo and Bpifrance, Ahumados Canarios, Positrónica, Bolda de Aguas de La Palma, the JTI tobacco company, Insular de Gynecology, Bazar Sport, Colidamar, Comercial Alte Wolfgang Kuhn and Superstore.

Investments in Mauritania

The Canary Islands have been attracting some investments in the mining sector from Mauritania, offering fiscal incentives and institutional stability for the families of managers, but the African country has counterattacked and offers a defined state participation of up to 20% for this type of operation, a tax rate of 25%, corporate tax of 3.5% (Canary Islands offers 4%) and VAT exemption for the import of personal property, materials, equipment, vehicles and other investments in fixed assets.

As of early 2023, in mixed partnerships, there were 88 Turkish companies operating on the African continent with commitments worth $1.7 billion.. In the contracting sector, so far 1,777 projects have been undertaken in the African continent for a value of 82,800 million dollars. According to the regional distribution, there are planned investments of 56,000 million dollars in 1,330 projects in North Africa and 26,700 million dollars in 447 projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.

MSC on the lookout

For its part, since 2023 MSC has launched its Turkey-Western Mediterranean-West Africa (Turkiye-West Med-WAF) service with eight ships to call at Tekirdag, Derince, Iskenderun, Gioia Tauro, Livorno, Genoa, Fos, Valencia , Las Palmas, Dakar, Abidjan, Tema, Lomé, Tincan Island and Lomé.

The attempted purchase of Global Ports Holding responded to the profits that it has been obtaining in recent years due to the increase in the freight rate in the transport of containers. After taking over Bolloré Africa Logistics (for 5,700 million euros) and entering the Italian cruise shipping company Moby Group for 80 million euros, MSC finalizes its offer in 2023 to take over Lufthansa for Alitalia's successor airline, which has 85 % of spaces at Milan Linate airport and 43% at Rome-Fiumicino international airport.

Francelys María Furcal, the most wanted fugitive in the Dominican Republic, was hiding in Madrid. His escape began on April 21, 2022, when he killed the manager of the Santo Domingo hardware store where he worked.. The event occurred in front of the customers themselves and was recorded by one of the security cameras: he throws an object at her, she throws another at him, he kicks her and she stabs him. While the victim lies dying on the ground, you can see how Furcal leaves the place walking. Not even the witnesses noticed the seriousness of what happened at first..

After 16 months of searching, the fugitive team of the National Police handcuffed him last week in Madrid. Sources familiar with the operation explain that he had sought refuge in Tetuán, in a part of the neighborhood known as the little Caribbean, due to the large number of Latino residents.. “It was extremely dangerous and he immediately left the country,” they point out from the National Police. The suspicion centers on the fact that Furcal, 31, had the help of some kind of white-trafficking organization: despite being a simple hardware store employee, her trail goes through Medellín (Colombia), São Paulo (Brazil), Doha (Qatar), Paris (France) and Barcelona, thus becoming one of the most elusive fugitives in recent years..

His arrival in Spain occurred in August 2022. The search began in Catalonia, but the movements of his acquaintances soon led the researchers to Tetouan.. The last images showed Furcal with red hair and, from that moment on, the fugitive team faced a new problem: the number of Dominicans with red-dyed hair in that Madrid neighborhood was too high to be able to close the fence. “She only went out at night and, in addition, she covered her hair with a net, which made it difficult to fully identify her”. They were also not clear that the fugitive had a fixed address, but they suspected that different acquaintances were giving her shelter.

The investigation ended up unraveling with the help of the General Police Station for Scientific Police. After months of surveillance and screening of telephones, the fugitive team targeted an alleged Colombian woman: “We detected an identity with which she seemed to be moving”. The next step was to request Furcal's fingerprints from the Dominican Republic and compare them with those in the databases of this second woman, which gave a positive result.. The agents proceeded to arrest him and thus confirmed his last suspicion: photographs with red hair had been useless for months. In Spain, Furcal had dyed himself blond..

“He made use of false documentation that he obtained on the black market for more than 1,000 dollars,” they explain from the National Police. This fact once again reinforces the idea that she had the collaboration of some criminal organization to reach Spain without being noticed through the white slave trade routes, but the sources consulted stress that it is a simple hypothesis. Be that as it may, that is one of the main unknowns that is still being raised today in the investigation: “Why did a woman who did not have an organized crime profile have all that potential to escape?”

In the absence of confirmation of his extradition, the answer to this question will remain in the hands of the Dominican Republic, but the video of the attack that went viral in April 2022 has already given way to another: a 25-second recording in which he sees how two police officers take Furcal by the arms towards a van. Although the fugitive is wearing a hairnet, her auburn hair peeks through her gaps.

The reform of the crime of embezzlement does not allow a reduction in the prison sentence of Juan Márquez Contreras, director of Labor in Andalusia between 2008 and 2010, for what is known as the Umax case.. The defense asked to review his sentence to five years and three months in prison, pointing out that he had not benefited from the diversion of funds on a personal level, but, in a car to which El Confidencial has had access, the Criminal Chamber rejects the request : “The profit motive can be yours or the third party to whom the funds are diverted, so neither before nor now is it required that the profit motive concur exclusively with the public official”. Among its protagonists, there are various convicts in the ERE case, such as the general director of Labor of Andalusia between 1999 and 2008, Javier Guerrero, who died in 2020, or Márquez himself.. The Supreme Court already confirmed the conviction of both in this parallel plot on June 14, but Márquez's defense appealed the sentence and asked that the recent reform of the Government of Pedro Sánchez be applied to reduce the sentence..

The former director of Labor argued for this that it is “an embezzlement by distraction and not by appropriation with direct profit from the appellant, which would justify a significant penological reduction”. His reasoning then indicated the new embezzlement of article 433 of the Penal Code, which punishes “the authority or public official who, without the intention of appropriating it, allocates the public patrimony placed in his charge to private uses.”. This crime is now punishable by sentences of between six months and three years..

The key to its application revolves around the interpretation of the aforementioned profit motive.. “The facts consisted of the appropriation without the intention of reimbursement by a third party of public funds, attributable to the public official responsible for the funds for consenting to that provision,” explains the resolution, dated July 19.. In this case, the magistrates argue that it is possible to speak of profit, since this concept not only affects “personal enrichment”, but also those officials who “break their duty of loyalty to the Administration and decide to give public funds an unequivocally illegal purpose”.

Once the profit motive has been confirmed, the Criminal Chamber rules out the aforementioned misappropriation of article 433 and concludes that the facts would fit with that of article 432: “The authority or public official who, for profit, appropriates or consents that a third, with the same spirit, appropriates the public patrimony that is in charge”. If in the diversion of funds “serious damage or hindrance to the public service had been caused”, as in the Umax case, the penalties are then raised to between four and eight years in prison, for which reason the Supreme Court considers that this reform In no case does it force Márquez to reduce the five years and three months in prison.

Although the decision is not appealable, sources from Márquez's defense point out that they will try to annul it. As they explain, the request for review required transfer to the Prosecutor's Office so that it could rule on the possible reduction, but the magistrates have responded by means of a “clarification of sentence” order and without listening to the parties.. By opting for this route, the defense considers that the pronouncement is invalid, and will defend it in a new letter to try to annul the current pronouncement: “There is no room for review of the penalties established in the contested sentence as a consequence of the entry into force of the modification of the Penal Code”.

• Espinosa de los Monteros leaves Vox and opens a new crisis in the party

Vox opened last Sunday to support Alberto Núñez Feijóo in a possible investiture without asking for anything in return. But it will not follow that pattern in the vote on August 17, when the Congress Table must be constituted.. The result of 23-J guarantees the PP four of the nine positions in the body, but Genoa intends to also fight to seize the presidency of the Chamber from the PSOE. In this case, however, there will be no free support from the ultra-conservative formation. Sources from the party leadership confirm that their intention is to demand a position in the governing body of Congress. “If not, we will vote for ours,” they warn.

The PP has initiated preliminary and discreet contacts with some forces of the parliamentary arch to try to shield that objective. As El Confidencial learned, Genoa is open to even giving up a seat on the Board to the PNV to try to truncate the majority of Pedro Sánchez. They see it as “difficult” to attract the jeltzales, since they have verbalized their refusal to support Feijóo on two occasions. But the popular ones insist on separating the distribution of positions in the Cortes from the investiture vote and they see some margin for negotiation with the Basque nationalists on this issue.. A few days ago, Andoni Ortuzar denounced in El País the “legislative techniques” used by Sánchez in the previous legislature and the abuse of the decree-law during his term with the approval of the aforementioned body.

However, the Vox order may further complicate the intentions of the PP with the PNV, which has already warned that it would not participate in any equation in which Santiago Abascal was involved..

The elections of 23-J dealt a hard blow to Vox, which left 19 deputies at the polls. But it also remains the third political force, with 33 seats, above Sumar. Since 2019, Vox has held the fourth vice presidency of the Chamber, which was held by deputy Ignacio Gil Lázaro. In Abascal's party, they do not clarify what position they aspire to this time, but they do warn that they will fight in the negotiations with the PP to maintain their quota at the Table.

Vox thus limits its strategic turn with Feijóo to an eventual investiture vote, and they are not willing to compromise with the idea of getting up from the parliamentary body so that the PNV can take its place. The vote on August 17 requires in the first instance an absolute majority of one of the candidates for the presidency of the Chamber, but neither of the two large groups has the necessary majority to achieve it.. The most voted applicants would face a second vote, in which only more yeses than noes would be required. The vote is secret, in a ballot box. And the sums of both blocks are so adjusted that a single seat can tip the balance to one side or the other..

PP and Vox have 170 seats, while PSOE and Sumar only reach 153. The cooperation of the nationalist forces in this last case is essential. Genoa wants to attract the five deputies of the PNV to break the balance, but it plays with another trick: that Junts distance itself from this vote to put the left-wing bloc against the ropes and issue a warning to Sánchez for the investiture. In 2019, ERC, Junts, Bildu and the CUP cast invalid ballots during the vote that elevated Meritxell Batet to the presidency of Congress.

Genoa considers 172 supports tied to an eventual investiture of Feijóo, with 137 own seats, 33 from Vox, one from UPN and one from the Canary Coalition. It is the same majority that the PP aspires to reissue in the vote that will decide the color of the presidency of Congress, waiting for how the negotiation with the PNV turns out. If the Basque nationalists were located in the Sánchez block, this would add 171 supports if no vote from Sumar, ERC, Bildu and BNG slips. The unchecking of Junts would tip the balance in favor of the right in this case, and everything points, once again, to a high-voltage vote in the Lower House.