They had been warning for some time that their patience had a limit, and it seems that it has reached its limit. The forest firefighters of Andalusia plan to start “forceful” mobilizations from the month of September to denounce the lack of information on the integration of the workers of the Environment and Water Agency (Amaya) in the new Security and Integral Management Agency of Emergencies of Andalusia (Asema). An organization that the Junta de Andalucía presented as a kind of autonomous Military Emergency Unit (UME), but which was supposedly announced before establishing the conditions for the transfer of the Infoca Plan personnel who fight against forest fires. The protests, if they are not appeased in response to the demands of the staff, could condition the start of the new political course of the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno, who these days is also hearing severe criticism from the opposition for the health planning this summer.

Sources consulted by El Confidencial pointed out that “it is going to be a big mess in September” because “we are fed up” with the “obscurantism” of the regional leaders, with whom in recent times various meetings have been held that have not allayed suspicions about ” a setback in the working conditions of the staff”.

“Whatever is done, will be fat,” warned the aforementioned sources, who pointed out that the forest firefighters and other Amaya employees are willing to mark the return of political activity so that, “once and for all, they take us in Serious”. “The mobilizations are postponed until September due to responsibility, because we are in a season of high risk of fires, but our patience has run out. We are fed up,” they said..

The protests are promoted by the unions Unión Independiente de Trabajadores de Andalucía (UITA), UGT, CCOO and CSIF, which accuse the Ministry of the Presidency, Interior, Social Dialogue and Administrative Simplification of lying when they affirm that they are negotiating because “we do not know ” how the Asema will operate. The various sources consulted by this newspaper described the position of the Andalusian government governed by the PP as a “little theatre”, “stage performance” and “theatrical function”, a party that they reproached for defending the recovery in the regional Parliament when it was in opposition of lost antiquity.

The existence of a device that is 100% operational all year round, which leads to an improvement in prevention work in winter in view of the most dangerous season, is another issue that forest firefighters have been demanding for some time and that has not been addressed.. A change that would require suppressing discontinuous permanent public employment offers and hiring staff during the 12 months. No party that has been in the regional Executive has wanted to satisfy this demand backed by the citizenry.

The professionals of the Infoca Plan and the Environment and Water Agency are willing to sneak into the political agenda after the return of the holidays and they plan to meet with the different parliamentary groups to publicize the current situation of the workforce.

The mobilizations are planned for September and will continue until the regional Administration parks the “obscurantism” and the “lack of information”, and meets the “acquired commitments”. Meanwhile, the affected workers are summoned to participate this August in different concentrations.

Antonio Sanz, Minister of the Presidency, Interior, Social Dialogue and Administrative Simplification, presented the fire-fighting device for 2023 at the beginning of January and reported that it had a budget of 223 million euros, 27% more than in the previous year. Of this amount, 125 million are allocated to prevention, “an amount that exceeds for the first time the investment in extinction —98 million—”.

A total of 4,700 professionals work in the service, of which 4,448 are public workers, including civil servants and labor personnel from the Administration and the Andalusian Environment and Water Agency. In addition to the human team, the device operates with a fleet of 117 heavy vehicles (101 pumpers and 16 water pumps), of which 15 units have been renewed this year and are causing staff complaints due to their breakdowns.. The air resources chartered by the Board add up to 36 aircraft.

A 40-year-old man drowned this Tuesday on the Miracle beach in Tarragona while trying to rescue two young people who had difficulty getting out of the water. The beach lifeguards have called the 112 emergency telephone number at 7:35 p.m. warning that two people had difficulties getting out of the sea, the Generalitat Civil Protection explained in a statement.

One of them was a 23-year-old girl, who has swallowed some water, and the Sistema d'Emergències Mèdiques (SEM) has taken her to the Joan XXIII Hospital in Tarragona with a panic attack, while the boy who was with her she has not needed medical assistance.

Witnesses to the events have explained that the deceased jumped into the water from a rocky area to try to rescue them when they saw that they had trouble getting out of the water.. A Maritime Rescue jet ski has rescued the man and has taken him to the beach, where they have tried to revive him without success.

Sánchez has traveled on a commercial airliner to the Marrakech airport, in what is defined as a “strictly private” trip, according to Moncloa sources, who stress that it has been “entirely paid for with own resources” by the president and in which no institutional agenda is contemplated. Although it was initially speculated that Sánchez would travel to Lanzarote, the same sources explain that the acting head of the Executive has remained in Madrid until Tuesday.

Before the official confirmation, the information was in four Moroccan media outlets, including Rue 20, considered to be related to the security apparatus.. La Moncloa remained silent in response to the questions made by El Confidencial in this regard. The Moroccan digital newspapers assure that Sánchez arrived on Tuesday at 11 in the morning (12:00 Spanish peninsular time) at Menara, the Marrakech airport. You will stay in a luxury hotel and intend to visit the city starting with the famous Jamaa el Fnaa square.

The Kech 24 newspaper indicates that the president's stay in Morocco will end in Tetouan, in the north of the country, very close to Rincón, which is where King Mohamed VI is on vacation.. The Throne Festival ceremonies concluded on Monday in Tetouan because the monarch spends a large part of the summer there. In the images of the various ceremonies, the sovereign appeared in better shape than on June 29, on the occasion of the religious festival of Aid Al-Adha (Sacrifice), which was also celebrated in Tetouan.. If this speculation from Kech 24 is true, this could be the invitation that the Alaouite sovereign extended to Sánchez on February 1, when he continued his vacation in Gabon and did not go to Rabat to receive him in audience, as is usual, at margin of the summit between the governments of Spain and Morocco.

The election of Morocco for part of the presidential vacation will surely provoke a controversy in Spain. It is possible that the president wanted to stage the excellent relationship he maintains with the southern neighbor after the support given to the solution advocated by Rabat to resolve the Western Sahara conflict. In exchange for this concession, however, it has not obtained large counterparts. Proof of this is that the customs of Ceuta and Melilla with Morocco, whose opening Sánchez announced on April 7, 2022, do not exist today.

Sánchez is the first president of the Spanish Government to spend part of his vacation abroad. Unlike Spain, where top politicians do not usually spend their vacations abroad, especially in Morocco, politicians from other European countries do.. The French are the ones who visit Morocco most frequently, including the presidents of the Republic such as Jacques Chirac or Nicolas Sarzoky. The Moroccan authorities are hospitable and do not conceive that foreign tourists of that level can pay for hotels or meals in their country.

The great exception in Spain was former President Felipe González who, after leaving office, traveled regularly for years to Tangier and Asila, in northern Morocco, to enjoy vacation days

The City Council of Almáchar (Málaga) has denounced an act of vandalism that occurred in the early hours of last Sunday in which one of the flags that commemorated the International LGTBI Pride Day, which hung on a pole at the Forfe viewpoint, was burned.

This was announced by the consistory through a statement, where it condemned “any act of vandalism that violates the freedoms of people”, while it has “deeply regretted seeing how the work carried out by the women of the crochet workshop has finished like this”.

“We cannot remain still, or remain silent in the face of messages like this, we have to continue fighting for a people full of diversity”, they have stated from the town hall. “We want to continue betting on a town without phobias, without rejections or attacks on the LGTBI collective, where everyone loves whoever they want and whatever they want to be,” they added..

In this way, the Almáchar town hall has indicated in the letter that the Municipal Police is already aware of this act of vandalism “and steps have already begun to locate the alleged perpetrators.”.

But the possibility of negotiating a possible removal of the debt of the territories underfinanced by the State through the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) has revealed the differences in the approach of the barons of the Popular Party in a matter that directly impacts the accounts of the autonomous administrations.

All the Spanish autonomies, except Madrid, the Basque Country and Navarra, have accumulated debts with the FLA to a greater or lesser extent. The liquidity mechanism was devised in 2012 by the then Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro (PP), in order to cover the needs of the community governments at a time when almost all of them found the private debt markets closed as a result of the mortgage crisis and the strong risk premium that Spain paid for its issues. What was set up as a temporary line of credit has ended up consolidating as a regular financing vehicle, especially for those territories that have financial adequacy problems or are more affected by the pay-as-you-go system while waiting for a reform that never comes.

Catalonia, without being one of the autonomous regions that benefited the most in terms of distribution, is above the average in resources per adjusted population (weighted using criteria such as aging or dispersion).. However, it has generated a strong dependence on the credit of the FLA, which is already the creditor of 84% of its 85.4 billion euros of total debt.. In other words, 71,000 million of the liabilities are debt with the Spanish Treasury.

The Catalan percentage is similar to that accumulated by the autonomies hardest hit by the financing system, according to reports from independent entities such as AIReF and Fedea. The Valencian Community, the red lantern in receipt of resources, accumulates a liability of more than 55,000 million that has its main creditor in the State, specifically, 46,274 million (83%), according to the latest figures from the Bank of Spain. Murcia, the second from the bottom, with a smaller Administration, has less overall debt, 11,506 million, but 84% of it is with the FLA. The fund dependent on the Treasury covers the million-dollar extraordinary deficits incurred by the two administrations year after year. They consider that it is not due to their own spending management, but to a chronic insufficiency of income. The documents on which they support their arguments indicate that to support similar or even lower levels of public spending per capita, the average has to resort to the FLA credit tap, which has generated a ball that, in turn, punishes its balance and prevents them from financing themselves and at reasonable interest rates in the institutional debt markets.

This explains why this Tuesday the new president of the Valencian Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, had to make argumentative balances to maintain a favorable position to what he baptized as “compensation” of debt, an implicit way of referring to the haircuts or cancellations, and the time to demand transparency from the PSOE in a possible negotiation with the pro-independence parties, without “perks or privileges” and outside the “dark room of separatism”. “I am in favor of compensating the Valencian Community. I am willing to study the formulas that are beneficial for compensation for all this time”, Mazón abounded entering the debate.

However, the Generalitat of Catalonia, in the hands of ERC, does not take the allusion for granted and does not consider for now that this will be a transcendental element when determining its position regarding a possible investiture. “The requests made by the Region of Murcia, from institutional loyalty and in the appropriate forums for it, such as the Council for Fiscal and Financial Policy, have been systematically neglected. However, it is enough that the support of the independentistas is necessary to open a new marketing around the financing of the autonomous communities”, they point to questions from El Confidencial from the Executive of the popular Fernando López Miras.

The position of Valencia and Murcia, in favor of debt restructuring through forgiveness or multilaterally negotiated compensation mechanisms, contrasts with the reading of the Community of Madrid, chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso. With no debt to the FLA, the Puerta del Sol Executive sees the debate in a purely political, non-technical key, and very circumscribed to the Catalan sphere, as if the matter on which it is being negotiated does not affect other communities.

“What has to be clear is that the debts must be assumed and paid. It cannot be condoned, because it is an important distortion for the market that in the end impoverishes all Spaniards and also even Catalans. What cannot be is that there is a free bar of expenses and an exponential indebtedness and that later those communities, especially Catalonia, do not want to assume their responsibility”, affirms the Madrid Minister of Economy, Finance and Employment, Rocío Albert. “Pedro Sánchez is willing to use any mechanism, even canceling the debt of Catalonia through the FLA, in order to continue maintaining Moncloa. He is willing to do anything to get the support of the independence movement,” he added..

The position of the Madrid counselor is that forgiving the FLA credit would amount to “a mutualisation of the debt that the General State Administration would have to assume, and therefore all the communities would be affected”, although it is obvious that this is already the case. de facto. The debt of the autonomies with the FLA is part of the total liability of the Kingdom of Spain for national accounting purposes. They are debts between administrations of the same State. and it makes sense. The Andalusian debt with the FLA is around 25,000 million euros (68% of the total), but the community left this financing formula in 2019. Since then, it has issued debt in the markets. The weight of the Andalusian debt with respect to GDP is 20.3%, three points less than the average for the rest of the regions. The calculation they make in San Telmo is that they lose about 1,000 million euros a year.

The Government of the Junta almost avoids ruling on the suitability of the removal. “We are not going to rule on a measure that we do not know about,” they explain from the environment of Malaga. But in San Telmo they predict that the great beneficiaries will be the potential investiture partners of Pedro Sánchez, that is, the Catalan nationalist parties. “What María Jesús Montero is doing is putting a price on the support of the pro-independence parties,” Carolina España, Minister of Economy and Finance of the Andalusian Executive, abounded on Tuesday. Spain also urges the Finance Minister to convene a Fiscal and Financial Policy Council to negotiate any measure of this nature and not to do so bilaterally with Catalonia.

A woman, around 60 years old, has died on Lires beach in Cee (A Coruña) after being rescued from the water, as reported to Europa Press from 112 and Health Emergencies 061.

Around 3:30 p.m., the emergency service received a notice from a private individual who alerted of a woman in the water who was in trouble.

Finally, she was pulled out of the sea in an unconscious state, although she died, as confirmed by 061, which moved to the place. Civil Protection, Civil Guard and Maritime Rescue, among other troops, were also alerted.

The Ceuta Juvenile Judge has ordered this Tuesday the closed detention of a 17-year-old adolescent as the alleged perpetrator of two crimes of attempted homicide and injury, which the Prosecutor's Office attributes to him, for his participation in a confrontation between two groups of young people early last Sunday morning, when the first night of the Fair in the autonomous city ended, which resulted in two men being stabbed.

The minor, whom the National Police considers the material author of the attack with a knife and who had already been identified in the framework of the special deployment of the Security Forces organized for the start of the Patron Saint Festivities, has given a statement this Tuesday after to be arrested shortly after the event and to agree to an extension of his detention, according to judicial sources in statements to Europa Press.

The young man has several police records, including an arrest last week for setting fire to the private vehicle of a relative of an agent from the Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR) of the Local Police.

The events for which he has been locked up in the Punta Blanca Reform Center awaiting trial took place at 5:45 a.m. on Sunday, when a uniformed crew of the National Police was summoned in the vicinity of the Paseo de la Marina Española, in the heart of Ceuta, because two young people aged 22 and 21 had suffered stab wounds after a “discussion”.

Once identified as the perpetrator of the “attack”, agents of the Citizen Security Brigade of the local Superior Headquarters went to the minor's home, where he was arrested.. They also went to the University Hospital, where the victims required medical attention for a wound that required “several stitches” and another six centimeters deep without danger to their lives in both cases..

Thousands of Madrid residents living abroad lived a second electoral night with the recount of the vote of the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA), which allowed the PP to win a seat in the province at the expense of the PSOE. The night for some was long. Others lived with “emotion” the only movement of deputies that took place in the country. This is the case of Blanca, a 25-year-old from Madrid who lives in London. He canceled his vacation to vote from the Spanish embassy in the United Kingdom. El Confidencial has contacted people from Madrid all over the world who deposited a PP ballot in the electoral envelope, although the majority did not imagine that their vote could be so decisive.

Another case is that of Miguel Fernández. He is 52 years old and has lived in London since 2011 with his wife and two children (both of legal age).. “We are four potential PP voters,” he says. Election night was spent listening to the radio and reading the publications of this newspaper. However, during the CERA vote count, he was surprised when he realized that his phone did not stop ringing with messages from some of his friends saying “thank you”. “They contacted us saying that we had changed a deputy,” says. Between laughs, he avoids giving greater importance to the situation because it has been a decision, he assures, of “many thousands of voters”. For this PP voter, having lived with such an impact the night of the CERA vote count “was very curious”.

A few kilometers away resides Blanca. In UK since 2014. She is a doctor, and has lived in the English capital for seven years. He usually travels to Madrid to vote in situ, but, after the pandemic, he has gotten used to doing it from London. He has been a voter for Ciudadanos, Vox and, in the general elections, he decided to vote for the candidacy of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. He wanted to send his vote by post, but he did not receive the envelope with the documentation at his address until after the deadline to vote from abroad had passed: “It was quite complicated”. Finally, he exercised the right to vote from the Spanish embassy in the United Kingdom. In no case did he imagine that his vote, sent to the Spanish embassy in the United Kingdom seven days before 23-J, would “influence a deputy”.

18.18% of the Spanish census in the United Kingdom exercised their right to vote during the last general elections. Blanca assures that “many Spanish friends in London (…) did not receive the documentation and did not vote, despite the suppression of the requested vote. Some said: 'What for'; 'voting never changes anything'. Not only did he not allow himself to be influenced, but he also canceled his vacation, he acknowledges, “in order to influence this.”. The young woman from Madrid selected the PP ballot, arguing that it “seemed to be a useful vote” given the “risk to the unity of Spain” in view of the coalition government's pacts. She is unrelated to party charges and adds that the only information she received from the popular was through a message, in a group with other Spaniards residing in the country, which explained the procedures for voting from abroad..

The PP has several “representatives”, affiliated with the popular, who reside in territories such as the United States, Venezuela or Belgium. They form their own territorial “committee”, although they do not have official positions in the formation, and use social networks as a way to concentrate the vote of Spaniards residing abroad. This is the case of Beatriz, from Tres Cantos, Madrid. He was “present” during the counting of the CERA votes together with a member of the CUP. “Since the polls closed until nine at night seeing that all the envelopes had the three stamps, the signature…”, he acknowledges. He uses a WhatsApp group to contact several supporters of the PP, forward content from Genoa and, in the same way, attract citizens to the party's social network in Great Britain “to have more followers”..

Madrid, stronghold of the right

It was just after 10 pm last Friday when the recount of votes in the community confirmed that the popular had taken the last seat from the socialists. After almost three hours of counting, the PP managed to close the gap of 1,749 votes with which the election night ended. The popular ones needed more suffrage, since the number was increasing for each vote that the PSOE obtained. The scrutiny record includes the 19,006 ballots from foreign voters to the PP, compared to the 10,411 that went to the PSOE. In Genoa they place the United Kingdom as one of the foci in which the foreign vote was decisive in changing the result in favor of the PP.

The majority of Madrid voters residing abroad voted for the right-wing bloc (PP and Vox), which obtained 57.08% of the total on 23-J, while the left obtained 39.8%. In the five previous elections, Ciudadanos, PP and Vox also obtained the majority of the support of the CERA vote compared to the opposing bloc (Sumar, Podemos, PSOE and IU).. The foreign vote in Madrid has been dominated by the big parties, while the other formations went from representing 19.04% in 2008 to 3.12% this year. This indicates that the capital of Spain has established itself as a stronghold of the right in the history of general elections for foreign voters.

Oblivious to the result

Some voters live oblivious to political news due to different circumstances. For example, Sofía —from Madrid who voted for the PP and has lived abroad for three years— has known the CERA vote count this Tuesday. “I've been super happy,” she says shortly after receiving the news. The woman from Madrid “took for granted” that the foreign vote was not going to “move the needle”. At all times, he thought that the result, after the elections last Sunday, would remain “as it was”. Sofia, in Indonesia for a few days, bet on the Feijóo formation in the elections, “although she is not someone I love,” she indicates. He exercised his right to vote “by discarding in capital letters” in search of “the best alternative to remove Sánchez” from the Government.

The Generalitat Firefighters are working this Tuesday afternoon on a vegetation fire next to the A-2 motorway in Collbató (Barcelona), which has cut off traffic on the road in both directions of travel.

The Firefighters have activated 11 ground crews and six air crews to put out this fire, they explained in a tweet collected by Europa Press.

We activate 11 land resources and 6 aerial means for a vegetation fire near the A2 motorway as it passes through Collbató (notice 4:00 p.m.). pic.twitter.com/kW7ds4t5Al

— Firefighters (@bomberscat) August 1, 2023

This is the third active fire in Catalonia this Tuesday, adding to the one already stabilized in El Perelló (Tarragona) and the one already controlled in Mont-roig del Camp (Tarragona).

Members of the Andalusian forest firefighting service, the Infoca Plan, are working to control and extinguish a fire declared in the area of Santa Margarita, a scrubland area in the municipality of La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz). ), and which has forced the preventive eviction of the houses located in the upper area of the Venta Melchor urbanization.

The Councilor for Citizen Security in the City Council of La Línea, Miguel Ángel Bautista, has explained this fact to Europa Press, indicating that in the residential area, Infoca continues to work to put out the remaining embers and that “the fire is oriented towards the beach”, which, in his opinion, “should not be so dangerous” since there is “a firewall made” and the front goes against the beach.

However, he has indicated that the west wind is blowing “strongly” in that area, for which reason he has shown his prudence in the face of the evolution of this urban fire that was declared after 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday and that is approaching the area of La Alcaidesa, although Bautista has trusted that the work of the firefighters will prevent it from affecting this area.

The fire has started in the urban area of Santa Margarita and Infoca, together with members of the La Línea, San Roque and Algeciras fire departments, are working with land and air means to prevent it from spreading to the forest area. Specifically, three air vehicles (two medium-heavy helicopters and one superpuma) are acting on this fire, as well as two cargo planes on the ground, one for coordination and two amphibians from the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge..

By land, there are six groups of forest firefighters, two Fire Reinforcement brigades (Brica), three Operations technicians, an environmental agent, two fire engines, a bulldozer, an advanced Fire Analysis and Monitoring unit and a Fire Medical Unit. Forest fires.