The Municipal Police of Madrid have investigated a restaurant in the Usera district and two of its workers for selling medicines of Chinese origin without control, high-grade alcoholic beverages imported irregularly or made clandestinely, as well as dishes made with exotic species. who sacrificed 'in situ'. As reported to Europa Press by sources of the investigation, the agents had been trying to access the establishment for some time after receiving information about the sacrifice of species to be cooked there..

However, the premises could only be accessed through a door that remained closed and whose access was cleared only after ringing the bell and being seen by the doorman. Finally, the policemen managed to enter the restaurant last Friday, July 21, during public service hours, around 3:10 p.m., according to the sources consulted..

Once the inspection began, the agents located alcoholic beverages of Chinese origin between 50 and 53 degrees without the corresponding import tax seals that were made available to the customs authority by the Police. They also found two bottles of about five liters each that contained homemade spirits with undetermined seeds or roots, lacking any traceability..

🚨 Investigated a restaurant and two workers for a crime against wildlife in #Usera. Exotic species were slaughtered to be cooked (turtle, sea bass, pike perch), they sold medicines without authorization and had serious sanitary deficiencies.. pic.twitter.com/A1woFHcd3g

– Madrid Municipal Police (@policiademadrid) July 26, 2023

uncontrolled medications

On the other hand, in the premises, located on Ramón Luján street, there were also two large boxes containing 9,653 units of Chinese medicines, many of them painkillers that had been illegally introduced into Spain and that were sold in boxes or by units. These medicines were immobilized and delivered to the Area of Pharmaceutical Control and Sanitary Products of the Community of Madrid.

In another warehouse, the Municipal Police of Madrid found up to 188 specimens of holutorias or sea cucumbers, an internationally protected species, in unlabeled plastic bags; and nine soft shells of turtles that had been slaughtered in the same place and frozen, which, according to the sources consulted, are usually purchased for 30 euros per unit from tourists who come from China and carry them in their luggage so as not to be detected by the enter Spain.

It also found 530 live specimens of American crab, an invasive species whose commercialization is prohibited; two tubs with pike perch already chopped and ready to be cooked, despite the fact that its sale is also prohibited; two halves of a dehydrated carp without labeling or protection of any kind and even a domestic pigeon that could have been captured on public roads, without any veterinary control.

Added to this were other serious or very serious hygienic-sanitary deficiencies in the kitchen, such as freezers without temperature control. In addition, according to the same sources, all these species were advertised on the restaurant's menu, both on the physical menu and on its social networks, although it was written entirely in Chinese..

Given all this rosary of irregularities, the agents of the Municipal Police Environment Commissioner opened proceedings against the premises and their workers for the alleged commission of a crime against flora and fauna..

Like so many political phenomena of the last decade (Brexit, Podemos), the process was an empty signifier. To a word, independence, each one gave the meaning they wanted. For CUP voters, independence meant the possibility of making a revolution. For ERC, it opened the door to increasing the power of rural areas with little de-Catalan at the expense of the province of Barcelona, which is increasingly Spanish. For the old Convergència i Unió, independent Catalonia would be at the service of local business elites, as in a kind of Mediterranean Singapore.

It was about ideological reveries. But the trick worked and the procés got the support of half the Catalan population. And he achieved an additional feat: the vast majority of Spaniards, including almost the entire left, opposed self-determination, but a good part of the Spanish left decided to treat the independence parties, for political purposes, as if they were left-wing..

Last year, the CUP had twice as many voters in rich neighborhoods (32%) than in poor ones (14%).. ERC has never been a workerist or Marxist party, but petty-bourgeois and Catholic-inspired. But, with certain semantic efforts, they could be located on the left. However, considering the offspring of Convergència i Unió as a left-wing ally has much merit. CiU was very right-wing. Its main heir, Junts, has gone further: to a large extent, it is a radical right-wing party, in line with almost all other European nationalisms. The PSOE has a legitimate right to seek your support for the investiture. But we must remember that this is its nature.

Together and the radical right

Normally, this argument is dismissed because Junts is not intransigent on moral issues such as homosexuality or abortion. But neither is the formation of Le Pen in France, nor are many of the Scandinavian authoritarian right-wing parties. Otherwise, their features are common. After the repeated refusal of the European institutions to support the independence process, in what is now Junts, eurosceptic impulses emerged. In 2017, Puigdemont called the EU a “club of decadent and obsolescent countries” and called for a referendum for Catalans to decide if they wanted to belong to it.. These impulses have increased after the setbacks of the European Parliament and the General Court of the EU against Puigdemont: he has called the EU “the Europe of the past” and has said that he had been “disappointed”. In Brussels, Junts is an ally of the NVA, the right-wing Flemish nationalist party, which has significant radical elements.. But Puigdemont has also allowed himself to be loved by the Vlaams Belang, which is openly on the extreme right and has supported the Catalan independence movement and the immunity of the former president.. There is more and more conclusive evidence that, informally, the Generalitat presided over by Junts had contacts with representatives of the State of Russia to prepare for eventual independence.

But the link between Junts and the European radical right is also evident in other aspects.. To begin with, its most charismatic leaders, Puigdemont and Laura Borràs, have, like almost all of these movements, a volatile, messianic and authoritarian character, and enormous contempt for democratic procedures.. The irregular approval of the disconnection laws prior to the referendum of October 2017 made explicit the vision of Junts, shared by all the European radical right-wing, that what they consider to be non-national minorities (in this case, the Spanish) does not enjoy the same political rights as the national majority (in this case, the pro-independence Catalans). And the same thing is frequently reiterated in the vision that Junts and his reference intellectuals convey about Spanish-speaking Catalans, particularly those of the lower class: they use an apparently inclusive rhetoric, but that conveys to whoever wants to hear it that their idea of Catalans leaves out Half of the population.

An even more radical split

In this sense, it is eloquent that there is already an even more explicit radical right split within the independence movement: Aliança Catalana. It is about a new party whose leader, Sílvia Orriols, after a few years dedicated to the militancy of the process, has achieved the mayoralty of Ripoll, and who transmits even more explicitly than Junts the ideological coordinates of conservative nativism. Not only with measures against Muslim immigrants, the first point of his ideological program, but also against non-independence Catalans. “For her,” the journalist Joan Burdeus wrote last week in a brilliant report in the Catalan-language booklet of the newspaper El País, “Catalan is not someone who lives and works in Catalonia, but rather someone who assumes that Catalonia is a nation with a single language, that it has been occupied for 300 years and that it is necessary to fight to free it”.

The inspiration for the rest of his show, says Burdeus, is also “pure Bannon.”. According to his account, for his financier and adviser, Jordi Aragonès (cousin of the president of the Generalitat), “the right-wings that are growing are those that have adopted a mixture of industrial protectionism, identity nationalism and a radical discourse against immigration, all in the name of to protect the normal people at home”. The financiers of this process? “Entrepreneurs and ex-politicians from the orbit of Convergence and Union”, says Burdeus. Junts has not gone to these extremes because it is a party too rooted in the traditional establishment and fond of respectable political terms.. But that will surely be the direction that at least one faction of the right-wing independence movement in Catalonia will adopt..

A part of the Spanish left believes that the independence movement is from the left because it opposes the political and business elites of Madrid; Proof of this is that PSOE and Sumar have chosen Jaume Asens, a man from Podemos, as negotiator with Junts for the investiture. Another part, very large in the PSOE, is not fooled: it wants to agree with Junts only because there is no other choice but to do so to come to power. Which is legit. But it should be clear with this that Pedro Sánchez is also going to depend on the radical and eurosceptic right.

The Superior Court of Justice of Navarra (TSJN) will not begin to deliberate on the possible reduction of the sentence for the members of the Pack of Pamplona until at least next September. The Supreme Court already established doctrine last June and endorsed the reductions in sentences for sexual offenders, but legal sources suggest that the TSJN has postponed until after the summer the review of the appeal of Ángel Boza, the first of the five convicted who seeks to benefit of the regulations.

The Provincial Court of Navarra convicted the members of the Pack for sexual abuse in 2018, but the Supreme Court corrected this ruling and raised the sentences to between nine and 15 years in prison for sexual assault. The controversy surrounding these sentences served as an impetus for the Government to carry out the law of the only yes is yes and, in July 2022, the Minister of Equality herself, Irene Montero, defended that this regulation allowed taking “a decisive step to respond to the historical debt of the State and the institutions” with victims like the one in Pamplona.

Barely a month later, in August 2022, El Confidencial announced that Boza's lawyer interpreted this legislative change in another way and was preparing an appeal to reduce his client's sentence.. The Ministry of Equality categorically denied this possibility and the Government delegate for Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell, crossed out the information that warned of the risk as “propaganda by the defender of rapists”.. The law ended up coming into force in October 2022 and, according to the latest data from the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), it has already led to 1,155 reductions and 117 releases of sexual offenders since then..

In the specific case of La Manada, Boza's lawyer asks that his sentence be reduced from 15 years to 13 years and nine months. The Provincial Court of Navarra rejected this request in February, concluding that the penalty “is equally susceptible to imposition in accordance with the new regulation of crimes against sexual freedom”, but after presenting a new appeal, the case has been left in the hands of the TSJN. Faced with the first attempt, the court will now have to apply the doctrine established by the Supreme.

Until the pronouncement of the high court, the judges had maintained, broadly speaking, two different interpretations regarding how the law of only yes is yes should be applied: on the one hand, those who considered that the sentence should be lowered when the one set by the new regulation was lower than in the previous regulation, and, on the other, those who defended that, if the penalty could continue to be imposed with the new law, it should not be lowered in any case.

The Prosecutor's Office and the Provincial Court of Navarra itself were inclined towards this last thesis, but the Supreme Court did so for the first. As it concluded in its judgments, the aforementioned argument that the penalty is “equally susceptible to imposition” is not enough to automatically reject the appeals, although at the same time it dropped another warning: “It cannot be appealed, in absolute terms and without more reasoning, to criteria of arithmetic proportionality”. Those are the new rules on which the TSJN will have to move and, whatever its decision regarding Boza, everything indicates that it will end up reaching the Supreme Court itself..

In case of achieving a reduction, this sentence would also open the door for the other four convicts of the Pack to benefit from the law of only yes, yes.. The regulations promoted by the Ministry of Equality have already been modified by a PSOE counter-reform that aggravates the punishment of part of the crimes, but it will only apply to attacks committed from April 29, when it came into force.. For all of the above, sentencing reviews will go ahead..

The informative declaration of assets and rights abroad by tax residents in Spain, the famous model 720, which was approved by Law on October 29, 2012, was annulled in terms of its specific penalty regime and certain presumptions of non-equity gains. justified by the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in a judgment of January 27, 2022, which resolved the appeal for non-compliance in case C-788/19 promoted by the European Commission against the Kingdom of Spain, with based on the violation of the community principle of freedom of movement of capital regulated in article 63 TFUE and article 40 of the EEA Agreement, which is also extensible to non-community countries.

Specifically, said CJEU ruling declared the Spanish regulations sanctioning model 720 contrary to EU law:

1. Because the situations of non-presentation (or extemporaneous presentation) of the 720 model are considered imprescriptible and, consequently, the tax treatment of foreign assets not declared as unjustified capital gains (which, in the case of individuals, were taxed on the general income tax base before sentence).
2. For penalizing 150% of the unjustified capital gains described in the previous point.
3. For establishing additional fixed sanctions (frequently called formal sanctions) for each data or set of data not declared or declared inaccurately or erroneously, as they are much higher than the sanctions for other breaches of domestic regulations.

Said sentence did not contain a temporary limitation of effects nor did it eliminate the obligation to present model 720, which is still in force, and established the order of costs to the Kingdom of Spain.

Spanish law was adapted to said CJEU ruling, by Law 5/2022, of March 9, which annulled the specific aggravated sanctions of model 720 and left them the same as in internal cases, banished the imprescriptibility in case of not having submitted the 720 model on time and annulled the penalty of 150% of unjustified capital gains, leaving said gains with the same treatment as those that can be produced within Spain.

The AEAT administrative sanctions for not declaring the 720 model on time or erroneously were brutal and disproportionate in terms of amount, many times much higher than the total amount of undeclared assets, even due to formal sanctions, just as when it was understood that there was a unjustified capital gain that was imprescriptible (evidence to the contrary of the prescription was not admitted, even when it came from a year already prescribed with prescription gained when model 720 came into force), since it was attributed to the personal income tax at the marginal rate of the general tax base of the last year not prescribed, and that quota had a penalty of 150%. All of this was rightly annulled by the aforementioned CJEU ruling.

The problem arises and was raised with the people to whom the AEAT had previously applied the regulations declared null by the CJEU ruling, there being a wide variety of cases and complex situations.

Well then, the people who had appealed against the sanctions and tax assessments that were affected by the CJEU ruling, both administratively (at first there was enormous resistance from the Administration to apply the aforementioned CJEU ruling) and judicial (which was admitted from the first moment), as it should be without a doubt in a Rule of Law, in general they have seen their rights recognized and the tax assessments that went against the CJEU judgment annulled, with special relevance the numerous very accurate judgments of our Chamber Third of the Supreme Court, which directly applied the judgment of the CJUE with all its effects against the excesses of the AEAT, among many others STS 906/2022, of July 4 (appeal no. 6410/2019), 925/2022, of July 6 (appeal no. 6202/2019) and 1114/2022, of September 1 (appeal no. 7172/2020), by which they declared the nullity of the contested sanctioning agreements issued in relation to the breach of the obligation to submit form 720.

The most serious and complex problem arises and was raised against the people who did not appeal or who, having appealed, had firm acts derived from actions of the AEAT of model 720, and to whom the effects of the CJEU judgment were applied..

Some of them initiated State patrimonial liability procedures, complex and lengthy procedures that are still ongoing.

Others initiated acts of full nullity of article 217 of the General Tax Law, by which the full nullity of acts dictated in tax matters may be declared, which have put an end to the administrative process or which have not been appealed in term, in the cases in which said acts harm the rights and freedoms subject to constitutional protection.

Well then, and this is the great novelty, after the unanimous and mandatory favorable opinion of the Council of State dated March 23, 2023, with a favorable report from the State Attorney before the AEAT and from the AEAT itself, which understands that the sanctions annulled by the CJEU ruling violated article 25.1 of the Spanish Constitution —“No one can be sentenced or sanctioned for actions or omissions that at the time of their occurrence do not constitute a crime, misdemeanor or administrative offense, according to current legislation at that time”—, the Spanish Administration is allowing taxpayers who request it to nullify sanction agreements in this way, which is good news.. For now, there is no record that the Spanish Administration does it ex officio, but that the taxpayer has to request it.

The most complex and onerous cases are the cases in which the taxpayer himself self-assessed or the tax administration applied an unjustified capital gain, considered imprescriptible to the last non-prescribed year and without admitting proof of the prescription, taxing the income tax margin, when Said situation came from a prescribed exercise, and that said provisions were rightly knocked down by the CJEU ruling. In such cases, having sufficient proof of the prescription in a prescribed year is essential to be able to defend non-taxation as an unjustified capital gain and request its return, although not by way of nullity in principle.. This criterion has been endorsed, among others, by Supreme Court ruling 531/2023, of April 26, 2023, Rec. N.º 4783/2021.

Likewise, the CJEU ruling has allowed that, even if the 720 model has not been submitted on time, with errors or formal defects, undeclared assets and rights abroad can be voluntarily regularized by taxpayers, which with the previous regulations was almost impossible to do so due to its very high cost, and that with the current regulations it is possible and advisable.

In all these cases, which are complex, it is advisable to have specialized and personalized professional advice and take into account all the background and nuances of each specific case, in order to choose the most appropriate and pragmatic path in each case to defend the rights of taxpayers. affected.

*Javier Estella Lana. Lawyer. Managing partner of Avantia Tax and Legal Advice. Leading estate planning firm and family business in Spain – Chambers 2008 to 2023. Co-director of the FIDE Planning Forum-FIDE academic advisor.

A deceased man has been found inside a burning vehicle near the Capela de San Pedro, in the Coruña municipality of Mañón. The Civil Guard reports that “all the hypotheses are open” in relation to this event that occurred this Wednesday.

The man was a maderista who works in the area and who is from Ourol (Lugo), something confirmed this Wednesday by the mayor of Mañón, Alfredo Dovale, who has expressed his regret for this tragedy.. “For a municipality like ours, this is a very hard blow,” he assured after conveying his condolences to both the family and relatives and his counterpart from Ourol.

The call to 112 was given by an individual who was passing through the area and who saw the car burn, around 1:30 p.m.. Material and human resources were immediately mobilized to extinguish the fire.. It was after extinguishing the fire that the man's body was located. In addition to the GES of Ortigueira, the Civil Protection of Mañón, the Civil Guard and Sanitary Emergencies of Galicia-061 attended. The City Council also contributed a motorized pump.

• Fire in Tejeda, Gran Canaria: last minute today of the evolution of the fire on the island, extinction and evacuees
• The fire in Gran Canaria could stabilize in the next few hours

During the last day we have witnessed a large fire in Gran Canaria, the most serious that has occurred on the island in the last four years. According to sources from the Cabildo Emergencies, the origin of the fire occurred in Cortijo de Huertas, which is part of the municipality of Tejeda, and from there it has spread to other areas.. After extending approximately 400 hectares, and causing the preventive evacuation of many people, the fire is increasingly controlled, and the technicians of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria rule out declaring it with a level 2 severity, as it did with the 2019 fire, among other things. things because the weather forecasts are favorable and that facilitates the work of extinction.

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that these are difficult times for the inhabitants of Tejeda and the surrounding areas. In this context, the testimony of Ruymán Mena, a shepherd who is precisely dedicated to fire prevention, and whose pen is located right next to where the fire originated, is giving people talk.. In addition to managing to save the lives of his sheep, it is likely that his work has contributed to the fact that the fire has not spread so much, since his animals have been important in cleaning the area. The video with his words has been released by the Canarian News and Audiovisual Agency, and later picked up by the institutional account of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, which defines it as “the most humane part of the forest fire in Tejeda”.

The most humane part of the forest fire in Tejeda 🔥

Ruymán Mena is a shepherd in the Cortijo de Huertas area. With his work, he helps in the prevention of fires. Today, he wanted to tell us about his experience at #IFTejeda.

🎞 @ACFIPRESS pic.twitter.com/G98rUEm9dC

– Cabildo Gran Canaria (@GranCanariaCab) July 26, 2023

As Mena explains, when he realized the existence of the fire, he quickly went to the corral and saw that the fire had reached “10 or 15 meters” from it, but the flames did not reach it thanks to the cleaning work that they have been carrying out. out the sheep, as part of the fire prevention that this shepherd takes care of. However, the smoke itself put them in danger, so Mena acted quickly to get the animals out of the corral and put them safely in an area on the outskirts.. Subsequently, he stayed up all night to check on the sheep and make sure they did not come near the fire..

A sustainable prevention

Sheep grazing is becoming one of the most effective and sustainable ways to prevent the spread of forest fires.. These animals feed on a large amount of dry plant matter, which, when the fire spreads, acts as “fuel” and makes the flames spread more quickly..

Reducing this matter allows better control of fires, and grazing acts as a firebreak; In addition, in the specific case of Gran Canaria, flammable bushes, such as broom or reed beds, had also been replaced in strategic places by grasslands, to prevent fires as devastating as the one four years ago from happening again..

A 36-year-old man lost his life this Wednesday when he was trapped between a car and a wall in a parking lot in Torremolinos (Málaga), as reported by the 112 Andalucía Emergency service.

The 112 telephone number received the notice a few minutes after 4:30 p.m., when a citizen called to report the incident, which occurred on Nidos street, in the La Carihuela area.

The coordinating room notified the Health Emergencies Center (CES) 061, the local firefighters, the Local and National Police, who have confirmed the death of the man.

Once again, José Manuel Baltar Blanco (Ourense, 1967) has given proof of the cunning of his lineage. With a maneuver, he turned the board around to come out reinforced —and rewarded— from a political situation that had become complicated for him, at 215 kilometers per hour in the official car on the A-52, passing through Asturianos (Zamora) on the 23rd. of April. It was not the only time that he made the radar jump on the same route, which had already caught him 54 minutes earlier at 173 km/h in Allariz (Ourense). It means that Baltar traveled a stretch of 140 kilometers in 50 minutes at the wheel of a Volkswagen with many horses that he drove well above the limit of the highway, committing a crime against road safety.

Up to two times he managed to avoid an uncomfortable judgment with the certainty of the radar that hunted him. “It was an oversight”, he justified himself, with strange explanations about what the president of the Ourensano PP was doing on a Sunday in the direction of Madrid in the official car of the Provincial Council without acts on the public agenda. Squeezing the deadlines and with legal delays, he managed to reach the municipal elections on May 28 without having been tried and did not appear electronically before the judge in Puebla de Sanabria until May 31.. Once again, luck fell on his side and the civil servants' strike postponed a hearing that has not yet been held.

With this media uproar and after the puncture of Baltar's PP in the Ourense mayor's office —which his archenemy Gonzalo Pérez Jácome reconquered—, the leadership of the Galician PP forced him to resign from the presidency of the Ourense Provincial Council before going to vote in the past Sunday 23-J, but it was not a free concession. In exchange, José Manuel Baltar has managed to get Alfonso Rueda's PP to propose him as a candidate for the Galician Senate in direct appointment together with the councilor of Ferrol, José Manuel Rey Varela, the only one of the seven Galician cities in the hands of the PP.

The proposal will be made official this Friday the 28th in an extraordinary plenary session of the Galician Parliament, and has a prize for Baltar son, who had already requested his reinstatement in the body of officials of the Xunta to which he belongs. As a popular senator, José Manuel Baltar will have a basic salary of 3,173.83 euros per month in 14 payments, in addition to allowances and other supplements depending on the positions or commissions that he integrates in the Upper House. But the Senate prize comes with the stone: the condition of registered. Implying? That only the Supreme Court will have jurisdiction to judge him. Extra protection for a politician who has already had several setbacks with the Justice, including an investigation for alleged sexual harassment and bribery that was filed and that Baltar described as “blackmail”.

End to 33 years of 'dynasty'

The Baltars, father and son, have been bolted to the command of the province of Ourense for 33 uninterrupted years of Baltarism. Together they took the helm of the Provincial Council under the acronym of the PP, with different styles, but fertilizing the lands of a rural, inland and aging province through nepotism and clientelism that reported them large majorities at the polls..

The first Baltar, the genuine one, was José Luis Baltar Pumar, self-defined as “good cacique”. President of the Provincial Council from 1987 to 2012, he knew how to make Ourense an infallible voting machine for the PP, election after election. Politically incorrect, he used to get into many puddles from which he came out without complexes or major complications until in 2014, already retired from public life, he was sentenced: nine years of disqualification for 104 irregular contracts. That is, for plugging more than a hundred like-minded people into a public institution that it managed as a private company, generating chains of favors that returned in the form of votes..

Ten years earlier, in 2004, he threatened to make water for the PP with a split from the party in Ourense —the rebellion of the little apartment, it was called—. He raised anger in the placid absolute majority of Manuel Fraga, who made Mariano Rajoy sweat cold; nor did he wrinkle before Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who could not break him for years, and opened fronts for him in the war of the mortarboards versus berets of the Galician PP, which pitted the most urban sector against the rural one and from which the Baltars emerged triumphant. He himself prepared his political epilogue —and even a tribute attended by Mario Conde—, but before that he promoted his son to the leadership of the Ourense PP over Feijóo's official candidate: the former mayor of Verín Jiménez Morán.

After 25 years in command, Baltar Sr. had woven the skein necessary for his son to inherit with his own hands the baton of command of the Provincial Council, the public institution from which they controlled the entire province without concealment, giving and removing subsidies, putting and paving roads. A succession worthy of a serial. Three uninterrupted decades in a dynasty that came to an end on June 14.. in the Provincial Council. José Manuel Baltar Blanco still retains the presidency of the PP of Ourense and from his mouth, despite internal pressures, Party sources point out, it has not come out that he will not continue in command: now also as a senator.

Dozens of people have gathered this Wednesday in Santa Cruz de Bezana to protest against the withdrawal by the municipal government of PP and Vox from the film “Lightyear”, in which a kiss between two women appears.

In the midst of a festive atmosphere and with many rainbow flags, the LGTBI collective has protested against what they consider an act of censorship for homophobic reasons and has claimed “free love”. Singing “Bésame mucho” by Luis Miguel and to the rhythm of a batucada, the nearly 200 people who have come to the square in front of the City Hall building, where the municipal plenary session was held, have met with the idea that the team of government, the only one in Cantabria with a Vox presence, will face “a rain of kisses” LGTBI.

After 28-M, the municipal coalition government (PP-Vox) decided to withdraw the children's film “Lightyear” from the cinema offer for the summer, which the PSOE, which led the previous government team, blamed on the ” censorship” and caused outrage on social networks and at the political level.

The initiative has been promoted by the councilor of Equo in Miengo (municipality near Bezana) Sara Gómez, who has celebrated the high influx before the media present. Gómez has affirmed that it is about “protesting against Vox censorship” in Bezana but also in several town halls in Spain, due to the withdrawal of films such as “Lightyear”, which he has defended that “in the only countries where it has caused problems is in those of the Middle East”. And it has encouraged similar actions in other municipalities in Spain, such as Valdemorillo, where a play by Virgina Woolf was withdrawn.

While the “kissed” was celebrated and before the plenary session began, the mayoress of Santa Cruz de Bezana, Carmen Pérez Tejedor (PP), who until now had not spoken out about the withdrawal of the film, has crossed out the conflict of “fictitious polemic”.

In a statement sent to the media, he has defended that “there are no coexistence problems” in the municipality and has accused the opposition of “using the change in the summer cinema programming for political interests”.. Specifically, Pérez has accused the PSOE spokesman and his predecessor in office, Alberto García Onandía, of “using” and “targeting the LGTBI collective”, before the 23-J elections. “That has no justification of any kind,” he considered.

The popular councilor has stressed that the door of her office “is open” to anyone “who has felt used and singled out” and has branded the controversy over the film as a “harassment campaign”.

France will not be able to control its border with Spain using drones in order to fight irregular immigration that tries to cross it. You will not be able to do it because the drones see and record everything, not only the Malian emigrant who walks a stony path between the two countries, but also gardens, patios and orchards in private homes. They are too intrusive a means of surveillance in the private life of citizens.

The French Council of State, the administrative body that oversees the activities of the Executive, suspended on Tuesday a decree of the Prefecture (government delegation) of the Atlantic Pyrenees, bordering the Basque Country and Navarra, of June 26 that authorized the use of drones in a space of 22 square kilometers delimited by Hendaye, Urrugne, the Behobia bridge and Biriatou and Ibardin. Although the drones did not cross the Spanish border, they could also observe what was happening there.

The decision of the Council of State invalidates in advance other similar projects that the French Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, was considering to use drones in other border areas with Spain, starting with the Eastern Pyrenees, adjacent to the province of Girona, and Alta Garona, which limits to the south with Lleida and Huesca.

These initiatives, together with the closure by Paris in 2020 of 16 small border crossings between the two countries, highlight the obsession of the French authorities with irregular immigration from Spain that crosses the Pyrenees.. It is made up of Moroccans, but those in the greatest hurry to go to France are usually Algerians and sub-Saharan Africans from French-speaking Africa.. The immigration that landed on the Spanish coasts has experienced a slight increase between January and July 15 of this year compared to the same period in 2022. 13,487 people without papers arrived (+1%).

The French Council of State put an end, with its decision on Tuesday, to a legal battle between the Ministry of the Interior, determined to deploy the drones, and lawyers from the Association for the Defense of Foreigners (ADDE) of Pau, the capital of the department, seconded by other NGOs and some residents of the area, who rejected this initiative.

The first assault took place at the beginning of the month before the Administrative Court of Pau, which already invalidated the prefectural decree, but the Interior appealed the ruling to the Council of State. This not only confirmed the order, but also ordered the State to pay 200 euros to each of those who appealed the decree before the Justice.

The Ministry of the Interior argued before the administrative courts that it noted this summer an “increase in the number of illegal border crossings” in that area of the Basque Country and that it did not have enough police officers to monitor it.. The prefect's chief of staff, Vicent Bernard-Lafoucrière, admitted to the Bordeaux newspaper Sud-Ouest that they only had 20 police officers on each shift when they would have needed 35. Hence also the need to use technological means to make up for, according to him, the insufficiency of human resources..

This lack of personnel forced the indefinite closure of the Avenida pedestrian bridge between Irún and Hendaye on July 4.. Half of the 16 high-mountain border crossings that Minister Gérald Darmanin ordered closed in 2020 by placing concrete blocks or earth walls are also still closed.. The main one is that of the port of Bañoles (Girona), where the locals on both sides have demonstrated several times shouting “Esborrem la frontera” (Let's erase the border) and they skip the prohibition even at the risk of being fined..

The ADDE and its president, the lawyer Isabelle Casau, responded to the Interior allegation that the migratory pressure from Spain to France was not on the rise. Rejections at the border rose, in the first half of the year, to 3,481, almost half of those of 2022 (6,154). It is true, however, that the number of foreigners detained during the semester in an irregular situation in the Atlantic Pyrenees, after crossing the border, increased by 66% (817) and returns to Spain by 56% (366)..

Even so and with everything, the Council of State ruled that the Interior did not justify that “its services cannot use, to carry out this mission in that area (…), less invasive means and respectful of private life”. annulled the decree. “It was not, at all, justified, because it is not the only way to monitor the border,” Casau said, satisfied when she learned of the decision.. “There are human means,” he recalled. “There is no massive arrival of immigrants that requires resorting to this type of surveillance,” he concluded..

It is not the first time that the use of drones by the Interior has ended, in France, in the courts, although until now the controversies were not related to immigration. Earlier this month, the Administrative Court of Grenoble described as “serious and illegal the damage” perpetrated against “a fundamental freedom” by using two drones in that city to observe and record a demonstration protesting the murder of the teenager Nahel by the police in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris.

In Spain, the Civil Guard also uses drones, since May 2022, on the borders of Ceuta and Melilla with Morocco. Four copies of the Matrice 300 RTK model were acquired at the beginning of last year, for a total of 200,000 euros, through an emergency procedure. They are equipped with long visual range spotlights and infrared sensors. Its deployment has not aroused any controversy on the part of NGOs or individuals whose homes are flown over.