The National Police have arrested two 16-year-old girls and two 19-year-olds for assaulting and robbing a 15-year-old teenager, whom they did not know at all, in the Ciudad Lineal square in Madrid, a spokeswoman for the Madrid Police Headquarters has informed Europa Press.

The events occurred on July 1 at dawn.. The victim was with a friend in said square when six strangers arrived and began to insult and rebuke him.. At one point one of them pulled her hair to the ground, at which point her cronies began kicking her all over her body..

After leaving the place, the victim called the police and told the agents what had happened.. When she returned home with her friend, she met her attackers again, who beat her again and stole her mobile phone, which they later returned to her broken, and her sunglasses, the newspaper El Mundo has detailed..

The girl was assisted by the toilets of the Samur-Civil Protection of various injuries. Group II of the Ciudad Lineal Judicial Police identified the attackers, who were arrested this week.

There are only a few hours left before the end of the campaign and Feijóo still answers about the controversial photograph with Marcial Dorado, convicted of drug trafficking and money laundering, with whom he had a friendship almost three decades ago. The PSOE once again used the snapshot as an electoral weapon in the final stretch of the general campaign, casting doubt on the true relationship of the Galician president with the narco. Asked about it in several interviews in recent days, the leader of the PP has given different explanations. If two days ago he assured in La Sexta that, when that image was taken, Dorado “did not have any open cause” and was unaware of his business, this Friday he added in Cope that, when he met him, he had already been a smuggler, but not a drug trafficker.

“I didn't expect the Prime Minister to use this garbage,” the popular leader exploded, adding that the left has taken the same photo of him during “five electoral campaigns.”. “I met him when he had nothing to do with this matter,” insisted the Galician, in relation to drug trafficking charges. And it added that, in the summary of the National Court on the case, it is stated that “this man has photos with people from all political parties”, and that “none of them was called to testify”.

This Thursday, the current president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, gave some explanations on the issue that served as gunpowder to the left on social networks. Asked if he knew what Marcial Dorado was doing, he stated that, at that time, there was news “that the whole world knew about.”. With everything, and when the controversy broke out again in the last week of the campaign, Genoa chose to ignore the matter to “not go down into the mud” of its political adversaries, with the certainty, they say, that it is an issue that “does not move a vote”.

However, and as published by El Confidencial, there are voices in the party that warn of a loss of initiative against the left in the final stretch. “Campaigns are war”, affirm these sources, who would have seen fit for the PP to counterattack by publishing other uncomfortable photographs of Sánchez, such as the one that the chief executive has with Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo, alias Tito Berni. “They have heated up too much,” they maintain.

10 people have been intoxicated by smoke in a house fire in the Madrid town of Parla, the emergency services have reported.

The fire originated on Thursday night in a residential building on Sancha Barca de Parla street.

Firefighters from the Community of Madrid quickly brought the fire under control and rescued three people through the façade.

According to the 112 Community of Madrid, the event resulted in 10 mildly intoxicated, three of whom were transferred by the Summa112. The fire, whose causes are being investigated by the Police, was extinguished.

Canarias lives these days with bated breath. Aware that a penultimate resurrection and re-election of Pedro Sánchez would cool the doors of the ministries, the Canary Islands Coalition and the PP —fellow travelers in the regional government and in a good handful of councils and town halls— hold candles to all the saints so that Alberto Núñez Feijóo's low back pain does not end up causing localized pain in the lower part of the budgetary back or, where appropriate, in the skeletal muscle structure. ethics of the backbone, competence, ministerial and investment —in the Canary-State relations, in short—.

Not only in the institutions governed by the Coalition with the popular ones, they cross their fingers so that the disconcerting end of Feijóo's campaign does not end up taking its toll. The socialists of the archipelago also hold their breath, aware that another government chaired by Sánchez would provide them with a scenario of hot doors in the different offices of the State Administration, and, who knows, perhaps some ministry, secretary of State or hole in some public company, the last train for those evicted from power in the Islands have enormous difficulties to relocate their own. Everyone, without exception, lives for them no matter how good or bad they do this Sunday. There is a party — they whisper with as much conviction as insistence from the socialist ranks —. We are better than what the polls say, the popular confess. Anything can happen —they warn in the Coalition plumbing—. Sumar, an abstract entity in the archipelago, also does his calculations. we can not know. They're not here. The earth has swallowed them, they have disappeared.

A legislature with a cold or hot door in Moncloa and in the ministries draws diametrically opposed scenarios. According to the president of the regional Executive, Fernando Clavijo, what finally happens on July 23 and in the following days or weeks will not affect the regional government. Clavijo pulls from the manual, does not charge against the hypothesis of another cabinet with Sánchez at the helm because institutionally he can but should not —no matter what, no matter what. However, the Coalition leader knows that, in the eyes of his government, in one scenario or another (Sánchez or Feijóo) the day-to-day relations between the two administrations resemble what an egg resembles a chestnut. Nothing to see. Hot or cold door. Highway or secondary road. WhatsApp or burofax. Complicity or bad neighbor. Is not the same. Hence the nerves and held breath. In few territories as in the Islands an electoral call is decontextualized. Campaign and beach agendas collide head-on on a land invaded by tourists or residents who live with their backs turned to polls, low back pain —more or less unexpected, inopportune or spontaneous— and last-minute debates as flat as they are innocuous. A general election in summer only finds a certain parallel in what it was, because of the pandemic, to celebrate a carnival in June. People ended up getting excited, yes, but just enough, timidly, aware that everything has its month; Carnival is February and midsummer doesn't seem like the best time to ask voters to closely follow a campaign that is far from them —from the beach, without a doubt, but above all from the mental decompression that July and August bring with them—. We will have to wait until Sunday to find out if in the Islands, these weeks being so conducive to summer rest and so little given to fulfilling duties or obligations, participation suffers or not from the misunderstanding that is breathed at street level.

The parties with greater implantation in the archipelago live these days without living, it is difficult for them to make prophecies, they doubt, at times they let themselves be lulled by optimism but immediately afterwards they confess the fear of a blow (the Socialists), of a disappointment tinged with failure (in the PP) or of being overwhelmed by the evil of non-existence, in the case of the Coalition —the nationalists confident in maintaining their presence in Congress, but without ruling out r a scare—. This final stretch is not turning out to be easy. Too many months of electoral campaign. Too much desire to disconnect. Expecting voters to enthusiastically follow what happens in the campaign is asking a lot. Saturation. Tired and even bored. Hardly the messages keep sneaking into the skin. It smells like sold fish, since the candidates can do little or absolutely nothing else to capture the attention of those who have become impervious to slogans and prefabricated phrases in the kitchens of the venues..

The Islands have not been an exception to the story left behind by the campaign that is taking its last steps at this time. In the Canary Islands, as in other regions, the script of bipartisanship —which is so fought over and needed— has invaded practically everything. The duel at dawn and at all hours of PSOE and PP has barely left room for the rest of the contestants or attendees. Once again the bipartisanship has been directed to the guts, the intestines, the liver, and much less to the head. Once again mobilizing their own with the gasoline of confrontation. You have to throw these out. You have to prevent them from coming. Against. Once again sowing to vote against something or someone, never in favor of something or someone. It has been a campaign for two. Neither four nor more, only the common-law couple of the reigning bipartisanship has occupied the first row of the stalls.

In the Canary Islands, the countryside and life are carried with a little more calm. Although completely marked by the pulse of what happens on the center court —in Madrid—, in the Islands the profile of the candidates of the different parties has facilitated that these weeks have passed at the local level with due respect. Its coincidence with the constitution of the government, councils and city councils has not helped to encourage the campaign either, it is not easy to be one thing and the other. Not even the heat waves have managed to counteract the coldness with which offices, bars or homes have lived with a campaign that will heat or cool the doors where the Canarian Government will knock from autumn.

The economic spokesperson for the European Commission, Veerle Nuyts, made it clear yesterday that the Spanish government promised to establish a toll for the use of Spanish highways and highways in 2024, one of the conditions, along with others, to receive the extraordinary funds from the community institutions.

Nothing we didn't know. And despite the fact that the government now says that it is trying to renegotiate this commitment, the truth is that Veerle Nuyts' statements confirm that Pedro Sánchez has lied during the campaign, since in the face-to-face with Alberto Núñez Feijóo he denied that this was true. We would add that like the rest of the candidates, only each one has chosen their own catalog of lies and half-truths. more or less as always.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that the candidates have reveled in some statements knowing that they are inaccurate or false.. Nor is there anything new in that indignation spreads through neighborhoods, selectively, and that some are more annoyed by a hoax in the mouth of one candidate than a troll in the mouth of another. So far everything is more or less normal. But the innocence with which with absolute conviction it is exclaimed that nothing like it had ever been seen is new.. It will be that we have lived very little or that we have very little memory.

It is acceptable to get upset if you are openly lied to and you realize it. The work of unmasking the liar and checking their statements is also laudable if they are blunt statements made to win a dialectical battle in an electoral campaign. But being scandalized by a supposed novelty of the lie, as if one of the founding rules of politics had now begun to apply, certainly causes embarrassment.

“There has never been as much lying as today, nor in such a shameless, systematic and constant way.” The quotation mark is not from now. Alexandre Koyré wrote it in the short essay The Political Function of the Modern Lie, in 1943. Bad times, very bad. The text was underlined by Hannah Arendt to write Truth and Politics in 1967. We can go much further back. Plato already sang the excellence of political lies more than 2,400 years ago. It is true that it required a presupposition of goodness in its use, a noble aim to justify it. But who is the handsome man or woman who, in politics and particularly in electoral campaigns, does not believe they are in possession of that noble ideal that justifies everything?

More wood. In 1516, Nicholas Machiavelli published his best-seller on the exercise of politics. “All men are knaves and will break their word. You are not obliged to maintain yours either”, one way like another of prescribing the use of lies in politics. Cardinal Mazarin, in his Breviary for politicians, states that politics is the art of simulation and dissimulation. Of deceit, go. And also in the other part of the world, since ancient times, similar formulas were prescribed. Tsun Tzu, in The Art of War, gifts eternity with the affirmation that everything is based on deception.

It is true that there have been prescriptions to the contrary. Frederick II of Prussia, the philosopher king, tried in 1740 to combat Machiavellianism, which had made a fortune as a watchword of success in politics. Helped by his friend Voltaire, he published Antimachiavelli.. There we read: “It seems to me a terrible policy to act like scoundrels and deceive people; They can only deceive once, because then they will lose confidence “. beautiful sentence. But he himself did not pay attention. Advice I sell that I do not have. To summarize: new, new, the lie does not work. What does not mean that, every time we discover it, it does not deserve our disapproval and the signaling of whoever pronounces it.

How much truth does a man need? is the title of a book by Rüdiger Safranski that dives from a philosophical approach into the truth and existence of knowledge. Well then, politics, little given to philosophizing in the field of the abstract, has long since obtained the answer to that question.. How much truth do we need? Little to none on most occasions. Unless it coincides with our desires, beliefs and convictions. Perhaps the problem of political lies lies in our little or no willingness to listen to the truth that is not good for us or the nuance that forces us to make the effort to think.

In one of his best-known satirical lyrics, Quevedo pointed out: “Well, the bitter truth, I want to throw it out of my mouth…”. The political truth has the same flavor and for that very reason there are very few who want to listen to it. Hence, due to experience in the trade, the verses sound a bit rectified in the mouth of a politician: “Well, the truth is bitter, I swallow it and holy Easter.” That being said, Sánchez has lied to us about the highways.

The PP faces the last 24 hours of the campaign without nerves, but with restraint. The massive act this Thursday in Madrid was the penultimate finale of two intense weeks with peaks and valleys, in which Feijóo has come to see himself on the verge of absolute. But now it's time to lower expectations. If you fly too high, they warn in the game, victory, which they take for granted, can end up being bitter. Despite the push of thousands of people last night clamoring “president, president!”, the leader of the PP asked for calm. He avoided taking everything for granted. “Friends, do not trust yourself. Some say that Madrid always wins. But they almost always win,” he warned. “Either we destroy them,” he said, “or Sánchez will govern”.

The atmosphere is still good, especially in Genoa. They look winners. “Easy victory”, insist the commanders. They believe that the problems of the last week do not take an excessive toll. And that the RTVE debate from which Feijóo was absent “does not move a single vote”. But in the popular ranks they warn of a loss of tension in recent days. It's time to hold your breath and take nothing for granted.. Excessive euphoria, like the one shown by Genoa and Feijóo himself last week, can bring problems. “We are facing the syndrome of the ministers,” popular sources say. It is the risk that is incurred, they say, when caressing the Moncloa with the tips of the fingers. And no one risks, not to take false steps.

Feijóo began the first week of the campaign on a cloud. The popular leader, both in public and in private, tried to call for calm. “For the euphoria of the debate to reach the electoral campaign would be an unforgivable mistake,” he acknowledged to El Confidencial. But not even he himself could contain his enthusiasm at what his polls showed. In an informal conversation with journalists last Saturday, he even assured that he saw himself with the possibility of reaching a result of 168 seats.. Only a week later, the PP considers this scenario almost impossible.

🔵 #IsTheTime to unite around a great majority.
🔵 From a country at the height of the Spanish.
🔵 That politics recover public service.

🗳 #It's time for change.#VotaPP pic.twitter.com/p1v69L4xHD

– Alberto Núñez Feijóo (@NunezFeijoo) July 20, 2023

The internal tracking of the party points to an average of 155 seats in the last hours. The unknown would be if, if the forecasts come true, Feijóo will be able to keep Vox at bay. In the PP, they would sign that result without hesitation. Above 150 deputies, they point out, it would already be a great success. It is important to remember that the PP starts from only 89. Seven years without winning. It is the margin that the popular leader set himself from the beginning to tell Abascal that, if he succeeded, he would not have portfolios in his eventual Executive. The 160 do not see them as impossible either, but, again, party leaders insist on calm and on managing expectations well so as not to demobilize their voters.

In the “decisive” week of the campaign, the PP pulled the handbrake. The enthusiasm had gotten out of hand. And the feeling also began to spread that the party had lost the initiative in the final stretch. First, due to Feijóo's entanglement with the pensions on TVE, when he confronted the journalist Silvia Intxaurrondo for a false information that, later, he was forced to rectify.. The “inconcretion” or “inaccuracy” of the national leader, as he himself described it, led to a tough campaign by the left against the “lies” and “hoaxes” of the Galician. From the party leadership, they chose “not to go down into the mud” and ignore a campaign that Feijóo has faced “all his political life”. The controversial snapshot dates from 1997, although it was made public in 2013. “They got too hot. It is not understood that no one from the PP has shown the photo of Sánchez with Tito Berni, for example,” says a party leader.

The effects that these episodes will have —or not— on the vote remains to be seen. In general terms, in the PP there is no doubt that “things are going to turn out well” despite everything. That “there is no mistake of any kind that is stronger than the idea of throwing Sánchez out”. But the fear of expectations also exists. And the certainty that the tension will continue “until the end”. This Thursday, Narciso Michavila, the president of GAD3 —the PP's headline demoscopic—, veiledly urged to lower that euphoria as well. “The party, until the last vote is counted, is not decided,” he warned in the Federico Jiménez Losantos program, which has many Vox voters among its listeners. There are those who saw in that Amarrategui statement a deliberate strategy to invoke the vote of those PP voters who went to Vox to harden the position.

The truth is that, for Genoa, the great unknown of 23-J will be the resistance capacity of Vox. In the PP, they point to a collapse of the Santiago Abascal brand. They believe that the ultra-conservative leader did not know how to take advantage of the bullet of the debate against Sánchez and Díaz either. And that, at the moment, the match for third place with Sumar “is tight.” From the Vox leadership, they have been whipping up the same message for weeks. If Feijóo needs your votes, however many they may be, they will not be free. They will ask for wallets. And the negotiation, in case of sum and winning on Sunday, will be the next battle that the PP candidate will have to fight.

The procession for the niche of voters of Hispanic origin has been joined by the political party Vox. And he has done it to the rhythm of salsa. The musical group Los 3 de la Habana, famous for opening YouTube for 48 hours with a song that invited the Latino population in the United States to vote for former President Donald Trump in October 2020, now arrives in Spain thanks to Vox: everything for that million and a half Latino votes.

Right-wing parties have realized that a good part of these Latino citizens in Spain do not have a defined ideological preference. Considering, on the other hand, that in many cases they have fled from regimes that many consider socialist, such as Venezuela and Cuba, the Spanish conservative parties have a hard time: if they manage to convince them to go to the polls, it is possible that many will choose to vote for the right. At least, these are the estimates with which they have worked in the last elections from the PP.

This is also helped by the fact that the discourse of freedom used by Vox against socialism is something that sounds very familiar to Venezuelans who have left their country due to the policies imposed by the Government more than 20 years ago.. And now, in addition, we must add that the discourse of fear of the left has spread to many Colombians who have not welcomed the rise to power of the Andean country of the leftist Gustavo Petro.. They are often middle and upper class families, that is, those who have had money to move to Spain and establish themselves in the country with the help of contacts. They are by far the fastest growing foreign community in the country.

From the Latinos por Abascal movement, they emphasize time and again that Vox has been the only party capable of demonstrating its support for the right-wing migrant population with facts. “Vox was the only party that left the Congress of Deputies showing its rejection of the policies of the Colombian president,” explains Josling Montilva, who left Venezuela due to the political situation in her country and has now been elected Vox councilor in Barcelona: “We have gone through a political trauma and that is why we are now so active.”.

No one doubts the power of the Hispanic mobilization and its passion. For the general director of Cooperation with the State and the EU in the Community of Madrid, José Herrera, what Vox is doing with Latinos is late. “not authentic. He grinds with his speech against migration,” says.

Herrera, on the other hand, makes a very positive assessment of what happened with the Hispanic vote in the municipal and regional elections of 28-M. “Hispanics fundamentally support the Popular Party, and this has been reflected in the polls,” ditch.

When looking at the neighborhoods of the Community of Madrid, for example, the places where the most Latinos live coincide with those in which Ayuso got the most votes, explains Herrera.. The party expects this to be replicated now in the general elections in support of Feijóo. And although he explains that the president of the PP has a more traditional profile than the president of the community, he says that he also has great support from the Hispanic population.

Latinos for Abascal

From Latinos for Trump in 2020 to Latinos for Abascal in 2023. By the end of the general elections, the group of Latinos that supports Vox decided to hire the Cuban group to make the Spanish version of Trump's song to the rhythm of salsa and thus show their support for their leader, Santiago Abascal.. “For a great Spain, we are going to vote”, repeats the chorus of the song, which has been adapted for the Spanish context.

One of the people leading this movement is Montilva.

Vox's policy says that the idea of making the song was born from within the movement, because they wanted to show their support for the presidential candidate, Santiago Abascal.. “And what better than to do it to the rhythm of salsa so that it could be a catchy song that everyone would like to sing in summer”. For the Latinos for Abascal movement, these two leaders, Trump and Abascal, cannot be compared, although they have in common that they seek to recover traditional family values and their fiery defense of private property..

The Latinos por Abascal group appeared on social networks on July 4, the same day they opened the YouTube channel and uploaded the song.. According to Montilva, the movement has been created for years, but it has not been until now that they decided to position themselves on the internet. “More and more people are looking for us interested in knowing how they can support Vox,” he says..

Alliances between the Spanish and Latin American right

For this Latinos por Abascal movement, the signing of what is known as the Madrid Charter is a real commitment to defend the rights of the migrant population in Spain from the ideas of socialism. “It is the only party that has had the courage to stand firm and carry a forceful message against the left,” says Montilva..

The Madrid Charter is the founding document of the Madrid Forum, which formed the alliance of right-wing political parties with organizations from all over Latin America and Spain in October 2020 through Fundación Disenso, Vox's think tank.

In this alliance, the main conservative Vox-like politicians from Latin America participated, such as members of the Republican Party of the United States, members of the Venezuelan opposition, Cuban dissidents and Fujimoristas from Peru..

In the fight for the migrant vote, alliances with the Latin American right play an important role. For the Vox deputy in the Madrid Assembly and founding member of Disenso, Rocío Monasterio, the Madrid Forum is a very powerful network that is fighting to defend freedom in the world: “Vox has a long way to go with this niche, and within the possibilities we have, taking into account the boycott we suffered from the media, the party does everything it can”.

These alliances have been signed with politicians who share the ideas of Vox, such as the former deputy of the Venezuelan National Assembly María Corina Machado, the leader of the Chilean Republican party, José Antonio Kast, the mayor of Lima, Rafael López Aliaga, and the Cuban politician Guillermo Fariñas, among others, according to Monasterio, who also assures that from his party there are no special policies or a different campaign focused on the Hispanic population. “We do not treat the Latino population any differently than the rest of the Spaniards”.

The policy also ensures that its popularity within the movement is due to the fact that many of the Latinos residing in Spain have arrived frightened by the leftist governments that now govern a large part of the Latin American continent, such as Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico..

Spain is embracing the rhetoric of Caribbean politics while absorbing a substantial part of its population, just as happened in Miami with the Cuban exodus. “We Latinos, I am Cuban, we voted for Vox,” says Monasterio.

The foreign population residing in Spain in 2022 amounts to 5.42 million people. A total of 315,885 people in 2022. And it is the fastest growing, according to the Statista data portal.

“Voting for Vox is giving them the guarantee that they will not go through the same thing again,” says Monasterio. “The idea is not just to get Sánchez out of Moncloa, it is to put an end to socialism,” says Monasterio.

Regarding the campaign of the Popular Hispanic Party for the PP, he says he does not know it, but he has no doubt that the Latino community belongs to Vox. “It's not just holding a rally with flags,” he says.

Carlos Guamán, better known on social networks as Carlitos de España, who appears at the beginning of the video for the Latinos por Abascal song, is part of the network of Latino talents that captures votes for Vox.. The youtuber is recognized for being one of the founders of the Comando Libertad association, which seeks to “combat communism and the 2030 Agenda”.

Guamán arrived in Spain from Bolivia 15 years ago irregularly, and saw “hope” in Vox, although he confesses that he did not become an activist until he had his papers in order.

Guamán's support for Santiago Abascal's party is difficult to understand, since Vox has always had a tough discourse against migration. In fact, encouraging fear of illegal migration, linking it to insecurity, has been one of his central arguments in the May campaign for the municipal elections.

Official data indicates that migrants in an irregular situation take an average of seven years to regularize their situation, and that 80% of illegal migrants who manage to regularize their situation in Spain come from Latin American countries.. This is the case of Guamán, who could not have established himself in Spain if the harsh anti-migration policies proposed by Vox had operated in the country..

Through the Comando Libertad association, dozens of Latinos have joined with the same ideals as Abascal's party: “The lyrics are wonderful, because they exalt the values of the Latino family. Many of us have suffered from the governments of our countries and we would never vote for the left,” explains the youtuber.

Since the game, they have invited him on different occasions to be part of events and interviews where he has shown his support. “That's pure political marketing. The speech of Hispanics for the PP with Ukrainian flags in Cibeles does not deceive me”, he assures.

On the other hand, the PP is confident that the support that Hispanics have given it in May will be seen again on 23-J, and Vox has entered the fight for that niche. “We are playing a lot in these elections, they are not normal. That's the general feeling,” says Herrera.

Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont is not willing to miss any chance to put Spain in a bad light. Last Sunday, the fugitive called to dig all possible trenches in a videoconference connection during a rally that Junts focused on his town, Amer. He also came to the fore to attack police infiltration in radical movements or to celebrate the filing of an investigation into Oleguer Pujol Ferrusola, who was being investigated for a triangular economic operation through the Drago company..

This Tuesday, he addressed an extensive letter to his family after hearing various rulings from the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) in recent weeks that ratified that Catalan schools must teach at least one core subject in Spanish, considering that the presence of this language in teaching is “insufficient and inappropriate”.. “The Spanish Justice chose July 18 to launch another attack on the linguistic model of Catalonia. A model that sought to reverse the devastating effects that the fascist dictatorship of General Franco had on our language and provide it with the strength to overcome the damage caused and ensure the future. Spain wants to eliminate our language since the Bourbons came to power,” he wrote in the harangue..

The Spanish “justice” has chosen July 18 to launch another attack on Catalonia's linguistic model. A model that sought to reverse the devastating effects that General Franco's fascist dictatorship had on our language, and to give it the strength to…

— krls.eth / Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) July 18, 2023

But his battle with Spain goes much further: this June, in a letter signed jointly with his partners Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, he asked that Europe fine Spain for buying Russian gas to make energy cheaper and accuses the Executive of Pedro Sánchez of directly financing the invasion of Ukraine. The man who came to receive alleged envoys from the Kremlin to support the secession of Catalonia in his official office at the Palau de la Generalitat is now calling for sanctions against the Spanish State for commercial operations in which the Spanish Government, in reality, has not entered.

The letter from Puigdemont and his partners states: “European imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) are expected to continue to increase in 2023. In 2022, the EU imported 22 billion cubic meters of LNG from Russia, representing an increase of 38% compared to the previous year.. These imports represent 10 million dollars of Russian daily income. LNG-related profits are a key driver of Russia's brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.”.

The largest importer of Russian LNG

The fugitive president in Waterloo also assures that, “as the largest importer of Russian LNG, Spain leads this trend, where LNG reaches 6,513 GWh, that is, 17.4% of total imports in April 2023. Spain has doubled, or even tripled, its imports of Russian LNG in each of the last 12 months compared to the previous year..

These accusations coincide with those made just a few months ago by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who accused the Executive of Pedro Sánchez of being “financing the war in Ukraine”.. Russia drastically reduced its gas pipeline exports to Europe, but, on the contrary, significantly increased LNG exports, despite the embargo decreed by the EU.

Puigdemont relies on the statistical data prepared by Enagás, but omits that the gas brought from Algeria accounted for 23.8% at that time and that of the United States accounted for 23.2%. According to the latest Enagás statistical bulletin, Russian LNG imports decreased this June compared to June 2022 (from 8,752 GWh to 7,673 GWh), although its weight in imports as a whole increased to 26.8%, as imports from the United States fell by half and dependence on Algerian gas also decreased. At the moment, LNG imported from Russia is the one with the greatest weight in Spanish demand, but this is a piece of information that was not available (it was known in July) when Puigdemont presented his brief. The United States, for its part, reduced gas shipments to Europe over the last year to preferentially allocate it to the Argentine market.

Most of the Russian gas that reaches Spain comes from long-term contracts with Yamal LNG, a consortium led by a Russian private company, Novatek, but in which there is also capital from European private companies. In Spain, Naturgy has signed a long-term contract with Yamal, which will expire in 2042. This is the only contract signed by a Spanish company regarding LNG.

However, according to the European Commission, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian LNG imports have plummeted. According to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), “gas flows via pipeline from Russia to Europe have plummeted 80% in just one year”, although LNG imports fell only 10% in 2022.. Spanish imports of Russian gas, however, increased by 45% in 2022 compared to 2021. According to data from Enagás, last year the United States became the main supplier of gas to Spain, displacing Algeria, which was the second supplier. Next came Nigeria and Russia.. Of the total gas imports, Spain imports 68.1% in the form of LNG through methane tankers, while 31.9% arrives through gas pipelines.

private transactions

According to statistics from the Corporación de Reservas Estratégicas de Productos Petrolíferos (Cores), in 2022, imports of Russian gas from Spain increased by 54%, while imports from the United States doubled and purchases of Algerian gas plummeted by 59% due to the crisis unleashed with that country.. This caused the leader of the PP to accuse the Government of Pedro Sánchez of being “financing the war”. The Spanish Executive, although last March asked the companies to stop buying Russian gas, argued that it could not intervene in the purchase operations because they were between private companies and, furthermore, they were due to already closed contracts that were being executed. In fact, the increase in the purchase of Russian LNG by Spain is not due to other countries buying less from Russia: simply, our country cannot receive Russian gas through pipelines, as other European states, such as Germany, do.

Be that as it may, Puigdemont takes the opportunity to poke Spain in the eye and, ignoring the fact that there are countries that import more gas than Spain, is exclusively interested in LNG. Thus, he recalls that “Commissioner Simson [refers to the EU Energy Commissioner, Kadri Simson] has urged Member States and all European companies to stop buying Russian LNG and refrain from signing new import contracts”.

The fugitive states that, “given the persistent increase in Russian LNG imports and its negative consequences for the Union's common foreign and security policy objectives, does the Vice-President of the Commission and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy plan to propose to the Council sanctions for Russian LNG imports? In the event no sanctions are proposed on Russian LNG, what other legal options is the Vice President/High Representative considering to prevent Member States from indirectly financing the war through Russian LNG imports?”. The pro-independence MEPs want community leaders to respond in writing to these questions.

Vox is the last party to launch itself for the so-called Latino vote. He has done so by blatantly copying the successful strategy of the US Republican Party, even covering a theme and a song (“Latinos for Donald Trump”), which here is “Latinos for Abascal”. It is curious how the declared enemies of globalism allow themselves to be influenced so frequently and with such enthusiasm by the ideas that come from the global Empire. To such an extent that they seem to have given up in their fight to impose terms such as Hispanics or Iberosphere, renouncing labels that fit better with their vision of the world, but that have very little impact among the community to which they appeal..

Regarding what we call the Latino vote, some commonplaces are also being imported that are worth reviewing. The crudest of all is to think that they have an innate ideological preference in their cultural DNA.. It is repeated that the Latino voter is conservative by nature, an idea that fits badly with the current political map of their continent, painted almost entirely red.. It is true that the association adapts like a glove to the desires of the Venezuelan community installed in Madrid, especially among those who fled from Chavismo and live in fear of a repeat of the nightmare in their host country.. As we told in El Confidencial at the time, there is indeed a juicy niche for conservative options, an opportunity that Isabel Díaz Ayuso saw before her rivals and that her team has managed to mobilize skillfully. Vox has also moved in this area, but from a more geopolitical perspective, strengthening ties with the new booming Latin American right, with which it has more in common than the Popular Party..

The Venezuelan community installed in Spain is large and politically very active, but it is not even the largest. That first place is occupied by Colombians, with quite a difference. Twenty years ago, there were no more than 50,000 and now it is estimated that there are more than 700,000, according to the consulate's own calculations.. Half of them (about 350,000) can already vote in a general election. Aware of the magnitude, there are several parties that have been working for some time to attract their vote. The Government of Pedro Sánchez, for example, has allowed students who enroll in Spanish public universities to work 30 hours a week to earn some money, in addition to streamlining the procedures for the recognition of academic titles. Although it was Mariano Rajoy who did the most for Colombians, removing the requirement to obtain a visa to enter Spain, and shooting up the numbers of irregulars.

“It is impossible to know for sure, but I would say that the Colombian vote is very distributed. Most work in sectors such as hospitality, and many have sympathy for the PSOE. Then there is a high percentage that votes for the PP, especially in medium and high socioeconomic levels. In Madrid, Ayuso arouses great sympathy. And surely there are some who vote for Vox because they are convinced by its policies or for whatever reason, but in general they continue to be suspicious when they hear messages like that Spain is for the Spanish,” says Juan Carlos Iragorri, a veteran Colombian journalist living in Spain and current correspondent for RCN Radio.. Something similar occurs with three other very large Latin American communities: Peruvians, Ecuadorians and Central Americans, who do not have a marked ideological identity and tend to go to the polls as divided as the Spaniards themselves can be..

In broader terms, Vox's strategy is based on a logic that has been raised since the very foundation of the party. Its leaders often situate the rejection of immigration on a cultural plane, in which Latinos would be brothers and, therefore, acceptable immigrants.. It is about distinguishing them from the rest, especially those from Africa or the Middle East, and even more so if they are Muslims.

This idea has a basic practical weakness, since it is estimated that 80% of irregular immigrants currently living in Spain come from Latin America, while Africans, including North Africans, barely add up to 10%.. Colombians, by the way, are the most numerous, as we explained in this report. Consequently, if Vox intends to deport all foreigners who do not have proper papers, it will mainly punish the Latino communities that it claims to support.. And, if, to prevent something like this from happening, it decided to establish exceptions for countries of origin and religious denominations, we would be entering a field that is already beginning to be very reminiscent of racial laws..