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It would be childish to resort to the famous “raise crows and they will gouge out your eyes” to explain the insurrection of Wagner's mercenaries against the Kremlin. Among other reasons, because the coup goes much further than a bitter dispute between old comrades who have needed each other for years to consolidate their respective power..

It goes further because what is at stake is no longer even the war in Ukraine, with all the importance it has for the world order, but rather because of the consequences that the political and military destabilization of Russia would have in geopolitical terms..

Basically, because it would affect not only Eastern Europe, but the Caucasus, Central Asia and, of course, Africa, where Prigozhin's mercenaries play a relevant role.. Not to mention the multiplier effect that the Russian crisis may have on energy and food supply chains or on refugee flows in the event of chaos in the region, something of particular concern to Turkey, which has already suffered its own. with the Syrian crisis, which explains the prudent reaction of Erdogan, who has already spoken with Putin. Erdogan himself knows what he is talking about because in 2016 he already suffered a coup attempt that caused some 300 deaths and was quickly backed by Putin..

On a more strategic level, it would even affect the correlation of forces between China —Putin's great ally— and the US, whose interest in extending itself towards the State, through NATO, is something more than evident.. And there are the repeated calls for Georgia, located in the middle of the hornet's nest, to join the Atlantic alliance.

Although it is still too early to draw conclusions, the destabilization of Russia, let alone an open civil war that today seems unlikely, is the worst possible scenario because what Hans Magnus Enzensberger called molecular wars would come true.. In other words, the proliferation of small armed conflicts such as those that arose after the Cold War derived from the fragmentation of international politics after the end of the bipolar world, and which have been the breeding ground for the existence of private armies, such as Blackwater, the American contractor, was in the Iraq war, and they have come to shape the wars of the 21st century, the outsourcing of warfare, as happened in the Middle Ages, when warlords emerged in support of the monarch on duty.

decapitate the Kremlin

Not without reason it has been said that for the world it would be more worrying if Russia lost the war and was humiliated in Ukraine than even win it, because the wounded bear -with hundreds of nuclear warheads- is unpredictable. Or, even, that a coup could decapitate the Kremlin to the extent that his successor would not improve the current head of the Russian state..

It does not seem that Prigozhin —who does not have serious support in the Russian Ministry of Defense— could have behaved more civilly than Putin in the event that the attempt had succeeded, which in reality has served to weaken Putin in the face of his people and their elites. Nor, in light of history, is there reason to believe that Russia could move towards a smooth political transition after the era of the Russian president.. It is true that what the West would like most is the departure of the Russian autocrat, but there is nothing to indicate that his successor had a free hand to create a new internal order..

On the contrary, the regime's nomenclature would try to survive by sharpening a defensive strategy and accusing the instigators of change of being US puppets.. The dilemma of the West, therefore, is to decide if it is better to coexist, even if it is badly, with Putin or, on the contrary, it is necessary to support a path towards the unknown, with the aggravating circumstance that the circle closest to Putin has more two decades in power, which allows them to control the state apparatus down to the last detail. Not even the oligarchs today have the capacity to embarrass the Kremlin. Putin himself took it upon himself to liquidate them, which in his day meant a radical change from the Yeltsin era, which was always held hostage by Russian billionaires.. Now, it is just the other way around: Putin is in charge, although more touched after the march of Wagner's mercenaries towards Moscow.

The war in Ukraine, in this sense, has only strengthened its power under the protection of special legislation that protects its collaborators, the vast majority of whom are legally persecuted by the West, for which reason they cannot leave the country, which means that they lack of incentives to support any movement against Putin, whose popularity among Russians remains high sixteen months after the start of the invasion.

an internal matter

In any case, what is clear is that with the Rostov riot there is a certain risk that many of the conflicts that are hibernating today will come out of the fridge, with the dramatic consequences that this would have for the planet.. Above all, if the West makes the mistake of providing some type of support —logistical or armed— to territories that have been seeking for years to move away from Moscow's orbit, and that today would have more incentives given the unexpected weakness of Putin, who has not been able to control his own allies, even though for the moment he has the chain of command of his army under his control. For this reason, the words of Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, are to be appreciated when he speaks of an “internal matter”, although Washington is more in charge of this than the diplomacy of Brussels. You just have to remember what happened in Afghanistan when the CIA made a pact with the devil Taliban to throw Russian troops out of the country.

What is relevant, in any case, is that there is a certain risk, still difficult to gauge, that the fuse in the region and in Moscow's area of influence will catch on, taking advantage of Putin's weakness, who, as was evident, has a military force infinitely superior to Prigozhin's 25,000 men, whose logistical means, even though they are very experienced elite soldiers, are very limited, which made it inevitable that control of occupied areas could not last long. Among other reasons, because it is a vast territory, more than 1,000 kilometers, which means that Wagner's troops in Rostov would have been isolated as the column advanced towards Moscow..

Wagner's coup, in this sense, appears as a sequel, far removed in time, but with some common elements, of Hitler's putsch in Munich, and which in the end, a decade later, contributed to the Nazis reaching the German Chancellery. Again, the old Chamberlain dilemma. To do? Either Putin or Prigozhin.

Fernando Torres's chain of gyms has resorted to the courts to claim compensation for “the damages suffered” during the pandemic. New Fitness demanded 808,100.58 euros from the Community of Madrid for the “serious losses” caused by the restrictions between March 2020 and May 2021, but after the regional government refused to pay them this amount, the case has ended up coming to the Supreme Court, inform legal sources.

The former striker for Atlético de Madrid and the Spanish team broke into the fitness business together with the brothers Javier and Óscar Meléndez in 2013. Its chain of gyms achieved a profit of 101,940.37 euros in 2019 with the three centers it managed —one in the capital Madrid, one in Aranjuez and another in Pinto—, but after the impact of the covid, it went into the red: revenue fell 43% and in 2020 ended with losses of 207,100 euros.

In the claim that they filed with the Madrid Ministry of Health, the company then denounced the “intense and disproportionate” measures that were adopted to stop the covid. In the gym sector, these ranged from “opening restrictions” to “capacity limitations”, but, indirectly, they also pointed to the effects of “perimeter confinements of municipalities” and the promotion and establishment of “work from distance”.

After calculating the alleged damages caused by these measures in an expert report, the company claimed compensation of 808,573.72 euros in May 2021: 269,573.72 for the company New Fitness Aranjuez and another 598,922.65 for New Fitness Group, in addition to “legal interest” that would have to be added up to its effective payment. This figure included “both the consequential damage actually produced and the lost profit not received”.

The refusal of the Community of Madrid

On February 8, 2022, the Legal Advisory Commission of the Community of Madrid refused to address the claim of New Fitness. His opinion, to which El Confidencial has had access, argues that “the sanitary measures were necessary” and affects situating the pandemic as a “force majeure that breaks the causal link between the administrative action and the evidentiary damage”. As he warns, it is not possible to appreciate “unlawfulness of the damage” and the patrimonial responsibility must be rejected.

“The Community of Madrid has at no time completely and generally suspended the activity of the claimant's economic sector (unlike what happened in other autonomous communities), in such a way that, since the state of alarm was lifted, it has been able to carry out its activity at all times, respecting and adjusting to the preventive measures of a sanitary nature”, adds.

Regarding the decisions of the Constitutional Court that declared part of the restrictions illegal, the report highlights that the magistrates did not extend this decision to the limitation and restriction measures in gyms. The court itself also indicated that its declaration of nullity regarding the second state of alarm did not affect by itself “the acts and provisions issued on the basis of such rules during their validity”, which allows ruling out their application to this case. concrete.

From the National Court to the Supreme Court

The gym chain appealed this ruling and, last April, the case was left in the hands of the Contentious Chamber of the National Court. In a resolution dated April 24 to which this newspaper has had access, the magistrates once again collect their claim for “the damage suffered as a result of the declaration of the state of alarm”, but this time it is not only directed against the Community of Madrid, but also against the Ministry of the Presidency of the Government of Spain.

“He raises his claim, in a very clear way, in request for compensation for the damages that he says he has suffered as a result of the closure of his business activity as a consequence of Royal Decree 463/2020 [which declared the state of alarm] and the successive derived regulations of the same, dictated by the Council of Ministers or by the delegated authorities of the Council of Ministers”, summarize the magistrates. Taking this fact into account, the National Court concludes that “the competence to hear this appeal corresponds to the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court” and not to them.

According to legal sources, New Fitness Aranjuez, New Fitness Group and the Community of Madrid have already appeared before the Supreme Court, but now it remains to be seen if it declares itself competent to resolve the dispute. After more than two years of comings and goings, “the damages suffered” by Fernando Torres's gyms now depend on the high court.

There were few Aragonese town halls in which surprises were expected when it came to electing mayors. But they have been thermometers of the temperature of the negotiations to elect the president of Aragon as of next Friday, June 23, when the Table of the Cortes is constituted. And everything indicates that Jorge Azcón, who obtained 28 of the 64 deputies of the Aragonese parliament, can achieve his objective of avoiding Vox's votes in the investiture and form a monocolor government, although he has admitted those votes to ensure mayors of relevant populations.

It has not been necessary in the three capitals, where the three mayors took possession of their command rods with their own and exclusive PP votes, even without having an absolute majority in Zaragoza and Huesca. They have needed them to govern towns like Jaca, Utebo, Cuarte or María de Huerva.

Meanwhile, mayors of emblematic places that were from the PSOE and needed the support of minorities to continue in power have seen how the ties that united them were undone and no new ones were tied. Especially significant has been the case of Alcañiz, where the socialist Ignacio Urquizu lost the mayoralty, which the PP won thanks to adding two separate votes from PAR and Vox and the abstention of Teruel Exists. Urquizu, who had already been removed days before from the lists to Congress from the Federal Executive, will continue in Alcañiz as leader of the opposition and will take possession of his act of regional deputy; After the forced relief, he regretted the decisions of the PAR and Teruel Existe on the networks.

The same as the general secretary of the PSOE Aragón, Javier Lambán, who even on the eve of the municipal investiture plenary sessions came to offer Teruel.. In that offer, he called on the Aragonese to respond to the PSOE's offer, because “it offers dignity”, compared to what the PP could propose, and to maintain the alliance locked in the Quadripartite.

The role of the RAP

But the steps taken up to now by the PAR do not go in that direction and do go in that of supporting the PP, facilitating the investiture of Azcón. The vote of Alberto Izquierdo, the only regional deputy of the Aragonese, is the one that would give the simple majority for the investiture, since the support announced by Aragón/Teruel Existe is that of abstention, without Vox in the equation. The PAR also seeks to obtain a vice-presidency of that disputed Provincial Council, the position held by the same Left under the command of the PSOE and which has been key for the PAR to present 214 municipal candidacies in the third Aragonese province, out of the 354 in the Community. This implantation and with its people-to-people votes, has been key to its survival in the main institutions.

Now, with the electoral wind in favor of the PP, in a party that has always made the most of its results —from the greatest in the past to the meager ones present—, everything indicates that their option is going to be to vote for the PP. They understand that it can allow them to assume an effective public management quota, which they do not see easy from a provincial council facing the government of the community.

In the case of Aragón/Teruel Existe, the proposals of the Aragonese PSOE have been received with great coldness. To the offer of the presidency of the Diputación de Teruel, Tomás Guitarte already responded that they proposed impossible things because they were in the hands of third parties. In any case, in Aragón/Teruel Existe they do not see it as politically appropriate to preside over a corporation of 25 deputies having four minutes. They do aspire to the vice presidency and, above all, as they have repeated in recent weeks, compliance with agreements on renewables, depopulation or health, which they have put on the table.

Despite the discourse of the Aragonese PSOE that the votes of the new formation come from its ideological spectrum and having supported the investiture of Sánchez four years ago, Aragón/Teruel Existe reiterate that they are on the issues that carry their program, beyond not accept the intervention of Vox, and not to party assumptions.

The Table of the Courts

Now the challenge is in the capacity of the PP to square everything, with a following temperature taking in the constitution of the Table of the Cortes. By this Friday, the round of talks that Azcón has held with all the groups will have concluded and it will be necessary to see what positions the possible allies occupy.

The interest in the evolution of the pacts in Aragon is maximum, as shown by the fact that the national leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, of the 8,000 municipalities in Spain, chose the inauguration of the mayoress of the small town of Celadas in Teruel. That presence had many readings. Also, that of betting because the pacts in Aragon are different from those of Valencia and reflect the centrist profile that he seeks for July 23. The same as what happened in Barcelona and the Basque Country.

Azcón himself is also in it, with his own denominator: without flaunting his resignation from Vox —the legislature is very long—, starting the new era of Aragonese politics with a single and indisputable color, blue. The own voice will be that of the popular leader.

In the eyes of Yolanda Díaz, “Morocco is a dictatorship” and she said so, in April, before the cameras of La Sexta. In the eyes of Agustín Santos, his number two on Sumar's list, Morocco is “a co-sovereignty regime” between King Mohamed VI and his people. Morocco's 2011 Constitution, however, grants the monarch the bulk of executive power, and constitutional practice has further increased his authority. The sovereign is also Commander of the believers, that is, the religious head of Moroccan Muslims.

Agustín Santos, 68, until ten days ago Spain's ambassador to the United Nations in New York, is the star signing of the leader of Sumar, not only as her second on the list for Madrid, ahead of Íñigo Errejón (Más Madrid ) and Ione Belarra (Podemos), but also to advise her on foreign policy and international relations.

The number 2 of @sumar, Agustín Santos Maraver, says that human rights violations in Morocco are “individual cases”. Well, it should be reminded that the No. 3 of her party, @teshsidi, has a direct relative, Mohamed Tahlil, who has been in jail since 2010, and on February 17,… pic.twitter.com/fdtPSaxfOZ

— Jalil Moh. Abdelaziz 🇪🇭 الخليل (@JalilWs) June 24, 2023

Just before embarking on a return trip to Madrid to join the electoral campaign, Santos gave his first interview on Thursday in a New York park. There he answered the questions of the delegate of the EFE agency with freedom because he had already been dismissed as ambassador. He contradicted point by point not only previous statements by Yolanda Díaz and the Sumar program, but also justified the change of position of President Pedro Sánchez on Western Sahara.

The interview, which hardly had an echo in the press, circulated on Friday among the Sumar militancy, where it caused great discomfort, and even the anger of number three on the list for Madrid, Tesh Sidi, 29, of Spanish origin. Saharawi, born in one of the Tindouf refugee camps (southwestern Algeria). “We have to start calling things by their name, Morocco is a dictatorship and is the occupying force of Western Sahara,” Sidi told El Confidencial in response to the words of the congressional candidate who precedes him on the list..

Santos hinted that “it is not realistic” to want to hold a self-determination referendum in Western Sahara when the voter census, prepared by the Spanish colonial administration in 1974, bears, after so many years, almost no relation to the current demographic reality.

The declarations of Yolanda Díaz and the provisional program of Sumar are committed to reaching in the Sahara “a fair, realistic and agreed solution between the parties that allows the right to self-determination of the Saharawi people”. This right can only be exercised through a referendum for which a voter census is required. “The excuse of the census is the one that Morocco – the occupying force – has been using from minute one,” Tesh Sidi replies.. “The truth is that a census has already been drawn up, that it is deposited in Geneva, and that it would only require an update,” he says..

MINURSO, the United Nations contingent deployed in the former Spanish colony, finished updating the Spanish census in 1999. It identified 84,251 voters, but Morocco placed such obstacles that the referendum it agreed to with the Polisario Front, after reaching a ceasefire in 1991, was not held. Technically, it would be possible to update the list of voters drawn up 25 years ago, removing the deceased and adding their descendants..

Agustín Santos refuses to describe Morocco as a “dictatorship” and affirms that the human rights violations that occur there are “individual cases”. Today there are three influential journalists imprisoned in Morocco, as well as a well-known human rights activist and several YouTubers and bloggers.. The Saharawi prisoners of conscience are 39. Between May 2017 and June 2018, the most intense phase of the repression of the Rif revolt, 798 Rif residents, 158 of them minors, went through Moroccan prisons, most of them for only a few months.. The four main leaders of that protest, starting with its leader, Nasser Zefzafi, are still behind bars.. When Mohamed VI acceded to the throne in 1999, no journalist was in prison.

One of the Sahrawis imprisoned by the Moroccan authorities is Mohamed Tahlil, a relative of Tesh Sidi. He entered prison in 2010 and three years later was sentenced to 20 years for his role in the Gdaym Izik revolt, a protest camp that was erected nearby in El Ayoun in the fall of 2010.. In its dismantling, 11 Moroccan riot police died.

The former ambassador of Spain to the UN maintains that the turn of President Pedro Sánchez on the Sahara, supporting the solution advocated by Morocco to resolve the conflict, “is not such because the UN continues to be placed at the center of any eventual solution”.. In the letter that Sánchez sent, on March 14, 2022, to the King of Morocco, he supports Rabat's autonomy plan for the Sahara, a solution that circumvents the self-determination referendum. Although it has been sweetening its resolutions on the Sahara, the UN Security Council reiterated again in the last one, at the end of October, that the objective of an agreement between the parties is “the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”..

Agustín Santos does not think, according to EFE, that “it is correct to expect some kind of counterpart from Morocco” to Spain's change of position. To date, it has not obtained any, except, from April 2022 to May 2023, a decrease in irregular immigration, especially that which arrives in the Canary Islands. “This change in position has not brought benefits to Spain,” stresses Tesh Sidi.

Aligning with Morocco in the Sahara dispute was an important concession because Spain is the former colonial power and its change in position could have a drag effect. By ceasing to be equidistant, it has also paid a high price with Algeria, which stopped importing Spanish merchandise.

Santos's opinion is not shared by many diplomats, retired or active, and a good part of the academics or researchers who follow foreign policy. “I do not understand what this government has done by changing our position on the Sahara,” said, for example, on June 21 in Barcelona, Jorge Dezcallar, who was ambassador in Rabat (1997-2001).. “I don't see what advantages we have obtained (…), I think it is a very serious mistake,” he concluded.

Israel is the last point of disagreement between Agustín Santos and Tesh Sidi, which reflects the majority opinion in Sumar. The former ambassador is reluctant to describe the treatment given by Israel to the Palestinians as apartheid. This term, used to describe the racial segregation that prevailed in South Africa, is the one used by large human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.. “Of course it's apartheid,” replies the activist of Saharawi origin. It is no coincidence, he stresses, that “two occupying powers, such as Morocco and Israel, have openly established a close relationship of military and security cooperation.”.

The language used by Agustín Santos is reminiscent, to a certain extent, of that of his former boss, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, today High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.. Although he was not part of the Spanish Government, Moratinos' good relations with the Moroccan authorities made him, at the beginning of 2022, one of the architects of the Spanish-Moroccan reconciliation, whose first step was sending the letter to Mohamed VI.

Tesh Sidi tries to downplay this trajectory. “It doesn't bother me to be part of the same list as him,” he says. “I'm looking forward to seeing how it's pronounced from now on,” she concludes..

“It is not true that the Spanish State maintains the Catholic Church. If no citizen marked the X in the income statement for a year, what would be transferred would be zero euros. We are not in the German system, where there is a religious tax. Here, what is done is to ask the taxpayers if they want a part to go to that religious purpose. But there is nothing for maintenance, the only thing the State does is provide this collection service”. The general secretary of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), César García Magán, defends with a point of warrior ardor what he calls “exercise of fiscal democracy”, which means asking Spaniards every year where they want a percentage of their taxes, in this case 0.7%, through the personal income tax return.

Because, according to what the auxiliary bishop of Toledo also points out to El Confidencial, whether or not taxpayers mark the X box for the Catholic Church in their declaration, “if it is not an annual referendum, it is a true survey based on to which the Church submits each year, something that other social, political and other spheres do not carry out, so that deep down there is a positive assessment of what the Church's action is in all its breadth, even by people who are not believers, but who value that performance”. “If that criterion,” he adds, “were applied to other items in our budgets that are going to subsidize or allocate that money to institutions or programs that may be more or less debatable, I don't know —if they did that kind of annual referendum— how much for percent of taxpayers would tag those grants to those programs…”.

The number three of the EEC puffs out his chest because the data supports them. In the 2022 income campaign, corresponding to the 2021 fiscal year, 8.5 million Spaniards checked the box for the Church (individual and joint returns), which represents 31.29% of those submitted, and with 84,201 new statements in favor of the institution, twice as many as the previous year, where the effects of the pandemic were felt.

And, with a view to the 2023 financial year, which ends at the end of this month of June, optimism remains after that year in which the coronavirus forced the closure of all the temples, without the Church's assistance work diminishing, as also evidenced by the 2021 Activity Report, which is required to present to account for the destination of the funds it receives. Some funds that in 2021 amounted to 320,723,062 euros, which represents an increase of 8.5% and that offers, on average, the data that the contribution that the Church receives from each taxpayer who marks the X is 37, 73 euro.

The abuse scandal does not take its toll

This is a not inconsiderable percentage, which seems to be unaffected by the erosion caused to the Church's image by the sexual abuse scandal or by the campaigns that advocate repealing a financing system that they consider maintains “privileges”. of the institution. García Magán denies the greatest. “That approach is not true, because this system does not give anything directly to the Catholic Church. What it does is a collection service of what citizens freely, using their will, deem appropriate, but they give exactly what the citizen determines. And it is a system that is perfectly compatible with a non-denominational regime, and let us not forget that the current Constitution of 1978 speaks of relations of cooperation between the Spanish State and the Catholic Church and other confessions.. In other words, our current constitutional system is not a purely secular separation system like the French one, as some claim, but rather like that of Italy.”.

And remember that, within this “fiscal democracy”, the taxpayer, in addition to the box for the Church, can also choose to check the box for activities of social interest (which is intended for NGOs) or even both options, as specified also in its promotional campaigns the EEC. “Or not mark any and let the State keep 0.7%,” says García Magán.

The tax allocation represents 22% of the financing of the 70 dioceses that make up the Church in Spain, out of a total budget that, in 2021, amounted to 1,142,775,931 euros, according to data from the Activities Report. The rest comes from the contributions of the faithful, who with 343.07 (30%) million euros, almost 11% more, seem to have overcome the downturn caused by the closure of the temples due to the pandemic and that it could not be pass the brush; 109 million come from income from assets and other activities (10%); and 383 million other current income (34%), to which are added 50.9 million extraordinary income (4%)..

The secretary of the Spanish Episcopate acknowledges that “the EEC is working hard, in collaboration with the dioceses”, to achieve self-financing, an issue to which it committed itself years ago when the current system was articulated, endorsed by the agreements between the Holy See and the Spanish State of 1979, and improved during the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, because, as is common doctrine in Añastro, the bishops negotiate better with PSOE governments. “Is it necessary to increase [the efforts for self-financing]? Without a doubt, we must make our faithful aware that each one has to maintain that collaboration, that co-responsibility with their Church, in this case, with the Catholic. This is what happens in parishes, where the faithful who come to them are the ones who have to commit to supporting it, because they are the ones who receive pastoral, charitable care, etc.”.

An assistance work that is also reported in the aforementioned Report and that helps them to vindicate themselves before those who repeatedly question whether they receive 0.7%. “In moments of difficulty for families to make ends meet, in sickness, in old age, in mental health problems, in an increase in suicides among the young population, the Church appears there”, highlights the Report, in whose presentation it was stressed that “the Church represents a fundamental support for the State, since, in the last three years, the 9,000 Church centers have attended an average of four million people in situations of exclusion and material need, women victims of trafficking and violence, family support centers, care for the prison population, the sick or the elderly”.

4,300 million savings to the State

Likewise, it is emphasized that, in the educational sphere, the more than 2,400 Catholic centers chosen by more than 1.5 million families represent savings to the State of more than 4,300 million euros per year; or that, on a cultural level, the heritage of the Church, with more than 3,100 assets of cultural interest, has a positive impact of 3% on Spain's GDP and represents an economic impact of 22,620 million euros, generating 225,000 direct and indirect jobs.

For all this, the secretary claims the relevance of the tax allocation system and denies that there is a “free bar” of financing for religions, criticizes what was heard a few weeks ago when the Sánchez government signed an agreement to equalize the taxation of all confessions with well-known roots in Spain. “The Constitution still in force —García Magán underlines the validity of the magna carta in all its apostilles— maintains a regime of collaboration with the Catholic Church and other religious denominations. And, to change that, it would be necessary to go to a constitutional reform “. There he leaves it.

The holes are made on fire every night of San Juan. You burn everything obsolete in that fictitious room where you pile up, like a lazy Diogenes, the habits that destroy you. For thousands of years, fellow humans from all over the world have taken advantage of the milestone of the most inclined planet to consider that something could change in their lives.. The Earth's look at the abyss from its north coincides with the fact that the return to the dark side of the void is shorter that day. It is the day of the solstice and in a very intuitive way our ancestors lived the milestone of a new year because suddenly it seemed that everything returned to its place. The night that the spirits had to hurry more in their daily journey to sow fear and sorrow, they were thought to be more vulnerable.. And strength was gathered with the sun at its height to plant, at its sunset, face to so much bad baba.

The fire and its destructive capacity seemed propitious to wipe out the bad. Fire consumes and purifies, they had been seeing it for many years in that wild Nature that still defended itself from us.. To scare away the spirits, nothing better than the unbearable heat of what they did not understand, which had been uncontrollable and which later was the key to getting away from the monkeys, when we cooked the meat. Fire, as an ally, has civilized us all and with it we have made a hole where we can locate ourselves, where to sow cereals, where to make an open field to see the enemies approach….

From those initiatory traditions, as we blamed ourselves for the causes of our ills, the turn of looking more at oneself and not looking the other way was agreed.. With the awareness of something that spoke to you from within, it was possible to start a dialogue that in this case was internal.. And at least one night a year, that of driving away spirits, became over time a proto-exercise of self-criticism.. To speak to the self that commanded with force to scold him. With the usual symbolism to explain to the most clumsy the conceptual of the matter, it was defined that that night it was necessary to purify. A computer reboot from before typing. Some jumped bonfires, others walked in the coals, all burned the old so that the new could enter.. Burn what burns you inside, paradoxes of the flame.

Then the Catholics arrived, they appropriated the concept that suited them so well in their stealthy methods.. Those who crush themselves -crush you, it is understood- so as not to complain too much. They decided, in commandment format, which is the one that requires the least explanation, the contrition of sins and the obligation to improve. And in order not to have to prohibit that pagan tradition of making a turning point in collaboration with fire, they decided to invent the birthday of San Juan and fit it into the calendar in a more orderly way.. Without much scientific rigor, as said date is less precise in its astronomical data, because in reality the solstice does not always occur on the same day of the alleged birth of the one they called Baptist.

With a half-firefighter San Juan, he handled himself with water, very caught up in the hair -it is not a macabre joke of how his days ended- he was associated with the short night, the disinfectant fire, the beginning of the harvests, the rest by agreement , the programmed drunkenness, the cheap coaching, the control of the sheep, the validity of the superstitions, the illusion of being better, the easy explanation to the lazy and an endless list of diverse concepts and the night with less dream… and with more expectations. We'll see on the 25th.

As we are going towards simple things, they included in the rite, recently I think, writing that bad thing that normally worries us. We collect little pieces of paper to record how lazy we reproach our spirit and give corporeal reality to our weaknesses.. And throw them in our faces and shortly after into the fire. And taking advantage of the brand that feeds the material that we have left over from year to year, with a certain ecstasy, normally without chemical support, the evils trapped on paper and with a pen are thrown away for their total destruction without effort, but with a certain commitment..

How I would like, in view of the elections, that tradition would evolve more towards transparency. That we all demand to share the content of the confessional papers to see if the aforementioned would have understood himself. It is for this electoral time that I demand the publication of your inaccessible consciences. Because it is also a time for balance, reflection and self-criticism of all our rulers, the cyclical appointment at the polls. To understand their intentions, I would like to have access to what they reproach themselves with.. Not to each other, to themselves. Even if it was just for once. I would give my trust to whoever was more self-critical, to whoever best wrote down all his limitations and had the commitment to destroy them with fire to be a better minister or president of the government, or adviser to a politician or director of the Post Office.. I would ask the candidates to do us public service that, in addition to crushing us with all the good they have done, or with what they have planned, they show a certain humility in reviewing their actions.. And that the act of contrition should be followed by the firm commitment to improve their attitude and be capable of something that is now conspicuous by its absence: the recognition of error as a starting point for consensus and progress, of generating the strategy that benefits almost everyone.. With the inevitable cost that some felt a bit out of the general common good for looking so special that they vehemently want what only a few want.

As Serrat would say at the end of his great Fiesta, after celebrating San Juan everything returns to the same place, just like planet Earth. In that transversal night that he tells so accurately, different people mingle, share enthusiasm and wine, feeling so equal when he looks at himself. Unfortunately, in the end, “the poor return to their poverty, the rich return to their wealth…” and the politician to his career… and without papers to burn. And we, every year, a little more burned.

Catalonia has become the last bastion that Pedro Sánchez has left for 23-J. After losing fiefdoms such as Andalusia, the PSC is the only hope for, in the face of the generals, adding deputies in key positions. The leader of the Catalan socialists, Salvador Illa, is the strongest baron at the moment, except for the wayward Emiliano García-Page. If the president has any chance of turning the polls around and governing, it is with the Catalan separatists. They are already agitating from Moncloa the message that with Alberto Núñez Feijóo the “factory” of sovereignists that Mariano Rajoy was will return.

The argument also serves to change the ERC roadmap. The agreements with the Government in Madrid have punished him in the municipal elections of 28-M. The Republicans suffered a severe blow when they became the third force behind the PSC and Junts. In the parliamentary elections, the forecast indicates that Carles Puigdemont's party can also surprise Oriol Junqueras's. In this scenario, according to different sources consulted, the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, would once again call elections. It would be the fifth time that since 2012 a legislature has not been exhausted in Catalonia.

The polls conducted by the Catalan parties for the general elections give ERC seven deputies in Congress, one less than Junts. The PSC would contribute to the result of Sánchez between 15 and 17 seats, the Commons between seven and eight, the PP seven, Vox two and the CUP, one. Beyond how these figures may end up determining the governability of Spain, in a domestic key the loss of the hegemony of sovereignism by the Republicans would make it impossible to rebuild relations with Junts, with whom the investiture agreement was broken.

Pere Aragonès would have a very difficult time moving forward with the Budgets for 2024. On this occasion, it would not be convenient for Illa to rescue ERC, so the call to the polls would be the most plausible option, according to what Republican sources admit.. The Catalans would predictably vote again in the spring of 2024 instead of 2025, the year in which the Republican mandate was completed.

Illa has expectations of winning the elections again like in February 2021. Then he was the winner in votes, but the sum of the sovereignist parties gave the absolute. Today, the PSC is fondling the idea that a pact, like the one that the Barcelona mayor's office has given to Jaume Collboni, could make the former Minister of Health president of the Generalitat with the Commons and it came from the PP.

The hypothesis holds on paper, but everything will be conditioned by what happens on July 23. If Feijóo wins the elections, he will have to negotiate with those of Santiago Abascal an investiture or even a government depending on how many seats he has. The PP sets out to exceed 150 that “necessary majority” that will allow it not to cede seats to Vox. If the Galician arrives in Moncloa alone, he could support the socialists so that there would not be a pro-independence president, as was done in the historic agreement of the Basque Country so that Patxi López would be Lendakari. In this equation, Pedro Sánchez should have ceased to be the leader of the PSOE.

ERC has already tried to approach those of Puigdemont to wave the flag of the process again. Aragonès has offered Junts a “common agreement” to demand from Sánchez the commitment that a referendum on independence in Catalonia will be allowed in exchange for reissuing Frankenstein, if the Prime Minister manages to join with his current partners. Those of Puigdemont have their own road map and marking distances with Moncloa is favoring them. The spokesperson in Congress, Míriam Nogueras, declared a few days ago that “it is very clear that Sánchez has lied to everyone” to justify his message that they distrust the socialist to give him their support after 23-J.

The PSOE has always maintained the referendum as a “red line”. Even if Sánchez tried to reach an agreement to remain in Moncloa, socialist sources warn that this time the party would rebel. “We have already paid dearly for the pardons and the reduction of the crime of embezzlement,” they point out from the territories where it continues to weigh like a stone that it was the president's management that “destroyed” the 28-M candidates. If Sánchez is given the numbers, he could try to use a vote in Catalonia as glue. Sumar has announced this week that his program will include that the Catalans vote “in some way” on their belonging to Spain.

The post-general board will reposition the protagonists, but if all the parties agree on something, it is that the Catalans will return to voting in advance, as has been the case since the process broke out in 2012. It is only taken for granted that Illa will be the PSC candidate. In the independence movement there are elbows before the bad relationship between Pere Aragonès and Oriol Junqueras, who aspired to be president. In Junts Puigdemont is also expected to move his thumb. The Commons have Ada Colau vacant and the PP, everything to do.

The Andalusian aerospace sector has experienced a great semester of strategic decisions that will mark its immediate future and that have culminated this week with two important announcements by Airbus at the Paris Air Show, which is held in the town of Le Bourget and which come to confirm the takeoff of the sector worldwide and the heavy workload that is expected in Andalusia. In this region, the European giant has four plants: San Pablo and Tablada, in Seville, and Puerto Real and El Puerto de Santa María, in Cádiz, with more than 2,000 direct employees.. In addition, Airbus has its large headquarters in Getafe and another plant in Illescas..

On the one hand, the low-cost Indian company IndiGo confirmed this week the largest contract in the history of commercial aviation, by ordering Airbus to manufacture 500 A320 aircraft, adding to other previous orders and increasing the number of aircraft contracted up to 1,330, becoming the world's largest client of this type of aircraft.

The president of the Airbus works council at the national level, Francisco Sanjosé, explained to EFE that the Airbus Cádiz plant, which will result from the merger of the two factories that the company has in the province, will be the most benefited of the Spanish ones due to this contract, since the fuselage of the A320 and other components are built in it. Thus, the Puerto Real factory manufactures its tail rudder, while the El Puerto factory manufactures the “fan cowl” or engine covers.. In addition, the Altesis Aerospace plant (one of the main supplier companies or tier1), in Puerto Real, is in charge of developing its stabilizers..

This mega-contract is in addition to the one that another company from the same country, Air India, ordered in February, consisting of 470 aircraft, of which 250 were assigned to the Airbus A320 model and the rest to its North American competitor Boeing.. These orders guarantee “at least” the workload until 2035, dates in which it must deliver the 500 single-aisle A320 family aircraft.

In any case, and despite these new contracts, Airbus maintains its roadmap for the closure of the Puerto Real plant and the concentration of all its workers in the old CBC (Bahía de Cádiz Center), now renamed Airbus Cádiz, located in El Puerto de Santa María, where the company will expand its facilities by 4,000 square meters to accommodate its new civil aircraft programs, while military aircraft components are already being diverted to the San Pablo and Tablada plants.

In these Sevillian factories they have also received with great joy the second announcement of the week: the Spanish Government has also confirmed at this same aeronautical fair, one of the most important in the world, that it will invest 1,730 million euros in the purchase of 16 military aircraft C295, whose final assembly is carried out at the Tablada plant in Seville. Specifically, the Ministry of Defense will order 10 units of the C295 MSA version for Maritime Patrol and another 4 of the C295 MPA model for Maritime Surveillance..

The sale of these units to the Spanish Government reinforces the success of the C295, the most Sevillian aircraft, which already has 280 orders from 39 commercial operators. Two months ago, Airbus delivered the first of the 50 aircraft of this model that the Indian Government has contracted and which will be an important milestone, since only 16 of these units will be made in Spain, while the remaining 40 will be made in the country itself. Asian country with the technology of the European giant.

The Paris Air Show 2023 has served to verify that the great pothole of the pandemic is over and that both commercial aviation and the aeronautical industries return to the expected path. Just before the covid, the two world aviation giants, the American Boeing and the European Airbus, made their forecasts for 2038 and indicated that the market would go from the current 23,000 aircraft to a global fleet of about 48,000.. Both estimated that in the next 20 years some 40,000 aircraft would be built, worth some five billion euros.. The arrival of the pandemic raised fears that nothing would ever be the same in international travel, but the vaccines and the opening of the global opening have not only restored hope, but have allowed the recovery, expected in about five years, to take off. accelerate in just two.

In Andalusia, the aerospace sector closed the year 2022 with a turnover and employment much higher than in 2021. Sales stood at 2,356 million euros, with a rise of 17% compared to the previous year (2,002 million). In the same way, employment also grew, reaching 13,136 direct jobs, which is 8% more than in 2021..

Despite this growth, compared to the pre-pandemic data, current billing is still 17% below the billing data for 2019 and employment 9% below. However, the sector assumes that in this year 2023 it will recover and exceed the pre-pandemic data.

The Andalusian aeronautical sector is made up of 143 companies located mostly on the Seville-Cádiz axis, although they also have a presence in Malaga, which continue to be excessively dependent on Airbus programs, although some also work for Boeing or Embraer.

The other great news for this regional industry has been the assignment to Seville of the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency (AEE), which has already begun to take its first steps in the Andalusian capital, from where investments of 700 million euros will be managed. , according to its director, Miguel Belló.

Administrations and businessmen underline the synergies of both sectors, the aeronautical, with a tradition of more than a century and very consolidated, and the space, still incipient, but which is showing great dynamism and strength, especially in the satellite sector..

The managing director of the Andalucía Aerospace cluster does not hesitate to point out to El Confidencial that “the new contract announced between IndiGo and Airbus this week is undoubtedly great news because it represents an important boost to the sector, and it is further proof that we are following this path post-pandemic recovery. Andalusian companies are already participating in this important civil program for the A320, and this historic macro contract is a great incentive to have good prospects for the future in terms of the Andalusian aerospace sector,” he says..

On the other hand, he believes that the designation of Seville as the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency “will allow the sector to take off in the region, since it will be possible to take advantage of synergies with existing technological capacities”. In addition, he explains that the most important initiative promoted by the cluster is the implementation of the Andalusat project, a satellite system that will be developed using, preferably, the technological capacities of companies in the community..

The managing director of the Federation of Metal Entrepreneurs of Seville (Fedeme), Carlos Jacinto, expresses himself in a similar line, who underlines the “magnificent news that we have known this week in Paris”, since they will allow the arrival of more workload for the Andalusian Airbus plants and for supplier and subcontractor companies. The Sevillian employers' association has repeatedly warned of the need to promote training, given the current problems of hiring specialized personnel to carry out the programs of the aerospace industry. This same week, the president of Confemetal, José Miguel Guerrero, went to Seville to meet, together with other representatives of the sector, with the Employment Minister of the Junta de Andalucía, Rocío Blanco, who was demanded to urgently launch new specific training plans to avoid problems of lack of capacity to meet the workload expected in the coming years.

Macarena Olona assured, when she was still flirting with returning to politics, that her return to the ring would be for Granada or it would not be. The woman from Alicante called herself Macarena de Granada in that failed assault on the vice presidency of the Junta de Andalucía, which ended with the state lawyer outside Vox, after a very loud divorce. Even Macarena de Salobreña, which is where she registered in a somewhat peculiar way to be able to run in the Andalusian elections of 2022. And he has fulfilled his promise by heading the Granada list of his Caminando Juntos project, the party with which he presents himself to the generals in a competition that, in this Andalusian province, is full of cuneros.

Among the main parties, only the PP presents a man from Granada, the veteran Carlos Rojas. He left regional politics in 2015 to go to Congress and will continue there in this legislature, for which he has seen three leaders of his party pass: Mariano Rajoy, Pablo Casado and Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The Galician has awarded him for his role in this long year of transition since the former president of the Xunta arrived in Genoa and, in fact, he is the only head of the popular list that remains in Andalusia compared to 2019.

Rojas is not the only one who repeats, since Olona was a candidate for Granada four years ago, but under the initials of Vox. From the Andalusian province, she established herself as one of the main faces of the party, led the appeals to the Constitutional against states of alarm and was general secretary of the parliamentary group and scourge of ministers such as Fernando Grande-Marlaska. It was her visibility that led to her trip to Andalusia and she did so accompanied by the person who now replaces her on the list of the ultra-conservative party, Jacobo González-Robatto, alias Coco Robatto.

With experience in the world of finance, he was responsible for Olona's campaign in his failed Andalusian assault. He accompanied her everywhere along with his press officer, Álvaro Zancajo. And he has no connection with Granada, although he does with Andalusia, since he was married to a Sevillian influencer, mother of his two children, and for this reason he has lived on horseback between Madrid, where he was born, and the Andalusian capital.. There he also served as an advisor to the Vox parliamentary group in the regional Parliament and, later, he was elected senator by regional designation.

But Robatto and Olona are not the only ones who can maintain old quarrels in this battle of the cuneros into which the big parties have turned Granada. In the provincial debates that are common in the campaigns of the generals, the left will have the opportunity to confront the two models of feminism that separate the PSOE and Unidas Podemos. The former vice president of the Government and the first strong woman of Pedro Sánchez, Carmen Calvo, heads the list of her party despite being from Cordoba. And for Sumar, Martina Velarde, leader of Podemos Andalucía, one of the leaders closest to the leadership of Ione Belarra and Irene Montero, is presented. Born in Rota (Cádiz), she also works as a Cordovan, although on her social networks she has defended her relationship with Granada, where she lived for 11 years after studying at the university in the Nasrid capital..

Calvo is one of the main representatives of that classic feminism of the PSOE, now swayed by the support of Amelia Valcárcel for Alberto Núñez Feijóo. His statements in the Ágora de Hoy por Hoy, where he collides with Pablo Iglesias and José Manuel García Margallo, incite feminism aligned within United We Can, linked to queer theory. The main battlefield in this matter has been the processing of the trans law, so a clash between the two women would not be unusual.. And it would be necessary to see in what position Macarena Olona is placed in this new version that criticizes postulates of her old party, such as the denial of sexist violence.

I want to greet you good people and tell you that as General Secretary of Podemos Andalucía I assume with responsibility leading the list of Granada for Sumar, as my party has asked me to.

— Martina Velarde (@MartinaVelardeG) June 20, 2023

The situations of Calvo and Velarde also have other organic similarities, since they are an example of a common practice in their parties and that does not always generate joy in the militancy. Velarde is now a deputy for Córdoba, but she is presenting herself in Granada because it is the quota that Yolanda Díaz's team has agreed to for Podemos with the rest of the Sumar actors. It must be remembered that, in Andalusia, the majority force in the space is IU, which has 3 of the 6 starting positions if the results are similar to those achieved by the left to the left of the PSOE in 2019.

The case of Carmen Calvo is more striking. It is not the only cunera on the PSOE lists, since Fernando Grande-Marlaska will go to Cádiz, a province with which he has a very weak connection – he spends a few days at a sister's house in the Cadiz town of Rota -. But it is curious that a woman from Cordoba goes to Granada. He does it because in his province the two probable positions are for the minister Luis Planas and the general secretary of the party in the territory, Rafi Crespín. The PSOE lists are racked, so Calvo would have been relegated to fourth place, impossible for the Socialists to achieve. And that is what has caused his trip to a neighboring province where there have been voices against his position on the list.

The year of discovery, the year that everything could, the year in which Spain began to be Spain, it was also the year in which Terra Mítica was conceived.. 1992. Although its birth would be left for the summer of 2000, it was in 1992 when the pines of Serra Cortina, in Benidorm, burned uncontrollably until they destroyed a vast area that included a premium package: the 10 million square meters that in 1996 served —expropriation through—to constitute the surface of Terra Mitica.

In the distance between the conspiracies and the assumptions, the Cortina fire remained in the imagination as the necessary cause for a consequence: the real estate use of a piece of land that required its absence, its non-existence.. On the ashes of the pines, the Phoenix Bird grew, the star attraction of Terra Mítica in its first bars.

“The works remain, the people leave,” writes, paraphrasing the divo of Zaplanismo, Julio Iglesias, the journalist Francesc Arabí in his book Ciudadano Zaplana (Ed.Akal). In his work, the best portrait of the former Valencian president, the Benidorm theme park is cited up to 38 times. It is not accidental because its genesis, its development and its fall explain in an almost parallel way the trajectory of the politician. “If there is an icon that concentrates all the perversions, irregularities and illegalities that have looted the Valencian Community, that is the Benidorm Terra Mítica leisure park,” writes Arabí, who circumscribes its construction to the “permanent bachelor party status” in which the community was installed in that cycle.

Mythology draws the Phoenix as the bird that regenerates from the ashes and, despite the fury of the flames, manages to be reborn.. Always a little more, always a new life. In a display of coherence with its own history, the flight of the Phoenix invited the first VIPs of Terra Mítica to climb to a height of 54 meters. And from there fall abruptly. A journey of 3 seconds, at 100 km/h. In the last two decades, the Phoenix has mainly served to embody the fall of the park in the headlines.

Zaplana himself could have fallen dragged by the acceleration of those glittering attractions. Accusations about money laundering and false invoices have flown over his head but, like the bird that escaped from his prison, he emerged unscathed from the fire.. It contributed to the grave, however, from the Valencian savings banks such as CAM and Bancaja. “The park that was going to transform a dry patch at the foot of the Serra Cortina into a gold mine, the complex in which 400 million euros of spending disguised as an investment were hung”, writes Arabí.

But far from steepening its flight, the mammoth dream of recreating Mediterranean civilizations in the heat of Benidorm has ended up as an ugly duckling in Spanish parks. If —beyond its own speculative meaning— the narrative of Terra Mítica aspired to look at Port Aventura from face to face, and perch itself as one of the most important leisure areas in the country, the balance after overcoming the pandemic is definitive.

Far from becoming a lever for the deseasonalization of tourism on the Costa Blanca, or boosting family tourism compared to the type of visitor profile in Benidorm outside of summer, the park has been reducing its opening calendar to a limit of just three months and medium, from the beginning of June to the middle of September. Two of its five areas —Iberia and Las Islas— only open in the months of July and August, de facto turning the park into a summer complement, far from its aspirations.

Its possible competitors, such as Port Aventura or Parque Warner, open from February to December. The income statement highlights the distances. If in 2021 Terra Mítica entered 4.3 million (with losses of six), Warner's income in the same year was 53 million (eight profit) and Port Aventura 163 (with fifteen profit)..

The attraction that, like a ferocious beast in an abandoned zoo, best expresses the drift of the park is The Rescue of Ulysses, one of the most cutting-edge attractions in Europe and that, with an investment of 18 million for its premiere, recreates Telemachus' journey in search of his father Ulysses. River boats, fifty animatronics and advanced technological development. For years, however, it has been unused after the animatronics stopped working and Ulises himself did not appear on the tour.. Your roller coaster is abandoned. The pufo and financial calamities ended up defeating mythology.