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72,000 crossings and 80 deaths

🔥 Ceuta after the chaos: what we know so far

Yes, last week we said this newsletter was taking August off. But then a massive crisis exploded at the Spain/Morocco border with tragic consequences. Here is a quick summary of what you should know.

You’ve probably seen the images by now. Tens of thousands of mostly young Moroccans swimming around breakwaters, climbing fences, and overwhelming the beaches of Ceuta sparked panic across Spain, alarmed European governments, and dominated headlines around the world.

• Social media was on fire. Influencers and media outlets were covering it across the board, many of them portraying it as proof that Europe had lost control of its borders.

• Now, almost a week later, the emergency phase appears to be over. But while the crowds have largely disappeared, many of the biggest questions remain unanswered.

What we know so far. The scale of this crisis was totally unprecedented. Around 72,000 people crossed into Ceuta in just a few days, making it by far the largest irregular border crossing Spain has ever experienced.

• Before you panic. Around 70,000 have already been returned to Morocco, while others (many of them minors) are still in the area. The authorities are assessing their situation.

• The human cost was high. Authorities are now working to identify 80 confirmed victims (an NGO says the total is 141, counting the ones who died on Moroccan soil), most of whom drowned while trying to reach the Ceuta shore. Many remain unidentified, and Spanish forensic teams continue coordinating with Moroccan authorities to notify families.

Viralization effect. Investigators now agree that the crisis was mainly caused by a coordinated social media misinformation campaign. Viral TikTok videos, Facebook groups, and WhatsApp messages all falsely claimed that “Spain’s border is open” and that migrants arriving by sea could no longer be returned after a recent Spanish Supreme Court ruling.

• The posts even shared Google Maps routes, recommended where to buy wetsuits and waterproof bags, and pointed people toward the least guarded sections of Ceuta’s coastline before disappearing from the internet.

Europe’s initial reaction. In the first 48 hours, several European governments reacted with concern. Italy reinstated temporary passport checks for travelers arriving from Spain, while politicians in Finland and Denmark and elsewhere questioned whether Spain’s handling of the crisis threatened the Schengen Area and suggested that Spain's recent regularization drive may have acted as a "pull” factor for the immigrant flood. Twenty-two EU countries called for emergency talks over the crisis.

• That tone has now changed. Following that emergency meeting of EU interior ministers on Tuesday, member states largely rallied behind Spain, praising its response and expressing “total solidarity” with Madrid.

• The focus has shifted from criticizing Spanish migration policy to strengthening the EU’s external borders, improving intelligence sharing, and dismantling migrant smuggling networks.

• Italy remains the exception. Rome has kept temporary passport checks in place, although it is increasingly difficult to defend doing so, given that Ceuta is not part of the Schengen Area and nearly all of those who entered have already been returned to Morocco. (And Italy has more irregular migrant crossings than Spain.)

Was this a “manufactured” crisis? So far, we’re not sure. Officially, Morocco insists it neither encouraged nor organized the mass crossing. But Morocco has repeatedly outmaneuvered Spain politically in recent years, using immigration as a weapon.

• Rabat claims the trigger was Spain’s Supreme Court ruling. Moroccan officials also say that decision spread rapidly across social media, convincing thousands of young people that reaching Ceuta meant reaching Europe.

• Morocco also says its police avoided confronting such enormous crowds to prevent even greater loss of life, and emphasized that it continues accepting the return of migrants under existing agreements. Moroccan authorities have now prosecuted 77 people accused of organizing illegal crossings or participating in violence during the crisis.

We beg to differ(ish). Spanish intelligence, however, paints a more nuanced picture. Their current assessment is that Morocco did not plan the operation, but allowed it to happen and then exploited it politically once events spiraled out of control. That distinction may prove important as relations between Madrid and Rabat enter another delicate phase.

• It comes at a particularly sensitive moment geopolitically. Morocco has grown noticeably closer to the Trump administration in recent months, while relations between Pedro Sánchez and Washington remain strained over defense spending and foreign policy.

• Morocco also continues to press its long-standing claims over Ceuta and Melilla whenever opportunities arise (FYI: Ceuta and Melilla are not colonies but Spanish exclaves on African territory. Their citizens are Spanish with full rights. Ceuta has been a part of Spain since 1580.) Things are so tough that leftist coalition Sumar is saying Spain shouldn’t even organize the 2030 World Cup with Morocco.

Enter the far-right. While the border itself has largely returned to normal, the political battle is only beginning. Across Europe and the U.S., far-right politicians quickly framed the events as proof of an “invasion.” U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Britain’s Nigel Farage, Germany’s Alice Weidel, and others shared videos suggesting these migrants were now heading across Europe.

• Obviously, this isn’t true. Ceuta is not mainland Spain and, as we explained above, entering Ceuta does not provide automatic access to the Schengen Area. Everyone leaving the city for mainland Spain must pass through identity checks at the port or airport. Plus, most of them were sent back to Morocco, so… no.

• Other fake news spread just as quickly. Claims that Sánchez’s recent migrant regularization encouraged people to cross the border “so they could become citizens and vote for him” ignore the basic fact that the people who arrived in Ceuta would not qualify under that program (in order to qualify, you had to be living in Spain and the deadline to apply has passed).

This was a big f*ck up, though. Even if Morocco bears significant responsibility or even instigated the crisis, Madrid is unlikely to escape scrutiny. The biggest question remains why Spanish intelligence failed to anticipate a movement that had been openly growing across Moroccan social media for days.

• Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska insists the government received no intelligence warning suggesting anything close to a mass crossing of this magnitude. At the same time, he said stuff “happens” and that doesn’t necessarily mean someone is responsible. 🤔

• That claim has triggered an unusual public disagreement within the government itself. Defense Minister Margarita Robles has defended the work of the CNI intelligence service while pointing out that Interior also oversees its own information services through the National Police and Civil Guard.

• The opposition Popular Party has seized on the confusion, accusing Sánchez of leaving Ceuta unprotected despite warning signs. Party leaders argue the government failed to reinforce the border in time and are demanding a full parliamentary explanation.

And now? The immediate emergency may be mostly over, but few believe the story is finished. Authorities still do not know who created the original viral campaign that convinced thousands of people to head toward Ceuta. Most of the accounts disappeared almost immediately after the crisis began.

• Spanish investigators are already monitoring new conversations circulating on Facebook and WhatsApp discussing another possible attempt on Aug. 15. Whether those calls represent genuine planning, copycat rumors, or another misinformation campaign remains unclear.

• Spain has reinforced Ceuta’s maritime border with floating barriers, patrol boats, and extra security in an effort to prevent another mass crossing.

What is clear is that this has become a test of border security, intelligence gathering, information warfare, and Spain’s relationship with Morocco. The crossings may have mostly stopped (or at least paused), but the political blowback is only beginning.

🎙️ Episode 4 of The Bubble Podcast is out!

On our latest episode, we discuss what it really means to belong in Spain today and explore one of the country's biggest identity debates—from immigration and Spain's record-breaking migrant regularization to the controversial Ley de Nietos—alongside Sweden's ambassador to Spain and writer Elizabeth Duval.

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🚨 Like all good Spaniards, this newsletter — our Thursday news and politics one — will take a break in August. (Our Friday events guide will continue publishing!) See you in September…and enjoy 😎!

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Scorched earth politics

🔥 Spain's worst wildfire on record appears to be under control at last. Don't get used to saying that.

Bad times. For nearly a week, large parts of central Spain looked like something out of a movie apocalypse, with hillsides burned, villages and towns evacuated, highways closed, and smoke from the flames visible from Madrid.

• The scene was an inferno. At its peak, the government declared a Level 3 national emergency—the first time Spain has ever done so for wildfires—and tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes.

• The good news is that the situation seems to be finally improving. The massive fire affecting Madrid and neighboring Ávila had been technically stabilized as of last night, authorities said, allowing thousands of residents to begin returning home.

• But “stabilized” doesn’t mean over. Firefighters remain on alert, several areas are still evacuated, and officials warn that another heat wave could easily reignite hotspots in the coming days. (Yesterday Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said things were “favorable”, although he asked people to be “cautious”.)

The big one. The fire that devastated Madrid and Ávila has already gone down as the largest wildfire in modern Spanish history, burning more than 50,000 hectares.

One culprit. Investigators believe the disaster in Ávila began with a spark from an excavator carrying out illegal work to open a road near Burgohondo (Ávila) during a period when heavy machinery was banned due to the extreme fire risk.

• The eight-ton machine struck rock with a hydraulic hammer, the Guardia Civil said, creating the spark that ignited dry vegetation. The fire then exploded across forests already primed by weeks of scorching temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds.

A heartbreaking tragedy. The human cost has been huge. Around 63,000 people were evacuated at the height of the crisis, making it one of Spain’s largest peacetime evacuations in recent memory.

• Home again. Roughly 24,000 have now been allowed to return home, while another 10,000 people in Madrid remain displaced or confined. Authorities say at least 100 primary residences have been destroyed, with the damage to second homes still being assessed.

• Happy news. Despite the scale of the disaster, no deaths have been reported, although several firefighters and emergency personnel suffered injuries during the operation.

The fires stretched far beyond Madrid. According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), more than 206,000 hectares have burned across Spain this year—well above the average—and the country has recorded 376 fires, more than double the norm.

• Spain didn’t fight the fires alone. Through the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism, Greece, Italy, and Türkiye sent firefighting aircraft, while Portugal deployed more than 130 firefighters and dozens of emergency vehicles to help contain the flames.

Enter politics. The disaster briefly produced an unusual display of cooperation. PM Sánchez praised the “institutional loyalty” shown between different levels of government and renewed his call for a national pact to prepare Spain for a future of more frequent climate disasters.

• Madrid presi Isabel Díaz Ayuso (of the center-right PP) announced 58 recovery measures, including psychological support, hotel accommodation for displaced residents, aid for damaged homes, veterinary care, and assistance for elderly and dependent people.

• But, no. The PP, however, rejected Sánchez’s proposal for a pact, accusing the government of weakening Spain’s firefighting capabilities, while simultaneously urging Brussels to develop a stronger EU-wide wildfire prevention strategy.

Scientists have warned for years that longer heat waves, prolonged droughts, and abandoned rural land are creating the perfect conditions for larger, faster-moving wildfires. This year’s figures already suggest that warning is already reality.

More news below. 👇👇

🎙️ Episode 4 of The Bubble Podcast is out!

On our latest episode, we discuss what it really means to belong in Spain today and explore one of the country's biggest identity debates—from immigration and Spain's record-breaking migrant regularization to the controversial Ley de Nietos—alongside Sweden's ambassador to Spain and writer Elizabeth Duval.

Subscribe and listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube!

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🤦 Zapatero gave his first interview and cleared up nothing

Every political junkie in Spain was glued to TVE last Thursday. Former PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was there, on Mañaneros, giving his first interview since an Audiencia Nacional (National Court) investigating judge charged him with leading a network of illicit influence peddling. Bring out the 🍿, because it was a doozie.

• The situation. Judge Calama of the Audiencia Nacional has Zapatero under investigation for allegedly running an influence-peddling scheme around the government bailout of airline Plus Ultra, plus money laundering, tax fraud, smuggling, and organized crime.

• The fly in the ointment. Two days before the interview, his associate Julio Martínez — the administrator of consulting firm Análisis Relevante, the alleged hub of the operation — told the judge that Zapatero was “the one who set the pace,” i.e., el capo.

What Zapatero said. He mostly repeated what he’d already told the court in June. He again said he spoke about Plus Ultra to nobody in the government or the body that bailed it out (SEPI). He was just a consultant who created reports, he said. And that Dubai offshore company supposedly set up to hide his income? “An absolute invention”. Finally, did he use his daughters as fronts? Good god no, that would be “incredible.”

• Maybe I talked to someone. He did admit calling a Santander executive to arrange a meeting for Plus Ultra’s directors — but insists that’s just “facilitating a contact,” not peddling influence. Yeahhhh….

And what he didn’t. Zapatero didn’t address that testimony of his buddy Julito Martínez, who’d told the judge that Zapatero ran the show. “I am not going to get into the defense strategy of any defendant,” he said. hmmm…

• Where those jewels came from. When asked about the 80 or so pieces of jewelry found in his office safe — valued at €1.32m ‼️— he said they were “a courtesy gift from many years ago.” From who? “I’m not going to say the country.” Why undeclared to the taxman? “There was no patrimonial intent“ (what?). Did he know they were worth over a million? “We couldn’t even imagine that,” he said (his people previously estimated them at €30-50,000). He also said the jewelry gave him “a severe allergic reaction,” which we don’t understand…but find intriguing.

• Rules are for fools. And on the good governance code he signed as PM, which explicitly prohibits gifts of this value? “Interpretable.”

And this was on a friendly channel. El Español noted that after 20 minutes of hard questions, Mañaneros host Javier Ruiz declared Plus Ultra, the daughters, and the jewels all “done” — when none were resolved — and spent the rest letting Zapatero play the victim over his leaked agendas and invaded privacy. Ruiz ended with: “President, how are you doing?“ Awww…

The reviews? Not positive.

• Friends. The PSOE closed ranks behind their colleague publicly but privately felt let down: “We didn’t really understand the utility of the interview,” one source told El Mundo. Later, PM Sánchez got colder: “I’m not his spokesman,” he replied when asked this week about the case.

• Enemies. The opposition PP called his explanations “a joke,” while Madrid mayor Almeida described the interview as a “bath and massage session.” 🤣 Ouch.

What’s next? Zapatero still owes an explanation to Judge Calama about the jewels — he dodged those questions at his June testimony too.

2. 👉 Catalonia could take a hard (separatist) right turn

You thought Spain’s national government had drama with the far right? Take a look at Catalonia. There, a new poll shows that if elections were held now, far right parties could take up almost a third of seats in the regional parliament — with a new separatist party being the breakout star.

• The latest poll shows a big win for Aliança Catalana. The hard right separatist party led by Silvia Orriols (anti-immigrant, anti-Spain, pro-independence) would win 25-28 seats in the 135-seat parliament — up from a mere two seats now — and become the second-largest party, according to a poll taken by GESOP for El Periódico, a center-left newspaper.

• And they’re not the only tighty-far-righties on the ballot. Add in the 11-13 seats expected for the hard-right Vox (anti-immigrant, pro-Spain, pro-bullfighting), and the extrema derecha would have almost a third of the Catalan parliament.

Why Aliança is surging. The party started as a protest vehicle for pro-independence voters disillusioned by Junts and ERC, the longtime separatist parties that led the failed 2017 independence push.

• Party evolution. It’s since pivoted hard toward immigration and public safety — and is now pulling voters from across the spectrum: Junts (its biggest source, at 24.5% of their 2024 voters), Vox (13%), PSC (9.2%), ERC (7.9%) and PP (7.7%). It even leads among 18-29-year-olds and among people who didn’t vote in 2024 (which sounds a lot like Vox’s demographic). Their own voter loyalty is 94% — which pollsters say is unprecedented.

Who’s hurting most? The right-leaning separatists of Junts are the trainwreck of the poll. Their seat total drops from 35 to 15-18. Even the ruling center-left PSC isn’t immune — dropping from 42 to 34-37 seats as nearly 1 in 10 of its voters switch to Orriols.

The other parties had excuses. The PSC said extremism should be fought with better public policies (they’re already doing that, they say). ERC said Aliança’s rise can be beaten by giving voters “hope…and a future” (true, but can you?). The PP reminded voters that if they want “seny i ordre“ — common sense and order — they know where to look. And Junts? They declined to comment because, let’s be honest, it’s ugly.

Good news for centrists (kinda?). Catalonia doesn’t need new regional elections until May 2028. But Orriols will get a chance to show Aliança Catalana’s power in May 2027, when Spain holds municipal elections throughout the land. She is already targeting hundreds of local councils — many currently held by Junts.

3. 🏖️ The world can't decide whether Torres and Llorente are dating or not (they are not)

Sigh. We just won the World Cup, but somehow one of the biggest stories of the week wasn’t Ferran Torres’ sports talent—it was his hug in Ibiza.

Torres — our current hero after scoring Spain’s winning goal against Argentina — is taking some days off in Ibiza with his buddy and teammate Marcos Llorente.

• Torres is very handsy and kissy-kissy with his friends, if we go by what we always see on TV, so it wasn’t that strange to see him hugging and kissing Llorente on the neck. You know, like two friends would while enjoying the greatest summer of their lives.

Gay? Social media and some media outlets naturally had other ideas. Within hours, X, TikTok, and Instagram were flooded with claims that Torres was secretly—or not so secretly—gay. AI-generated images began circulating, old photos with teammate Pedri were taken out of context to suggest a hidden romance, and the internet did what it does best: confidently invent a new reality (no, we won’t link to any of it).

Nope, not gay. Not that we care, but Marcos Llorente has been married for years and has a daughter. Ferran Torres was in a long-term relationship with a woman until recently and has since been linked by Spanish gossip magazines to what feels like half of Spain’s influencer population. So… don’t get your hopes up.

This reaction says far more about us than it does about either player. For years we’ve argued that men should be allowed to express affection without being trapped by outdated ideas of masculinity.

• As we were saying. Spain striker Borja Iglesias responded that rumors after the photos “aren’t just about homophobia; they are about a society that still punishes any gesture that falls outside the script of traditional masculinity.”

• And again. Writer Boris Izaguirre defended the images as a perfectly normal display of affection, pointing out that warmth between men has long been part of Mediterranean culture and shouldn’t be treated as something scandalous.

But wait, there’s more. Remember when last week Ferran wore a red “Make Spain Great Again” cap during the World Cup celebrations? The hat—an obvious play on Donald Trump’s famous MAGA slogan—made a lot of people wonder whether he was making fun of Trump or supporting his movement.

• Support, obvi. The White House declared on X that “everyone wants to join the movement,” while Trump himself reposted Torres’ video multiple times, calling him “a great player” and describing the cap as “a nice tribute.”

• Torres has not explained what he meant by it, so… we’re waiting.

4. 👷 Yo-Yo is looking for a job — and Mr. Handsome might have found her one

Remember Yolanda Díaz? We had sorta forgotten her, since she resigned her role as the boss of the fading leftish Sumar party and became a pato cojo. But Yo-Yo needs a gig for when she leaves government — she’s had a glow-up since entering national politics, but still needs a paycheck, ya dig? Well, good news: She’s found a lead.

• The news. PM Sánchez — aka Mr. Handsome — has nominated Díaz to lead the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN’s labor body. If elected, she’d be the first woman and first Spaniard to run it.

What’s the ILO? Founded in 1919 and based in Geneva, it’s the UN’s only tripartite agency — governments, employers, and unions each hold a vote. The labor standards it sets become legally binding when countries ratify them; Spain has ratified 141, more than anyone.

• The bad news. The ILO is in financial crisis. The U.S. owes it €280 million — 70% of all unpaid dues — while the Orange Menace’s influence is reportedly creeping into ILO policy. How? Spanish unions say LGBTQ+ rights and the right to strike are increasingly hard to defend inside the organization.

Her chances? Complicated. Of the 56 votes, unions (14) are on board. Employer groups (14) — globally, not just in Spain — almost certainly won’t be, given her record of heavy interventions in the labor market. She also needs a majority of government votes (28), and while Europe, Brazil, and China look promising, the African bloc will probably back the incumbent, Togolese Gilbert Houngbo, who wants a second term. Also, Spain is simultaneously running Agriculture Minister Luis Planas for the FAO top job — and countries rarely win two UN top jobs at once.

• The English problem. The ILO conducts much of its business in English. A 2023 clip shows Díaz needing a translator for a reporter’s English question. Not a dealbreaker, but not…great.

What people are saying. Sánchez calls it “an honor“ and unions are enthusiastic. But Pablo Iglesias, her former lefty ally (remember him?), is predictably less of a fan. Díaz is getting the nomination to a well-paying job far from political pressure “for services rendered” to Sánchez’s government, he says. He also snipes that, with the ILO director salary of $239,200 a year, she’d be “the best-paid CCOO [union] member in history.” The PP, for its part, says it’s payback for keeping quiet on government scandals. 🤷

• What’s next? Candidacies close Aug. 14 and the ILO council votes Nov. 16. If she wins, she could stay on as minister until October 2027, though it’s unlikely this government will be around that long.

5. 🗿 A 5th century church! A 15 million year-old turtle! Spain keeps digging up fascinating old stuff

You know we’re big fans of Spanish archeological finds here at The Bubble. A Roman ship off the coast of Mallorca? Nos encanta. Julius Caesar’s elephant (maybe) under a Córdoba hospital? Grande. “Exotically rare” ancient Greek, Iberian and Roman coins in a storage locker in Baena? Gen-i-al. Well, we got a double dose of finds this week, so you can only imagine how giddy we are.

• The latest. Researchers have just published a long-awaited study on a 5th-century church in Murcia that kept functioning under Muslim rule until the 9th century. And construction workers in Madrid stumbled across the shell of a giant tortoise from 15 million years ago.

That’s an OLD church. Excavations at Cerro de la Virgen, a hilltop in Calasparra (Murcia) that’s home to the first paleochristian church documented in the region, began in 2021 and continued through 2024 and 2025.

• Kinda gruesome, no? The newly published study documents a single-nave church built around 410–440 A.D., architecturally similar to Visigothic churches in Asturias and early churches in Syria. Inside: a 6th-century double tomb with a young woman and a fetus whose DNA points to “a common maternal lineage” — i.e. mother and child (we hesitate to imagine the sad story here).

• Less gruesome. Also found were coins from several Roman emperors and an Abderramán III dirham, bronze Andalusian weights inscribed al-ʿadl li-llāh (”justice is of God”), and balance scales. Sounds like they might have also been running a corner store.

The church straddles several chapters of Spanish history. The church survived the Muslim conquest of 711 and kept going for nearly two more centuries, thanks to the Pact of Teodomiro (713), which let Christians in southeast Spain practice their faith in exchange for taxes (i.e. god for money). The weights and scales suggest the church also served as a tax-collection point (fine, not a take-out beer joint).

• The researchers’ conclusion. “The hill was a Christian community subjected to the taxes of the Islamic State and forced to integrate into the regional fiscal and commercial circuits.“ The find chips away at the traditional picture of a sharp break between Visigoth and Muslim Spain — reality, it seems, was more complex.

That’s a REALLY OLD turtle. Workers building a training center for Madrid’s emergency services in the Latina district found the shell of a Titanochelon bolivari — a giant land tortoise that roamed the Iberian Peninsula during the Miocene, more than 15 million years ago. Madrid’s deputy mayor Inma Sanz called it “absolutely amazing” (true, if obvious). The shell is now at the Museo Arqueológico Regional in Alcalá de Henares for study and conservation. Madrid has history with digging up old giants — another city project unearthed a mammoth 🦣!

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@thebubblecomAnimals caught in Spain’s wildfires ❤️‍🩹 #Spain #Madrid #Ávila #Wildfires #incendios

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Plea dealing

🤦 Jeez, José Luis. With friends like these…

Ever had a terrible week where it felt like the world was against you and even your besties were out to bring you down? Well, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (aka ZP), the former prime minister from 2004-2011 (and BFF, at least until recently, of current PM Pedro Sánchez), just had that — ✖️1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣. Let us count the ways!

The Two Julios. ZP’s bad, no good, terrible week came courtesy of two men who happen to share a name — and, apparently, a strong preference for not going to prison if they can avoid it. They provided testimony to court this week in a sprawling corruption and money laundering probe linked to the controversial €53m government rescue of airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic (which ZP is accused of organizing behind the scenes — for a cut). And let’s just say if there was a bus in the vicinity, they definitely threw ZP under it.

The least believable claim. When ZP testified in court last month, he was extremely sure of himself, as in, “I did not speak with anyone, absolutely anyone from the public sector about the rescue of Plus Ultra. There will be no one who can say otherwise.” But oh, did these people say otherwise.

• Julio #1: Julio Martínez Martínez (”Julito”) — ZP’s longtime running buddy (literally: they jogged together nearly every day) and the administrator of a consultancy, Análisis Relevante, through which ZP collected plenty of money, ostensibly for “reports” based on his government experience. Julito had kept quiet since his arrest last December, but this week he went full-on Aldama — turning state’s evidence, in hopes of a sentence reduction, just like the star witness Víctor de Aldama scored in a previous corruption scandal (see: Caso Koldo). He told the judge that ZP ran Análisis Relevante from the shadows, off the books but pulling the strings on everything. ZP knew every step of the Plus Ultra bailout — and told Julito on Feb. 26, 2021, two full weeks before the official cabinet vote, that approval was coming. Oh, and ZP’s daughters were on the payroll too.

• Julio #2: Julio Martínez Sola, Plus Ultra’s president, plus ex-CEO Roberto Roselli: confessed in writing that they paid €530,000 in fake invoices as ZP’s 1% cut for making the bailout come true. The invoices described the money charged as being for “monthly advisory reports” that either didn’t exist or were, the executives admitted, “irrelevant.” Oh — and part of ZP’s payment came in the form of 46 unreimbursed business class flights. Because if you’re gonna set up a dodgy bailout for an airline, the least they can do is fly you in the Big Boy Seats.

How we got here. ZP and Julito met in 2011 when Julito bought ZP’s house in Vera, Almería — the sale was signed at La Moncloa while ZP was still PM (totally normal!). In 2019, they set up Análisis Relevante with ZP conspicuously off the paperwork. Clients included Venezuelan-linked businessmen, and eventually Plus Ultra. Along the way, police found €286,000 in cash at Julito’s home (hidden in a golf bag and behind a radiator because…where else?) and €1.3m in jewelry in ZP’s office safe. Routine stuff.

What the parties said.

• The PSOE-led government: Spokeswoman (and Minister of Inclusion) Elma Saiz said the dear folks in the government “continue to believe in his innocence.” Privately, PSOE figures are far less calm — one called the damage “irreparable” and warned the party cannot become ZP’s “political, emotional, or institutional shield.”

• Sumar: Yolanda Díaz backed the presumption of innocence but said ZP “has to give explanations.” Which, seriously, is about the least he could do.

• PP: Spokesperson Ester Muñoz called it a “chanchullo [scam] of Sánchez and Zapatero” that “can bring them both down.” The law of silence in the PSOE, she added, “no longer works.”

So, what happens next? The court described Julito’s testimony as “valuable“ but noted he was frustratingly vague on the key question we are all asking: who exactly did ZP lobby inside the government? (”I don’t know,” said Julito, somewhat unhelpfully.) Plus Ultra’s president and ex-CEO will testify in person — but not until after August. ZP still hasn’t explained the jewelry. And his legal team’s bid to throw out the evidence gathered from people’s phones as unconstitutionally obtained got kneecapped when Julito confirmed the messages in open court.

• If there were a contract on Kalshi, we’d put money on ZP going down. Actually, there are markets on Kalshi and Polymarket, though neither has him being arrested in 2026. But, slowly, painfully, one deposition at a time, we bet on him taking the fall.

More news below. 👇👇

🔔 Don’t miss the latest episode of The Bubble Podcast!

Episode 3 of The Bubble Podcast is out! We discuss the potential PP-Vox national coalition with political scientist Pablo Simón and whether it’s easy for foreigners to make friends in Spain.

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🏆 The National Football Team celebrated winning the World Cup with 2M people in Madrid

Do you feel that? It’s called an emotional hangover, and it’s what we’re all feeling this week after the epic, nail-biting Sunday night we all had. And if you thought Spain was done celebrating after beating Argentina, think again.

• Madrid on Monday turned into one ginormous victory parade as millions of people (seriously, millions) flooded the streets to welcome home the new world champions. The partying started in New Jersey, with Donald Trump apparently now saying it’s all good with Pedro Sánchez 🥳, before arriving in Madrid, where the world champions landed on Monday afternoon.

• They headed to the Royal Palace of Zarzuela to meet with King Felipe VI (aka F6), Queen Letizia, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía, who greeted each player individually. Wunderkind Lamine Yamal, who the King seems to have a soft spot for, broke protocol and gave him a bro hug, which they both seemed to enjoy. It didn’t really feel like a formal state reception, which is good.

• The players’ outfits raised a few eyebrows because they looked like they had borrowed an oversized suit from their parents. Turns out it’s an exclusive outfit designed by Loewe that costs €4,730 each (proof we know nothing about fashion).

The team then headed to La Moncloa to meet with PM Sánchez. Rodri carried the trophy into the gardens before the squad posed for the now mandatory photo on the steps of the presidential palace.

• Looking forward. Sánchez congratulated them and, since we’re set to co-host the 2030 World Cup alongside Portugal and Morocco, he joked about Spain winning another one in four years. (Jesus, dude, let them at least get a good night's sleep).

Road trip. The players then climbed aboard an open-top bus and slowly made their way through Madrid to Plaza Cibeles (i.e., city hall).

• The streets were packed from hours beforehand, and the mood on the bus was… festive. Borja Iglesias handled DJ duties, the team drank alcoholic beverages, the trophy was passed from player to player, and internet boyfriend Ferran Torres (more on him below) chose to wear a red cap reading “Make Spain Great Again”, which many interpreted as a nod to Trump (we, however, suspect trolling).

Partay! By the time the bus rolled into Cibeles around 10 p.m., Madrid had become one giant sea of red. Authorities estimate that roughly two million people lined the streets throughout the afternoon, while around 120,000 fans packed into Cibeles itself for the final celebration.

• The champions walked onto the stage one by one to songs they had personally chosen (see video above). Rodri acted as MC and coach Luis de la Fuente got an emotional standing ovation (he is a really nice guy, after all).

• Oh, and maybe-MAGA Ferran Torres (who scored the only goal against Argentina) was celebrated as a hero.

Superstars. To close the night, it felt almost inevitable that the party would finish with the players singing the unofficial anthem of Spain’s campaign, Aitana’s Superestrella (aka the song of the summer).

• Then Aitana hopped on stage and sang it too while everyone (players included) jumped around in excitement.

Good kids. Judging from the last few weeks, the Spanish team might be world champions, but they still come across as remarkably grounded.

• We’re muy proud. 😍

2. 👨🏻‍⚖️ Brussels gave Sánchez a win over Catalonia separatists’ amnesty

Great news (for some)! After almost three years, Spain’s divisive amnesty law has finally been settled. Many people hated it and said it was unconstitutional and hoped Brussels would eventually strike it down. Spoiler alert: it didn't.

• Big day. The EU's highest court ruled on Thursday that the amnesty law does not violate EU law, handing Sánchez a political and legal victory—and bringing Catalan separatist (and outlaw) leader Carles Puigdemont one step closer to returning to Spain.

• Recap. Back in 2017, Catalonia held an illegal independence referendum despite Spain’s Constitutional Court saying it was unconstitutional. Then-Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont fled to Belgium to avoid arrest, and some Catalan leaders were jailed while Spain spent years locked in a bitter political and judicial battle.

• Sánchez failed to win a majority in the 2023 elections and needed the support of Puigdemont’s right-wing Junts separatist party to repeat as PM, so he agreed to pass an amnesty law (something he said he wouldn't do) that would erase criminal responsibility for hundreds of people linked to the independence push between 2011 and 2023. He says the goal is to help ease tensions between Madrid and Catalonia (and help him be PM, of course).

Implementation hasn’t been simple. While many lower courts have applied the law, Spain’s Supreme Court has refused to grant amnesty to Puigdemont himself, arguing that the alleged misuse of public funds during the referendum should not be covered (hence why he’s still living in Belgium).

Enter the EU. The Court of Justice of the European Union examined two major questions Spanish courts had sent to Luxembourg: does the amnesty violate EU financial rules? And does it conflict with European anti-terrorism legislation? The answer was “no” to both.

• The Sánchez government celebrated the ruling, and Catalan regional president Salvador Illa (a non-separatist socialist) said there are now “no more excuses” and demanded Spanish courts apply the law immediately.

• The PP wasn’t as happy. While they said they respected the ruling, they insisted nothing had changed politically. Their argument remains that Sánchez traded legal impunity for parliamentary votes (which is true, but not against EU rules).

Poochie not in the clear. Despite celebrating what he called “a resounding victory”, Puigdemont (pronounced pooch-the-mont, aka poochie) still can’t come home.

• Local issues. Spain’s Supreme Court (which leans right) continues to argue that Poochie’s alleged misuse of Spanish public money falls outside the amnesty because it constituted a personal financial benefit—an issue the EU ruling didn’t resolve (it only ruled in the context of EU, not local, law). So, his arrest warrant remains active. 🚔

• Poochie is pissed off frustrated by the delay, so he has now filed a complaint before the European Commission, accusing Spanish institutions of refusing to properly apply European law.

Ball in Spain’s court. The decisive battle now moves to the Constitutional Court (which leans right), which is expected to rule this fall. Expect it to rule in Poochie's favor.

3. 👰🏻 Ferrán Torres is the internet’s new boyfriend, and he has tons of lovers (and haters too)

If you are terminally online like we are, chances are you are now turned on by in love with Ferrán Torres, the 26-year-old F.C. Barcelona forward who has become the face of Spain’s World Cup victory, not just because he scored the winner against Argentina, but because, well... have you seen him? The hair. The smile. The jawline. (And yes, the queerbaiting.) Social media has collectively lost its mind.

• The Ferran fan club now includes just about everyone. The ladies. The gays. Even plenty of straight guys seem perfectly comfortable admitting that Spain’s World Cup hero is ridiculously good-looking.

• While international media is already treating him like football’s newest heartthrob, poor Ferran is also dealing with some negativity at home. It’s been quite the week.

💘 The love. Ladies, he’s single! However, The Sun (as in, the tabloid, yes) reports that he spent Spain’s World Cup after-party flirting with singer Ana Mena after the pair were spotted together throughout the celebrations.

😡 The hate. Because this is Spain, the honeymoon didn’t last very long. First came the “Make Spain Great Again” cap that he wore and the suspicions surrounding why he wore it. Then came the housing controversy.

• A buitre too? A spokesperson for left-wing party Sumar publicly accused Ferran of being a housing speculator, claiming his investment company owned around 20 homes and comparing it to a “vulture fund” while arguing for tougher housing laws. The story quickly spread across local media — until other outlets started digging into the details.

• Or not. According to El Español, it’s fake news as the accusation appears to be based on a misunderstanding. The news site says Ferran does not own 20 homes. Instead, most of his assets reportedly consist of office spaces, with only four residential properties in his portfolio. At the time of writing, the competing claims haven’t yet been independently fact-checked, so we’ll hold off on declaring a winner in that particular internet fight.

And just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder... A mural painted in Barcelona by famous street artist TV Boy, celebrating Ferran kissing the World Cup trophy, lasted less than 24 hours before it was vandalized with pro-independence slogans and “Puta Espanya” graffiti.

• Some separatist figures had openly encouraged people to deface it after Spain’s victory celebrations filled Catalan streets with Spanish flags.

Oh, well… In other words, welcome back to normal Spanish politics. (Ferran, we still stan you).

4. 🚬 One more nail in smoking’s coffin

You’ll remember Spain’s first anti-smoking law in 2005, if you’re of a certain age (like, old). You’ll also remember that people said it could never work — Spaniards would never stop lighting up in bars and restaurants, because that’s what they do. And yet, it worked. The rate fell from 33% then to about 20% today, and the hospitality industry’s predictions of ruin never materialized. And now, the government has gone back for more.

What happened: The cabinet of PM Sánchez approved a sweeping new tobacco bill on Tuesday — the biggest overhaul of anti-smoking legislation in over a decade — and sent it to Parliament. The key new measures:

• Terraces, beaches, and beyond. Bar and restaurant terraces, beaches (sea and river), swimming pools, national parks, sports facilities, and even outdoor events like concerts (‼️) all go smoke-free.

• Fifteen-metre buffer zones around sensitive spaces, like schools, hospitals, universities, museums, libraries, and children’s parks.

• Minors banned from smoking — not just from buying, which was already the rule. Parents or guardians pay the €200–600 fine when their kids are caught, though it can be swapped for community service.

• Vapes equated with cigarettes. E-cigarettes, shishas, and nicotine-free devices face the same restrictions as tobacco and can only be sold in specialist shops — not convenience stores, not bazaars, not vending machines.

• An advertising wipeout. No ads online, on TV, or in shop windows. Presenters and influencers can no longer be shown vaping or smoking on screen.

A brief history. The 2005 law banned smoking in enclosed spaces but let bars keep designated smoking rooms. The industry worked hard to preserve that loophole, but in 2011 it was closed. Hospitality groups predicted catastrophe, which…never came. Spain went from 9.6 million smokers in 2010 to 7.9 million a decade later, while cigarette pack sales fell from 4.6 billion in 2005 to 2.2 billion in 2022 (tourists obviously bought a few).

The new bill still has to survive Parliament, where the government needs the support of PP or Junts — neither of which has committed to ‘yes’. The PP has concerns about the terrace ban’s economic impact on hospitality because, you know, people like a smoke with a caña.

• Two things were notably absent from the final text — mandated plain packaging (blocked by the PSOE; Sumar plans to add it by amendment) and a ban on disposable vapes (awaiting an EU ruling). No matter what, smoking’s running out of breath.

5. 🫢 That nude crowd photographer is coming to the Canaries

Ever had the urge to wander around a photo shoot in the Canary Islands, buck-assed naked except for being painted head to toe in rainbow colors? Well, it’s your chance! Because Spencer Tunick — the photographer of tons of nude people being all comfortable with their not overly gymed-up bodies — is coming to town.

• What’s going on? On July 26 (aka Sunday), Tunick will descend on Gran Canaria for Gran Spectrum, a mass participation installation in which hundreds of volunteers will have their bodies painted in the colors of various LGBTQIA+ flags and then pose across Las Palmas and Maspalomas.

• Backers. The project is backed by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria and the Canaries government as part of the Culture & Business Pride 2026 festival. Participants get a limited-edition print of the final image. The number of participants? That will be secret until the day.

Who is he, anyway? Tunick started in New York in the 1990s, photographing solo nudes in empty early-morning streets. (You could do nude photos in public there, as long as they were for artistic purposes.) One day he realized he had more than 70 people’s numbers and thought, why not get them all together naked at once?

• United Naked Nations. The first group shoot — 28 people outside the UN in New York — told him he was onto something. He’s since done 4,500–7,000 people in Barcelona (2003) and a record 18,000–20,000 in Mexico City (2007). (South Korea and Taiwan shot down other big shoots.) He tried Gran Canaria’s neighbor Tenerife a decade ago — it fell through; he says he can’t remember why.

What’s new? This shoot is more explicitly political than most of his work, a response to the anti-LGBTQIA+ climate in the U.S.: “There’s a lot of misinformation from the government, and it’s generating fear and violence.”

• Another twist. The body paint also pushes things further into abstraction — Tunick calls what he does “abstract paintings with bodies in public space,” citing Yayoi Kusama and Ellsworth Kelly as influences. Less photography, more collective sculpture. And bottoms and stuff.

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Oh, brother

🚔 PM Sánchez's brother just made history (for all the wrong reasons)

Just in time for the summer holidays. Spain has never had a prime minister’s brother sentenced by a court before, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. David Sánchez — musician, opera buff, and yes, the little brother of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez — has been banned from holding public office for nine years after being found guilty of “administrative misconduct” related to his hiring in 2017 at the Badajoz Provincial Council for a, um, job that required no work but did come with a paycheck.

• Not just him. Ten (10!) other defendants got the same sentence, while Miguel Ángel Gallardo, the former head of the council and former leader of Extremadura’s Socialist Party, got hit hardest — 18 years for two counts of malfeasance.

• But, but. but. The court ruled out influence peddling, the original core accusation (and one that comes with prison), saying it wasn’t proven. But the nepotism? Apparently yes.

• Is “administrative misconduct” a big deal? Well, it’s certainly another headache for PM Sánchez, that’s for sure. This is the fourth member of his inner circle to be convicted of something in under a year — after his attorney general Álvaro García Ortiz, former minister José Luis Ábalos, and former socialist party bigwig Santos Cerdán — and it comes while his wife, Begoña Gómez, waits to hear if she’ll face trial, and former PM and ally José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is in the midst of a corruption scandal. It’s just not a good look.

How it started. Back in 2016-2017, Badajoz’s council (then run by Sánchez ally Gallardo) created a brand-new high-level post — coordinator of the province’s music conservatories. David Sánchez got it.

• The charge. The court has found that the job was designed with the sole purpose of giving it to the brother of the now-PM (who was just a PSOE grandee then), with an administrative file built afterward to dress the decision in legalese.

• Evidence. Emails uncovered by the Civil Guard’s anti-corruption unit (UCO) referred to him internally as “el hermanísimo” (the “supreme brother”). In 2022, the job got renamed “Head of the Performing Arts Office,” which the court says was really just a tailor-made adjustment so he could keep pursuing his opera career without showing up to an office.

Not a great look. David Sánchez took the stand at trial and, by most accounts, didn’t do himself any favors. As we all saw in those cringe-inducing videos, his statement barely shed any light on how he actually landed the job. Oh, and at one point, he struggled to explain what his daily responsibilities were.

• No defense. Since he refused to say much during the trial, the prosecutors’ star witnesses, two UCO officers who’d spent months poring over intercepted emails, went largely unchallenged.

Official response. Fury, basically. The PSOE’s line, echoed by ministers and regional leaders, is that this is a “hunt” against the PM via his family. Transport Minister and Sánchez pit bull Óscar Puente called it an attempt to “topple a government that can’t be beaten at the ballot box” (though it has been very eager to avoid the ballot box, but that's another story…).

The right’s reaction. PP boss Alberto Núñez Feijóo, unsurprisingly, is enjoying this one. He called it a “historic” day for Spain’s rule of law, tweeting that “nobody is above the law, whatever family they belong to.”

• Who has “mafia” on their bingo card? Far-right Vox’s Santiago Abascal, never one for subtlety, called the whole government “a mafia.”

About that “lawfare” thing. Legally, David Sánchez wasn’t found guilty of trading on his brother’s influence. The court explicitly said that the charge wasn’t proven and stressed that nepotism, while ethically rotten, wasn’t automatically a crime unless it fits a specific criminal statute.

• That distinction makes the verdict look goofy to Sánchez supporters. And it’s a card the government is playing. The “lawfare” narrative — the idea that judges and prosecutors are being used as a political weapon against a government — is a belief genuinely held by many PSOE voters and officials.

• But, but, but… David Sánchez’s lawyer says “there’s no reason” to think lawfare had anything to do with the verdict and warns that his client will appeal.

Politically, it won’t change much. It barely matters whether the charge was influence peddling or malfeasance. Sánchez will keep marching ahead with his sights set on postponing elections until the last minute possible (that's mid-2027).

More news below. 👇👇

🔔 Don’t miss the latest episode of The Bubble Podcast!

Episode 3 of The Bubble Podcast is out! We discuss the potential PP-Vox national coalition with political scientist Pablo Simón and whether it’s easy for foreigners to make friends in Spain.

Subscribe and listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube!

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🛃 Gibraltar and Spain are one again! (Fine, we’re exaggerating)

Back together after all these years! One hundred and seventeen years after it was built by the English, 57 years after it was weaponized by Franco to blockade Gibraltar, and 44 years after it was reopened in part by Prime Minister Felipe González, the verja — the border fence — of Gibraltar is coming down.

• Why? At its root, this is a Brexit fix: Gibraltar voted 96% to stay in the EU in 2016, then found itself stranded outside Schengen when some geniuses in the U.K. decided to leave anyway.

• The treaty. Tuesday in Brussels, EU commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and U.K. Secretary of State Stephen Doughty signed a 1,117-page agreement defining Gibraltar’s post-Brexit relationship with Spain, with Spain’s foreign minister José Manuel Albares and Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabián Picardo watching on. It entered provisional force at midnight.

What changes. The 15,000 Spanish workers who commute into Gibraltar daily no longer have to queue for passport checks at the land border. But Gibraltar still says it’s a self-governing territory, and Spain still wants it back, Albares and Picardo confirmed.

• But, but, but… Gibraltar is now, practically speaking, inside the EU’s Schengen zone. Passport controls have moved to the airport, where Spain’s Policía Nacional will run EU entry/exit checks mirroring the St Pancras model, where French police check Eurostar passengers on British soil.

• No more tax dodging? Gibraltar is also shedding its tax haven status after 35 years: a new VAT starts at 15% and rises to 17% over three years. Making it almost, kind of, a little bit part of Europe.

Boots, yes or no. Picardo had spent years insisting Spanish police on Gibraltarian soil — “boots on the ground” — would never happen. The solution: a joint facility at the airport, straddling the border.

• You say shack, I say policía on The Rock. Picardo calls it the Schengen shack. “The boots will be contained within that,” he said. The mayor of the Spanish town of La Línea was more philosophical. “Everyone has to give a little. And obviously, if you’re going to enter Schengen via a land border with Spain — who is going to check you?” he asked the FT. “The Lithuanian police?”

What’s next? Provisional is the key word. The treaty needs formal ratification by the EU and the U.K. to become permanent. Picardo has said Gibraltarians will also have the right to vote in a referendum on whether to terminate the agreement in the future. History, as they say, is long.

2. 🔥 Why was the fire in Almería so deadly?

The sudden, deadly fire in Almería that claimed 13 victims riveted the eyes of the world, from the U.S. and Britain to France, Australia, and beyond. And as Andalucía dug out from the destruction and identified the victims, a giant question hung over the tragedy: How did such a relatively small fire become so deadly, so quickly?

• What happened. Shortly after 4:30 p.m. on July 9, a fire broke out near Los Gallardos, apparently from a downed electrical wire — though the power companies say the wires weren’t live. In less than two hours, the fire had traveled nearly 10 miles.

• Victims. By Sunday, when it was finally stabilized, 13 people were dead: four British, three Belgian, one French, one Spanish, and three still unidentified — most of them foreign retirees in isolated hillside homes around Bédar, a village of 973 residents, more than half of them foreign.

A small fire. The fire burned between 3,200 and 7,000 hectares — a fraction of the dozen-plus Spanish fires exceeding 20,000 hectares since 1968. So what caused such a tragedy?

• The weather. An El País analysis shows a rare triple combination — 38°C, 12% humidity, wind gusts above 40 km/h — matched only twice in all Julys recorded since 2015. Spain’s minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, said the fire advanced at 100 meters per minute: “We have never seen such ferocity here.”

• No warning. Andalusian authorities did not activate the national mobile alert system, saying different areas needed different instructions and it couldn’t target scattered communities precisely enough. Many foreign residents — isolated, some with limited Spanish — turned to Facebook groups instead. Thomas-Wolf Verdonckt, the son of Stanislas, a Belgian victim, was blunt: “The people who died did not disobey any order because no order was given.” (Andaluz authorities say some residents ignored evacuation instructions.)

• The trap. Seven victims followed what seemed like an escape route from El Curato — actually a dead-end track a beekeeper used to tend his hives. They were found at four in the morning. Two survived with serious injuries.

• The deeper problem. Bédar’s hillsides are full of isolated homes — many built by British immigrants over decades, some legally, some less so, in areas with no mandatory evacuation plans. Locals also say they’ve been blocked or fined for clearing brush. One neighbor’s goats, grazing the hillsides all year, apparently contained the fire where the authorities didn’t, or wouldn’t.

In Bédar. The town has opened an emergency office to help survivors with paperwork and claims. Hunters and volunteers are laying food and water across the scorched hillsides for surviving wildlife — tortoises, which cannot outrun fire, are being collected. Three bodies remain unidentified. “About the fire,” the village pharmacist said, “there is only one thing to talk about: those who are gone.”

3. 🇫🇷 Former PM Rajoy apologizes to no one, fools!

Former PM Mariano Rajoy (2011 to 2018) has a talent for opening his mouth and stuffing his foot in it. For example, last week, days before Spain played France in the World Cup semifinal, he managed to offend an entire country with half a sentence, outdoing himself once again.

• Mouth, meet foot. In his regular column for El Debate, Rajoy praised France’s squad as playing at “a very high level”, but added “sin franceses.” Without French people.

• An explanation for the hard of thinking: he meant the French national team doesn’t really count as French. Is it because, uhm, many of the players don’t look like they belong to the Gallic Roman Empire? 🤔 Unclear. Actually, clear. To us (and, honestly, many others), there was only one way to read it: skin color and family history define who is French.

• Fun fact. 23 of the team's 26 players were born in France. The other three are naturalized French citizens. So, what's up? Hmmm. Many are of African ancestry. Maybe that was it? Again: 🤔

Whoopsie. Once the column was published, it caught fire on both sides of the Pyrenees. Turns out such, ahem, “controversial” logic is the same as the far-right Front National used back in 1998.

• Jean-Marie Le Pen’s far-right party back then dismissed France’s World Cup-winning squad (Zidane, Thuram, Desailly, Vieira) as not representing the “real” France because too many players were Black or descended from immigrants from former French colonies. Faux pas!

How things have changed. This time, everyone in France — yes, including the far right — was furious. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that “France doesn’t have a skin color,” adding that any claim otherwise is “stupidity, racism, or both.” Sacré bleu!

• Spain enters the group chat. PM Pedro Sánchez didn’t hold back from taking an easy layup on the guy he tossed out of office, posting that Spain “belongs to whoever loves it and works for it, not to whoever embarrasses it with xenophobic statements.”

• Easy shots. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares demanded PP leader Feijóo publicly disown Rajoy. Transport Minister Óscar Puente (aka Sánchez's social media troll) called Rajoy a “post-Francoist idiot” (because when in doubt, say "Franco").

Relax, guy! The PP, not being good at easy things, instead ran defense. Spokesperson Borja Sémper insisted the comment was “sarcastic.” Now, that argument raises an obvious question: sarcastic about what, exactly? The PP never actually explained what the joke was supposed to be; they just kept repeating that it was one. Haha? 🤔

• What Rajoy said next. After Spain beat France to reach the final, Rajoy wrote a follow-up column — praising France’s team, praising Spain’s team, and notably not apologizing for anything.

• Look over there. Instead, he accused the Spanish government of manufacturing outrage to “distract attention” from things that actually matter to Spaniards, complaining that officials had preferred to “snitch to a foreign minister” (⁉️).

We’re not sure Rajoy knows how the internet works. Actually, we're sure he doesn't.

4. 💩 TV meltdown ends with journalist saying she’d ‘rather eat sh*t’

What is happening? Spanish TV had an awkward moment last weekend that nobody saw coming — with a panelist breaking down in tears, quoting Gabriel García Márquez, and walking off set mid-broadcast.

• What happened. During Saturday night’s Malas Lenguas, journalist Marta Gómez Montero told host Jesús Cintora she wouldn’t answer his question, said she felt humiliated, started crying, and then delivered the quote of the week.

• Woah. Invoking the ending of García Márquez’s No One Writes to the Colonel, where a starving woman asks her husband what they’ll eat and he answers “shit”, she told Cintora she’d rather eat shit than be humiliated by him again. Then she got up and left the studio, live, mid-show. Epic 🎤-drop.

What is Malas Lenguas, anyway? It’s Cintora’s political talk show on La 2 (TVE’s second public channel), built around a panel of journalists and commentators hashing out the day’s news — usually all talking at the same time, Spanish tertulia style.

• Awkward. On the Saturday night edition (which has been climbing the primetime ratings), Cintora asks uncomfortable questions meant to generate friction.

Montero snaps. The topic was Feijóo’s recent comments on labor absenteeism (which we covered last week). Montero, who leans conservative, was defending a softer reading of his remarks, insisting he’d only targeted fraudulent sick leave, not sick workers generally.

• When Cintora pushed the panel on Feijóo’s harder line about Spain being a “subsidized country,” Montero seemed visibly tense. Then the dam broke, with Montero giving an exhausted admission that she’d tolerated this “to pay the bills” and “for her kids” and couldn’t anymore.

• Cintora’s response could have been better. “What’s wrong with you, Marta? She’s decided to leave — she’ll know why,” he told the camera before moving on to the next panelist as if nothing had happened.

• Cintora later interrupted the broadcast again as social media reaction exploded, insisting he’d only gestured for Montero to wait her turn and that he didn’t understand what had triggered the reaction — while still inviting her back “with affection.”

We’re sowwy. RTVE president José Pablo López stepped in the next day, posting his own public apology and support for Montero, calling her an excellent professional and person.

• Me too. Cintora also posted a public apology on X, calling Montero “a good journalist and colleague” and saying the show’s doors remained open to her.

• Opposition chimes in. PP spokesperson Ester Muñoz accused the show of “constant on-air humiliation and mistreatment, paid for with our money,” framing it as punishment for Montero not following a pro-Sánchez line.

Montero returns. On Monday night, she was back, saying, “We’re human, and there are days you have an impulse.” She added she was reassured by López’s and Cintora’s reactions.

• The two shook hands on camera, and the show moved on to its regular news lineup. As far as we know, no one had to eat anything they didn’t want to.

5. 🐂 New movie idea: Joker: Folie à…Bulls?

Fine, we admit it. We tune in every morning to the TV broadcast of the running of the bulls during San Fermín, which is either a beautiful expression of Pamplona culture or a frat party with animals. Usually there’s one doofus who makes it clear he doesn’t know what he’s doing by wearing, like, a ninja costume or by slapping a bull in the head. But this year, that doofus was even doofier. He was…the Joker?

• Wait, what? If you watched the encierros, you couldn’t help but catch sight of a guy with green hair, white face paint, a sinister red smile, and metal teeth. Full-on Joker, Joaquin Phoenix-style. But with the traditional white clothes and red pañuelo, natch.

The Joker’s name is Lacey Mrzena. He’s a social media influencer from Chicago — some version of @straightdroplace on the socials — and he came to Pamplona to run with the bulls dressed as the comic-book supervillain. Which is something he does at a lot of other iconic events and locations (Mardi Gras, mariachis of Garibaldi, etc).

Dedicated prankster. Mrzena tried to run every single encierro at this year’s San Fermines. (There are eight, for non-obsessives.) He also ran the vaquillas afterward, where a young cow knocked him to the ground on day four, to sustained crowd applause.

• Not everyone was amused. Thing is, the San Fermines have rules, and Lacey didn’t follow them. On day five, he filmed himself next to a bull’s horns (filming is a big no-no because it’s, um, dangerous as shit for you and everyone else), got fined up to €6,000 and banned from the next run, ruining his goal of eight. Then, on day seven, he climbed onto a balcony on the Plaza Consistorial and was pulled down by the police.

• Lynch mob (not quite). After the final encierro, local runners confronted him in the street — “You’re a stupid boy. This is serious” — and police stepped in and detained him before the crowd turned. While being led away, he pretended he was handcuffed, fell to the street, and started shouting “I can’t breathe” à la George Floyd (in very poor taste, in our opinion).

Lacey’s defense? He was not filming, he said, and was being discriminated against. “Fake news” made him a target, he added. He titled one post “Prison Break 2026” and claimed his costume was justified by “religious and cultural reasons.” (We love Joaquin Phoenix too, but we’re pretty sure that’s not a religion.)

• The dress-up was fine, guy. The encierro ordinance runs eight pages. It bans phones, backpacks, and inappropriate footwear. So he did break the phone rule. But it says nothing about dressing as the Joker.

Here he is, just having his fun:

@straightdroplace1@Marta Armada Ruiz @caanxus @Lola Enríquez #love #spain #straightdroplace

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Starting the engines

🥊 Spain's right prepares its election platform for 2027

Something is shifting in Spain’s political landscape this week. A series of proposals, statements, and deals involving the Partido Popular (PP) shows the party edging further right, both rhetorically and strategically, as it tries to both prepare for 2027 elections (a centrist affair) while at the same time holding off the far-right Vox.

Hint: It's not a pretty dance.

• The move. Led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the conservative party has tried to position itself as a moderate, center-right alternative to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the PSOE. In recent days, however, it has increasingly operated in terrain that is traditionally dominated by Vox.

Let us count the ways.

1️⃣ The child not yet born has entered the debate. The clearest example of this is Feijóo’s promise this week to take Madrid’s “Unborn Child Law” nationwide.

• Pre-birth benefits. The law, recently passed by Madrid’s regional government, led by presi Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP), allows an unborn child to be counted as a member of the family for administrative purposes. As in, families can access public aid for housing, education, tax benefits and the like, from around week 14 of pregnancy.

• The argument. The PP says the move will help families have children by making the economics more possible.

• The drama. It’s controversial to some because it looks like a step toward an idea promoted by anti-abortion groups — that a fetus should be treated as a person with rights.

• The criticism. While the law stops short of granting fetuses full legal personhood, which would require changing Spain’s Civil Code and clash with Constitutional Court doctrine, critics argue it normalizes an idea that could eventually justify restricting abortion.

The big deal. The PP says it will not roll back Spain’s abortion law, which was upheld in 2023. But some on the left are painting this as a slippery slope and a way to shift the cultural baseline without triggering immediate legal backlash.

• Far-right chimes in. Vox, for its part, is delighted — but not satisfied. The party supports the law while pushing for something more radical: full legal recognition of the unborn, which would directly challenge abortion rights.

2️⃣ “Cancer” comparisons = bad. Feijóo told business leaders that workers’ absenteeism is a “cancer” that costs Spain more than €30bn a year. He also questioned why workers on sick leave should earn the same as those working.

Reality check. Before you ask, yes, Spain does have a real absenteeism problem. Around 4.5% of workers are on sick leave, nearly double the EU average, and public spending on it has surged to €18.4bn annually.

• Why? The data is complex — linked to an aging workforce, long waiting lists in public healthcare, and rising mental health issues. Honestly, we don't know exactly why rates are so high.

Cue the outrage. Feijóo's suggestion of effectively reducing pay during sick leave touched a nerve. Critics (i.e., Sánchez and government-allied unions) accused him of targeting vulnerable workers and encouraging people to work while ill.

• The walkback. The PP walked back Feijóo's words a bit yesterday, with party officials saying he was referring only to fraudulent cases, not genuinely sick workers. 😒

3️⃣ A new, new deal. The PP formalized yet another agreement with Vox to form a coalition government, this time in Andalucía. The part that matters? It includes Vox's “national priority”, a concept that prioritizes access to public services for people with local ties rather than newcomers (i.e., mostly immigrants).

• Leaning further right. On migration, the agreement rejects the redistribution of unaccompanied minors and undocumented immigrants, tightens controls on immigrants, and promotes the return of some to their countries of origin — policies that closely mirror Vox’s agenda.

How do the far-righties like it? Vox’s reaction to all this is…complex, and its official stance depends on your media diet.

• Happy! The party is pleased, according to the right-leaning El Mundo. Feijóo’s apparent shift validates its stance, and relations between the two parties are now described as a “fully extended hand”.

• Sad! Other media (notably the left-leaning El País) suggest something else: Vox actually prefers a stronger, more centrist PP, so the two parties can fight divide the right-leaning electorate and maximize the right-wing vote.

And the polls? If this is a strategy, it may be working. Recent polls show the PP and Vox holding a double-digit lead over the left, with the conservative bloc ahead by more than 12 points. Some projections even suggest Sánchez’s coalition could collapse to just over 110 seats — a historic low.

• Tail wagging the dog. At the end of the day, it feels like Feijóo is following, not leading, his rivals.

More news below. 👇👇

🔔 Don’t miss the latest episode of The Bubble Podcast!

Episode 2 of The Bubble Podcast is out! We talk about true crime (maybe), how to enjoy this summer’s verbenas, and mistakes foreigners make when moving to Spain.

Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube!

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🧯NATO drama puts Spain in the spotlight (again!)

Family gathering. This week’s NATO summit in Ankara was supposed to focus on defense, military spending, and the alliance’s response to instability in the Middle East. Instead, it turned into a political spectacle both in Turkey and here in Spain.

Make Spain pay again. Ahead of the summit, Donald Trump (aka the 🍊 Menace) escalated his feud with Spain, calling it a “terrible partner” and even suggesting the U.S. would cut off trade entirely.

• Frustrated! The orange fella's frustration stems from PM Sánchez's refusal to sign up to NATO’s long-term military spending targets or allow the U.S. to use joint bases in Spain in its campaign against Iran.

• Sorry, Don! In reality, Trump’s trade threat means squat has little chance of succeeding. Spain cannot negotiate trade independently as EU policy is set in Brussels. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also stepped in to defend Spain, highlighting that it has now reached the basic 2% defense spending benchmark (which is true, although he credited Trump for it).

• Did you watch the game? PM Sánchez, meanwhile, opted for de-escalation, describing his interactions with Trump during the summit as “cordial” (“we talked about football and golf”) and insisting that relations remain strong. 💝

Hell froze over. Back in Spain, Vox leader Santiago Abascal made the (very) unusual move of publicly criticizing his supreme leader pal Trump — not over Spain, but over… Italy?

• Trump’s relationship with Italian PM Giorgia Meloni isn’t doing so great after he said she had begged him for a photo and she denied it. Ahead of the summit, he mocked her, suggesting he needed a restraining order to keep her away.

• Fine, I'll say something. Abascal, who has avoided criticizing Trump in the past, this time called the comments “absolutely unacceptable” and warned that allies should not treat each other “like vassals”. Is Vox souring on Trump? 🤔

Begoña, literally grounded. A domestic subplot added an extra layer to the NATO drama. Begoña Gómez, the indicted wife of PM Sánchez, was denied permission to travel to Ankara to attend the summit due to ongoing legal troubles and restrictions, including the seizure of her passport two weeks ago.

• Not needed. Despite an official invitation, the court argued that her presence was not essential. However, the court let her travel to Britain to attend her daughter’s graduation, citing stronger judicial cooperation there in case she tried to flee.

• Not a table for two? When Sánchez landed in Ankara on Tuesday, he was given two bouquets of flowers — including one that local media said was for his wife. Hopefully, they make it alive to Madrid. 💐

2. 📸 It’s a clothing line. It’s a PR campaign. It’s…DMOCRACIA!

A bunch of attractive influencers wearing unattractive brown-and-gray streetwear sweats vamping through the parliament building with classical-ish cello music in the background, ending with the slogan DMOCRACIA: “When you get dressed, you position yourself.”

• It seems pretty innocuous (if a little tacky), right? Well, it triggered a lotta people, most (though not all) on the right.

What’s the dealio? The campaign marks an anniversary the Sánchez government was determined to hit with a bang: 50 years since Franco’s death. The Spain in Freedom commission — a government body set up for the occasion — wanted to reach young Spaniards who didn’t live through the dictatorship and may not think much about it.

• Rather than a documentary, they hired streetwear designer Bnomio, recruited 32 influencers including Marina Rivers (2.2m Insta followers), shot a video inside the actual Congress chamber, and launched what looks exactly like a clothing brand — hoodies, sweats, the number “50” stitched on everything — called DMOCRACIA.

The government wants to be clear, though, that this is not a clothing brand but a PR campaign. Either way, it’s generated the controversy of an actual outré brand launch, and then some.

Two controversies, actually.

• The first? The shoot in Congress. It was approved by parliament’s (government-controlled) board — the government notes in its statement — but the right is treating it as institutional desecration nonetheless.

• And second, the cost. Media repeatedly cited €14.6m, which is actually the budget for the broader España en Libertad program. The DMOCRACIA campaign itself, the government says, cost “just” €386,000 — €185k for production, €193k for social media distribution, and €10k for design and creative direction.

Now for the best part. The clothes are not actually for sale. The limited run was made for events and influencer shoots only. Want a hoodie? Enter the giveaway — follow the government’s Instagram, like the post, share it to your stories, and you might be one of 20 lucky winners to receive a full kit. The Sánchez administration, in other words, is juicing its social media numbers using democracy-branded merch as bait.

• Which brings us to the obvious comparison. When Bad Bunny made his housing short film, it landed because it kinda felt like a genuine artist channeling something real. DMOCRACIA, whatever its intentions, feels like a government committee watching Conejo Malo and thinking, “Dude, we can do that.”

3. 🚨 Big week for famous crooks in Spain — one caught, one set free

You win some, you lose some. But there was a kind of poetic justice to it, or maybe a dharmic cosmic balance.

• What happened? El Pequeño Nicolás — convicted four times, 12+ years in combined sentences — avoided prison once again, while All Boivin, Canada’s most wanted man, was caught in Marbella.

First, Little Nicky. Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias became Spain’s most notorious con man in 2014, when he was 20 years old and had somehow infiltrated the inner circles of the Spanish state — hobnobbing with businessmen, attending official events, and turning up at the proclamation of King Felipe VI, where he was photographed with the monarch. 🤷

• Darling Nicky achieved all this while posing as an advisor to the CNI (like the CIA + FBI), the Presidencia del Gobierno, and basically any institution with impressive letterhead. He also arranged for a friend to take his university entrance exam in his name using a fake ID, which suggests his fraud was not particularly sophisticated.

Four convictions followed, and he received a combined 12+ years in prison. But but but… he has not spent a day in prison. This week, a Madrid court suspended his latest sentence — two years for accessing police databases — on the condition that he commits no crimes for four years and pays a fine of €1,800. 🤑

• On a side note. Nicky has played his notoriety into a cameo role in Torrente, presidente, the latest installment of Santiago Segura’s series, where, we must say, he was brilliant.

And then there’s All Boivin, who is not nearly as winningly harmless. Boivin, 36, ended up in Marbella after founding the North Savage Gang in Quebec — a breakaway from the Hells Angels that was triggered, in part, by his refusal to pay the bikers their 10% cut of drug proceeds. What followed was one of Quebec’s nastiest gang wars, including kidnappings, arson, shootings, and a dude in Montreal with a finger and a toe amputated.

• On the lam. Boivin, who’d been Canada’s most wanted for three years, with a $100,000 bounty on his head, was living in Marbella in a gated community. He barely left the house while he underwent laser sessions to remove identifying tattoos — “Gucci” and “MLN” on his neck — and wore long sleeves in the summer heat.

• How was he caught? Stupid did him in. His inner circle posted their location on social media, which, you know, no cop ever uses. Oh, wait. The Policía Nacional nabbed him, and he now faces life in prison.

We never knew! Canada, it turns out, does have mobsters. And they holiday in Marbella like everyone else.

4. ⚖️ The government’s mass regularization gets a legal reprieve — for now

Spain’s left-leaning government caught a break when the country’s right-leaning Supreme Court decided — for now — not to freeze its controversial mass immigrant regularization or send it to EU courts.

• What exactly happened? The Spanish Supreme Court’s Administrative Chamber handed the government’s regularization a significant — if conditional — victory yesterday, rejecting both a suspension of the program and a referral to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU).

• Which means? The 1.17 million applicants who filed under the scheme won’t see their cases frozen — at least not yet. Which they are probably pleased to hear.

The legal challenges came from four corners. The Community of Madrid, Aragón, and Valencia — all PP-led — and Vox, who argued the regularization breached EU migration law.

• But…the rules! The specific concern, raised by three of the court’s own judges in late June, was pointed. They noted that the decree grants residency permits to people already under expulsion orders, and archives those proceedings even where courts had confirmed them — potentially clashing with EU rules requiring member states to issue return decisions against irregular migrants.

Those aren’t trivial objections. And yet the full seven-judge panel decided — unanimously, with no dissenting votes — that referring the case to the CJEU is “not pertinent at this procedural moment.”

• The logic is procedural, but it makes sense. Since the court is not suspending the decree, there’s no urgency to fast-track a European ruling. The government had argued just that — that a referral would be premature before any full examination of the merits.

This is the second time the court has rejected suspension requests. It previously turned down Vox and Madrid in May. Each refusal is good news for the government, and this one closes the most dangerous immediate door, because a freeze while EU judges deliberated could have dragged on for months.

• But, but, but… The underlying legal challenges are still very much alive. The Supreme Court must still rule on the merits of all four challenges. And the court’s own note explicitly leaves the door open to a CJEU referral later on. The regularization proceeds, but the legal battle does not end.

Maybe not as bad as feared. Considering the right-leaning Supremo has ruled twice for the left-leaning government here, maybe Spain isn’t all lawfare, all the time, like some people think?

5. ☢️ You can now add ‘radioactive barrels off Spain’s coast are falling apart’ to your long list of worries

Not to rain on your parade, but a new scientific expedition has confirmed that thousands of radioactive barrels dumped in the Atlantic Ocean off Spain’s coast are now in a worrying state of decay, which raises fresh concerns about the inevitable appearance of a Godzilla-like monster long-term environmental risks.

Wait… What?! Researchers from France’s CNRS have located and filmed some of the roughly 220,000 radioactive barrels dumped more than 40 years ago in the Atlantic trench, about 300 nautical miles from Cape Fisterra, in Galicia. Their findings: many of the containers are in an “advanced state of deterioration,” with some already leaking.

• What’s the worst that could happen? Between the late 1940s and the 1990s, several European countries (looking at you, U.K., France, etc.) used the deep Atlantic as a dumping ground for nuclear waste. The barrels, filled with radioactive materials sealed in cement, bitumen, or resin, were dropped to depths exceeding 4,000 meters.

• Exposed! The practice remained largely hidden until 1981, when a small Galician fishing boat, the Xurelo, sailed to the dumping zone and physically confronted ships discarding nuclear waste. The first images of the practice sparked international outrage, and that pressure led to a moratorium in 1983 and a full ban in 1993 under international law.

The worst has happened. The latest CNRS expedition confirms that some barrels are breaking down and releasing radionuclides into the surrounding environment. While measured radiation levels remain relatively low for now, they are higher than expected in the area. In other words, zombie fish are not here yet…but coming soon.

• If the barrels continue to degrade, radioactive substances could leak more widely, affecting local marine life and, over time, fisheries and coastal economies in northern Spain. These materials can persist in ecosystems for decades, accumulating in organisms and moving up the food chain. So… pretty bad.

What now? Should I move? Further lab analysis is underway, and pressure is mounting on the Spanish government to take a more active role.

• What’s next? Some political groups are already calling for a plan to assess whether the barrels can be safely removed, a complex and risky operation that could redefine this decades-old environmental problem. And it would not be at all expensive, right?

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@thebubblecomSiestas > Summer Love #lifeinspain #spanishsummer #eurosummer #spain #spanishlife

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That's a LOT of people

🛂 Give us your tired, your poor…ah, hell, give us everybody.

Remember Spain’s controversial massive migrant regularization program? Well, it just blew past expectations (way past!), and it’s now turning into one of the biggest social and political bets of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government.

• 1.3 million! The deadline to apply passed on Tuesday, and while the government predicted around 500,000 undocumented migrants would apply, early estimates now suggest the number could be as high as 1.3m. 😵‍💫

• The government hasn’t confirmed the final figure yet, but even its own mid-June data (900,000) already showed the scale of the surge. This would be the largest regularization in Europe in decades.

• UPDATE: After this newsletter was sent, the government confirmed a total of 1.174.978 petitions made (67% of them from Latin American citizens).

A big f*cking deal. In simple terms, the process allows undocumented migrants already in Spain to obtain legal residency and work permits (citizenship could come after years of residency).

• The government’s argument is both moral and economic. That is, these are people already working — often off the books — and bringing them into the system means taxes, contributions, and legal protections.

• Sánchez has made big claims. He has framed mass immigration as essential to sustaining the economy and says thousands of businesses, farms, and schools would disappear without migrant labor. Without immigration, he claims that Spain would lose 19% of its GDP by 2050. Now, this Big Scary Number is a guesstimate, but considering Spaniards are not having kids, he may be pointing in the right direction.

• Training. Alongside the regularization, the government has launched a €500m integration plan, focused on employment, training, housing, healthcare, and social cohesion (language programs, etc).

• Immigrants have been powering the economy recently. Since 2018, Spain has added 2.9m jobs, and some 44% of them have gone to foreign workers who help offset Spain’s aging population and labor shortages.

Party poopers. The center-right PP and far-right Vox (shocker) have come out strongly against the regularization, warning of an “efecto llamada” (a pull effect) that could encourage more irregular migration.

• The police are fueling that argument. They originally warned that the number of applicants would be much higher than the government's 500,000 estimate. Their internal estimates also suggested that up to 400,000 applicants may not have been living in Spain before the official cutoff date, raising concerns about fraud, forged documents, and a potential black market for fake proof of residency.

EU gotta be kidding me. Spain’s Supreme Court is now considering whether the policy could conflict with EU law (i.e., Schengen rules). It has asked both the government and several PP-led regions whether it should refer the case to the European Court of Justice (CJEU).

• Basically, EU citizenship. Judges are concerned that it would grant over a million people free movement across the EU and may conflict with EU migration law, especially since it was done without coordination with Brussels or other member states. Sánchez’s government, however, has said the permits are only for Spain (hmmm). And the European Commission has already signaled that migration regularization is a national power, not an EU one.

It’s not just the massive regularization that has the opposition up in arms. They’re also on fire about a massive naturalization — that of Spanish emigrants and their children abroad through a law known as the Ley de Nietos (The Grandchildren’s Law). Funny thing? Some of them used to support it.

• The Ley de Nietos is a provision of the 2022 Ley de Memoria Democrática granting Spanish citizenship to grandchildren of Civil War exiles and Franco-era emigrants. Applications closed in October 2025 with 2.45m submitted — mostly from Argentina (1.5m) and Cuba (800,000). Some 544,722 have been approved; 306,000 are now on the electoral roll.

• The awkward part. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo campaigned in Buenos Aires in 2023, promising a “specific law” to grant nationality to descendants of Spanish emigrants. In 2018, PP voted in favor of a similar Senate measure — and as Galicia’s president, Feijóo spent years defending the Galician diaspora’s right to a Spanish passport.

• Now, though. This week Feijóo called the law “electoral engineering” and accused Sánchez of “manufacturing voters.” Vox’s Abascal went further, alleging a full pucherazo (vote-rigging). Madrid presi Isabel Díaz Ayuso warned consular officials they could face legal consequences for granting citizenship to those “who don’t deserve it” — which pissed off Spain’s diplomatic corps, traditionally conservative and deeply unused to being accused of electoral fraud by the right. The government called all of it “trumpismo” — and Reuters drew the same parallel, explicitly comparing the rhetoric to Donald Trump's and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s election-denial playbooks.

The mail-in twist. Vox is now demanding that the Junta Electoral Central suspend postal voting for all Spaniards abroad — the better to protect democracy, we assume. But the irony: in the 2023 election, PP beat PSOE in overseas votes 32.7% to 24.9%. The overseas vote, as it stands, is a PP stronghold.

More news below. 👇👇

🔔 Don’t miss the latest episode of The Bubble Podcast!

Episode 2 of The Bubble Podcast is out! We talk about true crime (maybe), how to enjoy this summer’s verbenas, and mistakes foreigners make when moving to Spain.

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🤑 Spain’s Tax Man releases the 13th annual list of biggest tax dodgers!

Just like some Spaniards get all fired up about Semana Santa, Pride, or MadCool, we anxiously await the annual release of the biggest tax debtors. Because…we’re weird, and because we just loved following Shakira’s multi-year fight with Hacienda, which she won, in part, because her hips don’t lie, usually.

• The 2025 list doesn’t disappoint. The list includes 5,853 debtors, down 2.4% from last year, and at first glance, total debt looks lower — €15.4bn, off 4.4%. But strip out duplicate entries, and it’s actually 12.2% more than last year. Well done, cheats!

• The threshold to make the list: owe more than €600,000, debt firm and uncontested as of Dec. 31, 2025.

But we’re not here for the stats; we’re here for the celebrities.

• Back after two years off, TV presenter Patricia Conde returns with €714,615 pending. ¡Bienvenida!

• Back after three years: Gossip TV regular Kiko Matamoros squeaks back in at exactly €600,740. Well done, but we’ll expect more next year!

• Going up 📈: Isabel Pantoja’s debt has grown from €1m to €1.3m. Singing more, paying less. Paz Vega (real name María Paz Campos Trigo) is up to €1.8m. And El Chatarrero — a scrap metal mogul and right-wing gossip-press regular named Luis Miguel Rodríguez — has gone from €3.7m to €4.35m. 🎇 Lol, and to think your simple autónomo debt keeps you up at night.

• Going down (slowly) 📉: Bertín Osborne, the singer, right-wing(ish) TV star and…9th Count of Donadío de Casasola, still owes €835,000, though at least it’s trending the right way — notable given he just launched a new telecom company with the slogan “things done right, things done correctly”. Mario Conde, the former banker-turned-politician, has brought his tab from €6.4m in 2023 down to €1.9m. Points for effort.

• Leaving: Diego Torres, of the Nóos corruption case (remember the one involving the King’s brother-in-law?), has made it off. ¡Chao! 👋

• The corporate heavyweights: Real people are fun, but the serious money is corporate. Reyal Urbis, a real estate firm, has led the list every year since 2015 and owes €264.9m. Behind them: a parade of oil companies under investigation for VAT fraud — Bio-Zenite Energy (€232.9m), Metaway Combustibles (€195.6m), Vertix Petroleum (€194.7m).

The list was created in 2015 as a financial shaming mechanism. Does it work? Somewhat: €79.5m was paid right before the Dec. 31 deadline, presumably to avoid appearing. The problem is that 20% of the total debt (€4.3bn) belongs to companies in bankruptcy proceedings — meaning it may never actually be collected.

• Dream on. Someday, we hope to have enough 🫰to be that far in tax debt.

2. 🏳️‍🌈 Parliament criminalizes “conversion therapy”, at last

Just in time for Pride Week. Parliament has approved a reform of the Penal Code to criminalize the so-called “conversion therapies,” practices aimed at changing or suppressing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

• UN says torture. These "therapies,” which the UN calls a form of torture, range from psychological pressure to coercive religious “treatments,” often targeting vulnerable people, including minors.

• Banned already. Until now, these practices — which have persisted — were technically banned in Spain, though only punishable with administrative fines.

• Little punishment. There was little punishment under the previous regime: out of 23 complaints filed with the Ministry of Equality in recent years, 20 were shelved. And No Es Terapia (It’s Not Therapy), an NGO that fights against the practices, blames regions led by the PP and Vox for ignoring complaints brought to them.

The new law changes that. It introduces prison sentences of six months to two years, even if the person undergoing the “therapy” claims to consent. MPs supporting the reform argue that consent in these cases often comes from pressure, fear, or family coercion.

• For this reason, the law goes a step further. Parents, guardians, or anyone facilitating these practices on minors or vulnerable individuals can also face criminal penalties, including the loss of custody rights.

• The measure passed with broad support from the left and government allies (PSOE, Sumar, Podemos, ERC, Bildu, PNV and others), who framed it as a long-overdue protection of dignity and human rights. Socialist MP Víctor Gutiérrez, who is gay, said that “these are not therapies; they are torture,” arguing that fines were clearly not enough to stop them.

The right was… the right. Meaning it was split. The center-right PP abstained despite saying it supports banning conversion therapies, arguing the law is “legally flawed” and too vague, particularly around the issue of consent.

• Big market for that? Some within the party pushed to allow adults to voluntarily seek such treatments (hmm), a position that triggered a heated clash in parliament.

• Far-right Vox went further, clutching its pearls and voting against the law entirely, calling it an attack on “individual freedom” and denying the scale of the problem. They also said this law “bans homosexuals from seeing a psychologist” (which is a lie).

The left was also being the left. Despite backing the law, several left-wing parties said it doesn’t go far enough. Their main complaint? It focuses on punishing perpetrators but does little to help victims rebuild their lives.

• Proposals for financial aid, housing support, and psychological assistance were left out — leaving what some called a “half-finished” reform.

More fun things. Now Spain can turn from fighting over conversion therapy, just in time for Pride.

3. 💬 RTVE apologizes for decision to subtitle a woman from… Sevilla (?!)

Andalusians speak fast and have something against the letter 'S', but come on, now. Spain’s public broadcaster, RTVE, found itself at the center of a shit storm an unlikely culture war after it subtitled the Andalusian accent of the mother of Spanish footballer Fabián Ruiz in a World Cup documentary.

• That changed quickly. What was meant to be an emotional interview quickly sparked accusations of “andalufobia” (anti-Andalusian prejudice) and restarted a long-running debate in this country over regional accents and class stereotypes.

Selective subtitling. The controversy began in Denominación de origen, a documentary series about the families and hometowns of Spain’s World Cup squad.

• Not like mother like son. When Ruiz's mother, Chari Peña, spoke about her son’s childhood from their home in Los Palacios, in Sevilla, RTVE displayed Spanish subtitles because of her strong Andalusian accent. (Curiously, they did not subtitle Ruiz himself, even though they both speak with the same accent.)

Cue Andalusian scorn. This triggered an immediate backlash on TV and social media, with thousands accusing RTVE of treating Andalusian Spanish as if it were a foreign language and reinforcing an old stereotype portraying Andalusians as less educated.

• Fine, whatevs. Ruiz himself responded with sarcasm during an interview with DAZN: “If someone doesn’t understand me, you can put subtitles on my Andalusian accent too.”

The backlash was so intense that RTVE President José Pablo López publicly apologized, calling the decision “a huge mistake.”

• And I prostrate myself before you. Speaking to a parliamentary committee, López offered an “unreserved apology” to all Andalusians—and especially to Chari Peña—saying that “the Andalusian accent is a treasure and part of our cultural heritage, and should never be treated as a language barrier requiring translation.”

• Changes to come. He also said RTVE is reviewing its internal procedures to ensure the incident is not repeated, etc. etc.

Spain is home to a wide variety of languages, dialects, and accents, from Catalan to Basque and everything in between. That's what makes Spain so culturally rich (well, that and the different kinds of tapas).

• Hint: If you’re not a native Spanish speaker and need help understanding people from Andalucía, spend more time with them. It helps. 😉

4. 🌞 Did Spain install too much solar energy?

This is not a screed against green energy! We just felt the need to say that after that headline because, you know, people might think we’d gone all Orange Menace about the energy transition. But this story is about something not totally positive that is happening amidst the (necessary) transition: an economic washout that could slow it down.

• Please, take my power! The issue is that Spain has already broken its annual record for negative-price electricity hours — meaning times when producers must pay users to take their power — with half the year still to go, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in a piece out this week. The culprit is a renewables boom so successful it’s undermining itself.

More than $80 billion has poured into Spanish renewables over the last 15 years — a transition we’ve cheered before. Last year, solar overtook wind as Spain’s largest electricity source. But the grid’s ability to actually absorb, store, and distribute all that power hasn’t kept pace with the capacity to generate it. During peak hours, there’s simply too much electricity and nowhere for it to go. (Hmmm, installing batteries might be a good idea. No?)

• Investors are trying to exit the markets by selling at steep discounts, says Daniel Pérez of L’Energètica, a Catalan utility. At least four Spanish solar companies or projects have been put on the market, including Arena Green Power and Matrix Renewables.

• More examples. Iberdrola, Europe’s biggest green power producer, has delayed asset sales after getting lowball offers. BlackRock and four other major firms have opened short positions in solar company Solaria — whose output jumped 50% in Q1 but whose average sale price fell 20%.

Remember that April 2025 apagón? The blackout, which plunged most of Spain and Portugal into darkness, made things worse. Since then, the state grid operator Red Eléctrica has been more aggressive about ordering solar farms offline — partly because solar panels, unlike old-school spinning turbines, don’t naturally stabilize the grid’s frequency and voltage, and that can contribute to…blackouts.

• Of course, we’re not complaining. Spain’s power prices are among Europe’s lowest — like, roughly half what Germans pay. The government calls the situation “transitional” and is planning €30bn in grid upgrades through 2030, while also thinking about giving direct financial support to struggling producers — as well as incentives for batteries.

Like always in bad times, the vultures are circling. “Distressed asset investors” may spend €6-10 billion to snap up struggling assets, Luis del Barrio of Arthur D. Little told Bloomberg. And another €10bn could go into installing batteries (good idea!).

• Tomorrow, promise. Rafael Alcón at solar contractor Lantania, says clients are paying late as their projects underperform. But he claims to be cool about it: “It’s better to get paid late than never.”

5. ⚓ Archaeologists in Mallorca brought an entire sunken Roman ship to land

The ship has risen! Long live the ship! Fine, that’s ridiculous. But we’re excited. For the first time ever in Spain, archaeologists have recovered a complete Roman shipwreck. On Monday, as sunburned tourists were eating piles of ice cream along the seafront at Can Pastilla (one of the busiest tourist traps beaches in Mallorca), meters offshore, the archaeologists were finishing the recovery of the Ses Fontanelles, one of the most important underwater finds in the Mediterranean.

• It took four months, 15 researchers, and a team of Spanish Navy divers. Working in water barely two meters deep, the Arqueomallornauta team dismantled the vessel plank by plank, casting each piece in custom fiberglass molds that hardened underwater to preserve the wood’s exact shape.

• The final act — floating the last two hull sections along the seabed to the port and hoisting them out by crane — completed a campaign that the lead archaeologist Darío Bernal described as “technically complicated” but, he added, “we are very happy.”

The backstory. Dating to the 4th century AD, the Ses Fontanelles wreck is of a 12-meter merchant vessel loaded with more than 300 amphorae of fish sauce, olive oil, and wine from around Cartagena, almost certainly heading for Rome for some serious noshing.

• The end. A storm caught it in the Bay of Palma and sent it to the bottom, where it lay sealed under sand for 1,700 years until another storm exposed it in 2019 and a diver spotted amphora necks poking through the seabed — 65 meters from a beach where over a million tourists swim every summer.

What they found. The finds are extraordinary even by Mediterranean standards. Most of the amphorae survived with sealed stoppers and contents intact (taste test soon?). Painted inscriptions on the jars — tituli picti — name two merchants (Alumnio and Ausonio), identify seven scribes, and include a tax reference, making Ses Fontanelles the Roman wreck with the most painted inscriptions in the entire Med.

• The headline find may be a large section of the actual sail — one of only two such pieces anywhere, the other being Egypt’s ancient port of Berenice. Also recovered were four anchors, two intact baskets, and the first steering oar tiller ever found in Spain. A coin minted in Siscia (modern Sisak, Croatia) in 320 AD and placed in the mast socket during the ship’s original launching ritual confirmed the date.

What’s next. The wreck will spend at least a year undergoing preservation work at Palma’s Castle of San Carlos before moving to the National Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Cartagena (Murcia). The long-term plan is a permanent home near the Roman site of Pollentia in Alcudia, Mallorca.

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It’s getting hot in here

💥 “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, Sánchez edition

No, it’s not because of the heat wave. Right now, everything is hitting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez at once. This week has delivered a brutal one-two-three punch: his former right-hand man, José Luis Ábalos, was sentenced to over 24 years in prison, his ex-adviser Koldo García to nearly 20, and his wife, Begoña Gómez, is now officially heading to trial in a separate case.

Legal Earthquake #1. On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the so-called Caso Koldo (which we’ve covered many times here). Ábalos, who was once one of the most powerful figures in Sánchez’s PSOE and a key architect of his rise to power, was found guilty of running a corruption scheme tied to pandemic-era mask contracts (and got the longest prison sentence ever for a former minister — congrats!).

• Bad men #1 + #2. The court found he participated in an organized operation involving kickbacks, influence-peddling, and steering public contracts allegedly steered toward friendly companies. His close aide, Koldo García, was also convicted as part of the same network.

• Snitching Cooperating pays. Then there’s Víctor de Aldama, the businessman at the center of the scheme, who was convicted too, but won’t go to prison because he cooperated with the authorities. The court explicitly rewarded his testimony and evidence, arguing that collaboration helps dismantle corruption networks.

• The audacity! Inside the government, that decision has triggered real unease. Not because of Aldama himself (who made threats against Sánchez, suggesting he was involved), but because of what it signaled (at least to them): tell the truth, and you will receive leniency testify against the socialist party, and you walk.

Legal Earthquake #2. Just when things couldn’t get more complicated politically, another crisis hit Sánchez’s personal orbit. That is, Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has formally opened trial proceedings against his wife, Begoña Gómez, accusing her of leveraging her position as the prime minister’s wife to boost her professional projects and influence business relationships.

• The charges range from influence peddling to corruption in business dealings — serious accusations that Gómez has denied. The Madrid public prosecutor has questioned the solidity of the case, but Peinado is like a dog with a bone and is pressing ahead nonetheless.

Red flags. What has really set off alarm bells, though, is how the judge is handling it. In a WTF moment highly controversial move, he ordered Gómez to surrender her passport and banned her from leaving Spain, citing a potential flight risk.

• Questioning the Thin Blue Line. Peinado suggested that the very police officers assigned to protect her could help her escape (which pissed off pretty much everyone). The National Police and police unions, which are not exactly known for siding with this government, called it outrageous. And the judicial watchdog, the CGPJ, voted in favor of opening a disciplinary investigation into the judge over those statements. (Still, Gómez turned in her passport yesterday).

Out to get her? This case itself has been controversial from day one. It originated from what many saw as a flimsy complaint filed by Manos Limpias, a pseudo-union linked to the far right, and has been marked by a series of once again, WTF eyebrow-raising moments.

No comment. Sánchez’s response has been a combination of trolling and exhaustion. Just hours after the Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling on Koldo, he posted a TikTok advising people to drink water and wear sunscreen during the heatwave.

• The best defense is a good offense. Yesterday in Parliament, he switched to full mixed metaphor combat mode, condemning corruption, defending his record, and aggressively going after the opposition, especially the PP. Corruption exists, he says, but not in his government as a system (a distinction that may be too cute by half), and certainly not on the scale seen in previous administrations (which sounds like he admits it exists, but anyway…).

• The opposition laughed at his response, with PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo asking him to call an election. Even former Socialist PM Felipe González said he should either resign or call early elections out of “political responsibility.”

What happens now? We’re headed for a summer break (yay!). Begoña Gómez is on track to stand trial unless a higher court intervenes, and the broader corruption investigations linked to the Caso Koldo are still unfolding, meaning more revelations could be coming.

• Sánchez insists he will stay the course until 2027 (though his comments suggest he’s rebating that from July to March). But after a week like this, that timeline suddenly looks far less certain.

More news below. 👇👇

🔔 But first… Don’t miss the latest episode of The Bubble Podcast!

We discuss PM Zapatero’s corruption accusations, the very complicated relationship between the US and Spanish governments, and the World Cup. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube!

IE University proudly presents the 20th edition of LGBT+@Work, one of the leading LGBTIQ+ conferences in Europe and the longest-running of its kind since its launch in 2006. Two decades later, this flagship event continues to foster meaningful conversations on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the business world.

Register here to attend today!

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🇺🇸💔🇪🇸 Are American businesses souring on Spain as Sánchez and Trump duke it out?

Economic reverb. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s stand against President Trump’s war in Iran, tech bro assholishness, and Israeli military attacks are either a principled stand against the 🍊 Menace’s policies or the political grandstanding of a leader unloved at home (or both; it can be both). But it could be hitting Spain where it really hurts — you know, el bolsillo 🤑.

• What’s the deal? American companies are pulling money out of Spain at a historic pace. Between January and March 2026 — the first quarter to fully capture the diplomatic faceoff between Madrid and Washington — U.S. disinvestment sextupled (not often you get to use that word!), rising 534% year-over-year to €3.3 billion.

• Long time high. That’s the largest quarterly disinvestment spike going back to when records began in 1993. Net U.S. investment cratered 719%, flipping from slightly positive a year ago to negative €1.97 billion. In one quarter, ‘merica went from Spain’s #1 foreign investor to #254.

The timing is a bit obvs. Sánchez came out hard in March against the U.S. and Israel’s quest to send Iran back to the Stone Age, including by blocking America from using the joint bases in Spain for the war. Trump responded by calling Spain “a terrible partner.” That’s the last month the new data covers, which matters because American investment had been booming until then: 2025 closed with record U.S. investment, up 53% to €10.2bn.

• The U.S. numbers are the worst, but they’re not alone. Overall, foreign net investment in Spain fell 16.8% in Q1 2026, with total foreign disinvestment up 84.8%.

• But why? The fracas with the Orange Menace compounds pre-existing conditions, like Spain’s complex regulations and energy grid problems (remember the apagón?). It’s also worth noting that Spain’s so-called escudo antiopas — a screening system meant to stop foreigners from getting their grubby paws on buying strategic Spanish companies — again directed about 40% of its 2025 reviews at U.S. investors (it’s been consistent since the escudo launched in 2020).

• Two sectors seem to be taking the worst of it. Data centers, where Spain was competing with France for Mediterranean leadership (France: 320 active centers; Spain: 145), and defense, where industry sources say flatly that “most bridges are broken.”

What’s next? Economists are watching closely whether Q1 was a one-off — a handful of major exits skewing the data — or the start of a real shift. In part to avoid drama, some regional governments — chiefly Aragón (33% of Spain’s data center projects) and Madrid — are going to court U.S. investors directly and leave the 🍊 fella and Mr. Handsome to fight things out on their own time.

2. 🏺 Archaeologists prove Extremadura was super de lujo back in the day

You may think Extremadura is just the hot place that Spain’s conquistadores would do anything to get away from, including going to the New World to die (or kill). But no — back in ancient times, that could barely afford the written word, it was like Las Vegas and Dubai all wrapped into one.

• How do we know this? Archaeologists at Casas del Turuñuelo, a Tartessian site (long story) in Guareña (Badajoz), have just wrapped their eighth dig season with another mind-blowing find: half of a bronze ritual cart from around 500 BC, decorated with griffins, a river god with his tongue out, and two bearded Atlas figures holding the whole thing up.

• Really, this is crazy unique. Esther Rodríguez and Sebastián Celestino, the CSIC co-directors behind the dig, say they’ve “searched by land, sea and air” and found nothing like it. The only partial parallels are Etruscan.

Turuñuelo has been delivering for years. Previous campaigns at the mound turned up the first Tartessian stone sculptures ever found (five near-life-size busts); a slate tablet with one of the oldest known paleohispanic alphabets carved around a scene of battling warriors; and the bones of 42 horses and assorted livestock, arranged with eerie ceremonial precision — the first documented animal sacrifice on the scale described in the Iliad and the Old Testament.

• What else is hiding under the mound? A two-story monumental building from 2,500 years ago, unique in the protohistoric southwest Iberian Peninsula.

What it all means. Rodríguez is calling this “the year of imports.” Why? The cart is probably Etruscan. Found alongside it were attic ceramics from Greece, an Egyptian alabaster perfume flask, ivory fragments carved with warriors, lions, and lotus flowers, and a Greek ritual foot-washing basin that the team believes “traveled in a package” with a marble altar column found last year.

• Someone at Turuñuelo knew what the objects were for. The striking thing, Celestino says, is that these Mediterranean luxury goods keep turning up in landlocked Badajoz but not at coastal sites like Cádiz or Málaga. That’s just another reason Extremadura intrigues us — that and how much good seafood you can eat in the desert zone.

What’s next? The other half of the bronze cart is presumably still somewhere under the mound, with half the site still unexcavated. Spain’s largest protective dome is being built over the site. Isotope analysis will try to pinpoint where the bronze came from.

• And then there’s the central mystery. Why did Tartessian Extremadura’s inhabitants destroy everything, bury it in a mound, and walk away 2,500 years ago?

3. 🛩️ And then the princess flew a plane…

You know we’re always up for heartwarming royal news about Princess Leonor. Just three weeks ago, we breathlessly recounted how Felipe VI’s eldest daughter had jumped out of a plane more than once as part of her military parachuting training. At the time, we speculated that Spain was all there for Leonor because watching her grow from teen to adult was a welcome break from political scandals and weird stories about corpses that dominate our news.

• Now she’s done even more! Not only can she jump out of planes — she can fly one alongside her dad!

What happened: On June 19, the 12th anniversary of Felipe VI’s proclamation as king, the Royal House released 18 photographs of father and daughter doing some serious father-daughter bonding — by flying together.

• Kinda like when your dad did bumper cars with you. Leonor, in her third and final year of military training at the Air and Space Academy in San Javier (Murcia), flew a Pilatus PC-21 trainer aircraft as her father flew one alongside her, and together they soared over La Manga del Mar Menor on the Murcian coast. Like cute chickadee nestlings taking their first flight.

• The king was told what's what by the princess. Before takeoff, Leonor presented the mission briefing to Felipe, explaining the technical details and safety procedures. To her father. Who is the king. This is either excellent parenting or a slightly overachieving daughter. We’re guessing both.

• A note on the landing. “I felt better than I expected,” Felipe said, stepping off the plane (suggesting…?). Leonor hugged him and said: “Thank you, Papa.” The Academy director, watching them land, said it “went quite well.” High, if understated, praise all around.

The 12-year milestone. The timing wasn’t accidental. When Felipe VI was proclaimed king in June 2014, he promised a “renewed monarchy for a new era.” Twelve years later, watching his daughter brief him on flight safety before climbing into a combat trainer and flying formation over the Mediterranean — well, that image is doing a lot of monarchy renewal work.

• What’s next? Leonor’s military training wraps in July, when she receives her commissions as Lieutenant in the Army, Lieutenant in the Air Force, and Ensign in the Navy, in three separate ceremonies alongside her classmates. After three years of sailing tall ships, jumping from planes, and flying combat trainers, she returns to royal duties full-time. With a CV that puts most 21-year-olds (like, um, the younger versions of us?) to shame.

4. 🏳️‍🌈 Gay-jà vu: People are mad (again) at Madrid’s Pride banners

Oh, boy. It’s that time of year again. Madrid Pride is back to take over the city, and so is the annual controversy surrounding the City Council’s campaign. Earlier this week, PP Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida’s government unveiled the official posters for MADO Madrid Orgullo 2026 — and people are, once again, pissed off not happy.

• Rings a bell? Remember back in 2024 when people hated the banners because they appeared to reduce Madrid Pride to sex and alcohol? Well, this year’s campaign is swapping people for… random objects. But hey, at least they are rainbow-colored castizo objects!

• No, seriously. Instead of faces, bodies, or community imagery, the posters feature AI-generated scenes of ultra-Madrid staples: a flower-filled balcony, stacked terrace chairs, jars of candy.

• All wrapped in rainbow colors and stamped with slogans like “Proudly from Madrid” and, later, the updated line: “Diversity is lived in Madrid”. (You can see them here.)

Over the rainbow. The idea, according to the City Council, is to show how diversity is “integrated into everyday life” across neighborhoods, homes, and businesses. The problem? For a lot of people, that’s exactly the issue.

• Opposition leaders on the left said the campaign erased the people Pride is meant to celebrate. PSOE’s spokesperson in the city, Reyes Maroto, accused Mayor Almeida of turning Pride into a “marketing campaign” that reduces the community to decoration, while Más Madrid’s Rita Maestre slammed the initiative as disconnected from the movement’s history.

• LGBTQ+ organizations went further. Arcópoli, a major Madrid LGBTQ+ rights group, accused the city of a “systematic erasure” of LGBTQ+ people.

• The city responds. José Fernández, Madrid’s Social Policies chief, said LGBT diversity “isn’t a slogan here and that diversity isn’t just visible during Pride, but present year-round in the small, everyday details of the city.”

A gay old time. Madrid Pride Week kicks off today and runs until July 5. Last year’s edition attracted between 1.5 and 2 million visitors and generated close to €900m, making it the biggest Pride celebration in all of Europe. Even though there’s still work to do, Spain is killing it.

• Demand is already surging. Accommodation searches are up 70% over last year. So, whatever you think of the posters, Pride in Madrid is still a massive deal.

5. 😔 A rash of drownings put Spain’s beaches under scrutiny

This is a sad one. A series of tragic drownings over the past few days has shaken Spain just as the summer season begins. The most devastating incident took place in Tarragona, where three children — aged 12 and 13 — lost their lives, while two more adults died in separate incidents along the Alicante coast.

• In Tarragona, six kids were swimming near a rocky area known as Cova del Gos, when strong currents and waves pulled them out to sea. (A yellow (caution) flag was flying at the time because of rip currents and undertow.) Three made it back to shore and alerted lifeguards, but the others became trapped against the rocks, unable to fight the current or find a way out.

Rescue was very difficult. Rough sea conditions forced lifeguards to improvise; at one point, they had to abandon a boat rescue and swim out themselves. One of the children died at the scene despite multiple attempts at resuscitation.

• The other two were stabilized and rushed to the hospital (one by helicopter), but both later died from their injuries. City officials declared several days of mourning.

In Alicante, too. There, two more people died.

• One man was found unconscious in a rocky cove in Torrevieja with no lifeguard service present; despite CPR efforts, he could not be revived.

• Later that same day, a 24-year-old man drowned at Mil Palmeras beach shortly after lifeguards had ended their shift. Conditions had been rough all day, with warnings issued and a yellow flag raised.

These incidents highlight a critical issue as Spain heads into peak beach season — knowing where and when to swim can be a matter of life and death.

• Rocky areas, strong currents, and unsupervised beaches dramatically increase risk — even for young, healthy swimmers.

• Summer seasons. With more people heading to the water as rough seas affect parts of the coast, authorities are again urging caution. Basic rules: check the flags, avoid dangerous zones, and never underestimate the sea.

🔔 Don’t forget to follow us on TikTok!

@thebubblecomWE KNOW NOTHING. #laroja #fifa #mundial #spain #españa

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Who, me?

👨🏻‍⚖️ Former PM Zapatero heads to court and swears he’s like totally innocent

Another week, another political first. For the first time since the return of democracy, a former prime minister testified in court as a suspect this week.

• Yup, it was ZP. Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who was in office from 2004 to 2011, spent nearly three hours at the National Court yesterday morning, denying any wrongdoing in a sprawling corruption and money laundering probe linked to the controversial €53m government rescue of airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic.

• It’s the beginning of a major scandal that exploded recently, that has the center-left PSOE party freaking out and spiraling asking for “patience”, and that has put Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in the extremely tricky spot of having to defend his number one supporter.

Hold on. How did we get here? Investigators suspect Zapatero may have used his influence with the Spanish government to push the bailout through and benefit companies linked to businessman Julio Martínez, in exchange for commissions allegedly paid through sham consultancy arrangements.

• The 1%. At the center of the case is an alleged 1% cut of the Plus Ultra bailout that may have been funneled to Zapatero and cohorts (including his daughters) through a network of companies, possibly including an offshore structure in Dubai. Oh, and investigators think some of the bailout money was used to launder funds skimmed from Venezuelan government programs by businessmen tied to Nicolás Maduro’s government. Nice!

• Who among us does not have an emerald necklace? On top of this, police found jewels worth €1.3m in a safe in Zapatero's Madrid office, a discovery that added new charges, including tax fraud and smuggling, and intensified scrutiny.

I am not a crook. In court, Zapatero stuck to a clear line. That is, he had “no involvement whatsoever” in the Plus Ultra bailout and no contact with officials to influence it. He insisted his work was legitimate consulting based on his experience as a former PM

• Just guys paying each other on a handshake deal. Zapatero acknowledged knowing Martínez since 2011 and working with him from 2020 under what he described as a verbal consultancy agreement, paid annually.

• What, me? But he rejected the idea that the company involved was a shell used to channel illicit payments. He also denied ever owning or creating companies abroad and said he knew nothing about any commission agreement tied to the bailout. (The judge, for one, had doubts, saying, “He has failed to refute the rational indications of criminality”).

The jewel of denial. The issue of the jewels remains unresolved — and kinda awkward. Zapatero attempted to delay answering questions about them earlier this week, arguing he needed more time to document their origin. The judge refused, saying they were not new facts.

• So he didn't say anything. Zapatero chose not to answer on that point and will return to court in the coming days to address it specifically. It’s one of the most sensitive parts of the case, and potentially the most damaging from an optics standpoint.

No flight risk. Despite the seriousness of the accusations, the judge rejected the prosecutor’s request to seize Zapatero’s passport and impose travel restrictions.

• The reason? His public profile and “deep roots” in Spain make him an unlikely fugitive, and most key evidence has already been secured. There are suspicions, sure, but not enough, for now, to justify limiting his freedom. Plus, why would he leave? It's summer in Spain!

Really, I meant it! Zapatero released a short statement after leaving court, repeating he is “completely innocent” of all charges and will prove it, “however long it takes.”

• 🐌 Considering the speed of Spanish courts, that could take a while.

More news below. 👇👇

🔔 But first… Don’t miss the first episode of The Bubble Podcast!

We discuss PM Zapatero’s corruption accusations, the very complicated relationship between the US and Spanish governments, and the World Cup. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube!

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🧑‍🔧 ¿Cómo se dice Watergate en español?

Spain is one big anti-corruption report these days. Spain’s elite anti-corruption unit, the UCO, dropped its zillionth special investigative report this week — and it’s gonna leave a mark.

• Documents. Basement. This should ring a bell. Among documents seized from former PSOE bigwig Santos Cerdán’s locked devices in the basement of the party’s headquarters, investigators claim to have found evidence that the PSOE’s former organization secretary had authorized — and been fully briefed on — a coordinated operation to torpedo judicial cases threatening the Sánchez government.

• But Cerdán was not alone. At the center of everything was a woman named Leire Díez, whose nickname, la fontanera de Ferraz (the plumber of the PSOE HQ on Madrid’s Calle Ferraz), turns out to be entirely apt. She was there to fix leaks.

So who the hell is Leire Díez? And why is the government so scared of her?

• Small town to secret agent. Diez started as a politician in the Cantabrian mountain town of Vega de Pas (where the former mayor called her “very manipulative”), before working her way through PSOE communications roles and up to the post of director of philately at the national postal museum. Her LinkedIn page stops there, but somewhere along the way, she allegedly became the operational core of a scheme to kneecap judges, prosecutors, and the UCO itself. The party, it now emerges, paid her €45,000 between 2015 and 2017.

Great travel perks. According to the UCO, her activities were overseen by Cerdán, who ordered PSOE staff to approve any trip she requested, no questions asked. The alleged scheme was to find people who were willing to hand over compromising information on judges and prosecutors unfriendly to PSOE interests, sometimes in exchange for help with their legal cases.

• A document titled “Incumplimientos” (Failures) — found both on her laptop and on Cerdán’s Ferraz devices — allegedly catalogued the whole operation, strongly suggesting that somebody in PSOE leadership knew.

• Travel agent. A WhatsApp group the conspirators named “Vacaciones y Viajes” (Holidays and Travel) — yes, really — allegedly coordinated efforts to derail the case against the PM’s brother in Badajoz.

When we say “strongly suggesting”... Díez reportedly told one contact that when “your wife and your brother are charged, you realize you have to clean things up” — language uncomfortably close to describing Pedro Sánchez’s own situation.

• The initials “P.S.” also appear in her notebooks next to notes about arranging a lawyer for David Sánchez. (We are sure this is a total coincidence. It could mean Paquita Salas.)

• Totally not a threat. “I know much more than what appears in the notebooks,” she has said. “I’m worth more for what I keep quiet.”

This week’s report also deepened suspicions about Mercedes González — the government-appointed head of the Guardia Civil — who met Díez multiple times, then opened three internal investigations into UCO agents in nine months. She appeared before the Senate this Tuesday, where she repeatedly denied influencing the investigations.

• We definitely wouldn’t be worried if we were in government. Not at all. /sarcasm

2. 🛃 That whole “free residency” thing got a few more applicants than expected

500,000. That’s the number of undocumented immigrants in Spain the Sánchez government repeatedly estimated would apply for the massive one-off regularization it approved in April. The think tank Funcas pegged it at 840,000, while others went as high as 1m, but Immigration Minister Elma Saiz stuck with 500,000.

• It appears the government was wrong. With two weeks still to go before the June 30 deadline, over 900,000 people have applied — almost double the government’s public estimate, and a record that blows past the previous high of 691,655 applications set in 2005 (576,506 were accepted then).

• It could hit one million by the time the window closes. Of those, around 359,000 have been formally admitted to the process — meaning those applicants now hold provisional residency and work permits while their cases are reviewed.

Why so many? The requirements were more flexible than previous regularizations — no pre-work contract required — and the ministry actively encouraged people to apply even with incomplete documentation.

• Shhhhh… Also: there were simply far more undocumented people in Spain than the government was willing to say out loud. Spain’s police said they had estimated figures much closer to reality, but their projections were “questioned and minimized” by the government. And most of these applicants, by the way, didn’t arrive on inflatable dinghies — they flew in as tourists, mostly from Latin America, and stayed.

The right is predictably furious. Vox has challenged the decree at the Supreme Court — which refused to suspend it in May but still has to rule on its legality — and the PP, which initially didn’t block the process, has since fully embraced scary tales of an immigrant flood.

• The government, for its part, is “cautious and optimistic,” noting the numbers need filtering for duplicates and pointing out that each valid application generates an estimated €4,000 in net fiscal benefit to the state.

The administration has three months to process each application. Given the volume, this is going to be quite a hot bureaucratic summer.

3. 🗣️ FIFA realizes that lots of people actually speak Spanish (and Spain loses a few times)

FIFA caused a big ol’ escándalo scandal at the World Cup when they outlawed the use of Spanish at press conferences unless one of the teams there was from a Spanish-speaking country. Which seems odd, considering that the World Cup is being hosted by (checks notes) the U.S., Canada, and…Mexico.

• They might as well have just screamed “Nein!” FIFA officials at World Cup press conferences repeatedly told journalists from Spanish-language media that they couldn’t ask questions of Spanish-speaking players in Spanish.

• Seriously? Wanna use Spanish to ask the Dutch player Frenkie de Jong, who’s played for years at FC Barça, what it’s like to be a team leader? How about posing a question to Vinicius Jr., who plays at Real Madrid? Nope, and nope.

• “It’s for the translation.” That was the excuse the FIFA official rolled out when he told a Mexican media reporter he could only use English, Dutch, or Japanese to talk to De Jong.

The incident that lit the fuse. Rodrigo Ornelas, a journalist from Mexico’s TV Azteca, tried to ask Morocco player Achraf Hakimi — who was born and grew up in Madrid — a question in Spanish before the Brazil-Morocco match in New Jersey.

• A FIFA official cut him off. Hakimi offered to just answer in Spanish anyway. The official said no. Video of the exchange went viral across Spain and Latin America (see above).

FIFA quietly reversed course shortly after — with no official statement, because humility — adding Spanish translation to all U.S. matches and instructing officials to allow questions in Spanish going forward.

• Context that perhaps should have been obvious from the start. Again, Mexico is a host nation, and 57 million people speak Spanish in the U.S., making it the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking country. Behind only Mexico.

But what about the Canadians? No word yet on whether reporters will be allowed to end their questions with “Eh?” in the country that gave us Neil Young and Justin Bieber (moving on…).

• In other sad Spanish sports news. The Georgian-Spanish mixed martial arts superstar Ilia Topuria got his ass kicked lost for the first time, quitting after the fourth round with two broken orbital bones at the 🍊 Menace’s cage match 80th birthday party in the White House construction site.

• And Spain’s national soccer fútbol team got its ass kicked tied its first World Cup game 0-0 against Cabo Verde, a country making its first appearance at the competition and that many of you thought was in Latin America. Whoops!

4. 🫠 Madrid classrooms are turning into saunas, and we’re not sure who’s in charge

Sweat n’ wild. Madrid is once again facing a very apocalypse 2026 problem: classrooms that are just too damn hot for learning (or even screwing around). With temperatures climbing well above 30°C, and in some cases hitting 35-37°C, students and teachers are dying struggling to get through the day.

• En plein air. Lessons are being moved to hallways, gardens, or anywhere with a hint of shade. Others are improvising survival tactics: water sprays, fans, even literal “manguerazos” (using a hose to get wet like it’s 1920) during breaks.

Sorry, kids, not our problem. Here’s the core problem: no one fully agrees on who is responsible. The center-right regional government (led by PP’s Isabel Díaz Ayuso) handles major infrastructure, while the City Council (PP’s José Luis Martínez-Almeida) is responsible for smaller interventions. And the center-left federal government provides funding. The result? A lot of finger-pointing and very little urgency.

• Dude, we're trying. Madrid’s regional government insisted it's invested millions in A/C (€17.8m this year, €80m since 2019) and pointed to the need for more federal money.

• Ha ha. At the Madrid assembly, Ayuso’s culture advisor even mocked argued that heat could be “a source of inspiration”, which we're sure is what sweating students and teachers were feeling: Inspiration to kick someone in the teeth.

• Who's laughing now? The leftist opposition party Más Madrid blamed the politicians they want to replace and suggested holding parliamentary sessions without air conditioning, just to see how politicians like it (we're gonna guess that prolly won’t happen but not a bad initiative, to be honest).

No one’s buying it. Unions and parents' associations have reported the situation to labor inspectors, saying the high temperatures are not only annoying but unsafe.

• There have already been cases of dizziness, headaches, and even fainting. One study found that temperatures above 27°C directly reduce attention, memory, and learning capacity. Note to self: Maybe our schools were designed for a climate that no longer exists?

• Repeat after us: It's almost vacation. Teachers are improvising, and some classes are being held in corridors or outdoors. In extreme cases, schools are starting to feel less like places of learning and more like The Hunger Games.

Into the frying pan. On top of all this, Spain is heading into what could be the first major heatwave of the summer, with temperatures expected to jump 5 to 10 degrees above normal — and potentially exceed 40°C in some areas.

• Brace yourselves, it’s about to get hawt.

5. 🤩 Javier Bardem left his print, and Hollywood just got a little more Spanish

First time for everything. We may suck at sports this week, but when it comes to the soft power of Spanish film talent, we’re feeling damn proud. Legendary actor Javier Bardem has officially joined cinema immortality, leaving his handprints and footprints at the iconic TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard — becoming the first Spanish actor ever to do so.

• Among friends. He joins legends like Marilyn Monroe, Jack Nicholson, and a who’s who of film history. Like Vin Diesel.

Why him? Honestly, why not him? Bardem is one of the few Spanish performers who has managed to crack Hollywood without losing his identity (speaking English helps). Not only that, but damn, have you seen him perform (and his fabulous nose)?

• Hollywood longevity. From Jamón, jamón and Mar adentro to No Country for Old Men (which earned him an Oscar) and global blockbusters like James Bond’s Skyfall, Bardem has spent three decades doing what Denis Villeneuve described perfectly as transforming himself into whoever the story needs.

True to himself. Bardem played it exactly how you’d expect. He cracked jokes, he kissed the cement, he barked, and he thanked his late mother, Pilar Bardem, for grounding him in the idea that success (and failure) are both illusions.

• Aww… He also thanked his “wonderful” wife Penelope Cruz and his children.

Friends in high places. Around him were heavyweights like Villeneuve and Michael Mann, praising his talent and his integrity — something that matters more than ever right now.

• Keeping the Hollywood left alive. While Tinseltown has gotten quieter under the current U.S. administration, Bardem has been loud and clear on issues like Gaza and openly critical of the 🍊 Menace and U.S. immigration policies — even referencing ICE during the ceremony.

Can’t stop, won’t stop. Bardem is not slowing down. He’s currently starring in a new Apple TV+ adaptation of Cape Fear, stepping into a role once played by Robert De Niro (if you haven’t seen it, he’s amazing), and in the upcoming Dune: Part Three.

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@thebubblecomWE KNOW NOTHING. #laroja #fifa #mundial #spain #españa

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Hallelujah!

🇻🇦The Pope gave a speech and somehow every politician agreed with him

Holy week. Fifteen years after the last papal visit, Pope Leo XIV landed in Spain on Saturday morning with a full-blown, high-octane tour that feels like a religious roadshow that could compete with Bad Bunny.

• Party! From a massive open-air mass in Plaza de Cibeles (1.5m attendees!) to the hair-raising, waterworks-inducing blessing of the iconic Sagrada Familia last night, and now heading to Canary Islands migrant centers, the pope’s been busy with spectacle, symbolism, and politics.

• Thank god for a break. For Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the pope’s visit couldn’t have come at a better time. With legal troubles and corruption cases swirling around him and pals like former PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the papal tour frenzy shifted the spotlight (if for only a minute).

Guess who. It was on Monday that Madrid witnessed something close to a miracle: the pope delivered a historic speech in Parliament, and every major political party walked away claiming, somehow, that he was basically on their side.

• You guys agree? In a chamber better known for screaming at each other than agreement on anything, MPs from across the spectrum applauded for over seven minutes.

• Even more surreal? Center-left PSOE, center-right PP and far-right Vox all insisted the Pope’s message aligned with their own political platforms. For real?

Listen up, sinners. The pope’s 30-minute speech (see above) itself was anything but neutral. Leo XIV touched on some of the most divisive issues in Spanish politics: immigration, abortion, euthanasia, education, war, and the toxic tone of public debate. If he didn’t opine on onions in tortilla de patata, it was probably due to a lack of time.

• On immigration, he was crystal clear. This is not a numbers game but a moral issue, calling for dignity, legal pathways, and integration.

• But… on the other hand, he doubled down on the Church’s traditional stance that life must be protected “from conception to natural death,” clashing with Spain’s loose laws on abortion and euthanasia.

• He also defended parents’ rights in education (a nod to religious schooling), warned about the dangers of AI, and called out the increasingly aggressive tone of political discourse. Disagreement, he said, should not mean humiliation. (We all can agree with that, right?)

Choose your own adventure. The reaction from politicians was a masterclass in selective listening. As it turns out, everyone agreed on one thing: no one felt criticized! On the contrary, political leaders, right and (mostly) left, seemed to think that His Holiness agreed with them and only them (which is obviously absurd).

Hits for everyone. The right was most directly confronted on immigration, peace, and international law, areas where the pope’s stance clashes clearly with both the PP and Vox. The left didn’t get off easy either, facing a head-on challenge on abortion, euthanasia, and education. Even nationalist parties caught a subtle jab, with Leo XIV emphasizing unity over division.

• The PP. Boss Alberto Núñez Feijóo said he felt like the pope spoke directly to him, insisting the speech fit perfectly with the PP’s humanist roots.

• Vox. Party leader Santiago Abascal also saw no contradiction with his party’s stance on immigration (despite the pope explicitly condemning the kind of “national priority” logic that Vox promotes).

• PSOE and the left, led by PM Sánchez, highlighted the parts about international law, migration, and human dignity they agreed with, brushing past the pope’s clear opposition to some of their flagship social policies.

🙉 Everyone agreed. Because of course. The whole thing was political projection at its finest: take what you like, ignore the rest, and declare yourself the pope's #BFF. So who actually took the biggest hit? The answer is: pretty much everyone.

More news below. 👇👇

🔔 But first… The Bubble Podcast is back for season 2!

In the first episode of this season, we discuss PM Zapatero’s corruption accusations, the very complicated relationship between the US and Spanish governments, and the World Cup. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube!

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 👩🏻‍⚖️ Sánchez’s ‘beloved brother’ case is done except for the crying ruling

The best part of any court case? The closing statements, where each side blasts the other’s case and indulges in some theatrical badassery. That’s what we got this week as hearings wrapped in the trial of PM Sánchez’s hermanísimo David and the bullshit patronage job he was — or wasn’t — given in Badajoz (we wrote about this last week).

• The accusers went first. Lawyers for the various right-wing parties and lobbies called the creation of a “made-to-order” post for David a “farce”, said his “complete sham” of an interview for the position “never took place,” and that his “only merit” for holding the job was being “Pedro Sánchez’s brother.”

• The defendants were cutting. Miguel Ángel Gallardo, the former leader of the PSOE in Extremadura who faced trial for the supposedly illicit hiring of David, said his only crime was “not having the same ideas as the accusers” and that he’d already been “condemned socially”. Defense lawyers called the case “a house of cards,” and the plaintiff claims “a fictional script...devoid of the slightest sense.”

Now the screaming is done, and the case goes to the tribunal. Here are 5 issues to watch as you await the ruling:

1. Police report vs. people. The UCO analyzed thousands of emails and concluded the job was “predetermined” for David — pointing to Gallardo as the engine. But many of the 53 witnesses — and the state prosecutor — said otherwise. Who wins: one police report or half a courthouse of witnesses — mostly with ties to the PSOE?

2. David vs. David. His instruction-phase testimony was a slow-motion car crash: he couldn’t locate his own office, left 10-second silences, and rambled about his job title. His lawyers nearly silenced him at trial. The old videos were played in court anyway. Can his past self convict today’s David?

3. That “Hermanísimo” email. An email sent the day the job was posted — subject line: “Hermanísimo” — was the prosecution’s marquee exhibit. In court, its author walked it back to “a rumor I can’t source.” The tribunal’s president all but dismissed it. So, evidence or just a meme?

4. The ghost of Pedro. Five emails allegedly sent to Pedro’s personal account (but actually, it seems, to the account of his father, who has the same name) were unveiled at the last minute — with one plaintiff claiming they were deliberately left uninvestigated by the UCO after it was told to “stand down” by… the government 🤔? There are no charges against Pedro himself, but the accusation that political pressure shaped the investigation hangs over the whole thing.

5. Prosecution vs. prosecution. The state prosecutor asked for the acquittal of all 11 defendants. The right-wing groups want 6 years for David. Defense attorneys formally asked the court to make the accusers pay costs for “procedural bad faith.” Whoever loses won’t be quiet about it.

Tick-tock. The ruling could take until after August — no one is in pretrial detention, so the court has no urgency. Spain will have to wait.

2. 💎 A priest walks into a bar jewelry store

Wasn’t the Pope’s visit stirring? Well, apparently average Spaniards and politicians of all stripes weren’t the only ones to take inspiration from Leo XIV’s tour of Spain. But for some, it didn’t go so well.

• What happened: The Policía Nacional arrested seven people for the holdup of a Madrid gold shop yesterday afternoon. Three of the gang entered the store: two — dressed as a priest and a nun — asked an employee to show them a jewelry display, while the third violently forced her into the back room.

• Police caught them as they fled. During the arrest, the “priest” pulled a gun on two officers and had to be subdued. The costumes, police noted, were “not of very good quality.” The commitment was there. But the craft? Um, less so.

Not a one-off. This was Madrid’s sixth jewelry robbery in a month, all brazen, all in daylight, all apparently unconcerned with cameras or bystanders. A brief tour:

• May 15: A gold shop in Torrejón de Ardoz was robbed by five people who tricked an employee into opening the door. Estimated haul: €500,000.

• May 18: Four masked robbers hit a Puente de Vallecas shopping center with hammers, stuffing loot into raffia bags.

• May 22: A man and woman entered a jewelry store on Calle Toledo with a gun — which they left behind and turned out to be fake — pistol-whipped the owner in the head, and fled with the loot. At least she’s okay.

• June 2: Three hooded figures in military gear hit the José Luis chain at La Vaguada — Madrid’s first shopping center — making off mainly with Casio and Guess watches. Not exactly the crown jewels.

• June 8: Four more hit José Luis again in Torrelodones, this time with what witnesses described as a submachine gun.

The suspects. All seven arrested yesterday are Peruvian nationals. Two were picked up nearby as lookouts; two more were caught in a getaway car on the M-30, which crashed into a police vehicle. All face charges of robbery with violence and intimidation. Police are investigating whether they’re linked to the other recent robberies.

• New duds. As far as we know, this is the first time they dressed as men (and women) of the cloth. The Pope truly has inspired us all.

3.🚰 Madrid’s devastating water crisis: the city’s source of pride suddenly tastes ‘funny’

Madrid, what a town! It has a lot of things going for it, but one of its quiet superpowers has always (always!) been its tap water. Ask any local, and they’ll tell you that it’s the best drinking water in the world, hands down. No comparison.

• Seriously, you should never criticize Madrid tap water unless you want to make madrileños very angry. So when water suddenly started smelling and tasting weird this week, people did more than notice. They worried absolutely freaked out.

It started Sunday morning. All over the city (and beyond), people took their first sip of the day and immediately knew something was afoot. Social media exploded. Some said it tasted like chlorine, others like plastic, and others compared it to hospital water or even to drinking from a garden hose.

• Considering this is a city where 96% of people proudly drink straight from the tap, this was borderline identity crisis territory.

So what’s going on? According to Canal de Isabel II (the public company that manages Madrid’s water), the culprit was relatively boring mundane: a filtration adjustment gone wrong.

• Calm down, everyone. It was neither deadly nor dangerous (we hope). It was just that a maneuver involving activated carbon filters at the Santillana treatment plant altered the taste and smell of the water.

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid. While this may have sounded like the beginning of one of those weird plans concocted by comic book villains to murder thousands, experts say the reason people noticed so quickly is actually a compliment.

• Madrid’s water is famously “soft” (low mineralization), light, and clean-tasting, thanks in part to the granite terrain of the Sierra. So when something changes, even slightly, it’s immediately obvious.

• Some blame increased chlorine levels, possibly due to higher demand (hello, Pope + Bad Bunny!), which may have amplified the effect.

• Still, authorities insist the water was completely safe to drink. By yesterday, the issue had begun to disappear as the system flushed itself out.

The end of the (non) crisis didn’t stop many madrileños from temporarily switching to bottled water (a move that felt almost sacrilegious). It also didn’t stop political parties such as Más Madrid from demanding an explanation.

• Because water in Madrid is holy, and not because the pope was in town.

4. 🚆 Party! Fiesta! The youths get to travel for almost free

They may never be able to buy a home, or have a career not cut short by AI, or find love in the era of smartphone addiction, but at least the youngs have one thing going for them: They can travel across Spain for damn near free this summer! Hey, at least it’s something 🤷.

• What it is. Now in its fourth year, Verano Joven hands out heavily discounted travel passes to anyone aged 18-30 (Spanish national or legal resident) for trips between July 1 and Sept. 30. The government has set aside €130 million this year — €10 million more than last year.

The discounts. 90% off regular state buses and medium-distance trains. 50% off high-speed trains (Renfe, Iryo, Ouigo), capped at €30 per ticket. 50% off Avant. And 50% off a 10-day Interrail Global Flexible pass — so the party can extend to the rest of Europe too.

• How to get it. Register on the Verano Joven website (not live yet — coming “in the next few days”) with your DNI or NIE. You’ll get a personal code to use on each operator’s own site. Non-transferable, so don’t try to share it with your roommate or, like, mom.

The numbers. The program has racked up 4 million users and 16 million discounted trips across its first three editions, with 2025 setting records: 6.8 million trips, up 30% from 2024.

• Transport minister Óscar Puente called it “one of the public policies that has worked best” (shocking how free money is popular) and noted that young people’s desire to travel is “inversely proportional to the money they usually have in their pockets.” Correct, ministro.

Also, it has the nice effect of distracting them from all the world’s other problems. Come to think of it, maybe you could do the same for those who’ve passed 30? (Just asking for a friend.)

5.💊 We're not just a top holiday destination — we're also Europe’s main drug gateway!

Spain has a new nickname that's far less glamorous than “Europe’s Florida”. We’re now the main entry point for drugs into the European Union, at least according to the European Commission and the EU’s drugs agency's latest annual report.

• The numbers are high (pun intended). Spain led the EU in annual seizures of hashish (206 tons) and cocaine (124 tons) — by a wide margin. To put that into perspective: Spain alone accounts for around 37% of all cocaine seized in the entire EU. ☃️

• It doesn’t stop there. The country is also becoming increasingly relevant in synthetic drugs like MDMA, with a growing number of labs being dismantled. Turns out we’re not just a transit country anymore; parts of the supply chain are starting to settle here.

So why Spain? Not surprisingly, geography is responsible for that: Spain sits at the crossroads that join Europe with Latin America (cocaine routes) and North Africa (cannabis from Morocco).

• Drugs come in by sea, often through major ports or the Canary Islands, and then move across the continent. This country is essentially the front door, and the rest of Europe is, well, the house.

Dazed and confused. What’s changing (and worrying Brussels) is how sophisticated the trafficking has become (smugglers are using drones, high-speed narcolanchas in the Strait of Gibraltar, and smaller, fragmented shipments designed to evade detection).

• Law enforcement is catching a lot, but the report makes it clear: traffickers are adapting fast, and the game is getting harder.

We’re #1! Countries like Belgium and France are also major hubs (especially ports like Antwerp), but Spain combines entry point, transit route, and production zone — particularly when it comes to cannabis cultivation.

• Meanwhile, the Netherlands still dominates synthetic drug production, but Spain is increasingly part of that ecosystem too. So proud…

🔔 Don’t forget to follow us on TikTok!

@thebubblecomA corruption probe has triggered a political earthquake in Spain: Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is officially under investigation in a corruption probe linked to the controversial €53 million government bailout granted to the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic. What happens now? Read all about it in this week’s newsletter, in your inbox this Thursday morning. #zapatero #psoe #venezuela #politica

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Friends in high places

👨🏻‍⚖️ Sánchez’s bro gets his day in court: scam job or “flawless” hiring?

Oh, brother. Spain’s political drama just moved from one courtroom to another, and this time, it’s hitting even closer to home for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. His brother, David Sánchez, is officially standing trial in a case that’s been building for over a year.

• The case centers on his 2017 hiring for a senior cultural role at the Diputación de Badajoz, a job that prosecutors believe may have been tailor-made for him.

• He faced charges of influence peddling and prevarication. Basically, the prosecution said he got a B.S. patronage job given because of his brother, didn't work, and lived in Portugal to avoid taxes. One lesser charge, of accepting an illegal appointment, has been dropped because too much time has passed to prosecute it.

• Co-conspirators? Several officials from Extremadura, including former regional PSOE leader Miguel Ángel Gallardo, are accused of playing roles in creating and fast-tracking the position.

• It's a family affair. PM Sánchez’s wife is also under legal scrutiny in a separate case, meaning he is now governing while both his wife and his brother are entangled in court proceedings. Add the scandals surrounding the PSOE party, and 😱.

Not on Infojobs. According to investigators, the role David ended up getting didn’t even exist before he came into the picture. Internal emails show it appearing suddenly in late 2016, with unusual urgency 😒.

• We have rules here. In Spain, public sector jobs are legally required to follow strict principles of merit, equality, and transparency. That means positions must be openly advertised, candidates evaluated fairly, and the selection process based on objective criteria. Personal connections? That’s a no-no.

• But maybe not this time? Spain’s Civil Guard (UCO) says there are “strong indications” the position was effectively pre-assigned to David. One telling detail: before interviews even took place, insiders were already reportedly referring to the role as being for “el hermanísimo”; literally, “the beloved brother.” (Note: Pedro Sánchez wasn’t PM at the time but was already the head of Spain’s socialist party.)

Witness for the prosecution. One key witness, Cristina de Frutos, who was a seemingly highly qualified candidate for the job, told the court she was warned days before her interview that the job was already “his.”

• Move on. Nothing to see here. She says her own interview lasted minutes, with no real questions asked. Her conclusion was that there was no real competition. The defense, in turn, pushes back hard, questioning why she didn’t formally report it at the time and framing it as hindsight rather than proof.

• Fourteen other witnesses — mostly officials from the institution — defended the hiring process, insisting both hires were carried out properly and with “no flaws whatsoever.” (But really? What has “no flaws whatsoever”?)

But wait, there’s more. Two Civil Guard officials have testified that they were told to “stand down” and not actively investigate politically sensitive issues — like this one.

• Yikes. One even claims there was pressure to produce a report concluding “there was nothing there.” Which is bad, because it suggests potential interference at the highest levels. Other agents, however, have denied receiving pressure.

When will it end? It won't.

More news below. 👇👇

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1.🚫 Feijóo is trying to remove Sánchez now, but it's not looking likely

Cue the Jaws theme. Spain’s opposition is quietly circling the current coalition government. In the middle of mounting pressure on Pedro Sánchez, center-right PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo is exploring whether he can pull off a political Hail Mary: a motion of no confidence that would kick Sánchez out and trigger immediate elections.

• The twist. He needs 176 votes, and his party currently has 137. Add the votes from far-right Vox (33), and he has a total of 170. He’s short six! This means he can’t do it alone, so he’s reaching out to nemeses unlikely partners: the Basque nationalist PNV and the Catalan separatists of Junts. Both of them are (begrudgingly) supporters of the Sánchez government.

• Refresher. A motion of no confidence is one of the few ways to remove a PM in Spain. Sánchez himself used it in 2018 to oust Mariano Rajoy.

It’s all about the timing. Sánchez’s own parliamentary allies are starting to wobble. National elections are scheduled for 2027, but frustration is building. Between political fatigue and a string of corruption scandals that have hit Sánchez's inner circle, several junior partners are openly saying this government is done.

• Feijóo is probing whether those parties would go one step further and actually help bring it down.

• If Feijóo gets the numbers, he says he’d launch what he calls an “instrumental” motion of no confidence (basically, a temporary government whose only job would be to call elections).

• He’s even trying to make it more palatable by promising Vox wouldn’t be part of that interim government.

Not feeling it. The PNV has basically said it wants elections, but it’s not touching a no-confidence vote. Junts? Not surprisingly, it’s been more theatrical.

• The party behind the disastrous (and illegal) independence referendum in Catalonia in 2017, whose leader, Carles Puigdemont, is currently living in self-imposed exile in a McMansion near Brussels, told Feijóo that if he wants to talk, he should travel north to negotiate directly with the big boss in his Belgian abode.

• Feijóo’s response was not enthusiastic: “Let’s talk about serious things.”

• Vox, in the meantime, is furious: They don’t like the idea of Feijóo even considering negotiating with Puigdemont (or cutting them out).

The government responds. First reaction: this is desperation. The government’s spokesperson accused Feijóo of “cynicism” for suddenly courting parties he’s spent years attacking.

• Sánchez himself took a more ironic angle, pointing out that Feijóo now seems to recognize Junts as a legitimate political actor after years of refusing to do so.

Our take. Unless there’s a miracle, it’s unlikely that Feijóo’s plan will move forward. The math isn’t there, and both Junts and the PNV would end up paying a high political cost for siding with the PP and Vox.

• However, don’t rule things out entirely. This is Spain, after all.

2.🐰 Bad Bunny’s Casita isn’t for you (unless you’re rich + hot)

Down the rabbit hole. Bad Bunny is in Madrid to supposedly give a masterclass in stadium shows. Instead, he may have accidentally started a culture war over a tiny pastel-colored house.

• Mi casa es su casa? During his concerts, there’s a second stage called La Casita (“the little house”), a full-blown replica of a traditional Puerto Rican home, right in the middle of the crowd.

• The symbolism. La Casita was born in the short film that accompanied his album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, as a symbol of Puerto Rican identity, memory, resistance, and anti-gentrification vibes.

• Fans loved it so much that his team turned it into a physical centerpiece of the tour. A house that represents “the people.” Except the people don’t seem to be getting in.

Cue the controversy. During the show, Bad Bunny moves around la casita while being surrounded by a very (very!) select group of people. La Casita, as it turns out, has become the most exclusive VIP zone in Madrid.

• We’re talking Ester Expósito, Ana de Armas, Chiara Ferragni, Marta Ortega, Los Javis, plus footballers and influencers. Add to that a handful of “lucky” fans picked from the crowd, and you have the most coveted square meters in Spain right now.

• And those “lucky” fans? Not exactly random. According to some media outlets and pretty much everyone on TikTok, there’s a whole unofficial casting process before the show. Scouts from Bad Bunny’s team roam the stadium looking for young hot girls dressed in a very specific “Caribbean-core” aesthetic (flowers, minis, boots, the whole thing).

• How-to: Right now, there are literal tutorials online explaining how to dress so you (hopefully) get picked.

Why the hate? Because this is the same Bad Bunny who built his brand on breaking norms, defending diversity, and calling out inequality. So watching La Casita turn into what some fans are calling a “showcase of curated bodies and celebrities” has rubbed people the wrong way.

• No Yes, fat chicks. The criticism ranges from “we want fat women” and “this feels classist” to “this completely contradicts his message.” Others, however, are rolling their eyes at the backlash: he’s a reggaeton superstar, not Sumar MP Yolanda Díaz. What exactly were you expecting?

• The controversy got so massive that by Tuesday evening, El País reported that “changes came” to the little house, and people of all ages, sexes, and looks were seen dancing to Benito’s tunes. (Though some VIPs were still seen in the crowd, such as Noah Schnapp, aka Will from Stranger Things, and Victoria Federica, aka King Felipe’s niece.)

Getting surreal. La Casita also spilled into the housing crisis debate after a fake listing popped up on Idealista “selling” the house for €1m, complete with sarcastic copy about exclusivity.

3. 👮 The shove heard ‘round the world country

A push from behind by a policía nacional that left a retired teacher face-planted on the ground turned a teachers’ strike in Valencia into national news this week, with the police union and the national government’s regional rep slapping each other on social media and everyone else asking, “What the f*ck is going on?”

• What happened: Video on Sunday showed a national policeman taking an unneeded detour to knock down a 68-year-old teacher before continuing on his crowd-controlling way, provoking howls across the political spectrum.

The context. Valencia’s public school teachers have been on indefinite strike since May 11, now entering week four, demanding better pay, lower class ratios, and improved school infrastructure.

• The regional government (PP) offered €200/month more. Two smaller unions (CSIF and ANPE) took the deal. The three bigger ones — STEPV, CCOO, and UGT — refused, demanding that the salary question be fully reopened. The Generalitat says that the point is closed. Both sides have been giving each other the stink eye ever since.

The Twitter war. After the push, government delegate Pilar Bernabé (PSOE) called it “unacceptable” and promised to investigate and “assign responsibilities.”

• No, you! The police union fired back on X that “You won’t investigate anything” and added that teachers who block streets “expose themselves to being removed from them” (because blocking streets isn’t, like, a right).

• Bad boy. The police force has opened a disciplinary hearing against the cop in question.

The tent city. About 150 teachers have set up a small encampment in Valencia’s historic Plaza de la Virgen. The PP-run city government says it’s the PSOE-run national delegation’s job to clear it. The national delegation says it’s the city’s problem.

• The religious event Corpus Christi, which fills that very square, starts this week. Nobody seems eager to move.

What’s next — or isn’t. Strike participation has reportedly collapsed from 50-88% in week one to just 5.29% now (according to the PP gov, so ojo on the numbers), as unpaid days pile up; a teachers rep wrote to us that strikers were being docked €150/day.

• Only 13 school days remain before the summer break. The conflict will almost certainly freeze until September — when, with perfect irony, everyone (strikers included) could return to the status quo, refreshed from two months off and ready to fight.

At least one union has already announced renewed nationwide action in the fall. But hey, for now we’ve got the summer. 🕺

4. 🪂 A princess jumped out of a plane

Spain has been having a bit of a love affair with Princess Leonor, probably because watching her grow from teen to adult is a welcome break from the string of political scandals and weird stories about corpses that have dominated the news. We watched, rapt, as she turned 18! And went shopping in Chile! And hit the beach in a bikini (naughty paparazzi)!

• Now guess what she’s done. She’s jumped out of a plane…more than once!

What’s going on: Last month, Leonor completed the Basic Parachuting Course at the Military Parachuting School Méndez Parada in Alcantarilla, Murcia — jumping multiple times alongside roughly 50 classmates, including at least one nighttime jump, one of the most demanding parts of the training.

• Leonor earned the diploma and badge of Cazador Paracaidista — the “Rokiski,” a metal insignia of wings surrounding a parachute that only goes to soldiers who complete the basic parachuting course. Spain found out when eagle-eyed observers spotted the badge on her uniform at the Armed Forces Day parade in Vigo on May 30.

A royal first. Neither her father, Felipe VI, nor her grandfather, Juan Carlos I, completed parachuting training during their military careers. Leonor is the first member of the royal family to earn the distinction. Felipe, speaking at the parade, said she’d performed “with effort and brilliance.” Peak king dad.

Three years in. The parachuting course capped Leonor’s third and final year of military training — at the Air and Space Academy in San Javier, where she also piloted a Pilatus PC-21 combat trainer.

• Before that: the Army academy in Zaragoza, and six months at sea aboard the Juan Sebastián de Elcano (hence the Chile shopping and bikini spottings).

• This week, she collects her farewell honors from Murcia: a Gold Medal from the region, another from the regional parliament, and the title of Honorary Daughter of San Javier. (Why do royals get “honors” from everywhere they live? We never get any.) She also asked for a photo with Wells, an ex-rapper of whom she's a big fan.

What’s next? Her formal military training wraps up this summer. After three years of jumping out of planes, sailing tall ships, and flying combat trainers, she returns to royal duties full-time — with, it must be said, a considerably more extensive CV than we had at 21.

5. 🇨🇺 ¡We’ll always have Adiós, Cuba!

The U.S. is kicking Spain out of Cuba again. The last time — after the Spanish-American War of 1898 — ended Spain’s last pretensions of empire. This time isn’t so bad, though it does suck if you’re looking for a cheap package vacation.

• What happened: Meliá and Iberostar, two big Spanish hotel chains, announced that they were halting operations on the island after the U.S. administration of a certain Orange Menace threatened to sanction them if they didn’t, um, piss right off.

The island that gave refuge to thousands of vintage American cars and made photographer Alberto Korda famous has long had an uneasy relationship with ‘merica (exploding CIA cigars and all, ya know?).

• But the 🍊 fellah kicked it up a notch on May 1, signing an executive order that vastly expanded sanctions on companies doing business with Cuba’s military dictatorship.

The GAESA problem. The companies in question were linked to GAESA — Cuba’s military conglomerate, which controls roughly 180 hotels through joint ventures with mostly Spanish and Canadian operators (GAESA owns the hotels; the hospitality chains operate them).

• Trump’s executive order targets any company doing business with GAESA, whose director is a military officer named Ana Guillermina Lastres. That made the Spanish chains’ Cuban partnerships legally toxic in a hurry.

The exits. Iberostar went first, dropping 12 of its 18 Cuban hotels on Monday. Meliá followed on Wednesday, pulling out of 15 of its roughly 34 properties — all GAESA-linked — through its Portuguese subsidiary. (The deadline for cutting ties before facing sanctions was June 5.)

• Both are keeping hotels tied to Cuba’s Tourism Ministry rather than the military. Canada’s Blue Diamond had already departed 62 properties, though it blamed flight cancellations rather than Trump.

Not that the hotels cared. Most of Meliá’s abandoned hotels were already closed anyway — Cuba’s ongoing energy crisis had made operating them nearly impossible, with average occupancy of 34% and net profits down 68% in the first quarter. Maybe that’s why Meliá’s stock rose 0.8% right after the news.

• Because tourism has collapsed, Cuba received just 328,000 visitors in the first four months of 2026, down 55.8% year-on-year. 2025 was already the worst year since 2002. At least 11 airlines have cut or suspended routes; Iberia halted Madrid-Havana until October.

The end is nigh. Before long, there may not be much left to sanction.🥺

🔔 Don’t forget to follow us on TikTok!

@thebubblecomA corruption probe has triggered a political earthquake in Spain: Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is officially under investigation in a corruption probe linked to the controversial €53 million government bailout granted to the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic. What happens now? Read all about it in this week’s newsletter, in your inbox this Thursday morning. #zapatero #psoe #venezuela #politica

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Could it get worse?

👨🏻‍⚖️ Criminal investigation into ex-PM Zapatero blows up — and sets the government wobbling

Boom! It's Zapatero Investigation 2: Electric Boogaloo. That corruption investigation into the role that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (aka ZP), the former prime minister and BFF of current PM Pedro Sánchez, played in the dodgy bailout of a Venezuela-focused airline that we featured last week has gone 💥, and we are here to tell the tale.

• A quick recap. Last week, we explained how Zapatero (possibly one of the most symbolically important figures in Spain’s socialist party) is now officially under criminal investigation in a sprawling corruption and money laundering probe linked to the controversial €53m government rescue of airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic.

Now it gets interesting. The case file — known as the sumario — became public this week, releasing gobs of salacious details. And then other investigations piled on. Let us count the ways.

• Jewelry 💎. A search of ZP's office turned up a safe containing two hard drives (yawn…but maybe useful!) and a pile of jewelry that his assistants claimed came from his wife's family inheritance and gifts received while traveling. Friends of ZP said the value of the bling was €30,000-50,000, while a jeweler interviewed by El Español said they could go as high as €3.9m. 🤔

• Money 💰. A police search of the house of Julio Martínez Martínez, a close personal friend and running buddy of ZP who has, um, paid ZP a lot in recent years, turned up €286,000 in cash stuffed in a golf bag, a radiator, and various other amusing hiding spots. 🤔 Again.

Cool nicknames and mafia shoutouts. Text messages from telephones seized as evidence from a lawyer implicated in the corruption case referred to Zapatero as ‘Zorro’, ‘Z’, and ‘ZZZZ’ (we wish we had such cool nicknames). And according to the legal filings, onetime Plus Ultra owner Rodolfo Reyes was so enamored of Zapatero’s ability to influence both the Spanish and Venezuelan governments that he said “Zapatero is in charge here” months before the bailout.

• Money for the kids, too? The UDEF (Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit) of the National Police said that ZP's daughters, Alba and Laura Rodríguez, accepted payments for their dad, via their marketing agency Whatthefav (do explain the name!), to cover his alleged influence peddling.

Terrible timing. The expansion of the investigation lands at the worst possible moment for PM Sánchez’s government, which is already battered by years of scandals, judicial drama, and political exhaustion.

• They're shooting us! One Socialist figure summed it up for El País — first "they” shot the government in the legs, then the arms, and now they’ve gone “for the heart,” meaning Zapatero himself.

• Going down with the ship (or taking it down with him). Sánchez, however, is still defending Zapatero and insists he will remain in power until 2027. As you can imagine, the opposition believes the scandal is the coup de grâce for Sánchez.

• The call is coming from inside the house. Even former PSOE PM Felipe González says Spain should hold a general election “this year” to avoid further damaging the party. (Though González gave a backhand backing to Zapatero's innocence claims: he said he didn't think ZP had the "capacity” to put together a complicated money laundering ring. Ouch! But thanks.)

Shocked! Zapatero is allegedly “surprised” by the accusations. And — shocker! — he denies everything and says he can't be held responsible for the deeds of his longtime friend Martínez, now one of the key figures in the case.

• ZP will speak. His legal team requested a postponement to review the case file. He's now expected to testify June 17 and 18.

How did we get here? The investigation itself actually began far away from domestic politics. In 2024, authorities in Switzerland and France alerted Spanish prosecutors about a sophisticated money laundering network, tied to Spain, that was allegedly used to move skimmed Venezuelan money through shell companies and offshore accounts connecting Latin America, Europe, and tax havens.

• Venezuelan money trail! Some of those operations were allegedly linked to businessmen suspected of laundering money tied to Nicolás Maduro’s government. While investigating that network, authorities came across possible connections between the Plus Ultra bailout, ZP buddy Martínez, and others linked to Zapatero.

And now we wait. Over the next few weeks, this country will be treated to what promises to be a deadly mix of leaks, court appearances, political hysteria, and television shouting matches.

• Somewhere in the middle of all this, Sánchez will claim that things are perfectly normal while his administration appears to be held together with duct tape. 🥳

More news below. 👇👇

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. ⚽ Spain names its World Cup team and the star is… the King? (Oh, and controversy too!)

You can’t watch the announcement video of the Spanish World Cup team (above) and not get a tiny bit emotional. Spain may have no greater skill than its tear-jerking nostalgia videos about fraternity and working together (seriously, watch a few ads for the El Gordo lottery).

• But that’s not the point. What is? That King Felipe VI (F6) starred in the announcement of the 26 members of this year’s World Cup team, and there is controversy. Because that’s what soccer football’s about!

And the winner is… After a bait-and-switch — coach Luis de la Fuente appears, apologizes, and says he won’t be announcing the team after all — F6 took over, walking onto the pitch at Las Rozas to explain that the squad belongs to everyone — “to those who wake before the sun, who work the sea, who deliver the goods” — before closing with: “This is the list of an entire country. This is the list of Spain.”

• Normies. Then ordinary Spaniards — bakers, fishermen, librarians — read the names out one by one. Previous announcement videos featured Antonio Banderas, Ricky Rubio, and Carolina Marín. F6 has raised the bar kingly.

• Fun fact! The filming took over two hours in Madrid’s sweltering heat — and happened to fall on May 22, the King and Queen’s 22nd wedding anniversary. Queen Letizia advised behind the scenes. Romantic!

The squad:

• 🧤 Keepers: Unai Simón, David Raya, Joan García

• 🛡️ Defense: Cucurella, Grimaldo, Cubarsí, Laporte, Pubill, Eric García, Llorente, Porro

• ⚙️ Midfield: Rodri, Pedri, Gavi, Zubimendi, Fabián, Baena, Merino

• ⚡ Attack: Oyarzabal, Olmo, Nico Williams, Lamine Yamal, Ferran Torres, Borja Iglesias, Yeremy Pino, Víctor Muñoz

The controversy. For the first time in Spanish World Cup history, not a single Real Madrid player made the squad.

• Spanishification 🇪🇸. Enter Enrique Riquelme, who’s challenging Florentino Pérez for the Real Madrid presidency on June 7 and is promising the “Españolización” of the club: “If I become president, there will be a Real Madrid player who’s played the World Cup with Spain.”

Fun fact #2. Spain has 3 Atlético de Madrid players in its squad. Argentina has 7. The Colchoneros: proud to serve… Buenos Aires!

• In other Spanish football news, Alexia Putellas is leaving FC Barcelona after 14 years — two Ballons d’Or, 38 titles, 504 games, 232 goals, and a fourth Champions League clinched just days ago. She titled her farewell video Una historia perfecta. She was not wrong. London reportedly awaits La Reina.

2. 👮 Welcome home! Flotilla protesters beaten on their return to Spain

Cruel irony alert! The group of Spanish pro-Palestine protestors who’d participated in a flotilla bringing symbolic aid to Gaza had already had a tough time before their welcome home:

• They and their flotilla compatriots had been intercepted and detained by Israel, in whose custody they were reportedly abused, tortured, and demeaned — and some say sexually harassed.

• Condemnation. Amnesty International demanded justice, the U.K. Foreign Office condemned the actions, and Canada’s PM Mark Carney spoke to the Israeli president about the ‘appalling treatment’.

Then the Spanish protestors arrived back in Bilbao — and the regional police opened another can of whoopass on them.

• Moments after the six activists deplaned, what was meant to be a kind of hero’s welcome home devolved into a brawl, replete with baton smacks and handcuffed returnees.

What the hell happened? The six activists arrived at Bilbao’s Loiu airport on Saturday to find roughly 40 supporters waiting.

• The gathering was unannounced, but an agreement had reportedly been reached between the Ertzaintza (regional Basque police) and flotilla representatives by midday: there would be an orderly welcome, a traditional aurresku dance, and no blocking of other passengers. Twenty-five officers were deployed. It held — briefly.

The ETA twist. According to airport CCTV footage shown to the Basque Parliament, the spark was struck by a former ETA militant, one Oses Carrasco, who pushed the lead officer at 1:49 p.m., then grabbed and yanked a second. That was the match.

• Also present in the crowd: Itziar Moreno Martínez, another former ETA member, convicted of the attempted murder of a French gendarme.

Within seconds, batons were out, people were on the ground, and four were in handcuffs.

The other version. The activists flatly deny any provocation. Lawyer Sandra Garrido called the incident “absolutely constructed” by the Basque police — and said “we were broken more here than in Israel,” because, unlike the assault at sea, they weren’t mentally prepared for it at home in Spain.

• Amnesty International called it an “excessive use of force,” saying the images showed “no legitimate cause” — especially for baton strikes on people already on the ground.

The fallout. Basque Security Councillor Bingen Zupiria (PNV) took responsibility for the operation on Sunday, saying what happened “should not have happened” — and that those who “provoked” the Ertzaintza response would be investigated.

• A triple investigation is underway by internal affairs, an external police oversight body, and the courts.

• Trolling. The Israeli Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, posted on X, calling the detainees “anarchists” and mocking that they were driving the Spanish police “crazy”.

They weren’t so wrong about that part.

3. 📻 Two radio stars who narrated Spain just ended an era

Streaming killed the radio star. Sad news for those of you who (for some reason) are into AM radio. In the span of days, Àngels Barceló and Carlos Alsina, the two voices that have basically narrated Spain’s mornings for years, announced they’re stepping away from the most high-pressure part of their shows.

• Absolute shock. Barceló is leaving the Cadena SER station entirely after 21 years, while Alsina is “self-relegating” from the political 8 a.m. news grind on Onda Cero station to focus on the more featur-y second half of his show, Más de uno. If you care about news and politics, this is seismic.

Not hard to see why. Barceló and Alsina defined the morning conversation every day. Barceló’s Hoy por Hoy was pulling in around 3 million daily listeners, making it the most-listened-to morning show in Spain, while Alsina had turned Más de uno into a record-breaking competitor with nearly 1.8 million listeners and growing.

• Politically, both have labels — Barceló as center-left, Alsina as more centrist/liberal — but what actually made them stand out was their journalistic credibility.

• Tough interviews and analysis, and a level of professionalism that cut through Spain’s increasingly tribal media landscape. Even their critics listened (Alsina’s interview with PM Sánchez was chef’s kiss).

Why are they leaving? Depends on who’s asking. SER’s official reason was that Barceló wasn’t renewing her contract.

• However, there were reports that pointed to internal clashes within Prisa (the media conglomerate that owns SER) over editorial direction, with pressure to “diversify” voices and possibly shift tone after recent falling audience numbers.

Alsina’s exit was more philosophical. He openly admitted he’s “spent” after decades of political broadcasting and wants to focus on a different kind of radio (less confrontation, more storytelling).

• Conspiracy theory. Within hours, social media and some fringe media outlets were full of theories about a “right-wing conspiracy” to push out critical voices, especially as the electorate “moves to the right”. (There’s no evidence for that).

What now? Barceló’s future is unclear (podcast? Substack?), while Alsina is reinventing his role. Undoubtedly, Spanish radio is entering a new era. The age of the all-powerful morning anchor who sets the national mood at 8 a.m. is fading. In its place? God only knows.

4.🏅 Los Javis won big at Cannes with ‘The Black Ball’

Spanish cinema scores again. Los Javis (aka Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo) won Best Director in the Cannes Film Festival for La bola negra (The Black Ball), sharing the award with Paweł Pawlikowski, and yes, they got one of those long, emotional standing ovations (16 minutes!) that pretty much tells you that you’re cool.

• This is a huge moment for them, especially in a year where expectations were sky-high and most of the Spanish competition walked away empty-handed (sorry, Almodóvar!).

Blackballed. La bola negra is a layered drama inspired by legendary Spanish playwright and poet Federico García Lorca, weaving together three timelines (1932, 1937, and 2017) to explore love, repression, and queer memory in Spain (Lorca was gay and was murdered at the start of the Spanish Civil War, so it fits).

• Built partly from Lorca’s unfinished work, the film revolves around the idea that queer history often survives in fragments and that recovering it is almost an act of resistance.

• The cast is stacked with young Spanish talent (like Guitarricadelafuente and Miguel Bernardeu), and both Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close appear in it.

Political and emotional. The Javis used their Cannes moment to double down on why they think this story matters and say this is about reclaiming Lorca as a real person, not a sanitized cultural icon.

• Big statement. They said “Lorca was murdered for being gay” and their film leans hard into that, connecting past repression with today’s cultural and political tensions. It’s a very Los Javis film: unapologetically queer and definitely emotional.

The film hits Spanish cinemas on Oct. 2, and Netflix has already snapped up U.S. rights in a deal reportedly worth around $5 million. It's going global, fast.

• No love lost. The most surprising part of all this (in a good way)? It comes right after Ambrossi and Calvo, known for giving us iconic TV shows like Paquita Salas, Veneno, and La Mesias (and being the mainstay judges on Drag Race Spain), ended their relationship. Professionally, though, it looks like they’re still very much together.

5. 🤑 No more betting on whether Pedro Sánchez will leave office this year

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs is going after prediction markets — hard. The ministry on Tuesday announced that it had initiated disciplinary proceedings against Kalshi and Polymarket for operating (virtual) casinos without gambling licenses. Which, to be honest, they do. But there’s more.

• Who are these guys? Kalshi and Polymarket are basically online bookies that let you bet on anything — sports results, elections, and when Venezuelan ex-Pres. Nicolás Maduro would be kidnapped by the U.S. military.

But like we said, there’s more. The ministry led by Pablo Bustinduy — you know, the guy Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary called a “crazy communist minister” — decided that an investigation and possible fine and shutdown in Spain wasn’t enough. No, it moved to preemptively block the sites in Spain — and it did just that.

• What does that mean? Not only can you not place bets on the date by which Pedro Sánchez will leave office (see above), you can’t even see the page where Polymarket takes the bets. Because even knowing about this is dangerous.

• Seriously, we tried. We couldn’t get through to the pages unless we used our VPN. And now this all reminds us of China, but minor league. (Editor's note: A day later, the sites were again available; the ministry earlier said it would take 7-10 days to block the sites.)

The reasoning. Spain’s gambling regulator says prediction markets are gambling — you’re betting on uncertain outcomes, and operating that without a license violates the law.

• Beyond the license issue, neither platform has the consumer protections Spain requires: age verification, identity checks, and self-exclusion mechanisms for problem gamblers.

• The ministry tried to notify both companies directly at their foreign addresses. No luck — so it published proceedings in the official state bulletin, the BOE. Very Spanish.

• The timing. Full proceedings will take 3-4 months.

The context. Prediction markets have had a rough year.

• A U.S. Army soldier was charged after making $400,000 on Polymarket betting on the Maduro capture — which he helped plan.

• French authorities investigated thermometer manipulation at Charles de Gaulle airport to game a weather bet.

• A recent study found 70.8% of Polymarket users lose money, while the top 1% takes 84.1% of all winnings. Basically, a casino where the house is people who know more than you do.

Worth a mention: Presidential “wünderkind” (rolls eyes) Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisor in Polymarket (because of course he is), and the U.S. regulator overseeing these platforms has been run, under Papa Trump, by a former crypto industry lawyer.

• Not alone. Brazil blocked both platforms in April. Polymarket told the WSJ it welcomes collaboration with Spain. Kalshi didn’t respond.

🔔 Don’t forget to follow us on TikTok!

@thebubblecomA corruption probe has triggered a political earthquake in Spain: Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is officially under investigation in a corruption probe linked to the controversial €53 million government bailout granted to the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic. What happens now? Read all about it in this week’s newsletter, in your inbox this Thursday morning. #zapatero #psoe #venezuela #politica

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The scandals don't stop

👨🏻‍⚖️ From ex-PM to suspect: Zapatero corruption investigation shakes Spanish politics

Political earthquake. One of Pedro Sánchez's closest allies just achieved a first, and not in a good way.

• Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (PSOE, 2004–2011) has been formally placed under investigation in a corruption case tied to the controversial €53m pandemic-era bailout of Venezuela-focused airline Plus Ultra that, per the judge, may have involved Maduro-regime money, Emirati shell companies, and Zapatero's daughters' marketing agency. Yes, really.

• This is the first time in modern Spanish democracy that an ex-PM is formally under criminal investigation for corruption.

The case in a nutshell. At its core, it’s about whether Zapatero used his political influence to help Plus Ultra secure the €53m bailout, and whether he and people around him financially benefited from it.

• Undercover organization. The judge believes Zapatero may have been part of an elaborate network (think Emirati shell companies, dodgy payments, and behind-the-scenes lobbying) designed to push favorable decisions through the PSOE-led government's channels.

• The Caracas connection. The investigation even appears to involve money from the dictatorial regime of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (with which Zapatero was very cozy), which adds an extra geopolitical layer to an already sordid story.

Not just him. The case pulls in Zapatero's close associate and running buddy, Julio Martínez, who allegedly helped manage the business side of things, as well as companies linked to Zapatero’s goth-kid daughters. (If you've never seen the photo with the Obamas, you've got to take a look.)

• Free money! Their marketing agency, Whathefav, is under scrutiny for receiving big payments from firms connected to the scheme for doing basically nothing. In total, investigators are looking at around €1.95m in suspected commissions, with about a quarter going to Whathefav.

• Zapatero says this is all bullshit nonsense. He released a video saying he has “never” intervened in any public decision related to the bailout and insists everything he’s done has been on the up and up. He’s also framing this as part of a broader campaign against him. (Being the subject of a conspiracy is all the rage these days; just ask the Orange Menace.)

PSOE closes ranks. Sánchez, who relies on Zapatero as a key adviser, and his PSOE have given Zapatero full-throated backing, stressing the presumption of innocence and ye olde right-wing conspiracy.

• But this couldn't come at a worse time. Sánchez is already dealing with corruption allegations involving people very close to him, including his wife, his brother, and two of his right-hand men. This just tosses gasoline on a fire that was already burning.

The right is in attack mode. The center-right PP is demanding explanations (and of course elections) and tying Zapatero directly to Sánchez, arguing this reflects a broader stain of corruption on his government.

• Blow it all up. Far-right Vox has gone further, pushing (again) for a motion of no confidence. The PP said no and called the idea childish.

Well, that's a surprise. Zapatero has been seen as a relatively “clean” former leader compared to Spain’s long list of corruption scandals. The fact that even left-leaning media are treating this as serious (and referring to Sánchez's political movement as "sanchismo", an old PP talking point) tells you everything you need to know about how bad this could get.

• We'll sit the one out. Even the government’s leftist allies in Parliament, like Sumar or ERC, are being cautious and have switched from crying “lawfare” to being “prudent” as the case moves forward.

Next stop. Zapatero is due to testify on June 2 before the National High Court. From there, the case could expand, stall, or explode, depending on what investigators find. One thing it won't do? Go away.

More news below. 👇👇

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🗳️ The PP wins — but does it really? — in Andalucía

Not great results for pretty much everyone. Andalucía voted Sunday, and while the result looks like a clear win for the PP and a clear loss for the PSOE — and both are true — the reality is a lot messier.

• Happy? The PP, led in Andalucía by current regional president (aka governor) Juan Manuel Moreno, won the regional elections comfortably, finishing far ahead of the PSOE.

• Not happy. But the headline isn’t the victory—it’s what they didn’t get: a majority. The PP secured 53 seats, down from 58, falling short of the 55 needed to govern alone.

And the others. The PSOE, led by María Jesús Montero, dropped to 28 seats (from 30), marking its worst result ever in the region. Once the dominant force in Andalucía, where it regularly flirted with 50% of the vote, it now gets less than 23%. This is its fifth straight defeat in the region. Bad, bad, bad.

• Holding steady. Far-right Vox edged up slightly to 15 seats (+1), while leftish coalition Por Andalucía (basically Sumar+Podemos) held steady at 5.

• Lefty surprise. The real surprise came from leftist localists of Adelante Andalucía, which surged from 2 to 8 seats. The new player siphoned off votes and blocked the PP and PSOE from translating their support into seats.

• Newbies on the rise. Adelante Andalucía's rise and Vox's continued strength shows (again) that voters are tired of big mainstream parties (the PSOE especially). Instead, they're moving to more local and identity-driven movements.

No majority? No Yes, problem. Moreno, who has built his brand on moderation and distance from the far right, now needs Vox to govern. Whether that’s through abstention or a formal deal, Vox holds the key. Which stinks if you're Moreno.

• Vox has already made clear it wants policy concessions, including its controversial “national priority” in access to public benefits, and the end of “socialist policies” in agriculture, immigration, and energy.

Up and to the right. This election was the last major regional test before Spain heads toward general elections next year (or earlier), and it reinforces a broader trend. Across recent votes in Aragón, Extremadura, Castilla y León, and now Andalucía, the right has consistently outperformed the left.

• Even here, where the PP stumbled slightly, the right-wing bloc still holds a big majority. Spain ain't shifting overnight, but the direction is hard to ignore.

2. 👮 The son of Mango’s founder is arrested in his father’s death because his story's got holes like Swiss cheese

The whole “accidental” death of Isak Andic is looking less accidental. Jonathan Andic, the heir to the multi-billion-euro Mango fortune, was taken into custody by Catalan police Tuesday — on suspicion of, well, pushing his father off a cliff — questioned, and released on €1 million bail. And with that move, armchair Agatha Christies the world over now feel vindicated.

The case. We’ve covered this before: Isak — Istanbul-born billionaire, worth €4.5bn at his death — fell over 100m from a cliffside Montserrat hiking trail in December 2024, with Jonathan the only witness.

• For the uninitiated: Mango is Spain’s second-largest fashion empire (behind Inditex, aka Zara et al.), with more than 2,000 stores and €3.8bn in annual sales, all built from a single Barcelona shop Isak opened in 1984.

• Second generation less genius. Jonathan ran the business in the mid-2010s before his father had to step back in to steady the ship. Things between them were never the same.

The case was closed within six days of Isak’s death. But then it was reopened in January — and on Tuesday the judge lifted judicial secrecy and issued a 17-page ruling finding “sufficient evidence” of “active and premeditated” involvement.

The evidence. The judge found nine indications of a crime. These are the ones that sting:

• Jonathan told police he’d visited the trail once, about two weeks before the fatal hike. But traffic cameras and Barcelona’s low-emissions plate system placed his car at the site on Dec. 7, 8, and 10 — three times in the week before his father died.

• A mark at the scene looked like a slip—or push. Police ran 10 simulations and concluded it required deliberately rubbing a shoe sole back and forth at least four times. Not a trip.

• The autopsy found no injuries to Isak’s palms. He didn’t try to break his fall. He went “like a toboggan”, feet first.

• Jonathan called his father’s phone first after the fall — then his partner, then 112 — and gave different versions to the dispatcher and to police. When investigators asked for his phone, he handed over two — but neither was the one he’d used that day.

• In March 2025, Jonathan swapped phones, wiped the old one, and told his secretary it had been stolen during a trip to Quito, Ecuador — the same week news broke that the case had been reopened. The Mossos found no evidence of theft.

• WhatsApp messages showed what the judge describes as an “obsession with money” — and writings in which Jonathan allegedly expressed “hatred, resentment, ideas of death” toward his father.

The motive. In mid-2024, Isak informed Jonathan he was planning to change his will to create a charitable foundation (i.e., less for Jonathan and his two siblings). Jonathan’s attitude shifted “notably.” He proposed the hike as a reconciliation. The foundation was never established.

• The family. A spokesperson declared there are “no legitimate pieces of evidence against him.” Jonathan’s lawyer called the allegation “inconsistent — it stigmatizes an innocent man.”

What’s next? Jonathan has to make weekly court appearances, but he hasn’t been formally charged (yet). If he is, he faces a jury trial and 10 to 15 years. Mango continues under CEO Toni Ruiz, who paid shareholders (the fam owns 95%) a record €217.6m dividend last year.

• More secrecy: Jonathan secretly married fashion influencerPaula Nata three months before his father’s death.

3. 💑 Awwww, Spain and Mexico are BFFs again

Claudia and Felipe sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G (figuratively, of course). After years of kinda, sorta not getting along because of some stuff that happened, like, 500 years ago, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum invited Spain’s King Felipe VI over to her house, and he accepted — and not even the Wicked Witch of the West Real Casa de Correos (you know who we mean) could keep them apart, try as she might.

• What really happened. Felipe VI will attend Spain’s third World Cup group game — against Uruguay, June 26, in Guadalajara — after Sheinbaum personally invited him by letter back in February. He’s already told FIFA President Gianni Infantino too, presumably to lock in good seats.

The breakup. A quick recap: in 2019, Mexico’s then-president AMLO formally asked Felipe (aka F6) to apologize for, you know, Hernán Cortés’s conquest of the Aztecs in 1521 — and, not surprisingly, got radio silence in return. And so, on taking office, AMLO’s protege Sheinbaum didn’t invite F6 to her inauguration. The Casa Real was not royally amused.

The thaw. In March, Felipe acknowledged — at a low-key museum visit that was very clearly planned and not low-key — that there “was a lot of abuse” and “ethical controversies” during the conquest.

• It wasn’t an apology. It was the diplomatic equivalent of leaving flowers on the doorstep and running away. Sheinbaum called it a “gesture of rapprochement” and invited F6 to the World Cup the same week.

Enter the villain. Last month, Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso flew to Mexico, praised Hernán Cortés, called Spain’s colonial legacy something to be proud of, and (inevitably) spelled the country’s name “Méjico” — a provocateur to the last.

• Spelling 🐝. Ayuso was confronted at the airport by a local woman who reminded her that it’s México, with an X. The video went viral.

• Angry, not so angry. Sheinbaum pushed back on Ayuso’s provocation— then walked it back, insisting the bilateral relationship was bigger than Ayuso’s agenda.

And now guess who’s coming to Guadalajara? These kids…

4. 💰 Shakira wins €60M battle with the Spanish Tax Man

Judge rules those hips don’t lie. Shakira just scored a major win against Hacienda (aka the Spanish taxman), and if you’ve lived in Spain long enough, you already know this is about more than just one celebrity case.

• Spain’s National Court has ruled after a years-long legal battle that Shakira was not a tax resident in Spain in 2011, and ordered Hacienda to return more than €60m in improperly imposed taxes and fines (plus interest!).

• The whole case hinged on a deceptively simple rule: spend more than 183 days in Spain, and you’re on the hook for taxes on your global income. Hacienda argued she was already effectively living in Spain back then, largely because of her relationship with (former beau and current nemesis) Gerard Piqué and her growing presence in Barcelona after Waka Waka and her global tour.

Objection! The court didn’t buy it. It found that the tax agency could only prove she spent 163 days in the country, and that neither her personal life nor her touring schedule justified treating Spain as her fiscal base that year.

• Some context. After she met FC Barcelona star Piqué during the World Cup, she started spending more time in Barcelona. Hacienda later argued that by 2011, she had already shifted her life (and therefore her tax obligations) to Spain.

• That interpretation triggered a massive bill: roughly €55m in taxes and penalties, plus interest. While 2011 was never part of her criminal case (it was already out of the statute of limitations), it became the biggest financial front in her broader fight with Spanish authorities.

¿Dónde están los ladrones? This is where things get messy. Shakira did plead guilty to tax fraud for 2012–2014, accepting a suspended prison sentence and paying a €7.3m fine to avoid trial. So while this ruling doesn’t erase everything, it does hand her a symbolic and financial victory in the year with the highest amount at stake.

• Can’t remember to forget you. In a statement after the ruling, Shakira said there was “never any fraud” and accused Hacienda of treating her as guilty from the start, using her public profile to “send a threatening message” to other taxpayers.

• She framed the entire ordeal as eight years of reputational damage, stress, and institutional overreach—and expressed hope that the ruling sets a precedent for ordinary citizens dealing with what she sees as an aggressive system.

• Not over yet? Hacienda is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, so the final word may still be pending, although experts suggest it’s unlikely to go anywhere.

No love lost. If you’ve spent five minutes talking to Spaniards about Hacienda, you’ll know that people don’t like it very much. The tax agency has a reputation (fair or not) for being relentless, bureaucratic, and very willing to push cases to the limit.

• What makes this case resonate beyond Shakira is that she’s not alone. Over the years, several local celebs—from El Rubius to Xabi Alonso and even Piqué—have also taken Hacienda to court and, in some cases, won.

5. 🥷 You know Spain has a tourism problem when Britain unveils its Most Wanted list here

They look just like the guys getting plastered at 10 a.m. at the bars off Benidorm’s Levante beach. And it turns out they are the guys. Late last week, Spain’s Interior Ministry, the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, and Crimestoppers announced the 20th annual edition of Operación Captura — the search for Britain’s 12 most wanted criminals — in Alicante, natch. Because British criminals need sun too.

• Operación Captura launched in 2006 on a simple premise that British fugitives, like British tourists, gravitate to Spain. In 20 editions, 111 criminals have been publicized and 98 caught — a 90% success rate. 47 of those arrests happened in Spain itself, seven more across Gibraltar and Portugal. Just since 2019, 254 British fugitives have been arrested in Spain on international warrants. Málaga leads with 86, Alicante with 54.

• It’s not hard to see why they come. 400,000 Brits live in Spain, and 19 million more visit every year. As Sexy Beast showed, the British criminal abroad is almost indistinguishable from the British tourist: both go red in the sun, consider a 10 a.m. pint reasonable, and are deeply attached to chips. The gambas blend right in.

Without further ado, here’s who they’re looking for. Two alleged murderers, one sexual offender, six linked to drug trafficking, and three to fraud and money laundering — including, wonderfully, a former TV actor. Eleven of the men are British and one is Russian. Most have documented ties to Málaga, the Costa Blanca, and the Canary Islands.

The ones hiding in Spain (allegedly):

• 🔴 Kevin Thomas Parle — Alleged double murderer (Liverpool, 2004 and 2005). Red-haired, nearly two meters tall, and fat big. Links to southern Spain. Has appeared in previous campaigns. Hard to miss, and yet…still out there.

• 🎬 Philip Barry Foster — Convicted of fraud and money laundering (8.5 years). Former TV actor. His hustle: convincing victims he could make them famous, charging large sums for terrible photos. Linked to Marbella, natch.

• 🐟 Charlie Salisbury — Cocaine supply and laundering. Koi carp and dragon tattoos on his right arm. Possible links to Málaga.

• 🍺 John Rocks — Accused of sexual offenses spanning 2012–2022. Shaved head, ginger goatee. Possible links to Benidorm. Of course.

• 💊 Matthew Purves — Cocaine conspiracy across the U.K. Links to southern Spain and possibly Tenerife.

• 💷 Dean Eighteen — VAT fraud totalling £7.8 million, filed in the name of two companies he ran alone. Left the U.K. in January 2019 and has been pursued across Spain ever since.

• 🚤 Simon Dutton — Organized large-scale cocaine imports; one operation netted 10.5kg. Detected across multiple Spanish locations. Has “Rachel” tattooed on his left arm, which seems like a clue.

• 🌴 Liam Michael Murray — Drug trafficking and money laundering. 34. Links to Alicante.

If you’ve seen any of these people, Crimestoppers will take your call anonymously. Or the Policía Nacional (091). Or the Guardia Civil (062).

🔔 Don’t forget to follow us on TikTok!

@thebubblecomA corruption probe has triggered a political earthquake in Spain: Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is officially under investigation in a corruption probe linked to the controversial €53 million government bailout granted to the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic. What happens now? Read all about it in this week’s newsletter, in your inbox this Thursday morning. #zapatero #psoe #venezuela #politica

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Stumbling to the finish line

👮‍♀️ The death of two policemen turns Andalucía’s big election upside down

This Sunday’s Andalucía regional elections — likely the last dry run before national polls — were already looking grim for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE. The numbers, let’s just say, are not there. Then two Guardia Civil officers died chasing drug smugglers off Huelva, and his party contrived to score three own goals in three days. Now, his candidate — the charmless ex-treasury minister María Jesús Montero — is heading into Sunday looking like someone who really, really wants to lose.

• The spark that lit the fire. Two Guardia Civil officers — Jerónimo Jiménez and Germán Pérez — died on Friday after their patrol boat crashed into another while chasing a narcolancha (i.e., a boat specifically designed and used by drug traffickers to transport illegal narcotics) off Huelva.

• Simmering anger. Drug trafficking has colonized this coastline as enforcement pressure pushed cartels west from the Campo de Gibraltar. But Huelva’s Guardia Civil was operating with 300 fewer officers than it needed, in semi-rigid boats without night vision, against narco speedboats with four engines and sometimes armed crews. Their colleagues had warned their superiors about exactly this — in a detailed report, months earlier. The warnings were filed and forgotten.

Own goal #1. The Saturday funeral of the officers. With the campaign suspended, Montero attended — and got booed. Interior Minister Marlaska did not come, citing the hantavirus cruise operation in Tenerife.

• The government did send two lesser officials, who no one considered adequate, least of all in an election campaign in the affected region. (Context: at a similar funeral in 2024 after the Barbate narcolancha attack, one dead officer’s widow refused to let Marlaska place a medal on the coffin. He has history here.)

Own goal #2. Monday night’s debate. Describing the deaths, Montero used the phrase “accidente laboral” — workplace accident — to describe the officers’ deaths.

• Exqueeze me? Far-right Vox’s Manuel Gavira fired back immediately: “These aren’t accidents, they’re murders.” Even the far-left Adelante Andalucía candidate used similar language to go after her. Montero stood alone with her phrase, which sounds like what happens when you cut yourself while making a hamburger at a Burger King.

Own goal #3. Tuesday’s cabinet meeting press conference: The government spokesperson refused to correct Montero. So she corrected herself: Montero posted on social media describing their deaths as an “acto de servicio” — technically a walk back or rectification or something. But she did not say sorry.

• Cherry on top. On Wednesday, Marlaska spoke at a Guardia Civil graduation ceremony in Jaén and was booed twice when he mentioned the deaths. He emerged saying he was “hurt and furious.” He also clarified, yes, that the deaths were obviously “acto de servicio.” PP leader Alberto Nuñez Feijóo demanded his resignation.

So what about the election? PP incumbent Juanma Moreno — steady, competent, largely boring — was heading for 54-55 seats, possibly an absolute majority, before any of this happened (which means he may be able to govern without having to make a deal with Vox).

• Montero herself was polling below 30 seats, the PSOE’s historic worst. At the debate, she couldn’t land a clean punch even on topics where Moreno was vulnerable (a breast cancer screening scandal, for instance), and walked away having gifted the opposition a week’s worth of clips.

What next? Andalucía is Spain’s most populous region and the last significant test before national elections. Moreno, enjoying himself, was blunt about the stakes: if his majority is “lethal” for PSOE, “Sánchez won’t make it to Christmas without calling elections.”

• After this week, that looks considerably less like bravado.

More news below. 👇👇

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🦠 Spain contains the hantavirus (yay!), but politicians fight anyway

We did it! After days of global attention, rising anxiety, and a cruise ship that felt straight out of a bizarre mashup of Contagion and Speed 2: Cruise Control, Spain has officially brought the hantavirus crisis under control (or so it seems).

• Hello, and goodbye. The MV Hondius, which had been stranded with multiple cases and three deaths on board, finally docked in Tenerife. Passengers were evacuated, and the operation went a lot better than expected.

• Look at me! PM Sánchez called the mission a “success” and even said it was “a source of pride to be Spanish.” The WHO leader, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, backed him up and said there is nothing that suggests a major outbreak is coming.

Crisis not averted. But while the PSOE-led government was celebrating the end of the operation, the Canary Islands government was fuming. At the center of it all is Fernando Clavijo, the regional president and leader of Coalición Canaria, a regionalist, center-right party that has built its identity around defending the islands’ autonomy.

• How dare you! Over the past few days, Clavijo has accused the central government of acting with “arrogance,” “prepotence,” and even “lies,” claiming that his administration was sidelined at key moments and that crucial information about the operation was either delayed or never properly shared.

• No news. He insisted that he learned about key developments through the media rather than through official channels, and even suggested that Madrid concealed the existence of a positive case on board. The government denies this, arguing that what was described as a “positive” was in fact a non-conclusive test that later came back negative.

• Swimming rats! Clavijo even said infected rodents could leave the ship and reach land (the central government said his research came from ChatGPT).

What happens now? The 14 Spanish passengers have been transferred to Madrid’s Gómez Ulla military hospital, where they are undergoing a 42-day quarantine. One of them has tested positive and begun showing symptoms, though he remains stable, while the rest continue to test negative under close monitoring.

• Across Europe and beyond, other passengers are being tracked, part of an effort to ensure that no further transmissions emerge. The WHO says the risk remains low, but also warned that, given the virus’s long incubation period, this isn’t over yet.

2. ⚽ Real Madrid bossman Florentino Pérez loses his marbles after the team’s season from hell

Florentino Pérez held his first press conference in over a decade on Tuesday, and wow did he have a “Is grandpa off his meds?” moment. Pick your metaphor — a slow-motion train wreck, a sandcastle at high tide, Kash Patel speaking in public, whatevs — it was gruesome in a way we’d never expect from a dude with more power (at least in football) than gawd.

• The proximate reason for the conference? Pérez announced he was calling early elections for team president, which he has been since 2000, with a three-year break from 2006 to 2009. Since then, he’s been re-elected unopposed every four years.

Democracy, Bernabéu-style. To run, candidates for Real Madrid’s presidency must be Spanish, a club member for 20 years, and able to personally guarantee €187 million — 15% of the club’s annual budget. 🤑

• Are you a Mexi-can? Pérez referred to his rumored rival as someone with “a Mexican accent” who “talks with electricity companies” — a jab at 37-year-old Enrique Riquelme, an alicantino whose Cox Energy‘s biggest market happens to be Mexico. He called potential rivals “children,” dared them to show their faces, and delivered the day’s signature line: “They’ll have to shoot me to get me out.”

But there was so much more on the plate…

Florentino’s grievances were many: the press (he named the ABC newspaper 27 times and called out journalists by name), Barcelona (whose payments to the referee chief he called “the greatest scandal in football history”), and referees, who, according to him, stole seven league points from him, plus 18 league points this season alone.

• Strong as a bull. Pérez denied cancer rumors — “If I had cancer, wouldn’t I be in an oncology ward?” — called a female journalist “that girl”, and questioned whether another “girl” knew anything about football.

The response was swift. Spain’s Equality Minister called the remarks “anachronistic and machista.” The journalist he doubted wrote back: “Yes, Mr President, that’s who I am. A woman. What does it matter what I know about football? I do know the damage outside the Bernabéu.” Barcelona F.C. announced their lawyers were looking into it.

Of course, Florentino has plenty of reasons to be grumpy. This is Madrid’s second straight season without a title — the first time in 20 years. He fired his star coach, Xabi Alonso, after seven months, and current helmsman Álvaro Arbeloa looks to be next. Two players — Tchouameni and Valverde — brawled for two days running, leaving Valverde in a wheelchair and both with club-record €500,000 fines. Barcelona are champions, 14 points clear.

• Silver lining…ish? At least Arbeloa — the coach he’s expected to replace — has Florentino’s back: “I know what this club was like before Florentino. And I’ll take these 26 years.” Sweet. The likely replacement is rumored to be former Real Madrid coach José Mourinho. Two aging glories, well past their peaks, holding each other up like drunks leaving a bar.

P.D. On a TV interview Wednesday, Pérez claimed he'd only received "messages of congratulations” about his press conference. Maybe he's surrounded by yes-men? Just a thought.

3. 😨 Ex-FC Barça star Gerard Piqué also had a tough week

The former football star and Shakira diss track-target Gerard Piqué learned this week that the reason it’s so easy to make bank with insider trading is because it’s illegal. And that you can’t yell at referees in football. And Shakira has her own life. It was a lot.

The big one. Spain’s market regulator CNMV fined Piqué €200,000 for insider trading after he bought shares in a workplace health and safety company two days before its takeover was announced — based on a tip from a businessman friend.

• Piqué held the stock for a week, sold it, and pocketed roughly €47,000. So, he made €47k, owes €200k, and receives a “very serious offence” on his permanent record. The friend who tipped him off was fined €100,000. Being friends with Piqué can be expensive.

Meanwhile, in football. Piqué owns FC Andorra, a second-division club whose 1-0 loss to Albacete last weekend prompted him to allegedly tell the referee to “leave under escort so that you aren’t attacked,” and to note that “in another country they’d beat you up, but here in Andorra we’re a civilized country.”

• The Spanish football federation was not charmed. Piqueé got a six-match ban and a two-month suspension for “acts that undermine the dignity and decorum of sport.” The dignity and decorum of sport, it should be said, were also not charmed.

• Addendum. We were charmed to learn while reporting this story that Piqué’s second last name is Bernabéu, which is the name of the stadium of his former archrival, Real Madrid. Which is, let’s be honest, kinda funny.

And then there was Shakira. At her concert for two million people on Copacabana beach, she called herself a “single mother” — implying Piqué isn’t around much for their two kids. He’s reportedly furious, and his team is considering legal action. His lawyer, asked for comment, said: “I don’t know anything, truly.” As in, “Speak to the hand.”

• Suing Shakira — the woman who turned their breakup into a global hit — would be a bold choice. We’re rooting for it because god knows it would give us something to write about.

4. 🏳️‍🌈 Spain is the best European country for LGBTQ+ rights (homophobia still exists, though)

Suck it, Malta. Spain has just topped ILGA-Europe’s 2026 Rainbow Map, the most authoritative annual ranking of LGBTQ+ rights across the continent, knocking Malta off its long-standing perch and becoming — officially! — the best place in Europe to be queer.

• ILGA who? ILGA-Europe is the largest LGBTQ+ organization in the world. Every year since 2009, it has published its Rainbow Map, ranking 49 European countries on a scale from 0 to 100% based on their laws and policies affecting LGBTI people.

• Spain scored 89%. (Great!) The EU average? A humbling 52%. (Not so great).

Spain is killin’ it. Over the past few years, Spain has quietly (and then not so quietly) built one of the most progressive legal frameworks for LGBTQ+ rights in the world.

• The 2023 LGBTI and Trans Laws were landmark. Equality action plans, an independent anti-discrimination authority, and the removal of the requirement that trans people get a medical diagnosis or treatment before their identity is legally recognized — no doctor’s note, no surgery, no hormones required. You know. Big stuff.

A beacon (with some shadows). Over the last several years, Spain has become something of a refuge and a reference point for the LGBTQ+ community in Europe. At a time when other countries are legally dismantling protections, Spain has been moving in the opposite direction.

• This stands out in a continent where the Rainbow Map’s bottom tier reads like a tour of authoritarian regression: Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Belarus, Armenia.

Still lots of work to do. The Rainbow Map measures laws and policies, but it does not measure what it’s like to walk down the street. And on that front, Spain has a problem.

• More than half. According to the Estado del Odio LGTBI+ 2026 report, 54% of LGBTQ+ people in Spain said they experienced harassment, discrimination, or a physical attack in the past year.

• That’s up 12 points from the previous report. And one in two trans people has been a victim of physical violence.

Our take. Yeah, the laws are there, and the protections are real. But the gap between legal progress and real life is wide, and growing.

• ILGA itself flags this — legal rankings don’t capture daily reality. And 74% of those who reported incidents to authorities had a negative experience doing so, which goes some way to explaining why most victims still don’t report at all.

Tsk tsk.

5. 🎤 More Eurovision drama: Israel, Spain… and a few hundred voters

Only getting started. So, this week’s Eurovision drama didn’t come from the stage in Austria. Nope, it came from The New York Times, and it involved Spain.

• Gaming the system. The paper dropped an investigation suggesting that last year’s Eurovision vote may have been far easier to influence than organizers have admitted, and that Israel knew exactly how to play the system. Their example? *drumroll*… Spain!

• Israel’s representative absolutely crushed the Spanish public vote in 2025, according to the report, taking roughly a third of all votes (around 47,000) despite polls showing the Spanish public opinion was largely critical of the Israeli government, which is… odd.

Euro-voting is tricky. Eurovision is not one person, one vote. Viewers can vote multiple times; up to 20 times last year, now capped at 10. That means a relatively small group of highly motivated voters can massively amplify their impact. The NYT estimates that in Spain, just a few hundred people voting repeatedly could have secured Israel’s win in the televote. No bots, no fraud. Just good coordination.

• In Spain, Israel’s entry secured around 33.3% of the televote, the NYT reports, which translated into roughly 47,570 votes. The second-place country, Ukraine, was way behind with about 9,620 votes (6.7%).

• On paper, that looks like a landslide. But when you factor in the ability for each person to vote up to 20 times, the picture changes. To reach those 47,000 votes, you wouldn’t need tens of thousands of people—you could get there with just around 2,400.

• Not illegal, but kinda messy. Even the contest’s own director admitted Israel’s promotion last year was “excessive.” And yet, crucially, there was no external audit, no full release of voting data, and no real transparency about what actually happened.

Loving the attention. Spanish media jumped on the story. RTVE had already raised concerns last year, asking for an audit after Israel kept winning public votes in countries where public opinion didn’t match the results. That request went nowhere. Instead, Eurovision tweaked the rules: fewer votes per person, and a ban on “disproportionate” promotional campaigns.

• Yet here we are again. Just days before this year’s contest, Israel’s delegation was warned after circulating videos explicitly telling people to vote 10 times (the new maximum).

Spain isn’t even playing. RTVE is one of five broadcasters (along with Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Iceland) that decided to boycott this year’s contest over Israel’s participation, citing both the war in Gaza and what they describe as repeated rule violations. It’s one of the biggest fractures Eurovision has faced in decades.

• Espanovision. Instead, as we mentioned last week, RTVE is doing something… very Spanish. Rather than airing Eurovision this Saturday, it’s broadcasting its own musical show to compete with it.

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@thebubblecomFrom tapas to Krispy Kreme 🇺🇸 #spain #lifeinspain #madrid #expatlife

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Dear God, not again

⛴️ A cruise ship, a deadly virus… and Spain is right in the middle of it

The world has been glued to its screens for the past two days following the news unfolding in real time of a luxury expedition cruise ship drifting across the Atlantic with a deadly virus onboard — and now heading straight for Spain.

• The MV Hondius is carrying around 150 passengers and crew. What started as a mysterious illness quickly escalated into something much more serious. Three people have died, and at least eight cases of hantavirus (a rodent-borne virus that can cause severe disease) have been confirmed or are under investigation.

• The situation has snowballed into a multi-country health concern, and Spain is now at the center of it, because the ship is expected to dock in Tenerife on Saturday.

Quick recap. The cruise began in southern Argentina and made stops in extremely remote locations. Early on, a passenger fell ill and later died — but the cause wasn’t immediately identified.

• The ship kept going. Passengers kept traveling. And crucially, dozens of people disembarked mid-journey and flew home before anyone realized what they might have been exposed to. At least one person who left the ship has already tested positive. Authorities are now trying to trace contacts across multiple countries

This isn’t The Last of Us. Hantavirus is not new (outbreaks in Argentina have been happening since, like, forever). It’s not easily transmissible (so please don’t say this is “just like COVID”).

• It’s typically spread through contact with infected rodents, not casual human interaction. (Good). The Andes strain — the one detected here — can, however, lead to severe respiratory illness with mortality rates of up to 40% and can be transmitted from person to person if there’s very close, prolonged contact. (Bad).

• There’s no vaccine, no specific treatment, and when symptoms worsen, things can deteriorate quickly.

• Keep calm and carry on. On the ship, passengers are isolating, wearing masks, and limiting contact — but also reading, watching movies, and drinking tea. “Our days have been close to normal,” one passenger said. At least there’s that.

Now enter Spain. After being denied disembarkation in Cape Verde, the ship is heading to Tenerife following a request from the WHO, which has sparked… tension.

• Why involve us? The Canary Islands government is openly questioning why passengers couldn’t be evacuated directly from Africa instead of bringing the situation to Spain.

• You're not good at this. Regional president Fernando Clavijo has also complained about a lack of transparency and coordination from Madrid. On the ground, the reaction is simpler: people are nervous. (Remember COVID?.)

Full steam ahead. The central government, however, is sticking to the plan. Spain has activated EU emergency protocols and will handle the operation once the ship arrives.

• Welcome to Spain. Passengers will be medically screened, foreigners repatriated, and the 14 Spanish nationals flown to Madrid for quarantine in a military hospital. Everything is being coordinated with European partners.

• Please don’t panic. Health Minister Mónica García insists the risk to the general population is very low, while Fernando Simón, the Ministry’s Director of the Health Alerts and Emergencies Coordination Center, has gone out of his way to stress that this is “very, very different from COVID.”

What happens now? All eyes are now on Saturday, when the ship is expected in Tenerife. Passengers will remain onboard until evacuation flights are ready, and authorities will begin an operation to disperse them safely. Or maybe cause the end of civilization!

More news below. 👇👇

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🇲🇽 Ayuso travels to Mexico and — surprise! — pisses off her hosts

Guess who’s in town. Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) landed in Mexico on Sunday for what was supposed to be a 10-day official visit. Instead, it’s turned into a transatlantic controversy almost from day one — centered (surprise!) on history.

• If you’re going to go controversial, go big. Things started to unravel when Ayuso backed a tribute to Hernán Cortés in Mexico City — you know, that Cortés. The one who overthrew the Aztec empire (with the help of other indigenous groups) and, in the process, massacred 3,000–6,000 unarmed people at Cholula, either to avoid an ambush or just because he wanted to.

• Heck of a guy. Ayuso praised Cortés as “a key figure in the creation of modern Mexico,” argued Spain’s legacy is one of mestizaje (cultural/racial mixture) rather than something to apologize for, and warned against the “death of democracy under socialism,” naming both Spain and Mexico as examples. So: a light agenda.

Bad timing. Spain–Mexico relations have been shaky for years after former president López Obrador demanded an apology for colonial abuses, which Spain rejected. Recently, though, things were starting to thaw: King Felipe VI offered some conciliatory words, and Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum lowered the temperature in a visit to Barcelona.

• Then Ayuso shows up… and 💥.

Not amused — then amused. Sheinbaum fired back hard, saying anyone trying to reframe the conquest as something positive is “destined to fail.” But the next day, she walked it back, insisting Ayuso has “the right to speak” and this won’t derail bilateral relations.

• Back in Spain. Digital Transformation Minister Óscar López called the trip “irresponsible” — no surprise, given that Sánchez is setting him up as the PSOE candidate to run against Ayuso in the next election.

Presidenta non grata? At a Mexican airport, a local woman confronted Ayuso directly, criticizing her conquest comments and pointedly reminding her that México is spelled with an “x,” not a “j” — something Ayuso loves to do because it provokes people. The video went viral almost instantly.

• Wealthy Mexicans, who have been moving to Madrid in significant numbers, drawn for stability, lifestyle, and tax reasons, seem less stressed by Ayuso’s heroes, or her spelling.

Next stops? Monterrey and the Riviera Maya. We’re sure it’ll be calm. 🤣

2. 🇺🇸 Ceuta and Melilla are framed as ‘Moroccan’ in Washington

More surprises! Buried in a U.S. congressional budget document, a House committee has (for the first time) echoed Morocco’s long-standing claim over Spain’s Ceuta and Melilla.

• The wording is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The two cities are described as being “in Moroccan territory” but “under Spanish administration”.

• Um, like what “future”? The document encourages Secretary of State Marco Rubio (aka Mark Blondy) to help mediate their “future status.” (Translation: they are not quite Spanish, and are potentially negotiable). For the local government in these areas, this is a 🚩 (or a 🇲🇦, if you know what we mean).

Reality check. Ceuta and Melilla are not some ambiguous leftovers of the empire. They are Spanish cities, full stop, and have been for centuries.

• Heap long time. Melilla has been Spanish since 1497. Ceuta since 1668. Their residents are Spanish citizens, they vote, they’re part of the EU, and Madrid treats them the same way it treats Barcelona or Seville. For Spain, they’re not colonies, not disputed territories, and definitely not up for negotiation.

Why this now? Because of who pushed it. The language was introduced by Republican congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, a close Rubio ally and member of the pro-Morocco caucus.

• Freelance geography lessons. He’s been openly saying for weeks that Ceuta and Melilla are “in Morocco,” and that their status should be discussed “between allies.” That framing is exactly what Rabat has been arguing for years.

• Not law (yet). This is all part of an explanatory report attached to a budget bill. It still needs to pass the full House, then the Senate. But politically, it matters.

Great timing, too. Spain and the U.S. are not in their best moment. There’s been friction over Spain not doing its NATO spending, telling the U.S. it can’t use Spanish bases to attack Iran, and fighting with U.S. BFF Israel.

• Two great tastes that taste great together. At the same time, the U.S. has been doubling down on its alliance with Morocco (which signed a normalization agreement with Israel during Trump I).

Do not escalate. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares brushed it off with a line that says everything: the Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla is “as unquestionable as that of Santiago de Compostela.”

• Don’t forget us! PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo is heading to Ceuta this Saturday to mark Europe Day there and use the visit to “reaffirm the Spanishness” of both cities (and push for stronger EU backing).

Temperature rising. A few years ago, a comment like this would have been dismissed as noise. Now, during the “We’d like Greenland” presidency, it sounds sounds considerably less implausible.

3. 🎇 The trial of the century month is all over (except for the crying)

We hardly knew you, ‘Caso Koldo’. After 14 sessions, 70+ witnesses, and more salacious accusations than any single courtroom deserves, Caso Koldo — a case that was ostensibly about corruption in COVID mask contracts, but was really about whether the PSOE is a corrupt multi-headed hydra or just extremely unlucky in its staffing choices — has gone to the judges.

• The verdict may be months away. But memories last forever. Let’s get into what happened — and what’s next

The cast. This was a simple show, with three men sharing one stage (and trying to bring down the rest of the world with them). (A note: all the claims below are alleged, not proven.)

• The Lusty Boss Man 🤵. Ex-Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos allegedly ran a parallel economy from his ministry. In this telling, his bag man delivered cash in a Montblanc backpack — up to €250,000 per run — to his home and office; mask contracts were steered to his associates; one of his mistresses had her Madrid flat paid by his bag man’s partner; his advisor arranged prostitutes for him on a Mexico trip; and he got use of a beach house in Cádiz via a businessman seeking a hydrocarbon license. Prosecution asks: 24 years.

• The Furry Advisor (with a money habit) 🐻. Koldo García, Ábalos’s right-hand man and alleged operational hub. Known in the bag man’s notes as “grandu,” he allegedly told the bag man that Sánchez “knew everything.” His €400,000+ of spending in two years caught the police’s major crimes unit’s eye. Also maintained that his infamous “million in chistorras” text had nothing to do with money. Sure. Prosecution asks: 19.5 years.

• The Big-Mouthed Bag Man 💰. Víctor de Aldama — fixer, cooperating witness, and the man who made this trial considerably more entertaining than it had any right to be. Having admitted to everything, he used his testimony to go further — he named Sánchez “#1” of the criminal organization, roped in Sánchez’s wife Begoña Gómez and former Finance Minister María Jesús Montero, and tossed in Venezuela for flavor. The prosecution said his Sánchez claims lacked proof. Prosecution asks: 7 years (the cooperation discount).

The greatest hits? The prostitutes in Mexico, a paid-for mistress flat, cash in a Montblanc backpack, and Aldama’s blockbuster claim that €1.8 million in illegal donations flowed to PSOE through construction kickbacks — with the president allegedly aware of every peseta.

Their swan songs. In their final statements, Ábalos called the trial a “daily torture” (he comes in handcuffs) and an “inquisitorial process.” Koldo said he was “destroyed,” had lost his friends, and wasn’t “that bad.” Aldama said nothing. Probably wisely.

What’s next. A sentence will come eventually. Aldama and Koldo are also due at the Audiencia Nacional on May 14 in a parallel investigation. For now, Ábalos and Koldo will stay locked up pending the verdict because, not surprisingly, the prosecution says they are flight risks.

We’ll miss you, Caso Koldo. Don’t call us.

4. 🤐 You’ll love this apartment — the owners are about to die

Want more proof that the Spanish real estate market has gone mad? A real estate agency on the outskirts of Madrid caused major drama this week when it promoted a property on Idealista as a great buy because — wait for it — the current owners were on death’s door. ☠️

• Excuse me? Troya Servicios Inmobiliarios, an agency in Leganés on the outskirts of Madrid, listed a flat for €90,000 (😱), calling it a “unique opportunity” because both owners — aged 56 and 59 — “have delicate health conditions such as scoliosis, dialysis, and diabetes that could accelerate the future availability of the property, and they have no offspring.” That’s agency-speak for “one foot in the grave, no one to inherit”.

Some context: Spain has a real estate model called nuda propiedad, in which owners — typically elderly, often sick — sell their home while retaining the right to live in it until they die. The buyer gets a below-market price and… waits.

• Not exactly uplifting. The sellers are usually retirees desperate to avoid poverty, not people optimizing their real estate portfolio. Which makes the incentive structure, let’s say, awkward: as in, the buyer is quietly (or not) rooting for the seller to die. Preferably soon. Troya just forgot to keep that part quiet.

• It gets worse. Buyers circulate jokes about nudging sellers toward extreme sports or crowded places (hi, COVID). We couldn’t document actual foul play — but a movie exists, and French notaries recently faced charges for buying a property from a woman with Alzheimer's symptoms who died 28 days after signing. Just saying.

Anthropologist Jaime Palomera put it well, talking to El País: “The more the life expectancy of those living in the property is shortened, the greater the expected return for the investor. It’s a profoundly predatory logic.” Idealista took the listing down and blamed the agency for, like, maybe revealing confidential health info. The agency said its salespeople were “busy.”

• Troya’s real crime wasn’t doing anything especially wrong. It got caught saying the quiet part out loud.

5. 🎤 Screw Eurovision… We have our own musical show!

We’re not backing down. For the first time in 65 years, Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE will not show Eurovision (aka the Gay Super Bowl), following the country’s withdrawal from the contest over Israel’s participation.

• But don't cry! Instead, that same night, RTVE is rolling out a full-scale alternative: a prime-time musical special designed to fill the Eurovision-shaped void.

Friendly reminder. Spain joined Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland, and the Netherlands in declining to participate, turning what started as controversy into a coordinated boycott. But Spain’s absence hits differently.

• Eurovision here is more than popular. It’s one of the biggest TV events of the year, regularly pulling massive audiences and dominating the cultural conversation (last year’s final pulled over 50% share).

A worthy replacement? Enter La Casa de la Música, a 2.5-hour special hosted by zaddy Jesús Vázquez and packed with big musical names that you probably don’t know (including many with only one name): Raphael, Chanel, Manuel Carrasco, Chenoa, Mónica Naranjo, Ana Belén, Guitarricadelafuente (OK, you may know him), and more.

• Look over here! Officially, RTVE is framing the night around music and “coexistence for peace,” carefully avoiding direct references to Eurovision. Unofficially, it’s a one-to-one replacement, a concert that showcases sSpanish talent and makes a political statement.

Keeping it diplomatic. Eurovision's director said he “misses” the countries that pulled out and wants them back. And the RTVE feels him: TVE director Sergio Calderón said he “understands” the concern and left the door open to a return.

• Awww…But not yet. RTVE marked May 17 (the day after the final) as when they’ll reassess, depending on how the contest unfolds and, crucially, what happens with Israel’s participation. So, not this year.

• Sneaky! The Eurovision organization also tried to lure back some Spanish presence by inviting Jorge González (a Benidorm Fest finalist) to perform at an official event in Vienna. He declined, saying that if his country ain’t going, neither is he.

You can still watch Eurovision. The contest will be available via the official YouTube broadcast, and you can even vote from Spain. But the shared national experience? Gone. No Spanish entry, no coverage, no collective meltdown over televote points.

🔔 Don’t forget to follow us on TikTok!

@thebubblecomFrom tapas to Krispy Kreme 🇺🇸 #spain #lifeinspain #madrid #expatlife

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Party pooper

😥 The economy fiesta might be coming to an end

The economy of Spain in general and Madrid in particular has been “killing it” (technical term) in recent years, as we’ve noted again and again. It’s been leading the big EU countries and, seriously, everyone is moving here (like, even Walton Goggins 🥳).

• But now it looks like there may be clouds on the horizon. Or flies in the ointment. Or ketchup on the tortilla. And we’re beginning to worry that we — and the PSOE-led government that rules us — may be facing a paradigm shift. Let us count the ways.

Three letters: GDP. Spain’s economy has boomed since the COVID pandemic, buoyed by tourism and EU funds, but the air is bleeding out of that balloon. After outpacing the EU’s biggest economies with 2.8% growth last year, it was already expected to slow to 2.2% this year and 2.0% in 2027. Then the Orange Menace started to bomb Iran, f’ing up those growth projections by sending oil prices up ⏫.

• The problem with rising fuel prices? Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo (a.k.a. Carl Body) says inflation will shoot up to 3.1% (previous expectation: 2.1%), and when things are expensive, people buy less. Even so, Cuerpo is still claiming that 2.2% growth is on for this year despite the fact that the IMF cut its own projection to 2.0% (and 1.7% for 2027). But he admitted that if this war continues, they could cut the number by up to 0.8 percentage points (that would be to 1.4%, for those who don’t like math).

Getting a J-O-B isn’t as easy as it used to be. Employment numbers always sag after the holiday rush, but this year’s drop was crazy bad. The unemployment rate — which briefly dropped below Spain’s (embarrassing) 10% “good news” line at the end of 2025 — shot up to 10.8% in the first quarter with 231,500 new unemployed people, the biggest jump in that time period since 2013 (not including COVID, natch).

• Not great timing. The jump slump arrived just as the government is regularizing a guestimated 500,000 undocumented immigrants — a group that is especially exposed to the shop, restaurant, and domestic jobs that were lost. From exploitation to unemployment…

Finding a place to live? Also (even) harder. If you thought it was hard to find an affordable place to live, well, you might soon be nostalgic for the current situation. The average price per m² of a home in Spain was 14.3% higher in early 2026 compared to a year earlier (in Madrid and Valencia, it was worse: up 19%). Nuts.

• You may not be able to find a place to rent either. The Housing Law of 2023, which allows regional governments to cap rent in “stressed” areas in order to make housing more affordable and accessible, appears to be having the exact opposite effect.

• Less, not more. In Barcelona, which the Catalan government declared “stressed” in March 2024, the number of long-term rentals on offer fell from 132,259 to 79,456 — about 40% — between 2023 and 2026 as landlords took properties off the long-term market and converted them into short-term rentals, according to Observatorio del Alquiler, a think tank. (Fotocasa says more than a third of landlords plan to get out of the long-term market when their current rental contract is done.)

The real problem? Friend-of-The-Bubble (FOTB) Kiko Llaneras of El País has a fascinating deep dive into Spain’s economic state this week. Tl;dr? The average Spanish salary, taking inflation into account, has only risen 5% in the last 30 years — and because of constant tax increases, has actually fallen since 2015.

• Add in housing, and 💥. Take stagnant wages, rising taxes, and housing prices that have risen on average 47.7% since 2015 (and 95.6% in Madrid and Barcelona), according to Caixabank Research, and are you at all surprised that broke youth living with their parents seemingly forever are unhappy — and getting angrier (and moving to the right)?

More news below. 👇👇

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🇪🇸 Vox’s ‘national priority’ comes to life

Going national. Remember that whole “national priority” thing that sounded like a new discriminatory far-right talking point last week? Yeah, it’s now everywhere.

• Going big. What started as a chapter in regional deals between the center-right PP and far-right Vox in places like Extremadura and Aragón has officially taken over Spanish politics. Vox is pushing it hard across regional parliaments (and even town halls), and making it very clear that this is not a suggestion, it’s the line.

• More than a slogan. “Prioridad nacional” means giving preferential access to public aid, housing, and services to people with stronger ties to Spain, which, in practice, critics say opens the door to discrimination against immigrants and creates a two-tier system.

Come at us, bro. Vox, for its part, isn’t backing down. The party has warned the PP it won’t accept any attempt to “water down” the concept with softer language about “arraigo” (attachment) or legal nuance.

• The real deal. Internally, Vox sees “national priority” as a simple, emotionally charged idea that resonates broadly among working-class voters. Their strategy now is to force the PP to fully embrace it or publicly reject it.

Under pressure. In Aragón, regional president Jorge Azcón defended the measure during his investiture, insisting it’s “legal” (just in case) and based on rewarding those with long-term ties to the region.

• Everywhere! Vox is pushing similar proposals in Valencia and also warns they’ll ask for it in Andalucía if the PP needs their votes to govern there.

Quick backlash. PM Sánchez says this is about creating “first and second-class citizens” and has warned the government will step in if any measure crosses legal lines.

• Church, too. The secretary general of the Spanish Catholic bishops’ group has also rejected the idea.

Can’t stop, won’t stop. Vox, unsurprisingly, is emboldened by all of this. Party leader Santiago Abascal lashed out at Sánchez — calling him, among other things, “a piece of shit” during a rally.

• Hitting the church. He also lashed out at bishops who criticized his policies, accusing them of hypocrisy and siding with what he calls a system that “betrays Spaniards.”

Playin’ it cool. The center-right PP is trying not to alienate moderate voters while they face constant pressure from Vox to go further.

• That balancing act might actually be working. According to a poll conducted by the PP, a surprisingly large chunk of socialist voters (around 40%) are receptive to the PP’s softer version of the idea.

Assuming the PP's polling isn't just telling them what they want to hear, this may explain why they aren't slamming the brakes.

2.🐿️ The party might really be over for Alvise Pérez

Speaking about fiestas that are coming to an end, remember Alvise Pérez? The Telegram firebrand who, in 2024, shocked Spain by winning 3 European Parliament seats for his catchily-named party Se acabó la fiesta (”The Party’s Over,” or SALF) — riding 800,000 votes harvested from a brew of far-right messaging, anti-establishment grievance, conspiracy theories, and selectively-deployed online “exposés.”

• Well, his party may indeed be over.

Stripped. The European Parliament has officially stripped him of immunity, clearing the way for Spain’s Supreme Court to put him on trial over the alleged harassment of a Valencia prosecutor. The MEP shield doesn’t apply here because what he’s accused of has nothing to do with his job as a legislator.

• A mess from day one. Since arriving in Brussels, Alvise’s tenure has been an unbroken parade of public feuds with his own party members and constant controversy — culminating now in legal trouble back home.

The case. Prosecutors call it a targeted harassment campaign. In early 2024, Alvise posted messages and photos of a Valencia prosecutor on his Telegram channel, accusing her of persecuting Spaniards.

• The result: around 1,500 abusive messages from his followers, including threats and calls to harass her IRL. The Supreme Court believes there may have been a deliberate attempt to mobilize his audience against her.

Not the only one! This is one of five open legal investigations.

• The greatest hits. Illegal campaign financing — a €100,000 payment from a crypto bro “businessman” Alvise has openly acknowledged receiving; spreading a fake COVID test about a high-profile politician, admitted in court; allegedly harassing his own former SALF colleagues; and a separate Supreme Court probe into alleged threats against the mayor of Algeciras.

What now? With immunity gone, the Supreme Court can finally proceed with the first trial — and potentially others, depending on whether further immunity requests are lifted. None of this means he’s guilty. But the heat shield is off.

• Witch hunt! Alvise has already framed it all as part of a “corrupt system” targeting him — a narrative that plays well with his base. (Sounds familiar?)

Make Spain great again. Fret not, anti-establishment readers: he’s already announced he’s running in the 2027 general election.

3. 🌑 A year ago, all the lights went out — and we still don’t know who to blame

On April 28, 2025, a historic blackout plunged Spain into darkness, unleashing societal collapse of a profundity never seen outside of The Last of Us 🧟. Widespread looting, radioactive panthers, zombie hordes, paella made with chorizo…it was madness.

• Actually, none of that happened. Some 35,000 people were stranded in trains, and a team of window cleaners got stuck on one of Madrid’s Cuatro Cinco Torres skyscrapers. But at least judging from The Bubble’s “on the ground reporting” at the time, a big chunk of Spain’s population took it upon themselves to rescue warming beer and dance the Macarena (literally).

But it was a big f-up that cost us all a 💩-ton of 💰 — and a year on, no one’s saying whose fault it was.

• The reports. Four official investigations and one parliamentary inquiry have produced an impressive paper trail and exactly zero resignations. Beatriz Corredor, the former PSOE Housing Minister who Sánchez’s government appointed chair of partially state-owned grid operator Red Eléctrica — a €546k-a-year job — is still there. Energy Secretary Sara Aagesen still has her job. Sánchez himself has very pointedly not apologized.

What happened (allegedly). The technical consensus — to the extent there is one — points to a voltage surge cascading through a grid running on 55.5% renewables, causing every energy producer to go offline lest they suffer damage.

• Green fail? Not quite. The cause, experts say, wasn’t “excessive” renewables but a grid increasingly reliant on them and not yet fully adapted — meaning, in plain terms, more batteries and more gas/nuclear backup to absorb sudden clouds or a drop in the breeze. Spain has been early out of the gate on this; it’s uncharted ground.

The blame game. Red Eléctrica blames the utilities. The utilities blame Red Eléctrica. Iberdrola is suing. The Senate’s PP-majority report demanded dismissals — Corredor’s, Aagesen’s, the lot — which the government received with the seriousness it reserves for things it intends to ignore. Feijóo, predictably, called for resignations. Sánchez, equally predictably, has not delivered.

• Fines? Maybe. The CNMC (Spain’s competition authority and über-regulator), meanwhile, has opened 55 sanction investigations. Resolutions will arrive after an 18-month investigation — putting the actual reckoning in late 2027 or early 2028, by which point we will all surely have moved on to a fresh catastrophe (and past the next elections).

The money. Direct losses topped €1 billion. The extra cost of preventing a repeat (by topping up with conventional power)? €666m — a number whose biblical vibe is, we assume, conveniente. Consumers have absorbed it via a 10% rise in their electricity bills, because of course they did.

• Nobody else pays? Unlikely. Repsol is suing for €175m. The OCU may push households to sue. But CNMC’s maximum fine tops out at €60m — roughly a tenth of what consumers are paying to fix the problem.

The takeaway. 86.7% of Spaniards think it could happen again. They are, statistically speaking, probably right. As for who’s to blame — well, that’s what the next 18 months are for. For now, the lights are on. 🕯️

4. ✈️ Ryanair tells Spain it prefers Morocco and Italy

The war between Ryanair and Spain has gotten so bad that the cheap bastards discount airline is using a cake to mock the government. (See above.)

• Just wanted to say “hi.” Ryanair CEO Eddie Wilson flew into Madrid on Monday — exactly the day state-controlled airport operator AENA was distributing its annual dividends (€834m of which went straight to the state) — to announce that AENA’s fees are too damn high, so Ryanair will cut 1.2m seats in Spain this summer. (He says this year will be the first Ryanair hasn’t grown in Spain since it entered the market.)

The argument. Ryanair is annoying colorful (more on the cake below), but its grievances always reduce to money. AENA wants to raise fees 21% (plus inflation) over 2027-2031. Wilson’s take: AENA runs “excessive” 60% margins, has paid €5bn in dividends to the government over the past four years, and plowed €800m into airports in Brazil and the U.K. in the last 12 months alone — even as regional Spanish airports run 70% empty.

• Wilson’s verdict: “It is extraordinary that the Spanish government prioritizes dividends and sending money generated at Spanish airports overseas, at the expense of areas losing routes, tourists, and jobs.” Ouch. 🔥

Promises made, promises kept. None of this is new — Ryanair told us back in October it would do exactly this. The 1.2m cut is the third wave in a year, following last summer’s 800k-seat reduction and last winter’s 1m cut. Total damage since summer 2024: 3m seats

• So few seats. Asturias, Valladolid, Jerez, Tenerife Norte, and Vigo lose 100% of Ryanair service. Santiago drops 79%, Zaragoza 45%, Santander 41%. Girona and the Canaries take smaller hits.

• Ryan’s new friends. Meanwhile, Ryanair will grow 11% in Morocco and 9% in Italy — “significantly more competitive countries than Spain,” per Wilson. In other words, Ryanair to España Profunda: Screw you.

So much love. Ryanair’s other Spain grievances are still simmering: the €107m fine for charging for hand luggage (under appeal), the European Commission’s case against Spain over the hand-luggage sanctions, and the never-ending Bustinduy feud — group CEO Michael O’Leary’s nickname for the consumer minister, you’ll recall, was “crazy communist.”

And the cake? Pure Ryanair. The PR shop knows newspaper business desks need a single arresting image, so Wilson rolled out a frosted prop for AENA’s dividend day, showing most of its money reserved for dividends and investments abroad, with a tiny sliver for Spain’s regions.

• Petty? Yes. Effective? Also yes — exhibit A: this newsletter.

5. 🐾 Spain’s wildest ‘influencer’ lynx is hunting street cats

Uh-oh! A wild Iberian lynx nicknamed Veneno has basically moved into the small town of Cabañas de Yepes (in Toledo) and is regularly terrorizing hunting the local street cat colony.

• Viral cat. What would normally be a quiet ecological situation has exploded because neighbors started filming it, and now the media (get this) is calling it an “influencer lynx” thanks to how viral it’s become.

Here, kitty. According to very serious reporting, Veneno shows up almost daily, walking through streets, jumping walls, even sleeping in roundabouts like it owns the place. Veneno, who was born in 2024 in the Montes de Toledo, lives in a nearby valley (an ideal lynx habitat full of rabbits) and has learned a route straight into town.

• Once there, it targets the local cats — not out of cruelty, but instinct. For a lynx, other small mammals are either prey or competition.

• To locals, though, those are their cats. Some of them are even cared for by a community association. According to residents, 20 may already be gone.

Don’t pspspsps it. That’s where the tension kicks in. On one hand, many locals are fascinated (it’s not every day you see a critically endangered species strolling past your house!). On the other hand, there’s real concern for the cats, for the lynx itself (it could get hit by a car!), and for public safety if people start, like, crowding or chasing it.

• That’s already happening (shocker). People from nearby towns are literally showing up to take selfies with the murderous wild predator (don’t worry, according to experts, they won’t attack you). At one point, a town meeting about the lynx basically emptied because Veneno walked past outside.

Time to move on. Now, authorities are trying to gently push Veneno back out of town by removing food sources for cats, limiting human interaction, and discouraging people from feeding or approaching it.

• More followers than you. As for the “influencer” label, it’s because Veneno has become a viral star. Videos of it hunting or roaming are all over social media, turning it into an accidental celebrity (and even a potential tourist attraction).

Back with a vengeance. This is happening because the Iberian lynx is making a comeback. Just a couple of decades ago, it was on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 100 individuals left.

• Thanks to conservation efforts, the species has recovered. So Veneno wandering into town is actually a side effect of success. Can Madrid get one too?

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Crossed wires

🇻🇪 Venezuela's opposition leader ghosts Sánchez government

Guess who was in town? María Corina Machado, leader of the Venezuelan opposition and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, spent the weekend in Madrid and was welcomed like a head of state… just not by the Spanish government.

• ¡La Presidenta! Machado, who is widely seen as the real winner of the country’s last elections (even though she was disqualified from running), landed in Spain to a reception that felt closer to a victory tour than a diplomatic visit.

• Tighty righties. She met center-right PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo at party headquarters — where she was greeted with applause and chants of “libertad” — and then far-right Vox leader Santiago Abascal for good measure.

But wait, there’s more! Machado also held high-profile meetings with Madrid’s regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and Madrid mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida.

• Want something shiny? Ayuso awarded Machado the Gold Medal of the Community of Madrid, and Almeida handed her the symbolic keys to the city, a gesture usually reserved for heads of state or major historical figures.

The optics mattered. Madrid is home to one of the largest Venezuelan diaspora communities in Europe. Some 200,000 people who fled the crisis back home came to the city.

• Many of them see Machado as their political representative, so her appearance at the Puerta del Sol, where she addressed a crowd of supporters waving Venezuelan flags and chanting her name, felt like a campaign rally (albeit in exile).

Where’s Pedro? Despite being invited, Machado did not meet with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez nor anyone else from the Spanish government. Eeeeenteresting… 🤔

The water simmers. The awkwardness of not meeting started politely, through clenched smiles. Sánchez said he was “delighted to meet Señora Machado whenever she has the opportunity” — the doors of Moncloa, he added, are always open. Machado had said that meeting him simply “no es conveniente” (“It is not advisable.") right now. Nothing personal, you understand.

• But really, what's up? Machado nodded at one reason she didn't meet Mr Handsome —the progressive summit he was hosting in Barcelona, which featured left-wing leaders of countries like Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico who'd been kinda friendly with her nemesis, now-jailed Nicolás Maduro.

• Now we get it. She added some spice in an interview with El Mundo: “Meeting with Pedro Sánchez would have sent the wrong message; our cause is about truth and about the people.” Ouch.

The water boils. Then Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares started punching back on RNE. Machado, he noted, had managed to meet Feijóo, Ayuso, Almeida and Abascal: “She has acted as an ideological leader meeting with her political spectrum, which is the Spanish far right.”

• A little gratitude, please. Albares reminded everyone that this government flew Machado’s proxy Edmundo González out on a military plane and just rushed Spanish citizenship to fellow opposition leader Leopoldo López (who previously found asylum in Spain’s Caracas embassy). “Is it necessary to hide what Spain does for Venezuela in order to please others?” (Who are those others? Just wait…)

The pot explodes. Albares dropped a bombshell: Machado herself, he claimed, had once asked for refuge inside Spain’s Caracas embassy, and he’d granted it.

• Calling bull💩. Machado’s team called that “false.” Diplomatic sources told El Mundo the offer went the other way. And Machado fired back… obliquely: “There are opaque episodes” around Spain’s dealings in Venezuela, she told El Español, and “I have information others don’t” — that will be deployed once verified, we presume. 🤔

So what’s going on here? Two things, probably.

• First, of all European governments, Sánchez’s has been friendliest to Maduro — which doesn’t exactly build trust with the Venezuelan opposition.

• But more importantly, Sánchez and Trump are at each other’s throats, and Trump is the one who might actually install Machado in Caracas — having, in January, ordered the Fuerte Tiuna raid that dragged Maduro off to a New York cell. ”The only head of state who put his citizens’ lives on the line for our freedom,” she gushed in El Español. A bit thick, but she knows which side her arepa is buttered on.

P.S. Watching Leopoldo López try to avoid getting involved in the Machado/Sánchez spat in this interview is hilaaaaaarious. Dude will say anything to say nothing. Deer in headlights total.

More news below. 👇👇

💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🧑🏻‍💼 Pedro Sánchez has an international fan club, but…

The Prime Minister’s moves to take on Trump and Netanyahu, as well as his recent confab of the international left in Barcelona, have brought him a sizable fan club abroad. And that fandom went up 11 on Monday, when the CIS public research institute’s April poll showed Sánchez’s PSOE extending its lead over the center-right PP to 12.8 points, 36.4% to 23.6%.

• Overseas praise flooded social media, like the post above from DemsMight, a pro-Democratic party (U.S.) messaging group: “Looks like being anti-war and having cojones is popular. Spain is taking notice.”

But there’s a data problem. The CIS has a certain cachet — publicly funded, historically respected — but in recent years, well, not so much. After taking office in 2018, Sánchez appointed sociologist José Félix Tezanos — then a sitting PSOE executive committee member — as chair. Since then, the rosy poll numbers the CIS hands the PSOE have been wrong so often that they mostly qualify as wish fulfillment.

Seriously, that bad. As friend-of-Bubble Kiko Llaneras of El País has documented, the CIS under Tezanos has overestimated the left in 41 of the 42 elections analyzed since 2018. (Another analysis finds that the CIS underweights support for the right — PP + the far-right Vox — by 11 percentage points on average.)

• Plenty better ones. Private pollsters like 40dB. and the El País poll-of-polls have been consistently more accurate, while the CIS lives in a parallel (inaccurate) universe where the left almost always does a bit better than in real life.

• It’s not just the numbers. Former members of the CIS advisory council — including old friends and heavyweight sociologists — have filed formal complaints and quietly walked away, decrying the “CIS de Tezanos” brand that now clings to the center like bad cologne. One described it bluntly as “the least neutral institution in Spain right now.”

But has Sánchez’s Trump pushback helped? Yes — just not as much as the CIS suggests. Polls by SocioMétrica for El Español have found that the PSOE would win 110 seats (out of 350) if elections were held today, up 12 from two months ago, just before Sánchez took his stand against the war. That growth has come at the expense of the PSOE’s far-left allies and Vox; the PP held steady with 140, and could still form a majority with Vox.

• Does playing with the numbers help your side? Doubtful — and Sánchez may not trust the CIS polls himself. As the commentariat often notes, if he actually believed he had a 13-point lead, he’d call elections tomorrow.

Our take. Sánchez’s pushback on Trump is paying dividends (and is eminently justifiable). But Spanish voters are tired of him for many other reasons, and won’t switch to him en masse for heckling the Orange Menace. Indeed, Sánchez may be turning into Southern Europe’s Mikhail Gorbachev — popular abroad and unloved at home. Maybe the UN has a job for him?

2. 🤝 PP and Vox finally strike a deal in Extremadura (and it’s… complicated)

Cue the Imperial March from Star Wars. More than 100 days after the regional elections, regional president María Guardiola’s PP and Vox have reached an agreement to form a government in Extremadura.

• The deal secures a four-year coalition. Vox will form part of the government with a vice presidency, two ministries, and a regional senate seat.

• This is big news because it wasn’t supposed to be this easy, or even happen. Guardiola openly clashed with Vox leader Santiago Abascal during the campaign, even accusing him of “machismo,” and initially resisted governing with his party.

Agree to disagree. The deal itself is broad (61 points and 74 measures), but it’s the content that’s raising eyebrows. Among (many) other things, the coalition is pushing for lower taxes; a tougher stance on immigration; a ban on burqas and similar garments in public spaces; and a clear rejection of parts of the EU’s Green Deal and the UN’s 2030 Agenda. It also includes measures to “protect” the agricultural sector from Brussels and to extend the life of the Almaraz nuclear plant.

• The most controversial part? The so-called “national priority” principle. On paper, it prioritizes access to public aid, like housing and social benefits, for those with a “real, durable connection” to Extremadura.

• But, but, but… In practice, critics say it’s a backdoor way of discriminating against immigrants. The policy would favor long-term residents regardless of nationality, but it also explicitly seeks to limit access for people in irregular situations and calls for reforming Spain’s immigration law to make this possible.

Slight problem. Under current Spanish and EU law, this kind of discrimination is likely illegal, and the backlash was immediate. The PSOE labeled the pact “racist” and warned that it would challenge any discriminatory measures in the Constitutional Court.

• Surprise! Even within the PP, there’s discomfort: Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso publicly questioned the legality of “national priority,” arguing that “you can’t exclude people who have rights and contribute.”

• Another surprise! Yesterday afternoon, emboldened by what was happening in Extremadura, Vox went on a series of, ahem, “controversial” statements about non-Spaniards in Parliament and insisted on the need to reform Spain’s immigration law. The PP chose not to confront them on the floor but then low-key sided with PSOE and voted against their motion, effectively killing it. Sad!

Business as usual. Guardiola, for her part, is trying to walk a fine line. On Tuesday, she insisted the government will “never break the law” while doubling down on the message that Extremadura won’t “pay the price of a broken migration model.”

• She said this isn’t exclusion, but fairness for those who “have been contributing for years.” Then, after being officially voted in as the new regional boss yesterday (see video above), she said "she wouldn’t apologize” for governing with Vox.

Other unholy alliances. While Vox and the PP are still trying to reach a deal in Castilla y León, the parties announced yesterday that they had also reached a deal in Aragón. Expect the debate over immigration to get a lot louder.

3. 🛂 The mass regularization of immigrants has begun — and everyone’s fighting about it

No one could have predicted this. Okay, everyone predicted this. Ram through a mass regularization via a questionable decreto real during peak culture war, and you’d expect just a little chaos and fighting. And we got it — in spades. Let us count the ways.

First, shambles. “The queues we see are only for getting the documents,” government workers deadpanned to La Voz de Galicia, after NGOs and municipal offices found scores of applicants asleep on cardboard outside their offices, waiting for Monday’s first in-person slots.

• So many people. Madrid’s daily applications leapt from 1,500 to 5,500 in a week. Outside Aculco, a Madrid NGO that handles 300 a day, hundreds queued from the night before. “We’re overwhelmed — we didn’t expect this,” director Álvaro Zuleta told CNN. The government’s own prep? A Friday-at-5:38pm email begging the Federation of Spanish Municipalities to pitch in.

• The biggest confusion. Municipal offices and NGOs have been slammed by applicants seeking a “certificate of vulnerability” — except no one quite knows how to certify it. Madrid’s social-policy chief (of the PP, so not a government fan) says functionaries are working practically blind. Valencia mayor María José Catalá (also PP) was blunter: “If the Minister of Inclusion, Elma Saiz, says that any undocumented person is vulnerable [which she kinda did], then the question is: why is a certificate required to prove it?“ Catalá is also asking Madrid to pay her city’s €1 million paperwork tab.

Second, prisoners. The Ministry of Interior quietly instructed Spain’s 80 state-run prisons to help inmates in preventive custody — some 3,500 foreigners without convictions — apply. The opposition? Not happy. “A preventive prisoner is someone a judge has sent to jail over the risk of flight or recidivism,” PP’s Alma Ezcurra tweeted.

• The worry? Paperwork moves faster inside prison than for migrants on sidewalks — and once regularized, deportation gets much harder. The move is probably fair — innocent until proven guilty and all — but not a great look.

Third, scams. Appointments for empadronamiento (residence registration) or to file paperwork at Correos are both free. A black market has sprung up anyway.

• Nayeli, a Mexican student, paid €150 for a padrón that never materialized; others report quotes of €400 for padrón and €600 for a single Correos slot. Police say mafias use bots to hoover up appointments and resell them in locutorios. The government delegate in Catalonia has had to beg consuls to tell their citizens: “Nobody has to pay a single euro.”

This probably isn’t making the whole regularization any more popular. SocioMétrica’s poll for El Español finds 66.7% of Spaniards against it — rising to 80.5% among 17-to-25-year-olds. Polls are famously imperfect, but those aren’t great numbers. “Spain is the daughter of immigration and will not be the mother of xenophobia,” Sánchez said. Fine sentiments. But Spaniards, it seems, are unconvinced.

4. 🦠 A Valencia med school gave anatomy students cadavers infected with Hep C and COVID

Whoopsie. According to investigations by El País and Eldiario.es, a private medical school in Valencia’s CEU Cardenal Herrera University has been using cadavers with infectious diseases in anatomy classes, including a body infected with hepatitis C, which is gross considered a high risk.

• Threepeat. According to El País, at least three bodies used between 2022 and 2024 carried infections: hepatitis C, flu (H1N1), and COVID-19.

Here’s why that’s a problem. Across Spain (and internationally), universities routinely exclude bodies with infectious diseases like hepatitis B/C or HIV from teaching use. Not necessarily because contagion is likely (experts say embalming and time reduce viral activity significantly), but because basic safety standards demand it. Even Spain’s own academic bodies stress this is “common sense.” (And this university’s own internal rules banned accepting those bodies.)

Who? Me? The university admitted there had been an “error” with the hepatitis C case, essentially acknowledging that the body should never have been accepted.

• We tried! Then they spoke to Las Provincias and explained that all bodies underwent serological testing and that the results came back negative for COVID and flu.

Another whoopsie. The university was already sanctioned by the regional government after a whistleblower revealed that, for years, cadavers had been embalmed by someone without legally required medical qualifications.

• Authorities confirmed the violation, which could have justified shutting down the facility, but ultimately issued a relatively small fine (€15,100).

Fortunately, no infections were reported among students, but this raises serious questions about how casually protocols may have been treated. Next, zombies! 🧟

5. 🫣 Bullfighting’s biggest star receives a brutal ‘rectal’ goring in Sevilla

Hurts to see it. One of Spain’s most famous matadors, Morante de la Puebla (whose retirement we covered last October), was left “very seriously” injured after being gored during a bullfight at the iconic Plaza de la Maestranza, in Seville.

• The bull caught him from behind, driving its horn into his glute and causing a 10 cm wound that perforated his rectum 😱 (one of the most serious injuries in bullfighting — and gross!).

Wait, who? Knowing our readers, you’re probably not into bullfighting. But Morante isn’t just any torero.

• A living legend. He’s like the Elvis of bullfighters and a cultural icon who has transcended the bullring to become a mass phenomenon in Spain. His post-retirement return this season had fans super excited, making the incident even more shocking.

Behind you! The moment itself was sudden and brutal. The bull ignored the cape, turned unexpectedly, and struck him from behind before he could react. Morante collapsed in the arena, visibly searching for the wound as assistants rushed in.

• The audience went silent while they carried him out “like a Christ figure” to the infirmary (yes, the bullring has its own operating room in case it’s needed). There, he was operated on before being transferred to the hospital.

A real pain in the ass. Doctors later confirmed the severity: damage to the anal sphincter and a perforation of the rectum, requiring complex reconstructive surgery (they promise to make his rectum Hollywood pretty). Surgeon Octavio Mulet said the real danger wasn’t just the injury itself, but the high risk of infection due to the location.

• Morante told El Mundo that it was “the most painful goring of my life” and that he feared the horn had reached “his guts”. Despite that, he’s already left the ICU, and he is stable and even “in good spirits.”

Hurts donut? The incident has reignited the usual debate around bullfighting. Animal rights party PACMA responded sharply, asking: “Does it hurt? For the bull, always.”

• They criticized the attention given to the matador’s injury while the bull's suffering “remains normalized”. (The bull, by the way, is now dead.)

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Grab the popcorn

🇨🇳 Sánchez visits China again. And again.

Back in town. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is back in Beijing. Again. But this time, the context couldn’t be more, ahem, loaded. As Spain’s relationship with the U.S. continues to sour over the war in Iran and broader geopolitical tensions, the PM has doubled down on a different strategy: strengthening ties with China and positioning Spain as a key player in a rapidly shifting global order.

• Hold on to your butts. This is Sánchez’s fourth trip to China in just over three years, a pace of diplomatic courtship that would be eyebrow-raising in normal times. Over a packed few days, he delivered a major speech at the “Harvard of the Communist Party”, met with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, signed cooperation agreements with Prime Minister Li Qiang, and toured tech giant Xiaomi (because apparently no trip to China is complete without touring a tech campus and pretending you understand the supply chain).

A busy agenda. Officially, Sánchez’s visit was about strengthening economic ties, attracting Chinese investment, and boosting Spanish exports, especially in sectors like agriculture, infrastructure, and green technology.

• Spain, like much of Europe, depends on China for key materials and renewable tech. But politically, this trip is about something bigger: positioning Spain as a “middle power” that can operate beyond the traditional U.S.-EU axis, especially at a time when Washington is increasingly unpredictable.

Not a one-off. Spain has quietly become one of the most China-friendly countries in the EU. While others in Europe flirt with a tougher stance, Sánchez has leaned into engagement, even as critics warn the relationship is deeply unbalanced, with China dominating trade. However, Madrid sees Beijing as both an economic opportunity and a geopolitical necessity.

• In Beijing, Sánchez didn’t hold back — well, at least not entirely. He called on Beijing to “do more” to uphold international law and help end conflicts from Gaza to Ukraine.

• He also delivered a message on trade: Europe has opened up, and now it’s China’s turn. “We need China to open up so Europe doesn’t have to close itself,” he said, calling the current trade deficit “unsustainable.”

• Really, Spain needs a trade upgrade. Spain’s trade deficit with China jumped to €42bn last year — accounting for 74% of Spain's total deficit. A central aim of the visit was to sign a High Quality Investment Agreement that, Bloomberg notes, aims to ensure that Chinese investments in Spain involve technology transfers to local companies, contracts for local suppliers, and jobs for locals. (🤞 on that.)

BFFs 4 ever. The real headline came in his meeting with Xi. Without naming Trump, both leaders took aim at what they see as a world drifting toward unilateralism, or, as Xi put it, “the law of the jungle.”

• Sánchez echoed that language, pushing for a stronger multilateral system where the EU and China cooperate to ease global tensions.

• Sánchez’s outspoken “No to war” stance, especially his refusal to support U.S. military operations in Iran, has made him something of an unlikely hero in China.

• Chinese officials and media have praised his position, portraying him as a leader willing to stand up to Washington and as being on the “right side of history”. More importantly, Beijing increasingly sees him as a bridge between China and Brussels (a role that, notably, parts of the EU now seem to support).

Sánchez is trying to redefine Spain’s place in the world, somewhere between Brussels, Washington, and Beijing — and a lot closer to the latter. Whether this is visionary or reckless probably depends on how the next six months of global trade politics (and the Orange Menace's whims) unfold.

More news below. 👇👇

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🛂 The government fired the starting gun on its massive immigrant regularization — and it’s already got troubles

Spain’s “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” moment is finally here. On Tuesday, the PSOE-led coalition approved a royal decree that will regularize an estimated 500,000 undocumented immigrants.

• We covered the mechanics in depth when the first draft dropped, so here’s the short version. Think tank Funcas estimates there are 840,000 undocumented immigrants in Spain; to qualify, you need to have lived here for at least five months as of Dec. 31, 2025, and have a clean record; and the application window runs until June 30. (Read this if you want more.)

Now, the fun part. The decree was pushed through as a real decreto rather than a real decreto-ley — a crucial distinction, because the latter requires congressional ratification within 30 days, while the former bypasses parliament entirely. No debate, no opposition input, no vote. It’s essentially payment to hard-left Podemos for support on other issues — and the reason the opposition is heading straight to the Supreme Court.

Politics first. You will not be shocked to learn that Vox hates it, and that the PP feels obliged to perform outrage lest Vox hoover up its voters.

• PP boss Alberto Núñez Feijóo said “immigration in bulk” (as opposed to case-by-case) “has no precedent in any European country” and could become “the gateway for illegality.”

• Madrid’s Isabel Díaz Ayuso announced she’d appeal to the Supreme Court over the supposedly catastrophic effects on public services. (Worth noting: both PP and PSOE governments have done big regularizations before, with no sudden service collapse to speak of.)

• Vox’s Santiago Abascal went ominous on X, writing, “The people won’t forgive you. Sooner or later you’ll have to pay for it.” His party also said it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Then there’s the fine print. El Consejo de Estado — the advisory body that checks legislation for constitutional compliance — found plenty to complain about.

• The most eyebrow-raising problem with the original draft? It let applicants self-certify that they had no criminal record. As in, “Trust me.” (A bit of an oversight!) The government has since amended this to require a police report; if an applicant’s home country is slow to provide one, Spain will follow up through diplomatic channels. Problem solved, technically.

And pity the poor bureaucrats. Half a million new applications are incoming, with no meaningful increase in the number of people to process them. Immigration officers across Spain have threatened to strike starting April 21 — the day after in-person appointments open — arguing the system simply isn’t ready for the flood.

• Our take? It’s a messy law, rushed through with minimal debate. But getting half a million people out of the shadows — where they are routinely exploited — is a good thing. (Sánchez’s own defense of the decree is here.)

2. ⚖️ PM Sánchez’s wife faces four charges and is on the brink of trial

Here we go. The investigation into PM Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, has taken a decisive turn. After two years of legal drama, Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has formally proposed sending her to trial — in Spanish legal terms, the step right before oral proceedings begin.

• 4 crimes. In a 39-page ruling, he argues there are sufficient indications to charge her with four crimes: influence peddling, corruption in business, embezzlement of public funds, and misappropriation of a trademark. (One earlier accusation, professional misconduct, has been dropped).

Wait… how did we get here? The case dates back to April 2024, when a complaint was filed by the pseudo-union Manos Limpias, a far-right organization known for filing politically charged lawsuits that usually end in nothing.

• That initial complaint snowballed, with additional accusations from hard-right groups like Hazte Oír and Vox turning what started as a fringe legal move into a full-blown political and judicial saga.

At the center of it all is Judge Peinado himself, who has become almost as controversial as the case. His investigation has been repeatedly corrected by higher courts, including the Audiencia Provincial, which has overturned several of his decisions and limited the scope of the case.

• He has attempted to expand the investigation in multiple directions — from Air Europa’s bailout to implicating ministers — mostly without success. Add unusually political language in his rulings (including comparisons of the Sánchez government to “absolutist regimes”), and you get a judge who has become part of the story.

The substance of the case. Peinado argues that Gómez used her position as the PM’s wife to advance her professional activities.

• The alleged influence peddling centers on her role as a university chair at the Complutense and her relationships with companies that later secured public contracts.

• The corruption in business charge relates to how she allegedly negotiated sponsorships with major firms.

• The embezzlement angle focuses on a Moncloa-funded adviser who, according to the judge, worked partly on Gómez’s private projects.

• The misappropriation claim revolves around a software project developed with public and private resources that was later registered under her name.

But wait, Gómez is not on trial yet. For that to happen, the accusers must formally request a trial within five days. If they do, Peinado can issue an order to open oral proceedings.

• From there, the case would still face scrutiny from the Audiencia Provincial, which has already shown it is willing to rein in parts of this investigation.

The government, unsurprisingly, is not buying any of this. Government sources speak of “indignation,” accusing the judge of timing his decisions to coincide with Sánchez’s international trips (this one dropped while the PM was in China).

• Justice Minister Félix Bolaños went further, saying the investigation has “embarrassed many judges” and caused “irreparable damage” to the justice system.

• Sánchez himself has stuck to a more measured line: “I ask the justice system to deliver justice,” while insisting his wife is innocent.

So what happens next? After the five-day window closes, expect appeals, procedural fights, and, if the trial moves forward, a media circus.

• Realistically, we won’t know whether Gómez actually faces trial for months, and possibly not before Peinado himself retires in September. We’ll keep you posted.

3. ✝️ We’re fighting about the Pope’s visit because… reasons

Unlike a certain Orange Menace, Spain isn’t fighting with the pope. That wouldn’t be original and, plus, we’re classy. But that doesn’t mean we’re above fighting about the pope. Oh no, we’re getting all hot and bothered before the holy fella’s June 6-12 visit to Spain.

• Shocker, we know. You will be surprised, we’re sure, to learn that the throwdown over Pope Leo XIV’s visit is all sorts of political and reflects the usual left/right fault lines in Spanish society (which are deep but no, not as deep as the onion/no onion in the tortilla thing).

Leo’s coming at a time of religious change. The power in Spain’s church has begun to shift away from the conservative clergy who’ve run it for, like, ever.

• The influence of the Conferencia Episcopal Española (CEE) — the administrative institution in Spain — over the PP has faded; its relationship with the government has soured during negotiations over reparations for the church’s massive child sex abuse scandal; and a new generation of TikTok Catholic influencers — and not, you know, priests — have become the voice of the youth.

• Plus, church leaders have faced fire from far-right Catholics (in Vox and beyond) for being okay with renaming the Valley of the Fallen during the time of Leo's predecessor, Francis. And Leo himself has taken many firm stands on the need to treat illegal immigrants with respect (not exactly a right-wing talking point).

So there have been plenty of dustups before Leo’s arrival. Let us count the ways.

• His arrival. El País reports that the conservative side of the church would like him to arrive down the Calle de Alcalá in an alabaster chariot drawn by a team of angels (the chariot is a joke!), and pass through the Puerta de Alcalá in Barrio Salamanca (aka the rich neighborhood). Left-leaning clergy say it’s clear he should arrive through Carabanchel (aka the not-so-rich neighborhood), where he would presumably wash the feet of the poor and marginalized of the zone (plus the hipsters who’ve recently colonized the area). Okay, the hipster feet thing is our idea.

• Sponsors? Clergy and others not aligned with the CEE are asking why the group is raising sponsorship money to finance the €15 million trip — for a donation of €500,000 to €1m, you get a private audience with Leo — when the Spanish church’s income was €1.4bn in 2024. (We’re just happy to see that Mahou has already signed up as a sponsor, so there will be plenty of beer.)

• Addressing parliament. There are discussions about having Pope Leo speak to parliament, which would be a first for a pope. But there are worries that Vox might stand him up — not only has he spoken out in defense of immigrants, but he has also warned of far-right groups trying to use the church to further their aims.

Whether you’re a believer or not, this visit will be interesting. Just remember to refer to him in Spanish as el Papa, not la Papa, which would be a female pope — unlikely — or a South American potato.

4. 💉 The ‘Caretaker of Olot’ will now be a she — but still in jail

You know how sometimes bad memories return when you least expect or want them? Well, that happened this week when the Catalan newspaper El Punt Avui reported that Joan Vila, a serial killer serving a 127-year sentence at Puig de les Basses prison, is transitioning to a woman and henceforth will be known as Aida.

• Excuse me? Yes, really. Vila — a nursing assistant nicknamed “The Caretaker of Olot” for murdering 11 elderly patients at the Fundació La Caritat nursing home in Olot, making him Spain’s #1 serial killer of the 21st century — is already undergoing hormone treatment, has moved to the women’s block, and is awaiting surgery.

So who is the “Caretaker of Olot”? Between August 2009 and October 2010, Vila killed 11 patients aged 80 to 96, using methods that escalated in cruelty: first a cocktail of barbiturates dissolved in water, then insulin injections for diabetic patients, and finally — in the last five days of his killing spree — forcing victims to drink bleach or injecting corrosive substances directly into their mouths.

• Caught by chance. Vila was arrested almost by accident, after a coroner refused to certify one death as natural because the victim couldn’t have ingested that much cleaning fluid by herself. Vila confessed almost immediately — eventually to all 11 murders — saying the deaths made him feel “as if he were God.” In 2013, he was sentenced to 127 years, with a maximum of 40 to be served. He has been inside since October 2010 and has not had a single day’s leave.

Worth noting: During the investigation, Vila told authorities he had always felt like “a woman trapped in a man’s body” — so this is not exactly a bolt from the blue.

• The transition began over a year ago with psychological support and, according to El País, with input from feminist organizations (though El País insists Joan will become Aura, not Aida, so take that as you will).

And no, this is not a get-out-of-jail scheme. Legal experts and the victims’ families’ lawyers are unanimous that the transition has zero effect on the sentence. The court that convicted Vila and the Supreme Court that confirmed the verdict remain unmoved.

• Not going anywhere. Previous attempts by Vila’s defense to ease his prison regime — seeking “third-degree” status and day passes — were already rejected by the courts, which noted that Vila can appear charming but has a capacity for manipulation. The only procedural step required is to notify the court of the name change. That’s it.

Inspiration. Two books have already been published about Joan/Aida. Maybe this will inspire a third.

5. 🇫🇷 Spain takes Cannes: 3 films, 1 Palme d’Or dream

Spanish cinema has decided to show up at the Cannes Film Festival this year and not just politely wave from the sidelines. For the first time ever, three Spanish films are competing for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize and basically the World Cup of auteur cinema.

• We’re talking about Pedro Almodóvar (obvi), Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and the duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (aka the Javis, who recently broke up their personal relationship but remain business partners), all in the main competition. That’s right, the main event.

Yes, this is a big deal. The Palme d’Or competition usually includes around 20 films, and it’s historically dominated by French and American cinema. Getting one film in is already a win. Getting three? That’s borderline suspicious.

• Spain has never pulled this off before, which makes 2026 feel like a full-blown moment. Even Cannes boss Thierry Frémaux admitted as much: the selection comes from over 2,500 films. So this is quite the statement.

The lineup reads like a generational handover. Almodóvar returns with Amarga Navidad, his most intimate film yet; a story about grief, depression, and the blurred line between fiction and personal truth.

• He himself admitted he’s been losing his usual “pudor,” leaning more into autofiction: “There’s a lot of fiction, but nothing is invented.” Translation: this one is about him.

Then there’s Sorogoyen with El ser querido, making his official competition debut after years of climbing the Cannes ladder. The film follows a troubled reunion between a celebrated film director (played by Javier Bardem) and his estranged daughter, an actress stuck in a dead-end career.

• What starts as a professional opportunity turns into an emotional minefield. Sorogoyen called the moment “historic” and pointed out what everyone is thinking: that Spanish cinema has been building toward this for years.

And finally, the wildcard: the Javis with La Bola Negra. It’s their first time in the Cannes competition, and they’ve gone straight to the top tier, which almost never happens.

• The film, starring Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close, and inspired by an unfinished work by Federico García Lorca, follows three interconnected stories of gay men across different periods in Spanish history. It’s ambitious, emotional, and very them.

Three directors, three styles, three generations. Even Almodóvar framed it as a “day of celebration” for Spanish cinema, especially at a time when auteur filmmaking needs visibility.

• The Javis, meanwhile, summed it up more bluntly. They’re just happy to be there, alongside filmmakers they grew up learning from.

🙏 Once again, please remember to share this newsletter with your friends on social media. The more we grow, the more information we’ll be able to offer each week.

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Grab the popcorn

⚖️ Spain’s two biggest corruption cases hit court at the same time

It’s time for “Kolditchen”! That’s right, Spain’s peculiar judicial version of the 2023 double feature hit “Barbenheimer” just arrived in a theater courtroom near you, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

• Party x2. Both the Kitchen case (corruption in the PP!) and the Koldo case (corruption in the PSOE!) trials are starting in the same week by complete coincidence (or so we hear).

And really, how often do you get to watch Spain’s two main political parties get breaded in corruption and dunked in hot oil like the croquetas we wish they were?

• It’s still early days in these trials. So we’re far from ready to put a bet prediction on Polymarket on who will go to jail. But a few things seem to be coming clear so far: everything politicians say is being recorded, pretty much nobody works in Spain, and women get the short end of the stick. So let’s get to it!

But first, a brief legal history lesson. Here's why each case is so relevant.

Caso Kitchen revolves around an alleged covert operation launched in 2013 by Spain’s Interior Ministry under PP PM Mariano Rajoy, which (allegedly) used police resources and secret state funds to spy on former PP party treasurer Luis Bárcenas. The goal? To obtain and potentially destroy documents linked to the party’s illegal financing.

• Why the name? It’s called “Kitchen” because the operation referred to Bárcenas' driver, who was allegedly recruited as an informant, as “the cook” (apparently he looked like a famous Spanish chef).

• Best costume: One of the strangest episodes involved a man disguised as a priest who stormed Bárcenas’ home at gunpoint in an apparent attempt to steal incriminating documents.

Caso Koldo revolves around an alleged corruption scheme during the pandemic, in which former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos (PSOE), his advisor Koldo García, and businessman Víctor de Aldama are accused of taking commissions in exchange for awarding public contracts for medical masks. We’ve covered this case in excruciating depth.

• Ye olde kickbacks. Prosecutors say they used privileged information and emergency procurement rules to steer contracts to companies linked to Aldama. They face charges including bribery, influence peddling, and embezzlement.

First, Koldo. You might think that a major trial about kickbacks on public contracts would focus on, well, kickbacks on public contracts. But you’d be wrong. The first two days of the Case Koldo dove deep into ex-Transport Minister Ábalos’s (extramarital) lovers, and how they were plugged into apartments and government jobs by Koldo and Aldama. 🤦

• Doesn’t anybody work around here? One former Ábalos lover, Jésica Rodríguez, who lived in a €2,700/month apartment paid for by an associate of Aldama, earned €44,000 from two public administrative assistant jobs she was given but never worked at. When asked why she didn’t work, she said she was waiting for Koldo or his brother to tell her what to do 😂.

• Staring at a wall. Another Ábalos lady was former Miss Asturias Claudia Montes (no, he is not that attractive; it’s just that politics is Hollywood for ugly people). After being plugged into a state rail industry job, she was placed in an office corner facing the wall. Feeling that her services weren’t being used, she said she reported the situation to Ábalos and Koldo García and, in the meantime, spent her work hours reading books in Oviedo’s library. Pressed by the presiding judge, she clarified that they were always “books about trains.”

• Not nice. Jésica definitely got it worse. Ábalos’s lawyer went on a smear campaign to suggest that she and the ex-transport minister had never been actual partners, asking her if she was a prostitute — a move that caused conternation in court and in the press room. Her (well played) answer? “No. I’m a registered dentist.”

Ooooh, we’re gonna watch this one! There’s clearly more fun to come.

And now the Kitchen. More than a decade after the alleged espionage took place, former Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, his deputy Francisco Martínez, and several senior police officials are finally set to face trial. That said, so far the trial’s big moments have been mostly procedural.

• No more delays. Judges rejected attempts by the defense to annul the proceedings or move them out of Spain’s High Court, arguing that it was time to finally examine what happened.

• Can we expand? Piling on, the PSOE asked the court to expand the investigation and bring back former PP secretary general María Dolores de Cospedal, arguing that new audio recordings suggest she may have played a more significant role than previously established.

• Well, no. The court and the prosecution ruled that Cospedal had already been cleared during the investigation phase and that reopening that line of inquiry would only delay the trial further.

Expect to hear more about this. Did parts of the state apparatus act illegally to protect a political party from a corruption scandal? So far, this trial has been the less spicy of the two, but that could change.

More news below. 👇👇

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🇮🇷 Spain: No to war, yes to NATO, Orange Man bad

Now that WW3 has been postponed for two more weeks, here’s a roundup of Iran news as it relates to Spain (we'll leave the world press to tell you the rest). The tl; dr version? Whatever is happening in the Middle East, Spain doesn’t want to be dragged into it.