đźđ± Spain Sanctions Israel
Plus: The AG will stand trial, FeijĂło likes fruit, and Americans buy gobs of properties.
Madrid | Issue #116
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Genocide, sanctions, and bans
đ„ Spain and Israel Enter Diplomatic Freefall
Spain is done mincing words on Gaza. This week, Prime Minister Pedro SĂĄnchez said the quiet part out loud: Israel is committing genocide. And he said it not once, not hedged, but repeatedly â a line no other EU leader has dared cross (well, almostâbut more on that in a second). And he backed it up with nine measures aimed at tightening the screws on Benjamin Netanyahuâs government.
The most notable measures. A permanent arms embargo (symbolic, given Israeli sales were less than 0.06% of Spanish defense exports); a ban on ships and planes carrying weapons or fuel for Israel from Spanish territory; a halt on imports from illegal settlements; travel bans for suspected war criminals; and more aid for Gaza and the UNâs battered UNRWA. Spain will also limit consular services for Spaniards living in Israeli settlements.
Strong words. âThis is not self-defense,â SĂĄnchez declared of Israelâs actions. âThis is extermination.â In case anyone missed the point, he framed the measures not just as a moral obligation but a legal one. The polling helps explain his confidence: 82% of Spaniards agree Israel is committing genocide.
The âgenocideâ thing. Remember when we said above that SĂĄnchez was the only European lead to call Israelâs actions in Gaza âgenocideâ? Well, there were two notable othersâEuropean Commission executive vice president Teresa Ribera, and former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. And you know what? Theyâre both Spanish.
No surprise, Israel went ballistic in response. The foreign minister accused Spain of antisemitism, corruption, and even dragged in the Inquisition. Madrid shot back, calling the charges âfalse and slanderous.â
Then came the ban. Israel barred Second Deputy PM Yolanda DĂaz and Youth Minister Sira Rego (both of far-left Sumar, which has been even more critical of Israel) from entering the country.
Pride. DĂaz, never one to waste a headline, said that she was âproudâ to be persona non grata, and demanded SĂĄnchez cut all diplomatic ties.
Ban #2. Madrid replied in kind, banning far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich from Spain.
The fine print. That flashy ban on weapons shipments to Israel? It doesnât touch U.S. military flights using the Rota and MorĂłn bases in AndalucĂa. Under the bilateral defense agreement, Washington doesnât have to say where its cargo is headed. Translation: U.S. arms for Israel can keep passing through Spain â just without Madrid asking awkward questions. Public outrage, private carveout.
Weâre still friends. The U.S. expressed âdeep concernâ and warned that Spain was restricting NATO operations. âThese measures embolden terrorists," a U.S. State Department spokesperson said. However, government sources in Madrid confirmed the bilateral defense agreement remains intact.
Back home, the opposition PP has tied itself in knots. Party leader Alberto NĂșñez FeijĂło calls Israelâs campaign in Gaza âinadmissibleâ but wonât say âgenocide.â Madrid mayor JosĂ© Luis MartĂnez-Almeida outright rejects the term. Madrid presi Isabel DĂaz Ayuso, naturally, says the left is simply âagainst the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.â
What unites them? Accusing SĂĄnchez of using Gaza to distract from scandals at home.
But distraction or not, Spain now stands out in Europe as the loudest critic of Israel. SĂĄnchez clearly thinks the domestic politics work: most Spaniards are horrified by Gaza, and Brusselsâ cautious line leaves him with the moral high ground. Internationally, though, Madrid is burning bridges â with Jerusalem, and quietly with Washington too.
Now the conflict is seeping back into Spain. A flotilla of ships that sailed from Spanish ports toward Gaza (and carries former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau) has twice been struck by drones in recent days. At Spainâs ongoing Vuelta a España cycling race, pro-Palestine demonstrators protesting the presence of the Israel-Premier Tech teamâowned by a close friend of Netanyahuâhave forced organizers to cut short several stages. And in Jerusalem, a Spanish student was killed in a terrorist attack this week.
The war has moved into Spainâs daily political life. It no longer feels like a distant happening that Spaniards only see glimpses of on TV.
More news below. đđ
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đŹ Five things to discuss at dinner parties
1. âïž Spainâs AG may be going on trial, but he wonât resign
Spain is about to see something itâs never, ever seen before. That is, its Attorney General on trial. On Tuesday, Supreme Court judge Ăngel Hurtado ordered Ălvaro GarcĂa Ortiz to stand trial and slapped him with a âŹ150,000 bond đ€ to cover potential liabilities if heâs found guilty.
The charge? Hurtado says GarcĂa Ortiz may have broken the law by leaking a confidential email written by the lawyer of Alberto GonzĂĄlez Amador â yes, that Alberto, the boyfriend of Madrid regional presi Isabel DĂaz Ayuso (of the opposition PP).
So? The February 2024 email admitted Amador had âcertainly committed two tax crimesâ and tried to cut a plea deal with prosecutors. According to Hurtado, GarcĂa Ortiz leaked that document for the trivial aim of disproving an El Mundo piece that suggested (wrongly) it was prosecutors who had offered the deal.
Youâre better than this. The judge wrote the leak of confidential information âputs into question the prestige of the institutionâ and risks undermining both the Attorney Generalâs office and the defendantâs right to a fair defense.
How did we get here? Amador, accused of avoiding âŹ350,000 in taxes with fake invoices, was already facing trial. But when his plea offer leaked â landing in Cadena SERâs hands within hours â it shifted the political spotlight from his admitted fraud to the prosecutorâs office itself.
Investigators havenât found smoking-gun proof GarcĂa Ortiz personally leaked it, but they did find that Madridâs chief prosecutor sent him the email that night. GarcĂa Ortiz later wiped his phone. The judge says thatâs enough to prosecute.
You might think an AG made to stand trial would quit. Youâd be wrong. Instead, GarcĂa Ortiz insists heâs staying put. And while the PP is screaming âinstitutional degradationâ like their pants are on fire, PSOE ministers like FĂ©lix Bolaños and Pilar AlegrĂa are circling the wagons.
Not the droids youâre looking for. They are saying they have total confidence in the AG, total confidence in the Supreme Court, and everyone should breathe.
Wonât be thrown out. Hurtado himself declined to suspend GarcĂa Ortiz â citing a âlegal vacuumâ that means the AG canât be sidelined like an ordinary prosecutor.
Thereâs also a constitutional wrinkle. Experts argue that including potential fines in the âŹ150,000 bond violates the presumption of innocence, per a 2023 Constitutional Court ruling. Expect appeals.
The trial itself will take months to set up. The conservative-leaning seven-judge panel includes Supreme Court heavyweights Manuel Marchena, Carmen Lamela, and Ana Ferrer, so it wonât lack for drama.
Maybe thereâs a silver lining? Having an Attorney General in the dock could help him understand both sides of the law. Then again⊠probably not.
2. đ Spain to smokers: take it outside⊠way, way outside
Got a light? Spainâs government has a new plan to make it so hard to smoke that it might actually become cool and rebellious again (and not just stupid and unhealthy). Marlboro Man? PassĂ©! Let us now praise âIllegal Cig on a Terrace Man.â
Tighten the screws. The Council of Ministers (aka the Cabinet) on Tuesday approved a draft law that would overhaul Spainâs already tough anti-tobacco regime.
Been here before. Spain was once the cool kid of public-health policyâit banned smoking in workplaces in 2005, and pushed it out of bars and restaurants in 2010. Now Health Minister MĂłnica GarcĂa of the Sumar lefties wants a fresh crackdown aimed at cigarettes, vapes, and even those candy-flavored disposable e-cigs that you smoke at music festivals. âEvery year,â she said. â50,000 people die from smoking.â
So what does Mónica want? What do any of us want? Peace, love, a nice caña⊠Oh, in terms of the law? Let us count the ways. Fine, there are basically three parts.
Shrinking the smoke space. The bill would make bar/resto terraces, bus stops, train platforms, playgrounds, sports facilities, outdoor concerts, and even work vans smoke-free zones. Also verboten: anywhere within 15m of a school, hospital, or university entrance. Bars and restaurants will have to post clear signage, so you can no longer claim you didnât see the rule as you spark up with your nice caña.
Think of the children. Up to now, it was only illegal to sell tobacco to minors. Under the new law, it will be illegal for them to consume it at allâcigarettes, vapes, shishas, nicotine pouchesâŠthe works. Parents of teen smokers would even face fines. In other words â Dear minors: No smoking, period.
Vapes = cigarettes. E-cigs and other ârelated productsâ (shishas, heated-tobacco gadgets, herbal mixes) will be treated exactly like traditional cigarettes. That means no puffing them at festivals, in patios, or in the carpool van. Disposable vapes get banned altogetherâboth because they hook kids with strawberry flavoring and because theyâre âespecially damagingâ for the environment. Also, because when you smoke them you look like a child with a binky.
Canât always get what you want. You might read this and say, âSo far, so strict.â But itâs not as strict as GarcĂa originally wanted. Missing from the draft law is the generic, logo-free packaging that already exists in countries like France, as well as higher cigarette taxes. Both ideas died in coalition horse-trading after Spainâs competition authority threw cold water on them.
But donât expect your neighborhood terrace to go smoke-free overnight. The bill now goes to public consultation, then back through the Council of Ministers, and then to Parliament, where it still needs a majority, etc. Even if it passes intact, thereâs a 12-month transition period for things like clearing out the stock of single-use vapes.
Soânot that we want to encourage thisâbut looks like itâs time to smoke âem if you got âem.
3. âčïž 37.5-hour workweek in Spain? Lol, no.
We regret to inform you that your dream of working fewer hours for the same salary is deadâat least for now.
That would be a âno.â On Wednesday, Spainâs Congress voted to kill the governmentâs plan to reduce the standard workweek from 40 to 37.5 hours.
Not even a peep. đ The bill didnât even make it to debate. Instead, the center-right PP, the far-right Vox, and Catalan separatists Junts teamed up, passed a motion to reject, and sent the whole thing straight to the shredder.
For Pedro SĂĄnchezâs PSOE, this is inconvenient. But for his junior coalition partner Sumar, and especially for its leader Yolanda DĂaz, it is a shitshow devastating.
Coulda been a contender. The shorter workweek was her flagship proposal, her one big chance to be relevant. Now itâs gone, leaving DĂaz exposed and furious and lookinâ kinda sad. âčïž
You could tell how personal this was by DĂazâs floor speech. Speaking of the âthree right wings with different namesâ, she accused Junts of betraying their Catalan voters and siding with âthe most reactionary sectors of Spanish big business.â
Not happy with Miriam. DĂaz told their spokesperson Miriam Nogueras (with whom a Sumar rep had negotiated for months): âWith this vote, you do not represent the self-employed, the butcher, but the interests of Mercadona and big business.â At one point DĂaz even declared, "In the class struggle, you represent capital, and I and the Government of Spain represent the working people, Catalan and Spanish." â
But if DĂaz was bitter, her opponents were gleeful. Like, we mean, seriously enjoying DĂazâs (political) death foretold.
The right. The PP mocked the proposal as âscience fiction,â sneering that she was promising Spaniards âto work less and get paid the same. Why not half as much work for double or triple the salary?â And the tighty far-righties? Vox warned it would wreck small businesses and destroy jobs and said SĂĄnchez had âsent [DĂaz] to the slaughter.â.
The separatists. Junts twisted the knife: after months of negotiations with DĂazâs ministry, they dismissed the whole project as reckless, damaging to small businesses, and âagainst Catalonia.â Then Nogueras got personal and told DĂaz her party was â how can we say this delicately? â um,
fâing meaninglessirrelevant: âMs. DĂaz, you talk as if you had a majority you donât; the polls place you in a residual position.â Ouch. đ„
Itâs not hard to see why DĂaz is rattled. The PSOE has quietly kept its distance, leaving her to take the hit. Junts, once a potential partner, dunked on her movement. And for a party like Sumarâalready fuzzy in identity and shrinking in the pollsâthis kind of very public failure cuts deep.
So whatâs left? DĂaz says sheâll push forward with consolation-prize measures: stricter rules on out-of-hours contact and digital âright to disconnect.â Important? Sure. Kinda. But not exactly the stuff of history.
Still, DĂaz insists the 37.5-hour week will happen someday.âThis debate will be won because the force of history will prevail,â she said. We tend to agree. But if it happens, odds are her name wonât be on the law.
4. đ FeijĂłoâs âI like fruitâ karaoke video goes viral and⊠sparks a dumb political fight
Spanish politics is weird. Case in point: PP boss Alberto NĂșñez FeijĂło hopped on stage at a bar in A Coruña (Galicia) this weekend and belted out Mi limĂłn, mi limonero (My lemon, my lemon tree) and then posted the video on his Instagram Stories with the caption âMe gusta la frutaâ (âI like fruit).â đ.
Origin. The phrase might sound innocent (even wholesome!), but in Spainâs current political climate, itâs loaded with meaning.
Ayuso v. SĂĄnchez. Back in 2023, Madridâs regional president and PP heavyweight Isabel DĂaz Ayuso was caught on camera in Parliament muttering âhijo de putaâ (âson of a bitchâ) about PM SĂĄnchez when he was addressing the floor.
Who, me? When her team was asked about the insult, they initially claimed she was just sayingâMe gusta la fruta.â Eventually, the team admitted the insult.
A meme is born. Within days, PP supporters were chanting it at rallies, making t-shirts, and turning it into an inside joke that everyone understood. (If it all feels somewhat familiar, thatâs because it mirrors the U.S. experience with âLetâs Go Brandonâ,
a euphemism for Fuck You Bidena cruder insult against President Joe Biden.)
FeijĂłoâs Instagram post was the latest escalation in this running joke, and the SĂĄnchez government didnât find it funny.
A bit exaggerated? FĂ©lix Bolaños, Minister of the Presidency, said FeijĂło was contributing to what he called âthe ethical and political collapse of the PP.â âŒïž
Who said that? The insult was also somewhat of a surprise, coming from someone who is seen as calmer and less prone to insults than Ayuso. (Also, when he was elected leader of the PP in 2022, he said he wasnât coming to Madrid to insult SĂĄnchez but to defeat him.)
I will take a moment in the limelight. Ayuso, who wasnât involved in this but is never one to miss a fight, discussed FeijĂłoâs use of an expression that, after all, was invented by her own team.
You cannot be serious. In a TV interview, she mocked the PSOE outrage, saying, âWith everything going on in this country, the government is worried about this? Please. I really do like fruit â a lot. Thatâs just how it is.â
Humor-free zone. Ayuso, who really doesnât like SĂĄnchez, like, at all, said the controversy is proof that SĂĄnchez canât take a joke: âIf they get upset, itâs because they donât understand humor. Someone who thinks heâs the lord of all three branches of government doesnât like it when others laugh at him.â
And now letâs move on. To more serious, less fruit-driven news.
5. đșđž Americans take over the housing market (kinda)
Spainâs real estate market is wild right now (we just wrote this great piece about it).
Supply, meet demand. Prices are high, demand is through the roof, and foreign buyers are flocking to snatch up everything from downtown Madrid penthouses to country homes in Asturias.
But hereâs the plot twist. For the first time ever, Americans have become the number-one foreign buyers of property in five Spanish autonomous communities: the Basque Country, La Rioja, Asturias, Galicia, and Castilla-La Mancha.
U.S. buyers barely registered on the map just four years ago, as those regions were mostly dominated by the usual suspects: the French, Belgians, and Germans. But since the pandemic, Americans have gone from near-invisible to market leaders in these areas, a change that even seasoned real estate experts didnât see coming.
They love us, they really love us. According to a report from CaixaBank Research published by El Español, part of this surge is linked to a boom in U.S. tourism.
Hello, yanqui. In 2019, 3.3 million Americans visited Spain. By 2024, that number jumped to 4.3 million, with many of those tourists falling in love with places like San SebastiĂĄn, Santiago de Compostela, and the wine regions of La Rioja.
Off the beaten track. Unlike the traditional beach-home buyers in Mallorca or Marbella, these new American homeowners are snapping up properties in lesser-known, non-touristy regions, often drawn by lower prices and the promise of a better quality of life (or as a plan B escape hatch from the Orange Menace).
Now, this is far from an invasion. Americans only make up 2.6% of all foreign, non-resident property purchases in Spain. Still, their growth has been explosive. For context, 18% of all home sales in Spain between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025 went to foreign buyers, the highest share ever recorded since records began in 2006.
Those were the days. For decades, the breakdown was simple: British buyers ruled AndalucĂa and Alicante, Germans were kings of the Balearic and Canary Islands, and French buyers snapped up homes in Catalonia.
But that hierarchy is shifting. British buyers have dropped from 22% of the market pre-pandemic to just 15% now, thanks to Brexit and the weakened pound.
And whoâs stepping in? Besides Americans, itâs the Poles (yes, Poles!), and Latin Americans from Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico.
So if youâre trying to buy a place in Spain (especially in the north), you should expect more competition and higher prices, particularly at the high end. And if you start hearing more American accents in the streets of Bilbao or Santiago, now you know why.
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