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TODAY'S COLUMN
Dec 1: The mystery of Spain’s firecracker envelopes (🔊 audio)
Dec 5: The Spain-Morocco World Cup match (🔊 audio)
NOTES
1—Vox blames Moroccan communities in general. Buxadé wants Spaniards cheering Spain and "we do not want to see the images we have seen, of Moroccan communities in Brussels, committing acts of vandalism." Sánchez’s government should generally bring them all to order.
2—Islamic organisations in Spain have called for calm in a statement before the Spain-Morocco match in the World Cup tomorrow: emotions of joy or sadness, whether they win or lose, "cannot lead to public disorder that harms our neighbors or the urban environment that is for everyone's use" nor lead to "contempt for others".
3—So far, in Spain, and unlike what we saw in Belgium and the Netherlands last week, I have only seen videos of peaceful celebrations and joy when Morocco has won. Here, for example, are some images from Lorca (Murcia) last Thursday when they won against Canada.
4—Police presence will be increased in many towns and areas of cities where there is a large Moroccan population, though. Is there more likelihood of violence if Morocco or Spain wins or loses? Psychologically, which outcome would anger which national group more and lead someone to start throwing bricks or the prowling of city streets in mobs?
5—The statistics on this are very complex, depending on how you try to look at them, but 2021 INE data show the largest numbers of officially registered African migrants are to be found in the following Spanish provinces (as a percentage of total population in each province in brackets).
Barcelona: 141,202 (2.47%)
Murcia: 96,168 (6.33%)
Madrid: 87,709 (1.30%)
Almería: 68,630 (9.38%)
Alicante: 67,249 (3.57%)
6—Bal will challenge Arrimadas for the leadership of Ciudadanos. He announced on Saturday. Arrimadas says Bal's announcement was "a huge surprise" that now generates "uncertainty." She wants unity to avoid a battle: "We cannot focus on internal struggles thinking about the general elections [...] we cannot allow the last four years of work to be thrown overboard".
7—The PP wants to grab those politicians leaving Ciudadanos. "Ciudadanos’ talent has an door open in the Popular Party", Elías Bendondo said: "the PP is a open-door party, for coming in and for going out".
8—A poll in El País, if it does not quite give victory to the left, at least leaves it up in the air again. Would allk depend on regional nationalists again..
9—Three more envelopes intercepted…with animal eyes. At the Ukrainian Embassy, again, and the two Ukrainian consulates in Barcelona and Malaga. The Ukrainians say that there have now been 21 such cases in 12 countries.
10—Triple the communist stamps! Someone in the Transport Ministry has a sense of humour or is bent on winding up the right. They have approved an increase, a tripling, of the print run for the controversial Communist Party stamp. From 135,000 to 435,000 stamps. It’s already in the official gazette.
11—Spain on Substack: have started digging around for you to see who else is writing about Spain. Will include anything interesting I find in the daily notes. Take a look at
for analysis of Spain's World Cup matches: Costa Rica, Germany, Japan. They also do a podcast 🔊12—On the politics side, Spain seems to have some global mindshare for feminist gender issues: take a look at the
round up of the latest women's protests, and that reminds me of something sent along back in October about "gender contagion" in Spain, which was here on💰 Subscribe now:
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