Spain Notes, Dec 4: amnesty + mediator + political impact + royal scandal

1/ The Socialist Party and Junts (Puigdemont) began their negotiations on the amnesty deal side of things in Geneva, Switzerland. The El Salvador diplomat Francisco Galindo has been named as a mediator.

2/ Sánchez said during a radio interview this morning that he wasn’t planning on doing the amnesty deal but that the results of the July general election made it necessary “for the different forces in parliament to have to take that decision”.

3/ Aznar (PP, former PM): “shameful” that the Spanish government is doing a “clandestine” meeting in Switzerland like that.

4/ The right held another Sunday protest in Madrid against Sánchez and the amnesty deal, near PSOE HQ.

5/ Feijóo: “Sánchez appointing an expert in guerillas to decide on the future of Spain is humiliating”, it’s “shameful” that Spain is global news “because we are going backwards in rights”.

6/ Almeida: “We don’t need a guy from El Salavador to tell us what to do”.

7/ Ayuso also spoke of the “humilliation” of negotiations in Switzerland.

8/ A survey in El País shows 60% of Spaniards in regions of the country that are not Catalonia and the Basque Country think the amnesty deal is “unfair” and “privileged”, including about half of socialist (PSOE) voters.

8/ The survey also shows the left losing about eight seats in total, and the right gaining seven of those, which would put PP + Vox over the overall majority line in parliament.

10/ ABC sees the new Sánchez’s foreign policy affecting the image of the country abroad: “[it] has become the mirror in which his ideological move towards positions that are more like the far-left”.

12/ Vox and its satellite accounts are still protesting outside PSOE HQ in Madrid, calling for “permanent mobilisation” but the numbers being reported are now down into the hundreds.

12/ A guy called Jaime del Burgo, the former brother-in-law of the Queen of Spain, tweeted a photo of her years ago in which he said she was declaring her love for him. In other tweets, he alleged the two were still lovers “at the end of 2014”, months after Felipe was proclaimed King that summer. This morning, after the tweets had been seen by millions of Spaniards and “Cuckolded VI” began trending, Del Burgo had deleted all of the tweets.

13/ A suggestion it might be related not to the left…but the alt-right.

14/ A group of Spanish media companies, AMI, is suing Meta for 550 million euros for not complying with EU data protection law between May 2018 and October 2023. AMI sees an illegal competitive advantage in advertising.

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