Spain Notes, Dec 5: Israel-Gaza + Podemos + PISA education + media suing Meta
1/ Abascal (Vox) has gone to Israel. Vox says he has met two Israeli government ministers “to deepen relations between Vox and Likud”. The photos show him touring a destroyed room with a helmet and a flak jacket.
2/ Europa Press reported that Abascal had told the Israeli government ministers of “the shame that most Spaniards felt” upon watching the statements made by the Prime Minister, Sánchez (PSOE) and upon learning of the “applause” that “he got from the Hamas terrorist group”.
3/ People attending a speech by Borrell (EU foreign affairs, Spain, PSOE) yesterday walked out on him when he began to talk of “slaughter” in Gaza. “Maybe I said some inconvenience”, he responded, but that the UN had described it as such too.
4/ Belarra (Podemos) is railing against the Israeli propaganda apparatus and the “total dehumanisation” of the Palestinian victims.
5/ After suddenly deleting all of his tweets about his supposed affair with the Queen of Spain, Jaime Del Burgo posted a more political tweet against the King for not trying to stop the amnesty deal, in line with positions expressed by the alt-right over the past few weeks at the protests outside socialist HQs.
6/ Feijóo (PP) said during a radio interview that Sánchez was incapable of distinguishing the truth from lies and that this is “the darkest and most disappointing moment of Spanish democracy”.
7/ PP spokesman Borja Sémper said that the PP “is not in politics to be in opposition, we are here to govern and change things”. Just two weeks ago, Feijjóo said it was time for the PP to lead “the majority oppposition”.
8/ The Podemos leader in Madrid, Jesús Santos, has left the party: “my political differences with the leadership of Podemos today are enormous”, he writes, adding that it was a mistake to not join forces with Sumar as an improved way of doing politics for people on the left.
9/ The global PISA education report for 2022 is out. Spain got an average score on all three components—maths, reading and science—compared to the other countries. Not particularly better or worse than anyone.
10/ El País writes an editorial on the AMI media association suing Meta for anti-competitive advertising practices. El País and PRISA are part of the AMI. The editorial is interesting, though, for its explanation of how the media advertising business works: by selling your attention.
The answer to that is (still) readers to journalists direct: