Spain Notes, Oct 2: Murcia nightclub fire
1/ At least 13 people died in a terrible nightclub fire in the south-eastern city of Murcia in the early hours of Sunday morning. Another two people are still missing. The clean up and search of the three premises continues.
2/ The intensity of the blaze was such that only three of the bodies could be identified via their fingerprints, the Mayor, Ballesta (PP), announced last night. The rest will have to undergo DNA analysis.
3/ One distraught father played journalists at the scene a last WhatsApp audio message from his daughter to her mother, similar to the ones released from victims of the Twin Towers attack in New York in 2001: “Mum, I love you, we’re going to die”. The media were criticised for sharing the clip, with one channel, Antena 3, publishing a QR code for viewers to click to listen.
4/ The Prime Minister and the King offered their condolences, and the story was the lead international story (CNN, BBC, Sky) for most of the day.
5/ The investigation into the causes has only just begun. The Mayor of Murcia said City Hall would join the investigation and “this is all going to be cleared up, whatever the consequences, whoever falls, public or private”.
6/ In national politics, King Felipe will today being another round of talks with party leaders after the failed confidence vote in Feijóo (PP) last week, which will likely lead to Sánchez (PSOE) being named as the new candidate. The King has little to no wriggle room constitutionally to affect the outcome.
7/ Sánchez has almost two months, until the end of November, to try. If he fails, a new general election would be held in the middle of January.
8/ Images appeared to show only a few hundred marchers in support of the sixth anniversary of the October 1 separatist independence referendum. Local police estimated 4,500. This is very far from the hundreds of thousands they used to gather for such events.
9/ In a speech, though, Puigdemont promised that “things have started to change in the right direction” and that “all attempts” to highlight that the October 1 was a failure or no longer relevant “have failed and will fail”. He admitted the last six years, which he has spent as a fugitive in Beglium, hadn’t been easy.
10/ The Catalan separatist political class, however still wants a new referendum on independence as well as the amnesty. Have they overplayed their hand this time?
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