Spain Notes, Sept 21: amnesty + hairdresser's

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1/ Vox and the PP voted against being able to use Catalan, Basque and Galician in the national parliament in Madrid. The vote passed anyway, 180 in favour, 170 against. All of the PP and Vox’s amendments were rejected by the rest.

2/ A new national CIS survey said the Socialist Party would win a new general election, if MPs were unable to appoint a new Prime Minister over the next few weeks. PSOE: 33.5%, PP: 31.7%, Sumar: 11.9%, Vox: 11.1%.

3/ Old socialists Alfonso Guerra (83 years old) and Felipe González (81) used a book presentation to charge against Sánchez’s amnesty deal. Guerra said he had always tried to defend socialist policies as announced by the Prime Minister but then Sánchez suddenly u-turned and went in the opposite direction. González said Sánchez was “an election loser” trying to do a deal with “a fugitive from justice”.

4/ A PSOE spokesman called the comments “disloyal”.

5/ Guerra then also said in a TV interview that Deputy PM Yolanda Diaz spent…a lot of time at the hairdresser’s…which immediately caused a media and Twitter storm.

6/ Former Deputy PM Carmen Calvo (PSOE) spat back in the halls of parliament that “it is absolutely detestable that we [women] are judged for our hair instead of for our brain power”.

7/ Equality Minister Irene Montero (Podemos, but no longer an MP), said Guera’s chauvinist comment, “Rubiales style”, was nothing new, “Spain has changed, although they haven’t realised it yet”.

8/ Sánchez defended the position Catalan separatists have been insisting on since 2017: “I have always said that a political crisis should never have become tangled up in the courts”. That’s just a lie: Sánchez promised several times in years past to bring Puigdemont back from Belgium and see him tried for his crimes.

9/ A government spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, described the PM as “brave and determined” in an interview.

10/ Vox leader Abascal said “Sánchez and his accomplices are preparing a coup, humlliating Congress and courts, releasing rapists, negotiating with fugitives and surrendering borders…”

11/ Popular Party leader Feijóo, echoing recent comments from senior old socialists and former PP PM Aznar, said Spain now faced “an inflection point in its democratic history”, were Sánchez and the separatists to go through with the amnesty deal.

12/ In non-political news today, 11 male minors have been identified by police in Almendralejo (Extremadura) for producing deepfake AI porn photos of 22 of their female minor friends and posting them on social media. A 2023 version of teenagers photoshopping the girls’ faces onto deepfake AI porn bodies.

13/ And seen as we’ve mentioned Rubiales, again, the latest in the national football scandal is that the new Spain women’s manager, Montse Tomé, might already be out after the matches against Sweden and Switzerland. Stay tuned.