Spain Notes, Sept 4: Puigdemont + storms
(Some nice drone footage I took the other day of a Bronze Age settlement in Murcia. 4,000 years ago…From the ground, if you’re not right up on top, you can’t even see it. From the air, it looks that spectacular…)
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1/ Major national stories as everyone gets back to work after the summer include the Rubiales World Cup mess, the ongoing political negotiations for a national government and a storm over what just happened with the weather.
2/ The Rubiales scandal has died down over the past few days. More than a week of explosive global media coverage and events has become bogged down in the legal mud and laws surrounding suspension. The Spanish FA chairman has already been suspended by FIFA and the Spanish FA has taken away his money, his official car and his mobile phone but in Spain the sports court has ruled that the sports council cannot suspend him for as long as it might liked to have done so: the matter is “grave” but not “very grave”. The Spanish government would like to suspend him and is considering an appeal.
3/ The Deputy Prime Minister of Spain, Yolanda Díaz (Sumar), as negotiations over a future left-wing-separatist coalition government continue, has decided to meet…Puigdemont…in Brussels. This is if the first time a senior member of the Spanish government has made that trip since the former Catalan leader fled to Belgium in 2017 after declaring independence. He is still a fugitive from Spanish courts
4/ No word yet of the content of the meeting. “This is disgraceful”, said Ayuso, the FIrst Minister of Madrid on Twitter. Expect more energetic reactions this evening from the opposition.
5/ Did AEMET, the Spanish weather service, get the storm warnings right over the weekend? Or right enough?
6/ By Sunday night, its own data were showing that the worst hit areas had been Cádiz and Tarragona, about 400 km to the left and right of the path forecast for the worst of it. Regional emergency services frightened everyone with a phone in the Spanish capital by sending out a civil protection alert. By the evening, El Mundo was running a headline talking about “false alarms” and quoting someone from Madrid City Hall saying they didn’t understand what had gone wrong.
7/ Shortly after 10 p.m., the First Minister of Andalusia, Moreno (PP), chimed in on Twitter, saying that while precuation is necessary to protect lives, “if a public organisation warns of ‘extreme danger’, it must be very sure, because that has social and economic consequences”.
8/ The Mayor of Madrid, Almeida (PP), after warning of a “historic” storm to come on Sunday, said on Monday morning that AEMET should be more precise in its forecasts. These things cost money, he said, but “I am more worried about the credibility we might have in citizens’ minds”.
9/ AEMET made a corporate statment on Twitter that they “always work with rigour and a high level of responsibility”.
10/ The worst of the weather hit parts of Madrid, the region, not Madrid, the capital city, and nearby Toledo (Castilla la Mancha), during the early hours of Monday morning: Chozas de Canales, Guadamur, a metro train somewhere on the network, Aldea del Fresno, where bridges were destroyed, or Navalcarnero. One 10-year old boy who went missing in Aldea was rescued hanging on to a tree. Police are still searching for his father.