Business over Tapas 636

A digest of this week's Spanish financial, political and social news aimed primarily
at Foreign Property Owners:
Prepared by Lenox Napier. Consultant: José Antonio Sierra
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June 18 2026 / Nº 636

Editorial:
Business over Tapas
A digest of this week's Spanish financial, political and social news aimed primarily at Foreign Property Owners:
Prepared by Lenox Napier. Consultant: José Antonio Sierra
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email: lenox@businessovertapas.com
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Business over Tapas and its writers are not responsible for unauthorised copying or other improper use of this material.
Subscription and e-mail information in our archives is never released to third parties.


June 18 2026 Nº 636





Editorial:

Let’s see, our presidents (or rather, prime ministers): - we’ve had Felipe González (sometimes known in those days as Señor X) and his… at the very least… improper war against the Basque nationalists with the GAL (27 state-murders); José María Aznar who blamed the same Basque group, the ETA, for the Al Qaeda train explosions in Madrid in retaliation for his war with Bush Jr and Blair in Iraq (192 deaths), plus having some of his ministers ending up investigated or even incarcerated for corruption; there was Zapatero and his peculiar eyebrows; followed by the mysterious M.Rajoy (any Spaniard knows where I’m going with this) and his departure precisely for corruption; and now Pedro Sánchez, who we are told has both a shifty brother and a dodgy wife.
While the far-right, the media-whores, the conservative judiciary, the CIA and the Mossad are doing what they do best - character assassination - the pickings on the Sánchez family are a trifle thin. The brother and the wife are - as we all know full well - both squeaky clean (as was the attorney general, not that it mattered much) and anyway, there’s the far more traditional fare of the disgraced ex-ministers Santos Cerdán and José Luis Ábalos to keep the courts happy.
But Zapatero a crook? He is the benevolent and slightly forgettable ex-president who nevertheless got Spain out of Iraq, ended ETA (through dialogue rather than retaliatory assassinations), legalised mixed-marriages and brought about both women’s rights in the workplace and parity in politics. A piece from The Economist says ‘…the judicial probe centres on Mr Zapatero’s controversial ties to the dictatorship in Venezuela, and in particular the €53m bail-out by Mr Sánchez’s government of Plus Ultra, a Venezuelan-Spanish airline, during the pandemic. The judge claims that payments of around €2m to Mr Zapatero and his daughters for consultancy work were mainly a commission for arranging the rescue…’
This following a timely leak from the CIA, via Homeland Security, of the contents of a phone held by Rodolfo Reyes, a Venezuelan partner of Plus Ultra airways, confiscated at the US border and cloned back in 2021 (the use of any information extracted in such a way would be illegal under Spanish law). Whether Washington wanted to poke the Spanish hornets’ nest and whether Zap’s work in the dreaded Venezuela had anything to do with the sudden release of the damning documents is open to surmise.
The other day, the Guardia Civil were searching his offices (all live on TV of course) while looking for proof of corruption and found some expensive jewellery in his safe. Zapatero it seems took bribes, -oh how are the mighty fallen!- and was paid in gold and rare stones (rather than the more traditional transfer of funds to the Cayman Islands). The baubles have been assayed (by a Madrid jeweller’s shop - belonging by chance to the ex-PP minister Ana Mato), and valued at over a million euros. Well, there’s no arguing with that!
Zapatero told the judge on Wednesday that he did not contact any authority to influence the Plus Ultra bailout and he denied receiving bribes. Later on Wednesday, Zapatero gave a written statement insisting on his innocence and granting ‘a voluntary universal authorization to facilitate the tracing of any of his money and accounts’.
He further stated that he would fully explain with documentation the jewels found in his safe later next week. The jewels, says Infobae, appear to have come from the Saudi king Abdulá bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 2007, making any claim from Hacienda prescribed.
The question of whether the contents of a cloned phone can even be used in this inquiry will of course be down to the judge, the judiciary and the opinion-piece writers.
‘…Beyond radio, television, or internet talk shows’, writes Ana Pardo de Vera for Público: ‘journalists are spending a lot of time in newsrooms discussing everything related to the former PSOE prime minister of Spain between 2004 and 2011. Because it's surprising that the only head of government who didn't have a single corruption case in his ranks would so wildly overturn the chessboard -his party, his family, and himself- as some would have you believe, with opinions and determinations handed down here and there before even having listened to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’.
It’s a lot easier for columnists when they are at odds with the government - those of us who support Pedro Sánchez must always bring up the fast-growing Spanish economy and the various advances introduced, higher pensions and minimum wage and so on - while for an opposition writer, well, the subject is an easy one: corruption! They may be right, but one must remember the last Partido Popular government fell precisely for this reason, and there are still plenty of the old guard around today.

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Housing:

From The Corner here: ‘The price of free-market housing in Spain rose by 12.9% in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2025, maintaining the same year-on-year growth recorded in the last quarter of last year, according to the Housing Price Index (IPV) published this Monday by the National Statistics Institute (INE)’.

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Tourism:

‘Spain overtakes Greece, Italy, UK, France, Portugal, Germany and more countries across Europe in a tourism boom of historic scale driven by safety first travel psychology as visitors abandon the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia routes and redirect massive demand toward stable European destinations’ says Travel and Tour World here.

From El Periódico here: ‘There are many overcrowded tourist destinations in Spain, but topping the list is Ibiza, an island just 41 kilometres long with 163,000 permanent residents that receives 4.5 million tourists every year. That's an average of 27 vacationers per inhabitant, far exceeding any other national destination. The effects of this influx range from widespread environmental collapse to the privatization of the coastline and the displacement of the resident population to convert their homes into tourist accommodations’. An issue here is the shortage of apartments ‘The ruined hotel where Ibiza's tourism workers eke out a living. Around a hundred people “live” in a half-finished structure, without walls, that has been abandoned since 2010. The Sant Josep de sa Talaia Town Council is trying to evict the people and demolish the skeleton of a building that the developer now wants to finish’.

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Finance:

BlackRock: Spain stands out as Europe’s real estate leader. BlackRock’s Spain chief says the domestic property market is currently the most attractive investment in Europe. Idealista says: ‘According to Adolfo Favieres, managing director of BlackRock in Spain, speaking at a conference held at the SIMA Madrid Real Estate Exhibition “Spaniards have never had a moment like this. You talk about Spain in your investment committee and you see smiling faces.”‘.

Hacienda increases its focus on non-resident property owners in 2026. Advertorial from the Majorca Daily Bulletin here: ‘The Spanish tax obligations most foreign property owners discover too late. For non-resident owners, Spanish tax compliance is an annual responsibility they cannot afford to miss’.

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Politics:

The FAES, the Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies, chaired by former Prime Minister José María Aznar, published a scathing statement last Friday criticizing Pedro Sánchez's government. ‘Using rather vulgar language, the text refers to the Prime Minister as "the master" and his ministers as "the gang." It continues: "Is there any institution left under the master's control that hasn't been taken advantage of? This gang doesn't even give you a moment's rest. It's clear they've learned the motto well: 'whoever can grab, grab,' 'whoever can bribe, bribe.'" El País has the story here.

20Minutos has: ‘The PSOE denounces a rushed judicial calendar, they say, to try to bring down the government "before the summer"‘.

From LaSexta here: ‘Óscar López denounces that "there are judges who abuse their power" and assures that the Government "will not be trampled on" by the courts. Following the outbreak of the Zapatero case and the investigation into the PSOE's dirty tricks, the Minister for Digital Transformation and leader of the Madrid socialists has criticized the legitimacy of some judicial proceedings, citing the conviction of the attorney general García Ortiz as an example’.

From Reuters here: ‘Spain receives 900,000 applications in migrant legalisation drive, double the expected demand’. Then there’s Ayuso speaking to TV journalist Susana Griso: ‘They can see on their phones that their children, in two hours, in three days, or maybe in a week of travel, even at mortal risk, how their lives have changed…’

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Gibraltar:

From The Olive Press here: ‘Wrecking crews arrive at the Gibraltar frontier as the Rock prepares for life with an open border with Spain’.

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Europe:

From Pedro Sánchez on his Facebook account Monday: ‘More than 7,400 dead, most of them civilians. Hundreds of homes, schools, and hospitals destroyed. Widespread price increases and billions of euros in losses, including in Europe. This is the toll of the conflict in Iran.
We trust that the peace agreement announced today will put an end to this senselessness, that it will be respected by all parties, and that it will mark the beginning of a new era in the Middle East.
Let us celebrate. But let us not forget. And let us learn once and for all that war is a failure. Dialogue and diplomacy are the only way’.

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Corruption:

From El Norte de Castilla here: ‘Dozens scammed with cryptocurrencies in Valladolid: "The average is €150,000". The Deputy Government Delegate warns that "repeated scams of hundreds of thousands of euros," some even reaching a million, have been detected in the province in the last year through alleged investments’.

From El Mundo here. ‘The top officials in the alleged corruption scheme surrounding the Almería diputación (provincial council), governed by the PP, are remaining silent before the judge investigating the case that seeks to determine whether several high-ranking officials of the provincial body conspired with various companies to collect commissions through public works contracts and protective medical equipment during the worst moments of the coronavirus pandemic’. Forty-three people in Almería are under investigation.

‘The objective of the UCO (Guardia Civil judicial police) is not to fight corruption, but to destroy reputations‘ says the EH Bildu spokesperson Arnaldo Otegí (in a cynical moment).

The notorious Algarrobico hotel gets another lifeline: ‘Carboneras postpones indefinitely the vote to unblock its demolition. The council approves the motion to delay the vote, due to the "extraordinary legal, urban planning, heritage and economic complexity" of the case, which could entail patrimonial liability for the municipality’. In short - if the builder sues the town hall for its loss, then Carboneras would be bankrupted.

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Courts:

From The Guardian here: ‘Spain’s prime minister faces difficult week as wife and ex-PM summoned before judges. Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, charged and predecessor José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero investigated over offences including influence peddling’. The Hazte Oir private accuser against the president’s wife is asking for 24 years imprisonment says a news-show on RTVE.

elDiario.es says: ‘Begoña Gómez's lawyer to Judge Peinado: "This is a phantom procedure designed to undermine a government"‘.

From elDiario.es again: ‘The new judge stalls the investigation into Ayuso's boyfriend for the alleged bribery of a Quirón executive (the old judge retired, so it was back to Stage One). Judge Antonio Viejo takes six months to authorize access to Alberto González Amador's accounts and rejects the rest of the UCO's requests, even though the agents were guided by the previous magistrate's directives and her suspicion of the existence of a criminal group that laundered money’.

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Media:

‘Pope Leo has used the final day of his week-long tour of Spain to stress that “all of us are migrants” as he praised the power of integration, adding: “Yesterday’s foreigner may be today’s brother and neighbour.”‘. From The Guardian here.
There are around eight million ‘migrants’ living in Spain, paying their taxes and working - with some success - to make Spain an even better and wealthier country. Because they (we) can’t vote, we have the ear of no politician, and the far-right can push their contemptible National Priority to cement our state as second-class travellers on the Spanish train. Frankly, I think we need to build a shadow government (any takers?).

‘Donald Trump’s least favourite country might just win Donald Trump’s World Cup. Tournament favourite Spain is at odds with the U.S. president over Iran, Gaza, defence spending, immigration and green energy’, says Politico here. Spain’s first match with Cabo Verde nevertheless ended in a disappointing draw.

The Olive Press says that three in four people in Spain now doubt the truth of what they read online, report finds.

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Ecology:

From EcoNews here: ‘The Eucalyptus. Spain planted an invasive tree in 1960 thinking it was a great idea, and what’s worrying is how it’s now hammering local birdlife because the ecosystem can’t keep up’.

From Infobae here: ‘Trees can cool cities by up to 18°C if the right species are chosen. An international study assessed the impact of vegetation in Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Munich. They concluded that combining different tree species is the most effective approach’.

From AraInfo here: ‘Data centres in Aragón will cause electricity bills for households and businesses to skyrocket. Their intensive energy consumption will increase the energy price, and the distribution networks will be financed through a "toll" on the bills. This increase is already a reality in the United States and is becoming a problem in Ireland’. Undeterred, RTVE says ‘The Spanish government approves €719 million to launch an artificial intelligence gigafactory. The bid includes the locations for either Móra la Nova (Tarragona) and San Fernando de Henares (Madrid)’.
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Finally:
Rosalía - El Pañuelo with Magda & Valeria on YouTube here. Hot!