Madrid | Issue #160 | The Bubble is Spain's #1 English-language newsletter. We offer paid and free subscriptions (which you can customize). For sponsorships, click here.
đȘđș The Ceuta crisis goes European
Oh boy! The whole Ceuta migrant âinvasionâ really isnât just a Spanish issue anymore. Seven weeks later, the irregular arrival of some 70,000 aspiring immigrants into the Spanish enclave on the north coast of Africa has made its way to the heart of the European Union. And you know what it did there? It blew up.
Someone important is not happy. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament this week to propose a new framework that would let EU member states temporarily suspend the blocâs asylum rules in migration emergencies.
The catalyst, she made clear, was Ceuta. âThe border of Ceuta is a European border,â VDL declared, with great solemnity, âbecause Ceuta is Spain, Ceuta is Europe â and Europe is there for you.â
This is a bigger deal than it might sound. The EUâs new Migration and Asylum Pact only entered into force in July, and VDL is already proposing an escape hatch from it. The new âemergency response frameworkâ would let member states hit pause on asylum procedures to speed up deportations when things get out of hand.
Does VDL blame Morocco? She blamed trafficking mafias and unnamed EU âadversariesâ for weaponizing vulnerable migrants against European borders â a reference to Russia and Belarus, who pulled exactly this stunt on the Polish and Lithuanian borders a few years back.
The implication was that Ceuta wasnât just a humanitarian crisis. It was, at least in part, a geopolitical attack. She didn't blame Morocco (conspicuously), though VDL is part of the same political family as the PP, which blames center-left PM Pedro SĂĄnchez â and Morocco â for the incursion.
Meanwhile, in Madrid⊠SĂĄnchez and PP boss Alberto NĂșñez FeijĂło are accusing each other of deliberately keeping the crisis alive (as you can see, nothingâs changed).
FeijĂło says Morocco has offered to take migrants back and accuses SĂĄnchez of âchroniclingâ the crisis by failing to process and return them quickly enough.
SĂĄnchez threw the accusation straight back. He says the PP has floated breaking or suspending parts of the EUâs relationship with Morocco, but Morocco is precisely the country Spain needs to cooperate with to return the migrants. In SĂĄnchezâs telling, blowing up that relationship wouldnât solve Ceuta â it would make solving it harder.
Still stuck. In Ceuta, the regional government estimates that around 13,000 irregular migrants remain, although even the national government acknowledges nobody knows the exact number.
International whodunnit. The investigation into how this happened is getting serious, and the crisis has already claimed its first political victim: Gonzalo Sanz, chief of staff to the governmentâs representative in Ceuta, resigned after a spectacular dispute with his boss, Miguel Ăngel PĂ©rez Triano.
Whoopsie! An officer of the CNI (Spainâs intelligence agency) had warned Sanz on July 29 about social-media calls for a mass crossing the following day. Sanz says he passed the warning on. But PĂ©rez Triano says he didnât (or that they were âinformal warningsâ at best).
Nacional Court judge MarĂa TardĂłn now wants to hear it from Sanz herself. Sheâs summoned him to testify on Oct. 1, while Ceuta's regional president Juan JesĂșs Vivas will testify the day before about what authorities knew and why the response collapsed.
The Ceuta crisis even found its way onto the fĂștbol pitch. Several La Liga clubs â Villarreal, Betis, Elche, and Real Madrid â joined a solidarity campaign called âTodos Somos Caballasâ (âWe Are All Ceutansâ), wearing t-shirts with the slogan before matches.
But then⊠Three Real Madrid players â Vinicius, MbappĂ© and KonatĂ© â walked out on the pitch with the shirts half-folded, flashed them for approximately one second, and yanked them off. They gave no public explanation, but the club acknowledged their players have âpersonal sensitivitiesâ about a campaign that some see as cover for anti-immigrant sentiment. (MbappĂ© later said, âI stand in full solidarity with Ceuta⊠But I also wanted to offer a gesture and a thought for all the migrants who have lost their lives..)
Angry face đĄ! The right-leaning El Mundo was predictably incandescent and called it âtreason,â demanded the three be expelled from the club immediately, and blamed âsanchismo.â Because SĂĄnchez is apparently all-powerful, even though he canât pass a law or budget to save his life.
Ay, por diosâŠ
More news below. đđ
Are you an American living in Spain? You can vote in U.S. elections from here! If youâre an eligible U.S. citizen, request your ballot now at VoteFromAbroad.org and choose to receive it by email. Once it arrives, complete and return it promptly, following your stateâs instructions and deadlines. Need help? The website offers state-by-state guidance and support from voter assistance volunteers. Request your ballot here.
đïž Episode 5 of The Bubble Podcast is out!
On our latest episode (recorded right before the Ceuta crisis), we discuss immigration, belonging, and identity in Spain with writer Noor Ammar Lamarty, ask whether the PP is moving closer to Vox ahead of the next election, and explore the TV shows, from Verano Azul to SĂĄlvame, that help explain Spanish society.
Subscribe and listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube!
đŹ Five things to discuss at dinner parties
1. đïž Madridâs F1 comeback was a huge success! (Except for the race, which sucked)
Formula 1 returned to Madrid after 45 years last weekend, and by almost every measure the inaugural race at the new Madring (the Madrid ring, geddit?) was a success: packed stands, hundreds of thousands of visitors, non-stop press coverage and a massive economic boost for the capital. It all went great, except for one teeny, tiny, enormous problem: the actual race was incredibly boring.
First, the positive. Around 350,000 people attended (wow!) over the three-day weekend, with tickets sold out and hotel prices nearly 70% higher than during the same period last year.
Money, money, money. A PwC study commissioned before the race estimated that, after a âŹ481.5m investment, it would generate âŹ467m in economic activity, nearly 8,850 jobs and âŹ83m in taxes and social security contributions (and this is just for the first year).
First of many. Madring has a 10-year contract running through 2035, making this a pretty big comeback for the capital.
But then, the race. Kimi Antonelli won the historic first race at Madring. Good for him. However, watching cars drive around in a line is apparently boring af.
Like watching paint dry. Sports media quickly moved to destroy the race, which produced only four overtakes in total (apparently thatâs bad, not that we know). Even Monaco (basically the poster child for dull F1 races where nobody can pass anybody) managed 10 this year.
Madringâs tracks make it extremely difficult for a driver to pull alongside another and attack. Lando Norris (no f*cks given) elegantly said: âI donât know how someone looks at this design and goes, 'Mint!ââ Audiâs Gabriel Bortoleto said he âalmost fell asleepâ at the wheel. Yikes.
But fear not, F1 fan with disposable income! It seems much of the circuit is temporary, and organizers have already said theyâre open to modifications before next yearâs race.
Now add a little politics. Transport Minister and professional X (nee Twitter) troll Ăscar Puente called the Grand Prix an âabsolute turd dud,â and Madridâs regional president Isabel DĂaz Ayuso was not amused.
No, you! She said the event was a âtotal successâ and accused SĂĄnchezâs government of doing âeverything possible to tarnishâ the event because Madrid organized it.
Both things (a successful dud) can be true at the same time.
2. đ„ A Spanish exchange student is murdered in Mexico
Itâs a parentâs greatest nightmare. Claudia Tacoronte, a 21-year-old from the Canary Islands who was studying childhood education at the University of Granada, was stabbed to death â apparently by a stranger â outside of the cultural center in Cuautla, in the Mexican state of Morelos.
Claudia had been in Mexico barely three weeks. On Saturday evening she traveled from Cuernavaca, where she was studying at the Universidad AutĂłnoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM), to attend a medicinal plants fair in Cuautla, 50 km away. Around 8:30 p.m., a man tried to snatch her phone. She ran. He chased her inside the building and stabbed her multiple times. The ambulance took half an hour to arrive, and she was already gone.
Paco is the main suspect. Security cameras caught a man in a white Under Armour shirt and dark backpack fleeing the scene at 8:50 p.m. Neighbors identified him as âPaco,â a local thief who had been caught on camera stealing a bicycle the same day. He remains at large. The Morelos prosecutorâs office is investigating under a femicide protocol, though robbery remains the leading hypothesis.
Why no warning? Claudiaâs sister posted a video that has been viewed more than half a million times, asking a question that has reverberated across Spain: why did no one warn Claudia or her family that three other students from the same university had been murdered in the previous seven months?
Claudia was more than this. In a follow-up message, she asked that Claudia not be reduced to a headline: âI donât want us to remember Claudia simply as âthe 21-year-old girl who was murdered in Mexico.â I want this to mean something.â
Troubling history. Morelos has the second-highest femicide rate in Mexico. In the country as a whole, 1,250 women were murdered in the first seven months of 2026. The University of Granada has cancelled its exchange program with UAEM. Meanwhile, âPacoâ is still out there.
3. đ€Ą A Killer Klown is terrorizing Madrid! (Allegedly)
We knew we had it too good. We returned from fantastic vacations just as Madridâs weather slid into gorgeous autumn. And then, boom đ„, a murder-happy clown began to terrorize our fair city. Thatâs how they get you, right?
It began about a week ago, in the suburb of Rivas Vaciamadrid (pop. 103,000). TikTok and WhatsApp groups blew up with reports of a killer clown prowling parks at night, chasing women and girls with a baseball bat, and also, apparently, hurling bottles at youths, because if youâre going to be a killer clown, you gotta go all the way.
The photos and videos? They went viral, natch, as media outlets reported it as real, and vigilante groups organized nighttime car patrols to hunt the clown down. Yes, really.
We are sad to break this to you. The Guardia Civil and PolicĂa Local investigated, reviewed security camera footage, and interviewed every person who called in a sighting.
The conclusion? The clown (aka Pennywise or maybe Penique Listo?), with his red afro and blue-and-yellow parachute suit, does not exist, the police claim (though maybe theyâre just trying to calm us down⊠đ€)
Please tell us youâre kidding. Nope! The photos show incoherent shadows, unrealistic proportions, and other signs of A.I. slop. Of the five calls received, all turned out to be false alarms â people reporting what theyâd been told, not what theyâd seen. Shocker!
When Killer Klowns are involved, politics canât be far behind. The local PP spokesperson, Janette Novo, posted a video with epic background music demanding the IU (communist) leaders of town hall take the clown âseriouslyâ (you know how lazy communists are about clown safety).
The video? Mejor imposible. It opened with an image of the nonexistent clown while asking people not to share unverified images of the nonexistent clown. A constituent replied: âYouâre asking people not to spread nonsense while spreading nonsense.â
Fine, I exaggerated. Once the authorities debunked the whole thing, Novo graciously acknowledged her error with a post declaring: âCase closed: the only clowns in Rivas are IU.â #ffs đ€Š
Police are now tracking down whoever started it. Fabricating crimes carries a fine of 6-12 monthsâ salary, and deliberately spreading false content to cause public alarm can mean 3 months to a year in prison. Wearing a clown suit while carrying a baseball bat? Totally cool (At least heâs not ripping little kidsâ arms off from the sewers.)
Killer Klown sightings have a blue-blooded genealogy. The phenomenon likely began in Greenville, S.C. (USA) in August 2016, with the original killer clown scare, before it went global, fed by Stephen Kingâs It and basic human fear of clowns (which is natural).
But clown fear goes back further. The 1988 cult hit Killer Klowns from Outer Space stoked our fears with the tale of evil clown-like extraterrestrials that invade a small town to capture, kill, and eat the human inhabitants. True story!
4. đ Let us celebrate a shepherd from another era
Marina Vilalta died on Monday. You may not know her â okay, letâs be honest, you donât â but she had an amazing life. She died at age 99 in Bruguera (Girona), still working as a shepherd, a job sheâd done since age 5, making her the oldest and longest-working active shepherd in Catalonia â and almost certainly in Spain. Hereâs her story.
Vilalta was born in 1927, one of 12 siblings, and the only one who chose the mountains. She began shepherding alongside her father. There was one brief detour â a few months in a textile factory â which she abandoned because, she said, she wanted to see the stars. She spent the next nine decades doing exactly that, taking her flock of sheep and goats out each afternoon to graze at the foot of Mount Taga, returning when the light faded.
Vilalta never learned to read or write. Instead, she carried inside her a vast store of Catalan songs, refranes and oral tradition, all of it memorized with extraordinary precision. (There was a book written about her, though: Journo Abraham Orriols penned the book, Una vida a les muntanyes, when he was 26 and she was 96.)
In 2022 she was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi, Cataloniaâs highest civilian honor. She declined to go to Barcelona to collect it. Someone had to watch the flock, you know? So the regionâs then-president Pere AragonĂšs traveled to Bruguera to present it to her in person. She addressed him informally, with tu. Her family still tells the story, half-amused, half-scandalized.
Vilalta has an epitaph of sorts, which she dictated herself. âI never thought Iâd live to be this old. One day God will call me, and thatâll be it. And when I die... screw the living!â In celebration of her life, current Catalan president Salvador Illa called her an example of the pagesia catalana (Catalan peasantry), and her biographer Orriols posted a photo of the two of them sharing a vermouth in the village bar â taken two weeks before she died.
Last Tuesday she went out to pasture, as she did every day. She felt unwell. An ambulance came. Caring for the sheep and goats was the last thing she did.
5. đŠ A Diplodocus turned up in Teruel. It shouldnât be there.
[Ed. note: We swear itâs not our goal to write about nerdy exciting archaeological findings each week, but itâs not our fault that Spain is lately killing it in that department.]
Cue the Jurassic Park theme, because this is big news (literally)! For almost 150 years, Diplodocus â an enormous, long-necked veggie-saurus that could stretch 25 meters from head to tail â had been an exclusively American dinosaur.
¥Teruel también existe! Now paleontologists have identified 14 exceptionally well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevrons that confirm that one of them was wandering around what is now Teruel 150 million years ago.
Big deal. This is the first confirmed Diplodocus ever found outside the region and one of the most complete diplodocid skeletons ever discovered in Europe.
News, but not really. The fossils were actually excavated back in 2008 at La TejerĂa, near the village of El Castellar in Teruel. Researchers have spent the years since studying the bones and trying to establish exactly what animal they belonged to. Because at first they couldn't believe it was a Diplodocus.
Why is this such a big deal? Because unless aliens teleported it, there was no way it could have travelled all the way here. As in, it must have lived here. The discovery provides unusually strong evidence that dinosaur populations were moving between what would eventually become North America and Europe during the Late Jurassic.
And they may have literally walked between them. Back when Pangea was a thing (Google it, kids!), the Atlantic Ocean as we know it didnât yet exist, and the continents were barely separated by water. Researchers believe periods of lower sea level may have temporarily exposed land bridges, islands, and corridors that allowed enormous animals to migrate between the two sides.
Teruel was apparently quite the dinosaur neighborhood. Fossils from sauropods (think of them as big cows), meat-eating theropods (the mean-looking birds), stegosaurs (those are cute), and ornithopods (not as cute) have all been found in the region.
Even better news. You can actually go see him/her/them! The fossils are now on display in the dinosaur hall of the Museo AragonĂ©s de PaleontologĂa at DinĂłpolis in Teruel. Tell the bones we say hi!
đ Donât forget to follow us on Instagram!
If youâre not following us on Instagram yet, youâre missing out. Weâre posting exclusive content with our collaborators across Spain, breaking news updates, and pop culture coverage. Click on the post above and come hang with us!
đ Once again, please remember to share this newsletter with your friends on social media. The more we grow, the more information weâll be able to offer each week.
It has taken me THIS MANY YEARS of reading you guys to understand that "natch" means "naturally". Omg.