Madrid | Issue #165 | The Bubble is Spain's #1 English-language newsletter. We offer paid and free subscriptions (which you can customize). For sponsorships, click here.
🔥 It's getting hot in here!
🥊 The gloves are off. With Spain’s Nov. 29 elections just over a month away, the country’s political leaders are touring the country, holding rallies, making promises, and resorting to attention-grabbing stunts.
Are you ready to rumble? While most polls predict a PP–Vox victory, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the Socialists aren’t going down without a fight.
The battle for the Senate. While everyone’s watching the race for Parliament, the Senate has become an unexpected electoral battleground. The center-left PSOE and several left-wing parties have formed an alliance called Senado de Progreso (Senate of Progress), hoping to wrest control of the upper chamber from the center-right PP.
Isn’t the Senate kind of irrelevant? Yes, but… You see, the Senate will soon help appoint four Constitutional Court judges. If PP and Vox secure a three-fifths majority, they could potentially choose all four and shift the court’s ideological balance (it currently leans left).
The right is getting nervous. Vox is considering withdrawing its Senate candidates in provinces where it has little chance of winning, encouraging supporters to vote for the PP instead. In response, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has suggested rewarding Vox with Senate seats appointed by regional parliaments.
Numbers game. Had the left and right gone as blocks in 2023 as they are talking about now, the left would have won 135 seats, compared with 109 for PP and Vox, according to an El Mundo simulation.
United in the Senate, divided everywhere else. Despite last week’s attempts, the parties to the left of the PSOE have failed to form a single alliance for Parliament. The Frente Amplio led by Ada Colau and the far-left Podemos–ERC alliance couldn’t agree on how to share power before the deadline (which angered lefty voters).
That’s bad for the left. Spain’s electoral system punishes smaller parties when they split their votes. And with polls already predicting a difficult election for the left, competing against each other isn’t going to do them any favors.
Meanwhile, the socialists… At a rally in Fuenlabrada, Sánchez made an impression by publicly thanking his legally embattled wife, Begoña Gómez, and kissing her in front of thousands of people.
“They’ve tried to break us in every possible way,” Sánchez said. “And they’ve achieved exactly the opposite: today we’re stronger than ever. I love you.” Aww ❤️…maybe?
Remember: Gómez faces a trial over allegations of influence peddling and misuse of public funds. Sánchez and the PSOE portray the investigation as politically motivated, and he’s turning the controversy into a rallying cry for progressive voters using the same slogan los Kirchner used in Argentina (fyi, ex-president Cristina Kirchner was convicted of basically…influence peddling and misuse of public funds).
Feijóo has promises. Meanwhile, the PP boss has been touring Spain and unveiling some of the measures he wants to introduce when if he becomes prime minister:
Squatters out in 48 hours. Feijóo says he’ll pass legislation allowing authorities to remove illegal okupas (squatters) within two days. He’s also promising to build 1 million homes during the next legislature.
Not everyone gets a vote. The PP leader wants naturalized Spanish citizens to meet a minimum residency requirement before being allowed to vote (i.e., you should have lived in Spain before voting in Spain): “One thing is having a passport, and another is having the right to vote”.
Ley de Nietos. The proposal follows the Supreme Court’s decision to provisionally suspend voting rights for more than 160,000 people who obtained citizenship through the Ley de Nietos. But restricting the voting rights of Spanish citizens would raise serious constitutional questions.
And then Milei showed up. Because apparently Spain’s election campaign needed an international guest star, Argentina’s anarcho-capitalist president Javier Milei visited Madrid yesterday, called Sánchez an “unpresentable dictator,” and urged Spaniards to kick the Socialists out of power.
The PSOE-led government capitalized on his visit to make politics. The Foreign Ministry condemned his remarks, accusing him of encouraging polarization and violence.
And the Spanish right? Feijóo kept his distance, while Vox's leader, Santiago Abascal, had a FaceTime call with him. Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso was a bit warmer, welcoming Milei with an enthusiastic hug during a discreet two-hour meeting.
Sánchez had some fun with it. The PSOE hung a banner outside its headquarters welcoming Milei to Spain, while Sánchez released a video embracing the label zurdo (leftist), which Milei regularly uses as an insult.
Things are getting ugly, too. Yesterday Abascal’s campaign stop in A Coruña ended in violent clashes between police and leftist protesters.
Around 5,000 “antifascist” demonstrators gathered to oppose Vox’s anti-immigration rhetoric. After Abascal left, riot police charged at protesters, leaving several injured. Two protesters were arrested, and authorities reported 12 injured officers.
Who started it? Protest organizers accused police of excessive force, while the government’s delegation said officers intervened after demonstrators threw objects and ignored instructions. Around 2,000 people later protested the police response.
Who’s winning? For now, the PP and Vox remain favorites to form the next government.
The game. Feijóo is trying to protect his lead. Abascal wants to maximize his influence in a future coalition. And Sánchez is betting/hoping/praying that fear of the far right will mobilize left-leaning voters (unlikely, but what do we know).
The official campaign doesn’t even begin until Nov. 13. Buckle up.
More news below. 👇👇
🎙️ Episode 7 of The Bubble Podcast is out!
In our latest (short and sweet) episode, we have a one-on-one chat with journalist Juanma Lamet, and we discuss the elections and Ceuta. Subscribe and listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube!
💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties
1. 🗳️ Which election polls should you pay attention to?
2. 🌧️ Another deadly DANA storm hits Spain. This time, the warnings came early.
The rain in Spain, again. Almost two years after the deadly flooding that killed 233 people in Valencia, another powerful DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos, aka a pocket of cold air high in the atmosphere that becomes separated from the main jet stream) has struck Spain’s Mediterranean coast.
Storm Adam brought torrential rain, flooded entire streets, forced thousands from their homes, and left at least six people dead. But this time, there was one crucial difference: authorities warned residents before the worst arrived.
How bad was it? Very. The worst flooding struck northern Alicante and southern Valencia, particularly Dénia, Pego, Gandia, and Oliva, though Andalucía, Catalonia, and the Balearic Islands were also affected.
Record-breaking amounts of rain. Some areas received more than 700 liters per square meter in less than 36 hours (that’s a lot). The Girona River overflowed, and streets turned into canals, as floodwater poured into homes, garages, and businesses. Ibiza’s airport even recorded 173.8 liters/m² in 24 hours, an October record that goes back over 80 years.
People stranded on rooftops. Emergency teams carried out more than 1,000 rescues, some by helicopter, and around 2,000 people were evacuated.
The human toll. Among the dead was a 79-year-old woman with reduced mobility, found in her flooded ground-floor home in Oliva. A 64-year-old man also died after suffering cardiac arrest at a campsite, while another woman died after entering the sea during a storm warning in Sagunt.
How does it compare with 2024? Officials planned ahead this time. Valencia’s regional government activated emergency measures early, sending mobile-phone alerts, deploying rescue teams, and ordering residents across 145 municipalities, around 850,000 people, to stay indoors.
Families of the 2024 victims noticed. Elisabeth González, vice president of a victims’ association, said that “what wasn’t done two years ago has been done now”.
An annual thing now? DANAs aren’t new, and Spain has experienced them for decades. They can happen at different times of the year and don’t necessarily produce flooding of biblical proportions.
What’s changing? Well, the climate. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and warmer Mediterranean waters can bring more energy and moisture for storms, making extreme rains more intense. That doesn’t mean we’re getting one each October. But the risk of increasingly heavy rains is growing.
Adam had moved away by yesterday, bringing much calmer weather to most of Spain, although some rain and strong winds remained possible elsewhere.
3.🚨 A deadly robbery and 2 innocent men caught in a racist hoax
An 83-year-old woman died after being robbed in her apartment in Burgos last week, and police arrested six people in connection with her death. But as the news of the arrest spread, social media accounts linked to the far-right began circulating photographs of two supposedly foreign suspects. The problem? They had absolutely nothing to do with the crime.
A robbery turned deadly. Last Tuesday, Rosario Sánchez opened her door to two strangers who apparently tied her up, gagged her, and ransacked her home, stealing her jewelry. Rosario needed an oxygen machine to breathe and, unable to reach it, she died of respiratory failure.
The police first arrested two teenagers (aged 16 and 17) last Friday. According to local reporting, both are of Eastern European origin and had previous records for theft. By Wednesday, four additional arrests had been made.
Going viral. On Saturday — after the first two arrests — an X account shared an online article about the initial arrests, but added photos identifying the supposed killers as “Mohammed Chekraoui, 16” and “Ayoub Haiboub, 17” and calling them naturalized foreigners.
None of that was true. The photos actually showed Ahmed Benyahia, 20, a student in Barcelona, and Youssef Abraoui, 29, a taxi driver in Manresa. Both of them were Spanish citizens born in Spain, and both had no connection to the robbery (nor did they know each other).
The original post quickly went viral with far-right accounts, including those associated with the extremist groups Núcleo Nacional and Vox-linked Revuelta. The anti-immigration X account El Imperial España also published the photographs, which spread across Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp.
Ahmed found out while visiting a friend’s mother in a Barcelona hospital and “had an anxiety attack”, he told El País. Youssef was asleep when a neighbor woke him up because his family couldn’t reach him. His phone was flooded with messages accusing him of murder and calling for the death penalty.
Ahmed and Youssef had to publicly explain they were innocent while their photographs continued circulating.
El Imperial España eventually deleted the post and claimed it had fired the person responsible for publishing it (because lawsuit alert!).
Too late. The images continued to be shared, and Youssef’s sister Salma, a lawyer (uh-oh!), says “the correction doesn’t erase the exposure. Apologies don’t guarantee their safety.” Ahmed has filed a police report, while Youssef’s family is pursuing legal action (told ya) and collecting evidence.
El Imperial España best be lawyering up.
4. 🤦 Mayor-for-life resigns after not one, but two, sexual assault claims
The mayor of Algeciras is finally calling it quits. José Ignacio Landaluce has spent the last 15 years as mayor of Algeciras, the port city made famous for organized crime and drug trafficking in series like La Línea: La sombra del narco. But even a decade and a half in power couldn’t save him from two sexual assault allegations — especially once his own party turned against him.
Jumping before he gets pushed. Landaluce, of the conservative PP, announced on Monday that he would resign on Oct. 25, three days before a no-confidence vote was due to end his tenure anyway.
Two accusers. The crisis erupted after two women affiliated with the PP accused Landaluce of sexual assault. One alleges that he assaulted her twice in 2020 and 2021. The second, a member of the party’s youth wing, alleges that he groped her in his office on July 10, under the pretext of explaining how to check for suspicious lumps. Landaluce, a doctor by profession, denies the accusations.
The second case has landed him in court. He has been summoned to appear as a suspect on Oct. 23. The first complaint, filed with the Supreme Court, is still awaiting a decision on whether to proceed.
Fragging the platoon leader. Landaluce’s real problem, politically speaking, is that his own troops have deserted him. Twelve of the 15 PP councillors resigned from their government roles in protest, then joined forces with far-right Vox to back a motion of censure. The two parties plan to install Jacinto Muñoz (PP), Landaluce’s deputy, as mayor.
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Landaluce says he is leaving because of the “political circumstances” and insists the allegations are “utterly false”. He also plans to keep his council seat, so this isn’t quite goodbye to public life.
This may not age well. In his farewell statement (on Facebook, because he’s an old), he said, “I leave with a sense of calm, a clear conscience and the pride of having served Algeciras. Truth and justice will prevail.” Hmmm. The fact that both accusers are PP members gives this the look of something that may stick.
5. 🛫 How’d they travel so far back in the day? Romanair?
We love a good archaeology story. The Bubble practically couldn’t exist without them. And this week’s tale rocks: two siblings, buried 725 km apart in the fifth-century Roman Empire. How did they get so far from each other? And what the heck happened to them?
The news: A new genetic study has discovered that a young man buried in Mérida and a young woman laid to rest near Castellón were brother and sister, first-generation Barbarian immigrants who arrived as the Roman Empire was breathing its last gasps. The findings are part of the largest study yet of ancient DNA from the Iberian Peninsula, published in Cell.
The old AP-7. The woman was buried at Ildum, a Roman roadside station on the Via Augusta, where weary travellers could swap horses, grab a bed and a bite, or send a message. (Think a highway gas station, without the Haribo and energy drinks.)
Her gold dress pins are what caught researchers’ attention. They found almost identical ones on the female corpse next to a young man buried hundreds of kilometers away, among the so-called Suebian princesses of Mérida. When they analyzed DNA from one of her teeth, they discovered they were siblings.
What was she doing there? Nobody knows. Perhaps she was travelling to Tarraco (modern Tarragona), then an important Roman city.
A theory. As archaeologist Javier Heras speculates, she might have been part of a royal entourage sent to seal an alliance with another group. “Who’s to say that, at some point, the Suevic king didn’t leave his daughter or an aristocrat in the hands of another group?” he asks. Romantic? Political? Something much darker? The researchers can’t say.
But the siblings’ story illuminates a bigger mystery. That is, what happened to Spain’s population when Germanic Barbarian groups — including the Suebi, Vandals, Alans and Visigoths — arrived as Roman rule crumbled?
Little impact. Analyzing hundreds of ancient genomes, researchers found that these newcomers left a surprisingly modest genetic footprint. Unlike in Britain and the Balkans, where migrations transformed local ancestry, the incoming groups in Hispania contributed about 15% of the gene pool. The new rulers changed the political elite more than the population, formed over centuries of Roman migration that had already made the peninsula remarkably diverse.
The siblings remain anonymous (we want names!), and their journey is still a mystery. But, as geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox puts it, ancient DNA “humanizes history”. God, we do love a family drama 1,600 years in the making.
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In Barcelona we received 2 alerts each day October 3-6. On the one hand, that makes sense (CA/ES then CA/EN); on the other, it seems people are taking them less seriously. They do at least seem to have stop sending the emergency alerts saying "the emergency is over" now, though.