The Spain Report
By Matthew Bennett
issues
Casado says Vox and Abascal are populist radical destructive "bitter fruit" that make everything worse
In his speech on Tuesday evening, Popular Party leader Pablo Casado spitefully called Santiago Abascal and Vox, his political brothers on the Spanish right, who had spent the election campaign with the slogan "sow" [the seeds, fields, countryside], as destruc…
PP refuses to accept reality of having to govern with Vox
The Popular Party tried to keep moving forward on Monday with the version of events it had thought would happen before it called the regional elections: governing by itself in Castilla y León. Vox and the PSOE should abstain to allow that to happen. Both Vox …
Vox demands top job in regional government PP minority win in Castilla
The Popular Party has managed to improve its result by two seats in the regional parliament in Castilla y León but has lost 60,000 votes and o.04 percentage points of support. Instead of having Ciudadanos in its regional government, like before Christmas, wit…
Polls suggest right-wing coalition in Castilla y León
Bonus: podcast here with Rupert Cocke on Castilla y León elections and Vox vs. PPWhile the world's athletes compete in the Winter Games in China and the West looks worriedly towards Ukraine and the build up of Russian troops on the border, now with an open th…
Vox, Le Pen, Orban and Morawiecki in Madrid
Europe's far right, or alt right or very traditional conservative right is having a big meeting in Madrid this weekend, hosted by Vox. France's Marine Le Pen and Hungary's Viktor Orban have already turned up. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is coming…
Does any voter in Spain watch all the propaganda?
The official regional election campaign in Castilla y León begins tomorrow. All the parties have already been on their media campaigns for several days. They have multiplied the intensity of their social media messaging by ten. Candidates appear around every …
Should Spain and the West do more in Ukraine?
Allied efforts to try to present a united, principled front on the Ukraine crisis appeared to waver today. European and NATO messaging attempted to calm growing apprehension. US, British, Australian and Canadian goverments made warnings about the situation or…
Will global events crash the elections in Castilla y León?
Unless an unexpected black swan appears, the main news stories for the next two or three weeks in Spain are going to be the regional elections in Castilla y León, the international crisis with NATO and the EU against Russia in Ukraine, and the ongoing, seemin…
How will Spain react to the Ukraine crisis?
The Ukraine crisis catches Spain in the run up to the regional elections in Castilla y León on February 13. This weekend, Western leaders seem to be taking the Russian invasion as a given, now imminent. More weapons are arriving in Ukraine or nearby countries…
Strategy & Journalism 2022 (v, conclusions & your role)
The long termPaths and formatsReporting operationsDaily battlesConclusions and your roleSo now we have: Spain + independent journalism + independence from political power + readers who guarantee it + 21st century technologies + newsletter, podcast, video repo…
Strategy & Journalism (iv, daily battles)
We had imagined journalism over the long term, devised a strategy to deal with it and deployed some resources towards a specific news story. Now what? Part IV of the review of my journalism. Read here:https://www.thespainreport.es/articles/720-220110123948-st…
Strategy & Journalism 2022 (iii, reporting operations)
Part III, again in tweet note format: read here.
Strategy & journalism 2022 (ii, paths and formats)
Once we have decided on some ultimate aims and values, we must think about how we are going to do that type of journalism. What are the best formats? Where should we concentrate our efforts...?Again in tweet note format, so read here.
Strategy & Journalism (I, the long-term)
Have started a short series to review the whole project after two years of pandemic reporting and analysis. Me thinking out loud about different levels of strategy and journalism. Doing it as a series of tweets which are also on the website, but format doesn'…
The problem is the TV footage, not a pencil and paper
The provincial court judge in Huelva, Florentino Ruiz Yamuza, today published his order with the arguments for throwing all journalists out of the entire Laura Luelmo murder trial. All the parties asked him to do it, he asked the jury and then of course argue…
Andalusia Court Turns Murder Trial Into News Blackhole
Another public authority in Spain, in this case judicial and not political, decided on Monday that it is best to close everything off to journalists and that society should neither see nor know anything about what is happening inside. Instead of regional gove…
Spain trying to acquire 50 F-35 fighters from US
Spain is one of three European countries trying to acquire Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters from the United States, Janes reports. The other two are Greece and the Czech Republic.Janes reports Spain wants 50 of the super fighters, 25 x …
Spanish farmers warn on agriculture inflation
Spanish farmers have warned agriculture production costs are skyrocketing and want "urgent" help from the national and regional governments to stop producers being crushed by wholesale buyers trying to keep prices in supermarkets down.COAG says the "brutal" r…
Conversation with Rupert Cocke on Spain, fascism, democracy, politics, media
We chat about his recent article "Dismantling the narrative that Spain is a fascist state". Spain, Franco, the Transition, Zapatero, Catalan separtism, the evolution of media, politics, technology, the economy and the rise of Vox.Dismantling the narrative tha…
Pablo Iglesias, a Nazi pistol and accusation in the mirror
Pablo Iglesias, the former Podemos Deputy Prime Minister of Spain, has published an article on an online site called Context. Clearly with the approval of the editor of that publication, Miguel Mora, the shocking thing about it is the image they've chosen to …