Category Archives: Spain

Madrid museum shuffles its pack charting decades of rapid change in Spain

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Reina Sofía’s three-year rehang of works by artists from Spain and beyond is billed as a ‘critical reinterpretation’

The Reina Sofía’s new rehang opens, quite pointedly, with a painting of a detained man sitting, head bowed and wrists shackled, as he waits for the arbitrary hand of institutional bureaucracy to decide his fate.

The picture, Document No …, was painted by Juan Genovés in 1975, the year Francisco Franco died and Spain began its transition to democracy after four decades of dictatorship. Genovés’s faceless, everyman victim of the Franco regime’s control and repression is the natural starting point for the Madrid museum’s exploration of the past 50 years of contemporary art in Spain.

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Shells found in Spain could be among oldest known musical instruments

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Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher

As a child, Miquel López García was fascinated by the conch shell, kept in the bathroom, that his father’s family in the southern Spanish region of Almería had blown to warn their fellow villagers of rising rivers and approaching flood waters.

The hours he spent getting that “characteristically potent sound out of it” paid off last year when the archaeologist, musicologist and professional trumpet player pressed his lips to eight conch-shell trumpets. Their tones, he says, could carry insights into the lives of the people who lived in north-east Spain 6,000 years ago.

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Suspected members of neo-Nazi terror group arrested in Spain

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Three people are accused of belonging to the Base, an ‘accelerationist’ white power organisation founded in the US

Police in Spain have arrested three people on suspicion of belonging to the Base, a global neo-Nazi terrorist group that incites and trains members in techniques to overthrow governments and bring about a race war.

The group, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is part of a worldwide “accelerationist” white power movement that prepares its cells to carry out violent and destabilising attacks.

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Thousands rally in Madrid to demand snap election over corruption allegations

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Pressure grows on Pedro Sánchez amid series of claims involving his family, party and administration

Tens of thousands of people have attended an anti-government demonstration in Madrid to demand a snap general election as the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, tries to weather a series of corruption allegations involving his family, his party and his administration.

Sunday’s protest, called by Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) under the slogan, “This is it: mafia or democracy?”, was held three days after one of Sánchez’s closest erstwhile allies, the former transport minister José Luis Ábalos, was remanded in custody by a judge investigating an alleged kickbacks-for-contracts scheme.

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German president honours victims of Nazi bombing atrocity on Guernica visit

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Frank-Walter Steinmeier travels to Basque town for remembrance ceremony marking ‘terrible crimes’ of 1937

Eighty-eight years after Luftwaffe pilots took part in the most infamous atrocity of the Spanish civil war, Germany’s president has visited the Basque town of Guernica to honour the victims of the Nazi bombing and to urge that the “terrible crimes” committed there are never forgotten.

Hundreds of civilians were killed and hundreds more injured on 26 April 1937 when planes from the German Condor Legion, operating alongside aircraft from fascist Italy, spent hours bombing Guernica on market day. Adolf Hitler had loaned the Luftwaffe unit to Gen Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces to help them in their coup against the republican government, and to allow Nazi Germany’s pilots to practise the blitzkrieg tactics they would later use in the second world war.

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Wetherspoon’s to open first pub in Spain – offering garlic prawns and beer from 6am

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Opening in Alicante airport is the chain’s first move into mainland Europe, and will offer outdoor drinking

Wetherspoon’s is to open its first pub outside the UK and Ireland, serving alcohol from 6am every day to sun-seeking Britons waiting for their plane in the departure lounge at Alicante airport.

The opening in Spain, scheduled for January, will be the first foray on to continental European soil for the pub chain, which said it expects to pursue more footholds on the continent in the coming years.

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Spanish PM calls for nation to heed past lessons on anniversary of Franco’s death

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Pedro Sánchez says his country must defend the democratic freedom ‘wrenched from us for so many years’

Spain has marked the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death with an absence of official events but a call from the prime minister to heed the lessons of the dictatorship and defend the democratic freedom “wrenched from us for so many years”.

Franco, whose military coup against the elected republican government in 1936 triggered a civil war and brought about four decades of dictatorship, died in Madrid on 20 November 1975.

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Luis Rubiales has eggs thrown at him during book launch in Madrid

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  • Former Spanish federation president struck by three eggs

  • Rubiales claims the assailant ‘was my own uncle’

The disgraced former Spanish football federation (RFEF) president Luis Rubiales had eggs flung at him, allegedly by his uncle, during the presentation of his new book on Thursday in Madrid.

Rubiales, convicted of sexual assault for a forced kiss on the player Jenni Hermoso after Spain won the Women’s World Cup, appeared to be struck on the back by an egg as the man Rubiales claimed was his uncle threw three in the direction of the 48-year-old.

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Three dead and 15 hurt after rough seas pull people into the ocean in Tenerife

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Two men and a woman died in separate incidents after sudden sea surges battered the Spanish island

Three people have died and at least 15 were injured in separate incidents linked to rough seas battering the Spanish island of Tenerife pulling several people into the ocean, emergency services said.

A rescue helicopter airlifted a man who had fallen into the water at a beach in La Guancha, a municipality in the north of the island, but he was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.

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Danes are Europe’s keenest nudists in principle and practice, survey suggests

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YouGov study of six countries finds those in Denmark most likely to approve of nudism and have been naked in public

Germans may have a hard-won reputation for being Europe’s most enthusiastic nudists, but a survey suggests Danes are not only more accepting of stripping off in public, but more likely to have actually done so.

The YouGov survey of six western European countries – the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain – found that Danes were the most likely to say it was perfectly OK to bare all in public places – and to have followed through.

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Disgraced former king of Spain’s memoir details ‘enormous respect’ for Franco

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Memoir chronicles Juan Carlos’s anointment as heir to dictator and death of younger brother when playing with pistols

A memoir by Spain’s disgraced former king chronicles his anointment as heir to the dictator Francisco Franco, his role in saving democracy from a coup attempt in 1981, and his grief at the death of his younger brother when the two were “playing” with a pistol as teenagers.

The book, published 11 years after Juan Carlos’s abdication and exile, is titled Reconciliation but appears to do anything but, instead detailing how he feels abandoned and misunderstood by his son and heir, King Felipe VI, and by other close family members.

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Spain grants citizenship to descendants of civil war’s International Brigades

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About 32,000 volunteered to fight Franco dictatorship, including 2,500 men and women from Britain and Ireland

The Spanish government has granted citizenship to 170 descendants of volunteers in the International Brigades in recognition of their fight against fascism during the Franco dictatorship that followed the civil war.

An estimated 32,000 volunteers from around the world joined the anti-fascist brigades during the civil war, including approximately 2,500 men and women from Britain and Ireland, of whom 530 were killed.

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Valencia president Carlos Mazón resigns over botched handling of deadly floods

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Leader of Spanish region’s People’s party had clung to power despite calls for him to stand down over 2024 disaster

‘Mud on our hands; blood on his’: fury lingers one year after deadly floods

Carlos Mazón, the embattled president of the eastern Spanish region of Valencia, has bowed to public fury and political pressure by resigning over his botched handling of the deadly floods that killed 229 people in the area just over a year ago.

Mazón, a member of the conservative People’s party (PP), had hung on despite calls for him to stand down after it emerged that he spent more than three hours having lunch with a journalist as the floods hit and people were drowning in their homes, garages and cars.

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Rare white Iberian lynx captured on film in Spain by amateur photographer

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Researchers to investigate whether environmental factors may have affected female animal’s pigmentation

An amateur photographer in southern Spain has captured unprecedented images of a white Iberian lynx, prompting researchers to investigate whether environmental factors could be at play as wildlife watchers revelled in the rare sighting.

Ángel Hidalgo published the images on social media, describing the singular animal as the “white ghost of the Mediterranean forest”.

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Spain expresses regret over ‘injustice’ suffered by Mexico’s Indigenous people during conquest

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Acknowledgment shows shift in tone after six years of diplomatic spats over colonial-era abuses

Spain has acknowledged and expressed regret over the “pain and injustice” suffered by the Indigenous people of Mexico during its conquest of the Americas, heralding a shift in tone after six years of diplomatic spats over the abuses of the colonial period.

In March 2019, Mexico’s then president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote to King Felipe VI and Pope Francis, who was then the leader of the world’s Roman Catholics, urging them to apologise for the “massacres and oppression” of colonialism and the conquest.

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Madrid regional government co-funding Woody Allen’s new film – but it must feature ‘Madrid’ in the title

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Regional authority is investing €1.5m in the project but has stipulations about featuring ‘identifiable locations’ on screen and the film premiering at an international film festival

The Madrid regional government is hoping to harness the power of film tourism by investing €1.5m (£1.3m) in a new Woody Allen movie that will be shot in and around the Spanish capital and which will be contractually obliged to feature the word “Madrid” in its title.

Regional authorities are confident the 89-year-old film-maker’s next project could do for Madrid what Roman Holiday did for Rome tourism in the early 1950s, and what Sex and the City and Emily in Paris have more recently done to increase visitor numbers to New York and the French capital.

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Four feet higher and rising: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia becomes world’s tallest church

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Antoni Gaudí’s masterwork is still under construction but now stands taller than Ulm Minster in southern Germany

Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia basilica became the world’s tallest church on Thursday after a part of its central tower was lifted into place.

The masterwork of the architect Antoni Gaudí now rises to 162.91 metres (534ft 8in) above the city, the church said in a statement. That beats the spire of Ulm Minster in Germany, which tops out at 161.53 metres.

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‘Still angry’: more than 50,000 protest in Valencia on first anniversary of floods

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Demonstrators call on regional leader to resign over handling of one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades

More than 50,000 people took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of last year’s deadly floods and denounce the authorities’ handling of the disaster.

Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on the regional leader, Carlos Mazón, to resign over what they say was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades.

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Mango founder’s son becomes alleged suspect in fashion tycoon’s death

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Spanish media report Jonathan Andic’s status has changed from witness of father’s fatal ravine fall

The family of Isak Andic, the founder of the fashion chain Mango, have insisted on his son’s innocence after media reports suggested he was a potential suspect in the billionaire’s death.

Andic died last December, aged 71, after apparently falling 100 metres down a ravine while hiking at Montserrat, near Barcelona, with his son, Jonathan. His death prompted tributes from politicians, journalists and the fashion world.

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