👀 Pedro Sánchez says please look over there

Madrid | Issue #120

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What, me worry?

🤩 How do you say “distraction olympics” en español?

If you pay any attention to American politics, you’ve heard plenty of talk of the Orange Menace’s genius for distraction. Like, wanna distract people from the icky Epstein files? Demand that the Washington football team be renamed the Redskins (huh?)! Don’t want more talk about how the Big Beaut will force millions off Medicaid? Suggest you’ll revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship! (Show of hands: who’d thought about Rosie in years before Señor Naranja pulled that one out of his navel?)

• Sorry. We apologize for the digression. This is a long way of saying that it appears that PM Pedro Sánchez has learned something from the orange fella, judging from the number of Grade A political distractions that have been rolled out this week.

But why? We don’t pretend to question anyone’s motivations (we just point at their actions 🫵 and laugh 🤣). But if you were to pay us to speculate (by the way: we offer paid subscriptions), we’d suggest that maybe it’s because his government:

• Hasn’t passed meaningful legislation in, like, forever; won’t even try to introduce (much less pass) a new budget this year; and faces investigations into the PM’s wife, brother, and two closest PSOE partners. Maybe that has something to do with it?

But hey, like we said, we don’t question motivations. Let’s just talk about the distractions flowing through Spain’s politics this week, because god knows we all need a laugh. Let us count the ways:

• Legal weed decree! 🪴 (Late and halfway there.) The government officially approved the medical use of cannabis, marking a historic but super tiny step forward. Under a new decree passed by the cabinet this week, cannabis-based medicines will be allowed — but only within hospitals, prescribed by specialists, and prepared under strict supervision.

  • Cannabis will largely be used when traditional treatments fail, for cases like multiple sclerosis-related spasticity, severe epilepsy, chemotherapy-induced nausea, or resistant chronic pain. But, primary care doctors will not be able to prescribe it, and neither cannabis flowers nor over-the-counter sales in pharmacies will be permitted (sorry, potheads).

  • Advocates welcomed the move as a “historic day” for patients who have long called for legal access to medical cannabis, though many criticize how restrictive the measure remains. Still, headlines, right?

• Abortion rights data drama! The inciting event? Most likely the very stupid decision of Madrid Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida of the center-right PP to have his party vote for a proposal from far-right Vox to require municipal employees (in this case, medical professional) to inform women considering an abortion of “post-abortion syndrome”, which in theory can lead to alcohol and drug abuse, suicidal thoughts, and increased risk of cancer in women’s reproductive organs. The problem? The syndrome sorta doesn’t exist. Almeida sheepishly walked this back, but the central government has since been on abortion like white on rice.

  • Abortion stats. On Tuesday, a few days after Almeida’s climbdown, Health Minister Mónica García presented a study of abortion in Spain over the last decade. It showed that the number of centers and abortions had hit records in 2024, suggesting that they were increasingly available. It also showed a wide disparity in terms of the percentages performed by public and private centers in each autonomous community. Cantabria (88,5 %), Galicia (77 %), La Rioja (76,1 %), and Navarra (74,8 %) were tops in public centers, while Andalucía (0,2 %) and Madrid (0,47 %) had the lowest.

  • Conscientious objectors registry. While there was little statistical evidence that this affected the availability of abortion — Madrid and Andalucia were 3rd and 5th in number of abortions per 1,000 women, while Galicia and La Rioja were far below the national average — the Sánchez government took the opportunity to remind four communities (most prominently the PP-run Madrid), that a 2023 law required them to guarantee the right to abortion in public health centers, and demanded that they supply the required lists of public system doctors who would not offer abortions (i.e. “conscientious objectors”). Madrid presi Isabel Díaz Ayuso got angry at Sánchez for demanding lists that would “stigmatize” doctors on them. Controversy served.

We could go on and on. Like, just yesterday, the government’s allies validated its decree law setting an embargo on arms sales to Israel — but only after the far-left Podemos called it “fake” (for not actually being an embargo) before holding its nose and voting to accept. But we’ll stop here. Let’s just say that until the government calls elections — or faces a major world crisis that brings it popular support — we’re going to see a lot more circus.

More news below. 👇👇

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties

1. 🚣 Gaza flotilla returns from Israel with tales of torture

And so it ended, with more of a whimper than a bang. The voyage of the Gaza aid flotilla, aka the Global Sumud Flotilla, aka the “Freedom Flotilla” that we have been covering since it embarked from Barcelona in early September (twice, actually, after the first try failed), has come to an end.

• 48 of the 49 Spaniards on board returned home, deported by Israel in two batches on Sunday and Monday. (More on #49 in a moment.) Wearing Israel-issued grey sweatpants, white t-shirts, and shower slippers, as well as keffiyeh headscarves (presumably not issued by Israel), they arrived at Spanish airports to cheers and hugs, and delivered tales of torture, or at least bad treatment, at the hands of the Israeli armed forces.

• Israel intercepted 42 boats carrying 479 people, including climate star Greta Thunberg and ex-Barcelona mayor Ada Colau, about 70 nautical miles off the coast in international waters last Thursday. From there, the activists were taken to the port of Ashdod, and then to the Saharonim prison in the Negev desert, a detention facility usually used for African asylum seekers. That’s where things allegedly got ugly.

It seems conditions were really not very nice. Colau said they were “kept for hours on our knees” and denied access to lawyers. Journalist Carlos de Barrón of El País claimed they were “deprived of sleep” and shuffled between cells at night, while Público journo Néstor Prieto Amador said they had their belongings confiscated.

• Activist Rafael Borrego added that guards “beat us, dragged us on the ground, blindfolded us, tied our hands and feet, put us in cages, and insulted us.” Another said they endured torturas sibilinas — “subtle tortures,” whatever that means — while being filmed by guards. One Spaniard, Reyes Rigo, remains detained, accused of biting a prison official. (She’s #49.)

Israel flatly denies any mistreatment. Its foreign ministry called the flotilla “a PR stunt” and said all detainees’ rights were “fully upheld.” Far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir went further, calling the activists “terror supporters” and scolding PM Benjamin Netanyahu for letting them go: “They should breathe the air of our terrorists’ wing for a few months.” Swell guy, that Gvir.

A worthy cause, but some of the returning heroes may have oversold their suffering. One flotilla member — Juan Bordera, a regional deputy for Compromís in the Valencia government — compared Saharonim to “somewhere between Guantánamo and Auschwitz.” That’s a lot.

• And who should be getting the attention? As Catalan-Moroccan writer Najat El Hachmi put it, Gaza’s tragedy hardly needs Colau arriving by boat to solve it like she “solved” housing in Barcelona. For El Hachmi, the flotilla was less a humanitarian act than a performance: a selfie “facing down the monster,” she wrote, proof of a generation’s “pathological narcissism.”

Final coda. Israel’s foreign ministry says the flotilla’s 42 ships were carrying about two tons of aid. “This amounts to less than one-tenth of a single aid truck,” it said. The UN says about 600 trucks are needed daily.

2. 💔 Tragedy in Madrid: 4 dead after building collapse

Madrid woke up in mourning yesterday after a six-story building under renovation collapsed on Calle Hileras 4, steps from Plaza Mayor. The accident, which occurred shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday, killed four people — the project’s architect and three construction workers — and left the city shaken.

What happened? The building, which had been closed for years, was being gut-renovated to become a four-star hotel.

• At the time of the collapse, around 40 workers were on-site. According to Madrid’s mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida, the sixth-floor slab gave way, crashing through all the lower floors and burying several people beneath tons of debris.

• Firefighters, emergency crews, and police worked through the night in a massive rescue effort, using drones, cranes, and search dogs. By early Wednesday morning, after hours of manual excavation, the bodies of all four missing people were recovered.

Who were they? The victims were identified as Laura Rodríguez Sabín, a 30-year-old architect from Madrid who worked for the renovation company Rehbilita, and three construction workers employed by the subcontractor ANKA: Moussa Dembélé from Mali, Diallo Mamadún (Alfa) from Guinea, and Jorge from Ecuador, between 30 and 50.

• Laura had been supervising the renovation from a small first-floor office, El Mundo reports. Moments before the collapse, she stepped out to use the bathroom — her on-site office survived; the bathroom did not. “It was pure bad luck,” a colleague said.

• Two of the workers were trapped in the basement bathrooms, and a third was on the top floor.

Official response. Throughout the day, emergency teams battled against time and debris — seven collapsed floors and roughly 150 cubic meters of compacted rubble.

• Firefighters had to dig by hand in sections to avoid further collapses. Almeida praised their work and confirmed that no one else was missing. “The tragedy could have been even worse — 40 people were working inside when it happened.” One survivor was hospitalized with a broken leg, and two others sustained minor injuries.

• The mayor also suggested excess weight from construction materials on the sixth floor may have triggered the collapse, though he stressed this was still a hypothesis.

• The construction company ANKA, however, denied that the upper floors were overloaded or that work was being done on the roof at the time.

• Fire brigade chief Miguel Seguí said the collapse was likely the result of “a combination of factors related to the renovation work,” though the exact cause remains under investigation.

What we do know. The building had a renovation permit issued in February 2025, and officials say there were no previous complaints or warnings about safety.

• Flags at City Hall flew at half-mast yesterday, as Almeida said, “all of Madrid is in mourning.”

3. 🧾 La juventud española thinks it’s just fine to cheat the Tax Man

Need more proof that Spain’s young men feel shut out of the system? Beyond, that is, their flirtation with Vox and their rage at, like, probably never owning a home? Look no further than their attitude toward taxes. Hint: they don’t just dislike them — they take them personally.

• Nearly half of men aged 25–44 say taxes are “something the State forces us to pay without knowing what we get in return,” according to a recent CIS survey dissected by El País this week. That’s 15 points above the national average. And among men under 25, 45% say people cheat on their taxes because they’re “excessive,” more than double the national figure.

• Even more telling? One in three young men thinks it’s “tolerable” for a small business to dodge corporate tax, and 51% sees nothing too wrong with paying a plumber off the books to avoid IVA (versus 23% overall). Call it the “Escape to Andorra” mindset (you’ll see why in a minute): if you can’t win, at least don’t pay to lose.

You can chalk up some of this anti-Hacienda fury to the influencer right. There’s a cottage industry of young men online railing against “the parasitic State” and hawking “escape plans” to Andorra. You’ve got Carlos Adams (“the system is designed so you lose”), penis-waffle-magnate-turned-tax-theorist Pedro Buerbaum, and “The Party Is Over” politician/crypto bro Alvise Pérez, who literally told followers, “Hacienda is a mafia. Don’t pay a cent you can avoid.” One thing that many of these influencers have in common? They’ve moved to Andorra to avoid paying taxes.

• But the resentment runs deeper than memes and influencers. As political scientist Oriol Bartomeus told El País, young men “feel the social contract is broken.” They’re working longer for less, can’t afford homes, and watch as politicians promise “solidarity” paid for by them. In a separate recent study from an institute connected to Hacienda, 40% of men under 25 said society would be better off if no-one paid taxes; only 16% of people over 40 agreed.

It’s not just a YouTube thing. It’s a trust thing. The State feels remote, the benefits invisible, and the rules arbitrary — unless you’re born with enough money to buy a house. Meanwhile, young men’s feeds are filled with people boasting about “optimizing” taxes or moving north to Andorra la Vella (that’s the capital of Andorra, for those not in the know).

• The CIS data also suggest this fiscal cynicism lines up with politics. Vox remains the only major party promising to “cut taxes” without also mumbling about “solidarity,” and it’s thriving among men under 35.

So, yeah, young Spain is angry, but not just at Hacienda. They’re pissed at a country where you work hard, pay your dues, and still can’t move out of your parents’ house. And when that’s the deal on offer, who wouldn’t start dreaming of Andorra (or hiding cash under the mattress)?

• P.S. Just like we published features on Spain’s housing non-bubble and the crazy prices that stop young people from buying property, we are about to publish a deep dive into why people hate Spain’s tax man so very much. Coming soon! 🥳

4. ✈️ At this rate, Ryanair won’t fly at all to Spain by 2027