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🍿 This Week in Spain: 2 Men Enter, 1 Man Leaves

Also billionaires in space, misspelled slogans, and a town council meeting gone awry.

By @IanMount and @AdrianBono | September 28, 2023 | Madrid | Issue #30

🎉 Welcome to The Tapa, an English-language, weekly newsletter about all things Spain!

đŸ„œ This Week in a Nutshell: Alberto NĂșñez FeijĂło lost the first vote in Parliament to become Prime Minister, something literally everyone knew. There was a lot of drama on the floor of Parliament and fortunately we’re here to tell you all about it. Also, King Emeritus Juan Carlos I is back in Spain for some reason.

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We all saw this coming

Surprise (but Not Really)! PP Leader Alberto NĂșñez FeijĂło Has Lost the First Vote to Become Prime Minister

We’ve been saying this for months, but in case you forgot: Popular Party (PP) center-right leader Alberto NĂșñez FeijĂło never had the votes to be elected Prime Minister of Spain but that didn’t keep him from trying this week.

  • The conservative leader had to get 176 votes out of 350 MPs, but despite his best wishes he only managed to get 172 votes in favor, while 178 voted against.

  • Yeah, yeah
 technically he did win the most votes in July’s general election, but he failed to cross the 176 mark (absolute majority), even if he joined forces with far-right party Vox, which was willing to support the PP for little in return.

The drama began Tuesday, when Feijóo appeared in Parliament to ask MPs to vote for him. It didn’t work, true, but it did give us a lot of (un)forgettable moments. So let’s go through the main points of this week’s parliamentary debacle.

The Votes

On Wednesday Feijóo obtained a total of 172 votes between those from his own party (137) and the ones he got from Vox (33), Coalición Canaria (1) and UPN (1). Nothing’s really changed since King Felipe VI nominated him for the premiership bid last month so no surprises there.

  • The 178 MPs who voted against him came from the PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Junts, Bildu, PNV, and BNG.

  • On Friday’s second vote, the PP leader needs a simple majority (more yeas than nays) but he’s not expected to win that one either.

  • Then it will be the turn of caretaker Prime Minister Pedro SĂĄnchez, who needs to be voted in by Parliament before Nov. 27. If his attempts to strike a deal with separatist party Junts fall through, we’ll most likely be heading back to the polls on Jan. 14.

The Amnesty Issue

Feijóo started the debate by clearly opposing a possible amnesty for Catalan separatists who took part in a failed push for Catalonia’s independence six years ago (and which Sánchez is apparently considering in exchange for the votes he needs in Parliament). He called “it ethically and legally unacceptable”.

  • "I have within my reach the votes to become the president of the government,” he said, suggesting that separatist party Junts had approached him too to form a coalition government. “However, I do not accept paying the price they ask of me to be so [you know, amnesty],” he added, causing many on the floor to break into laughter as it’s extremely unlikely that far-right Vox would accept being part of a coalition with the separatist guys.

  • FeijĂło was hoping to debate SĂĄnchez on this issue and much of his speech (and subsequent replies) on Tuesday seemed to position him as more of an opposition leader that was filing for a motion of censure against him.

  • SĂĄnchez, however, once again surprised everyone when he decided to sit this one out and picked MP and former Valladolid mayor Óscar Puente to issue his rebuttal instead. As it turns out, Puente has a few things in common with FeijĂło, as he was the most voted candidate in the municipal elections, and yet a deal between the PP and Vox relegated him to the opposition. During his rebuttal, he also didn’t mention the word “amnesty” once.

Sánchez’s Secret Weapon: Oscar Puente

The PSOE said later that they picked Puente as a way of showcasing the PP’s many “contradictions” (don’t forget the conservatives insisted early on that Feijóo should be elected Prime Minister because he got the most votes).

  • FeijĂło was visibly annoyed as he wanted to debate SĂĄnchez, not Puente. “You asked me for six debates and now you can’t even do the second one?” he asked as the rest of the center-right MPs started shouting “coward” at SĂĄnchez.

  • Puente responded he “wasn’t expecting to hear that kind of verbal abuse toward the caretaker Prime Minister” and found it ironic they would refer to him as a coward, mocking FeijĂło for avoiding the televised debates with SĂĄnchez because he had “back pain”.

The spokesperson for the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party), Aitor Esteban, made it clear that “if the choice was between Alberto NĂșñez FeijĂło and amnesty,” his party would choose amnesty.

  • Esteban’s party could have considered joining FeijĂło in a coalition government, but having Vox in the equation made it not an option for them (Vox has said in the past that if it were up to them they would make the party illegal for their “complicity” with the ETA terrorist group).

An MP’s “Oops” Moment

Then came the (probably) most memorable moment of the week, which involved Teruel MP Herminio Rufino Sancho ĂĂ±iguez from PSOE. He was supposed to vote against appointing FeijĂło. He voted in favor.

When it came time to vote after the debate, the PSOE’s Isaura Leal conducted the roll call. As Sancho ĂĂ±iguez was called to cast his vote out loud, he answered with a resounding “yes”, confusing Leal who quickly replied “Yes? No?
 Excuse me?”.

  • As everyone on the floor started laughing, Sancho ĂĂ±iguez immediately corrected himself and said “no”, gesturing that he had made a mistake.

  • The confusion was due to Leal mispronouncing Sancho’s last name and calling him “SĂĄnchez” first, instead of “Sancho”. The MP later explained that he initially said “Sancho, yes” to confirm his identity not because he was voting in favor of FeijĂło.

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties this week

1. đŸ‡Ș🇾 Fab rally. Now about the spelling


Click for original tweet

Sunday’s PP rally in Madrid was many things—a sign that a lot of people support the PP and Alberto Nuñez FeijĂło (and really don’t like the PSOE’s “Perro Sanxe”), a PP attempt to put on a brave face before the almost inevitable failure of FeijĂło’s investiture, a traffic nightmare


  • But let’s be really catty and talk about spelling. Seriously.

Among the usual PP rally sights—people wearing Spanish flags as capes (“Look, son, it’s Super Spanish Man!”), the occasional schmuck making Franco salutes, fields of wrists bearing Spanish flag bracelets (aka the pulsera rojigualda), and plenty of Yorkshire terriers—there were signs, many signs, of questionable orthography. 

Click for original tweet

  • The most popular and eye-catching example was a young attendee handing out “FEIJO, ÂĄFIJO!” signs. Which, as many webizens pointed out, not only misspells FeijĂło’s name, but also doesn’t make any sense. The errors were so over the top that many wondered whether the distributor was a performance artist or a PSOE plant trolling the event. 

  • A close second was the handwritten sign describing SĂĄnchez as a ‘sicopater’ and a ‘comonista’. Which sound really bad.

  • Taking the bronze was “PUIGDEMON A PRISION”, which you can almost excuse because it’s phonetically right (though it you want to send someone to jail, maybe spell his name right?).

Well, at least one botched spelling turned out to be “Fake News”. Fact-checking site Newtral (get it? Neutral) found that a sign railing against “amistía” (instead of amnistía) much mocked for showing a lake of spelling skills was in fact just a nice bit of photoshop. 

  • The most-mocked person in the spelling olympics was Mercedes FernĂĄndez, a PP deputy from Asturias, who not only posted a photo on X (nĂ© Twitter) of herself with a “FEIJO, ÂĄFIJO!” sign, but also posted another celebrating “La Presidenta Ayuso interviene en el acto”, only to be told in no uncertain terms that intervene is with a v. She corrected her post, but the damage was done. 

Click for original tweet.

Ultimately, for many members of the online commentariat, the mistakes of orthography were a bookend to the PP’s rejection of the use of “co-official” languages in Parliament. In the words of one, “They don’t like the co-official languages, but it seems they don’t like Spanish much either.”

2. 🚀 There's a starman waiting in the sky


Sumar boss Yolanda Díaz took a page from David Bowie and sang about people in space this week. But not about androgynous Ziggy Stardust types—rather, about the richest of the rich escaping to space and telling the rest of us left on earth to take a long walk off a short pier.

Start ridicule
now. The right-leaning press and politicians immediately piled the mockery on the lefty pol, who serves in SĂĄnchĂ©z’s government as acting second deputy prime minister and labor minister. 

Funny thing is, what Díaz said is not entirely off base. Billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson all have rocket companies to get them off the earth, and Musk told Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu that he’s “in favor of anything that makes us a spacefaring people”. Fellow billionaire Mark Zuckerberg changed his company name from Facebook to Meta in a bet he could move life to the metaverse, and billionaire/Sith Lord Peter Thiel in fact tried to build a fortress mansion in New Zealand.

So she is verifiably not in Crazy Town here, though it’s still a bit odd to concentrate on American Billionaires in Space when the top concerns in Spain are (flipping through the CIS national statistics site
) 1) The economy crisis 2) unemployment 3) political problems. Still, definitely not nuts.

One note: None of the billionaires who fit in Díaz’s immensely rich class of space-faring, metaverse-loving fortress buyers are Spanish. For example, Amancio Ortega of Inditex/Zara fame apparently just wants to buy every possible luxury tower and warehouse complex he can find.

3.💋 Women’s national team coach named in Kissgate case

The legal case around Spain’s former soccer federation boss Luis Rubiales has broadened in a new, grimmer, turn.  

Now the judge has expanded the probe to include three other ‘people of interest’ from the RFEF soccer federation: fired women’s national team coach Jorge Vilda as well as men’s team director Albert Luque and RFEF marketing director RubĂ©n Rivera. They will be investigated, also for coercion, for allegedly pressuring Hermoso to claim the kiss was consensual. Luque and Rivera had been considered witnesses before the change. 

Some in the web commentariat have pointed to video shot just after the final (and kiss), in which Jenni Hermoso’s brother Rafa plays down the kiss, saying it was “just a little thing and that’s it” (“Ha sido una anĂ©cdota y ya está”) but that seems to be unlikely to affect the case, as it comes from a third party in the confused moments directly afterwards, and because it comes before the apparent repeated attempts at coercion.

But hey, at least the team beat Sweden (1-0) and Switzerland (5-0) in the first two games of the UEFA Nations League run-up. ÂĄVamos!

4. đŸ«… From one King to another


You’d never know that Rey Juan Carlos I (aka JC#1) had left Spain under a cloud after years of scandal (illicit payoffs, messy affairs
and a broken leg in Botswana that involved illicit payoffs AND a messy affair) had turned his once unblemished reputation as the savior of Spain’s democracy into, well, that of a pariah. 

And now he’s back again! Indeedy, it’s the truth. Mr. King likes to sail, and he really likes to sail near his beloved Sanxenxo (Galicia), and there actually is a regatta there right now called the “VIII Regata Rey Juan Carlos I” so, honestly, how could he stay away?

Honestly, his ex-excellency’s visit is not that exciting because it’s the third one. What is exciting is that as part of his visit he recorded a video Happy 80th Birthday greeting to the King of Love. Yes, Julio Iglesias. From one King to another. JC to JI. Feel the love.

JC#1 is expected to return to his exile in penury luxury home in Abu Dhabi on Oct. 2, when the regatta ends.

5. đŸ€Š Well, that got out of hand quickly

Scene: City hall of a small town in Valencia.

Situation: A discussion of municipal activities for adolescents. 

Take it away! Here’s the dialogue: 

Welcome to Godella, Valencia! This apparently is what happened on Sept. 21 in this small town of 13,000 founded (according to Wikipedia) in 1238 through the cession by James I of Aragon of a region named Godayla to Pedro Maza of AragĂłn.

Baffle them with bullshit: Stuck in an, um, uncomfortable position, Godella’s PP leaders went with an old favorite strategy
 

Huh? In other words, they rolled with Star Wars’ “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”

So far, the strategy seems to have worked, as no one has quit as far as we know


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