<![CDATA[In English Section | EL PAÍS]]> Thu, 9 Apr 2020 14:29:44 +0200 Thu, 9 Apr 2020 14:29:44 +0200 en 5 https://ep00.epimg.net/iconos/v1.x/v1.0/logos/cabecera_portada.png Logotipo de EL PAÍS https://elpais.com/ <![CDATA[Catalan premier announces snap election amid dispute over role as deputy]]> Catalan premier Quim Torra announced on Wednesday that there will be a snap election in the northeastern Spanish region once the regional budget is passed by parliament, a process that could take between two and three months.

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]]> <![CDATA[Deià: The Spanish village with more tourist accommodation than residents]]> Nestled at the foot of the Tramuntana mountains on the west coast of Mallorca, in Spain’s Balearic Islands, Deià is a haven for artists and musicians and was home to the novelist Robert Graves before his death in 1985.

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]]> <![CDATA[In photos: Easter in Spain under the coronavirus lockdown]]> <![CDATA[Spaniard in Wuhan faces tough choice: Stay with husband or evacuate]]> They were still in their pajamas and sipping their morning coffee when Sun Naitian proposed to Dácil Sánchez. It took her a few moments to process the information, and at first she thought it was a joke. But as soon as she realized that it was for real, her answer came spontaneously: yes. Now, after two years of marriage, Dácil is facing a much more complicated choice.

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]]> <![CDATA[Jailed Catalan leader speaks in parliament on Article 155: “It did nothing to stop us”]]> Six politicians who were jailed last year for their part in the 2017 independence drive in Catalonia were taken to the regional parliament on Tuesday, where they were due to speak as part of an investigation commission covering the application of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution that year. The measure, taken by the central government in Madrid, suspended the regional powers of the Catalan government in response to the illegal referendum on secession from Spain held on October 1, 2017 and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence passed by the parliament.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spanish dentist caught secretly filming colleague undress given three years]]> Arancha (fictitious name) was working as a receptionist at a dentists clinic in Alcorcón in the Madrid region. Every day, she would change into her uniform in a small storage-laboratory space that was made available for that purpose. One day, as she was beginning to undress with the door ajar, her boss grabbed the handle on the outside of the door.

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]]> <![CDATA[In Madrid, investors eye tenants who still pay just €7 a month]]> The businessman Luis de Ulibarri has just snapped up eight apartments in the center of Madrid for €1.8 million, which comes out to just €225,000 each. Given the current property market, it seems like a great deal, but there is a catch. All the apartments come with a tenant on the old rental contracts fixed by law during Franco’s dictatorship. The lowest rent is €7; the highest is €700 for a place that would cost €1,800 a month at current market prices.

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]]> <![CDATA[The shoestring superpower]]> Being a superpower is not what it used to be. These days, you can do it on a shoestring.

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]]> <![CDATA[El Roto]]> <![CDATA[Safety failures in Spain]]> The explosion that hit a chemical plant in Tarragona at 6.38pm on Tuesday was so powerful that it shook the windows of buildings located more than 12 kilometers away. The blast sent flying a piece of metal weighing nearly one ton for more than two kilometers, until it hit a residential building, killing a man who was inside his home. Great clouds of smoke rose up over the surrounding areas and the flames were visible from nearby neighborhoods.

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]]> <![CDATA[Police: Minister met Venezuelan vice-president to avoid her entry into Spain]]> Opposition parties in Spain are calling on the transportation minister, José Luis Ábalos, to confirm whether or not he met in secret with the Venezuelan vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, in the early hours of Monday morning at Madrid’s Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport. European Union sanctions prevent Rodríguez from entering the bloc’s airspace.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spain’s political parties lock horns over far-right Vox’s ‘parental veto’]]> A policy from the far-right Spanish political party Vox is causing heated debate over education and the rights of children. Dubbed by Vox as the “parental pin,” the policy gives parents the right to stop their children from attending complementary workshops organized during school hours. The measure means that schools will need to ask for parents’ permission to give “talks, workshops or activities with an ideological or moral leaning against their convictions,” according to the text of policy. This includes talks on sex education and LGBTQ+ rights.

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]]> <![CDATA[PM announces pension hike, defends prosecutor general pick after first Cabinet meeting]]> As was expected, Spain’s new coalition government has started its term by announcing good news. The debut measure adopted by the Cabinet, which met on Tuesday for the first time ever, was a 0.9% rise in pensions, a move that had been on hold until a government could finally be formed.

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]]> <![CDATA[Catalan premier challenges regional parliament by refusing to give up seat]]> The Catalan premier Quim Torra on Monday refused to give up his seat in the regional parliament, ignoring decisions by the Supreme Court and the Central Electoral Board stripping him of his credentials after he was found guilty of disobeying electoral rules.

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]]> <![CDATA[Civil Guard colonel slams actions of Mossos chief during independence drive]]> Monday saw the start of the second week of a trial of four figures connected to the Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, for their actions in the 2017 independence drive in the northeastern Spanish region. They are accused of having played a “key role” in the secessionist movement and are facing charges of rebellion and sedition.

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]]> <![CDATA[Catalan premier refuses to comply with Supreme Court decision to strip him of his seat]]> The Spanish Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to strip Catalan premier Quim Torra of his seat in the regional parliament until a final sentence is reached on his ban from public office. In December, the Catalan Regional High Court found Torra guilty of disobedience for refusing to remove banners in support of jailed pro-independence leaders from public buildings during an election campaign, something that violated regulations on political neutrality. The ruling, however, is not definitive until the Supreme Court issues a decision on Torra’s appeal.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spanish PM to negotiate with Catalan separatists on lowering sedition sentences]]> Spain’s coalition government is planning on reforming the country’s criminal code to lower the sentence for sedition, a crime that came into the spotlight following last year’s Supreme Court ruling on the Catalan separatist leaders involved with the 2017 breakaway bid in the northeastern region. Spain’s top court found nine of the defendants guilty of offenses including sedition and handed down lengthy prison sentences, sparking mass protests and disturbances in Catalonia.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spanish prime minister announces date of meeting with Catalan premier]]> Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will meet with Catalan premier Quim Torra the first week of February in Barcelona to discuss issues relating to Catalonia. The meeting is part of the agreement the leader of the Socialist Party (PSOE) made with the separatist Catalan Republican Left (ERC) in order to ensure he could be sworn back into office by Congress. The ERC agreed to abstain from Sánchez’s investiture bid on the condition that the PSOE commit to negotiations about the political situation in Catalonia and the future of the region.

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]]> <![CDATA[Ex-Mossos chief seeks to distance himself from Catalan independence leaders]]> This week saw the start of the second major trial covering the events of the fall of 2017, when pro-independence forces in the northeastern region of Catalonia organized a referendum on secession from Spain, and the Catalan parliament passed a unilateral declaration of independence.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spain trying to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan along with French, British nationals]]> The 20 or so Spaniards who are trapped in the Chinese city of Wuhan due to the ongoing outbreak of the coronavirus 2019-nCoV are due to be repatriated in the coming days, most likely on the same planes that are being prepared by the French authorities to transfer the 500 or so of their compatriots who have been in the area since the epidemic began. That was according to the Spanish government spokesperson María Jesús Montero, who was speaking on Tuesday after the weekly Cabinet meeting.

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]]> <![CDATA[Minister’s secret meeting with Venezuelan lawmaker sparks political storm]]> Spanish government officials are providing few details about the Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodríguez’s controversial layover at Madrid airport last week despite European Union sanctions prohibiting her from entering the bloc.

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]]> <![CDATA[Effects of Storm Gloria in Spain: “Recovery will be very tough”]]> A powerful storm that battered Spain this week has claimed at least 13 lives – four people remain missing – and devastated coastal areas along the Mediterranean with record rainfall, wind and waves.

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]]> <![CDATA[Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar triumphs at Spain’s Goya Awards]]> The internationally acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar was the big winner at Saturday’s Goya Awards with his semi-autobiographical film Pain and Glory (or, Dolor y Gloria) taking home seven of the 16 prizes it was nominated for.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spain’s foreign minister travels to Morocco amid territorial water dispute]]> The Spanish foreign minister traveled to Morocco on Friday amid diplomatic tension over Rabat’s attempt to take control of waters near Spain’s Canary Islands.

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]]> <![CDATA[Which school talks are under threat from the far-right’s ‘parental veto’?]]> It all began with a photo. In April 2018, the then-chief of the education department of Spain’s southeastern Murcia region, Adela Martínez Cachá, of the conservative Popular Party (PP), posed for a press photo at a school with members of No Te Prives (Don’t Deprive Yourself), an LGBTQ+ collective that gives talks on preventing abuse and homophobia in schools.

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]]> <![CDATA[€5 tickets for Spain’s new low-cost rail service to go on sale on Monday]]> Tickets for Spain’s new low-cost high-speed rail service, known as AVLO, will go on sale for as little as €5 a ticket on Monday. The cut-price offer from state operator Renfe will last for 10 days, with a thousand tickets available each day. That’s according to the transport and mobility minister, José Luis Ábalos, who was speaking at the Fitur tourism fair in Madrid on Thursday.

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]]> <![CDATA[Why Venezuelans from all generations are flocking to Madrid]]> In 2008, there were so few people from Venezuela in Madrid that José Luis Marín and his son-in-law Fernando Rodríguez had to seek out their compatriots by driving their Opel Astra around the city with the trunk filled with the Venezuelan cheese they made. They struck lucky in Las Tablas district, where the headquarters of the oil firm Técnicas Reunidas employs dozens of Venezuelan engineers.

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]]> <![CDATA[¿Qué? podcast, S04E2: A new Catalan trial and Vox’s idea for a parental veto]]> This week on our podcast we take a look at the second major trial covering the Catalan independence drive of 2017, which this time puts four figures connected to the regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, in the dock.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spain’s olive oil industry is already feeling the impact of Trump’s tariffs]]> The United States government’s decision to impose a 25% tariff on bottled Spanish olive oil in mid-October has pushed the industry to the point of near collapse. The situation has been worsened by a drop in the price of the product and the European Union’s slow response to private storage for olive oil surpluses. The plummeting prices have meant it is no longer profitable to harvest olives in rain-fed orchards. What’s more, the sector fears that the US administration of President Donald Trump will increase the tariff on olive oil sold in containers of less than 18 kilograms, and apply new levies to bulk shipments.

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]]> <![CDATA[The pioneering Spanish company where staff work a four-day week]]> A four-day week on the same salary has become a reality in Spain as a company in the southern Spanish city of Jaén, Software Delsol, this month reduced the hours of its 181 employees.

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]]> <![CDATA[Airport authority plans €1.5-billion overhaul for Madrid’s Barajas]]> The Spanish airport authority Aena is planning to invest around €1.5 billion in remodeling its Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas facility as part of its 2022-2026 Strategic Plan.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spaniards’ new travel trends: more trips abroad, fewer at home]]> Spaniards traveled less in the summer of 2019 than they did the previous year, with a significant drop in domestic tourism that a rise in foreign trips failed to balance out. That’s according to the Familitur survey carried out by Spain’s National Statistics Office (INE), which focused on the third quarter of 2019. Despite this reduced travel, spending rose by 1.9%, with almost €19.3 billion spent overall.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spain and Britain set date to negotiate on post-Brexit Gibraltar]]> Britain’s imminent departure from the European Union means that Spain is embarking on a special task: negotiating Gibraltar’s own exit from the European club.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spaniards in the UK: “I have a Plan B but Britons are trapped if things don’t go well”]]> They want to stay in the United Kingdom, they point to the contribution of Europeans to British prosperity and they fear Brexit more for its impact on the domestic economy than the possible effect the country’s departure from the European Union could have on their ability to stay in their adoptive home. The Spanish residents of the UK are as varied as the population they left behind, but what unites this diverse group are the challenges raised by Brexit and today’s general election, which they are observing both as witnesses and concerned parties.

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]]> <![CDATA[Gibraltar braces for British election as Brexit deadline looms]]> Conchita was among the 95.91% of Gibraltarians who voted against Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union in the 2016 referendum. Like her neighbors, she was shocked to find out the following day that the United Kingdom would be leaving the EU, a process commonly referred to as “Brexit.” There was nothing she could do but resign herself to it. And now, aged 64, she pauses during her stroll with her mother down Main Street to speak about the stalemate that has consumed the UK for the past three years and five-and-a-half months. “It’s a huge headache,” she says. “We have to move forward now and leave. There’s no turning back.”

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]]> <![CDATA[Brits in Spain resort to Irish ancestry to stay in the EU after Brexit]]> On June 23, 2016, Emma O’Sullivan spent the evening in her apartment in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, initially concerned and later shocked by what she was hearing on the BBC: that 52% of her fellow Brits had voted to exit the European Union, leaving her and around 1,300,000 more British nationals living in the EU in a state of limbo.

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]]> <![CDATA[Barcelona man reclaims art of small talk through free street conversations]]> Raquel Frohlinger, a 26-year-old from New York, was passing through Barcelona on a recent day when she stopped to chat with a complete stranger under one of the Catalan capital’s landmarks, the Arc de Triomf.

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]]> <![CDATA[Video: Spanish photographer’s speech on happiness at work goes viral]]> Pedro Correa’s life took a dramatic turn the day his father died. “He was 56 years old and I was 29,” he said to engineering students at Belgium’s Catholic University of Leuven during their graduation ceremony. “One day he was as strong as an oak, and the next day he was gone. We all know we are mortal, but it’s one thing to know that we are mortal and another to know we are going to die, and that it can happen from one day to the next.”

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]]> <![CDATA[“We have medication that prevents breast cancer, yet nobody uses it”]]> Harold Varmus, one of the first researchers to define cancer as a genetic disease, described it as “a distorted version of ourselves.” Unlike a infection caused by a virus or bacteria, which can be annihilated in order to restore health, tumors are the result of a malfunction by the very same mechanisms that keep us alive. Fighting them involves performing a complicated balancing act between the damage sustained by the cancer and the damage that is caused to the patient. In recent decades, research has enabled scientists to more accurately separate the healthy cells from the tumoral ones, to better understand what causes cancer, and to attack it more efficiently and with fewer side effects.

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]]> <![CDATA[An inside look at drug-fueled “personal growth” weekends in a Madrid villa]]> The session starts and the 12 participants gather to introduce themselves. One of them is Fernando, 55, who works in a shelter housing program in Ciudad Real and wants “to put his life in order” and improve his feelings about the state of humanity. Franka, 52, is finding it hard to get past her separation and cries as she admits to a tobacco and marijuana addiction. Then there is Taylor, a 22-year-old American who is wandering aimlessly around Europe and seeking direction.

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]]> <![CDATA[Is Spain’s Antonio Banderas an ‘actor of color’?]]> Even as this year’s Academy Award nominations were being criticized earlier this week for their lack of diversity, a related social media controversy broke out when some US media outlets described Spanish actor Antonio Banderas, who is in the running for an Oscar, as “an actor of color.”

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]]> <![CDATA[The Fitur tourism fair: Around the world in 10 pavilions]]> <![CDATA[Why tourists are digging deep in Asturian mines]]> There was never such perfect darkness. The blackness is absolute and the silence is broken only by the breathing of the other visitors in the group. We are hundreds of meters underground, in a small passage that connects two drifts in the Pozo Sotón mine in Spain’s northwestern region of Asturias. There is very little space and it feels as though we are far from everything. The miner Nuria, who insists she is not “a guide,” has told us to turn off our helmet lamps. So we stand in the darkness in silence. The moment lasts just a few seconds, but there is something mystical about the experience, something metaphysical in the blackness and the absence that surrounds us. It is like not existing; like a brief journey to outer space, despite the fact we are actually occupying an inner space, deep within the Earth.

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]]> <![CDATA[Discovering Chillida Leku and the magic of San Sebastián]]> The reopening of the Chillida Leku Museum is the perfect excuse to visit San Sebastián – known in Basque as Donostia – in Spain’s northwestern Basque Country. As are the city’s delicious pinxtos, the tapas-like creations that are an art in themselves. Indeed, there are more than enough reasons to visit San Sebastián, a city in constant transformation that boasts the perfect mix of creativity and gastronomy.

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]]> <![CDATA[Let it snow: Spain’s ski season kicks off in style]]> If the weather conditions hold, this ski season promises to be a long one. Autumn snowfalls have meant that resorts are opening early, with Masella in Girona in the northeastern region of Catalonia getting a head start as usual; this year its lifts powered into action on November 13.

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]]> <![CDATA[A journey to Spain’s magical Las Alpujarras region]]> Las Alpujarras is a region of mountain villages nestled among the Sierra Nevada range in Granada province, in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. Three such villages, which belong to the Spanish Beautiful Villages Association, lie in the Poqueira gorge – Capileira, located 1,400 meters above sea level, Bubión (1,300 meters) and Pampaneira (1,058 meters). These traditional villages receive thousands of visitors each summer, but in autumn and spring, attract mostly mountain-lovers and hikers eager to explore the area, which sits at the foot of Mulhacén mountain. But climbing Mulhacén, which at 3,479 meters above sea level is the highest peak in the Spanish peninsula, is only one of the many activities visitors can enjoy in this picturesque valley.

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]]> <![CDATA[Spain’s dying railroad towns: Trying to catch a new train to prosperity]]> A setting sun casts oblique rays over the hamlet of Algodor. In this spur of Madrid territory that bites into Toledo province, a solitary building made in the neo-Mudejar style rises over the reddish-greenish plain. The old train station with its arched windows was erected in 1929 to replace an older, more humble building.

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]]> <![CDATA[Alleged fraudster ‘Little Nicolás’: “They sent me to a school where everyone was rich except for me”]]> It’s breakfast time. On the second floor of a building in one of the most expensive areas of Madrid, a young man opens the door of a luxury apartment that has been seized by the authorities from a drug dealer, and is now being used by a special team from Spain’s internal affairs unit to investigate Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias, the young opportunist who managed to access the highest echelons of power using a cocktail of personal charm and extravagant lies.

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]]> <![CDATA[Ten temples of Spanish tapas]]> In Spain, food is a religion. That's why there are bars and restaurants where a specific tapa may be an object of worship. EL PAÍS SEMANAL tried 10 places around the country where people flock for a taste of deceptively simple dishes, prepared the right way.

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]]> <![CDATA[Piqué shakes up the tennis world]]> While Gerard Piqué was helping Spain win the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, he was also carving himself a new future. The cup was won due to collective effort; the vision was the product of boredom.

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]]> <![CDATA[Why an American photographer is fighting for Madrid’s Romani community]]> If you have walked through Puerta del Sol square in downtown Madrid, you may have seen them. Among the people dressed up as Super Mario and Mickey Mouse, the cigarette stands and the buskers, they slip in and out of the crowd, often approaching passers-by with signs asking for money.

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]]> <![CDATA[Eco-friendly Barcelona: Trend or truth?]]> As I walk down Gràcia’s narrow tree-lined streets, it is hard to ignore the contrasting décor of “eco-friendly” businesses surrounded by overflowing garbage bins, which are filled with plastic and non-recyclable material.

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]]> <![CDATA[Why I’m joining the climate protests, and you should too]]> In recent years I’ve experienced increasing levels of anger, frustration and despair with the scale of the climate emergency and the lack of urgency in tackling it.

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]]> <![CDATA[Could this be the last original craftsman of the Toledo sword?]]> It’s a quiet Thursday morning in the ancient Spanish city of Toledo, and Mariano Zamorano is standing outside of his store looking out across the empty cobblestone street. Behind him, past walls covered with gleaming swords of varying lengths and designs, the faint sound of clanking metal can be heard.

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]]> <![CDATA[Expensive murders]]> Each year, about half-a-million people are murdered worldwide. Naturally, these deaths have devastating effects on the victims’ families and loved ones. But there are also killings that reach far beyond friends and family and change the world. These transcendental murders can turn out to be very expensive. The iconic case is the 1914 assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. His death set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I and the deaths of 40 million people.

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]]> <![CDATA[Revolting alliances]]> Here are a few of last week’s headlines:

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]]> <![CDATA[Junk TV is more toxic than we thought]]> Some TV enriches our lives, some TV debases us. Some television opens minds, makes us think, takes us to places we would never get to visit and brings us face to face with life’s great dilemmas. There is also television that deliberately degrades, deceives, and confuses. And of course, there is TV that simply aims to distract us. Frequently, television that seeks to educate us is unbearably boring, while the shows that try to manipulate us end up polarizing and deceiving us. In contrast, TV that only aims to entertain is politically irrelevant. Or so we thought.

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]]> <![CDATA[The world’s most dangerous place: Washington D.C.]]> International security experts often draw up lists of the most dangerous places on earth. These are not places that are just dangerous to their population, but rather places that irradiate conflict and instability to neighboring nations or even to other continents.

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]]> <![CDATA[EL PAÍS launches new application for cellphones]]> EL PAÍS has recently launched an updated cellphone application, with which readers will be able to enjoy the best digital content and also benefit from new functions, such as reading stories offline.

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]]> <![CDATA[All stories from the English Edition]]> <![CDATA[About the EL PAÍS English Edition]]> The EL PAÍS English Edition is brought to you by a team of three native English-speaking journalists and translators, working from the newspaper’s main newsroom in Madrid.

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]]> <![CDATA[Subscribe to our newsletter]]> Puzzled by Podemos? Stumped by the Socialists? Perplexed by the Popular Party? The EL PAÍS English Edition brings you all the most important news from Spain and Latin America, translated from the Spanish website by a team of native English-speaking journalists, and with added context and background.

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