The Government has defended this Thursday, with an extensive document, the loan of 53 million euros granted on March 9, 2021 to the airline Plus Ultra. A financial aid, charged to the support fund for the solvency of strategic companies after the coronavirus pandemic crisis, now in the eye of the legal, political, and media storm following the indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for alleged corruption crimes that would have their origin in this Executive rescue.

The Ceuta crisis has become an opportunity for Giorgia Meloni to try to impose her migration agenda in Europe. The Italian right celebrates the “success of the diplomatic initiative” for having placed the strengthening of borders at the center of the European debate. But, at the same time, in Palazzo Chigi there is a much more immediate fear: that Spain will respond with reciprocal measures, introducing controls for travelers coming from Italy. In the middle of August, when hundreds of thousands of Italians spend their holidays in Spain, that decision could translate into long lines at airports and ports and end up exposing the essentially symbolic – or, as the Italian opposition denounces, “populist” – nature of the temporary suspension of Schengen decreed by Rome.

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, will appear at their own request and in an extraordinary session at the end of this month before the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and National Security committees of the Congress respectively, to report on the management within the scope of their competencies regarding the massive entry of immigrants in Ceuta on July 30 and following days, according to sources from the Presidency.

Tubos Reunidos is now the third investigated company that was rescued in 2021 during the pandemic by the State Society of Industrial Participations (SEPI), as were Plus Ultra and Air Europa. In this case, it has been by order of the judge of the Audiencia Nacional, Santiago Pedraz, who yesterday ordered the search of its headquarters by the central operational unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard.

Juanma Moreno, the president of the junta and PP candidate, started the electoral campaign tonight in the Murillo gardens in Seville in a quasi-family event. Not many people, all of them loyal devotees of the president waving Andalusian and Spanish flags.