The Council of Ministers today, the first after the summer holidays, has approved a Royal Decree-law for the creation of a “public and mandatory” register of lobbies to ensure greater transparency and accountability.
Why not send an ES-Alert during the heavy rains in Tarragona last weekend? That is the question behind the latest controversy surrounding the Generalitat Government upon their return from vacation. Those downpours caused 11 injuries – one critical and another serious -, flooded streets and building basements, as well as closed roads, interrupted Rodalies service, and evacuated campsites. According to Salvador Illa’s Executive, the alert to mobile phones was not sent because the emergency level was below the threshold required to use these mass warnings.
Joan Laporta, president of FC Barcelona, has contacted the 17-year-old minor who last Sunday was hit with batons by a group of police officers after being removed from a line formed to enter and watch the match between Elche and Barcelona at the Martínez Valero stadium.
The German far-right is euphoric. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party boasts a new face that could bring it its first regional presidency, after years of growth at the polls since its founding in 2013 without this translating into access to power due to the cordon sanitaire applied by other parties. Ulrich Siegmund, candidate in the elections of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, to be held on September 6, could garner up to 43% of the vote, according to the latest poll by the Pollytix institute.
The investigators of the alleged attempted attack in early August at the German Leipzig airport found, ten days after discovering a first drone equipped with an explosive charge, another unmanned aerial vehicle near the airfield, as well as explosives, German media report this Tuesday.
The firefighters are working to extinguish a new fire in the north of Collserola, declared this Tuesday afternoon near the Canyelles neighborhood, in the Nou Barris district of Barcelona. The fire is located above the Alta de Roquetes road heading towards Sant Cugat. A large column of smoke is visible from different points in the city.
The Moroccan Minister of Islamic Affairs, Ahmed Toufiq, has once again raised Morocco’s claim over Ceuta and Melilla, doing so on the occasion of a religious festival presided over by King Mohammed VI, which was also attended by Crown Prince Moulay Hassan and Prime Minister Aziz Ajanuch. This is not the first time a minister from the Alaouite country has called to “liberate” these two Spanish autonomous cities: the Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, had already done so.
The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, using a report from the Defense Staff (EMAD), has attributed the arrival of more than 80,000 people in just 48 hours to Ceuta to a “self-management of individuals” who came “spontaneously” to the border attracted by messages on social networks warning of the lack of obstacles on the border perimeter. With this thesis, the Government focuses on the previous movements on social networks, which for Robles are “an essential instrument” of hybrid attacks thanks to disinformation campaigns. “Let’s not deceive ourselves. There are issues we will never know,” warned the Defense Minister about the origin of the assault, although she immediately pointed out that “interested actors” are using, or have even favored, this crisis with the “clear political purpose” of “destabilizing” Spain.
The Government has approved in its first Council of Ministers after the summer break two draft bills to reform the Spanish system of immigration and asylum and adapt it to the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum. The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, presented both initiatives at the subsequent press conference as an attempt to combine an “agile, effective, and orderly” management of migratory flows with the maintenance of guarantees for migrants. The reform, he added, will also allow speeding up the processing of international protection applications and improving “the necessary management of our borders to guarantee security in our country.”
The Ceuta crisis has revealed contradictory criteria within the Government this Tuesday regarding the intelligence information available in the days prior to the massive entry of migrants on July 30 and 31. While the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has assured in Congress that the 25 agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) stationed in the autonomous city have shared and analyzed with the State Security Forces and the Government Delegation the information they had gathered, Fernando Grande-Marlaska has maintained at La Moncloa that “there was no report indicating that on July 30 what finally happened was going to occur.”
