Geometry in Barcelona, Spain - Slideshow

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The Colonial Guard

Francisco Franco is alive and well and holding the keys to entry

File this one under "things you don't normally get to hear about in EngLang media", as it's not just the new US immigration laws that carry the spirit of Arizoname!, sad to say.

One of the ongoing spats here in LatAm which flares up every so often is the Gestapo-esque attitudes of Spain's customs and immigration officials who love to lord it over the former colonies. Stories of ill-treatment float across the airwaves from media channels in nearly all South American countries that hit the same kind of wavelength; you get some minor infraction of a Latino trying to enter Spain, you get heavy-handed officialdom, you get physical ill-treatment, you get a big fat zero in justification or excuses from the Spanish authorities.

Spain might be enlightened when it comes to football these days, but stick a whole bunch of them in a government uniform and the dumbasses immediately knee-jerk themselves back to the day of Franco. Here's an example of the bad karma from Argentina's Clarín this morning (translated):

Another Old Woman Ill-Treated While Trying to Enter Spain

27 July 2010

She has a weak heart and the authorities confiscated her medicines. She was locked up for 24 hours and then sent home.

By Victoria De Masi

Luisa Ormeño, 72, is devastated and under medical treatment in her home in Cordoba Argentina, taking tranquilizers due to the nightmare she lived through a few days ago. She was another victim of what her family is calling clear ill-treatment when she was not allowed to enter Madrid, Spain, to visit one of her daughters, her son-in-law and her three grandchildred. Luisa prefers not to talk publicly about the ordeal but one of her daughters has decided to make the story known.

Her ordeal started one week ago when she readied her baggage and set off for Spain in an Aerolineas Argentinas flight. She was accompanied by Carlos, a 20 tear old family member. The idea was to spend three months there. According to her daughter she had complied with all documental requirements. What's more, to be on the safe side she went to the Spanish Consulate in Cordoba to allay any doubts about paperwork. But when she arrived at Barajas airport in Madrid, she was refused entry. The reason given at Immigration was that the Entry Invitation (in Spanish 'Carta de Invitación') presented was not the original but a faxed copy.

24 hours incommunicado and without medication

They said that she complied with all requirements but the letter done the by son in law "did not comply because it was a fax", said Miriam, daughter of Luisa, to Clarín. She then went through an ordeal. According to her daughter they put her in with other "rejected people" in a locked room with no food and without her required medicines for her heart problem despite the fact that she had her medical certificate with her.

"We found out about this from out son in law, who had little information to offer because they wouldn't let him see her" said Miriam. Meanwhile, her family waited in vain in the arrivals hall with no word passed to them.

continues

Chile versus Spain

Apart from a few snarkybits and quick references, this humble corner of cyberspace hasn't been too heavy on The World Cup so far. This has been deliberate, as there are a squillion different places to go if you want to be bored by some dumbass pontificating on the importance of it all.

But today we make an exception to preview a match coming up in five hours and forty-five minutes from now. Spain meet Chile in the last set of group matches and the basic story, assuming Switzerland beat Honduras....not a dead cert but let's just assume, is that Spain needs to win to go through at the expense of Chile, while Chile needs a win or a draw to send Spain home (one of the pre-tournament favourites). Both sides play attractive, quick, attacking football and won friends and plaudits in their qualifying games. Spain are the current European champions and really have a wonderful crop of players right now. Meanwhile, Chile have improved in leaps and bounds under the management of Marcelo Bielsa, who is for many people the best manager out there today.

Bottom line: The match today has the makings of an all-time classic. Now for sure footy fans will know very well that games rarely live up to this kind of billing....but all the same....you gotta watch this one because it might, just might be as good as that. And when it's played at its maximum expression there's no more beautiful game in the world than Association Football.

Update: It wasn't a classic, but at least Chile get through thanks to Honduras. It was also the first time this tournament that a South American team lost a match. So Portugal vs Spain and Brazil vs Chile in the last 16 round. This World Cup is now hotting up.

Switzerland 1, Spain 0: Three thoughts

1) Chile vs Spain on June 25th might turn out to be an all-time classic.

2) There's a strong possibility that we get Brazil vs Spain in the last 16 round.

3) Mario Eggimann is the best name for a footballer ever.

News roundup (half the news, some of the time)

Trade-in, che?

Venezuela has recalled its ambassador to Peru 'for consultations' by way of protest against Peru's granting of asylum to Manuel 'BraveSirRobin' Rosales. Hugo himself has been pretty quiet about the whole Peru thing.........so far.

Ecuador. Only in Spain would Studmuffin have to field such dumbass questions about an Axis between Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. Sincerely, the Spaniards make your average US Joe look smart on LatAm and there's not even the language barrier to deal with. Anyway, Mr Prez-Til-2013 said (and I quote), "I've probably travelled more to Brazil than to Venezuela. I've travelled many more times to Argentina. If they (you) want to look for axes, look for them and find them....If there were an axis it wouldn't (necessarily) be a bad thing, but explicitly there isn't one. There's too much talk and popular is confused with popularism."

Yay, The Muffin still rules!

Fox News again accuses Mexico of...being slow off the mark with its swine flu prevention program. They even managed to find some Neocon doctor to agree with them.....que sorpresa.

Argentina, and big agromachinery company Agco reports country tractor sales down 60% in the first quarter even though they climbed 3% in Brazil in the same period. The reasons being a combo of the drought weather period and total dumbasses in government. Klishtina&Co still insist that GDP is rising in Argentina....it's skin-crawlingly embarrassing.

Do what with tourism???????

This one isn't really LatAm, but it is Spanish language, it is politics and it's definitely stuff like that. Spanish PM Zapatero (he of the crummy suits) was speaking at a press conference today after meeting Russian President Medvedev. The issue in question was bilateral tourism and Zapatero said

"We have made an agreement to stimulate, to benefit, to f**k, to help this tourism."

Don't believe me? Ok, here's the Youtube.

The exact words are (in the last 10 seconds of this 27 second video):

"Hemos hecho un acuerdo para estimular, para favorecer, para follar para apoyar ese turismo."

For those who suffer under the Castilian challenge, the offending word is "follar" (pron: fo' yar). Sure it's a blooper, but it's a damn good one. Just a pity the new US Prez is such a good speaker. Will we begin to miss those dubyaisms after a while?

Thanks for the headsup, UL.

Spanish professional soccer a front for narcotrafficking

Carlos de la Vega. A very naughty boy, it seems

Carlos de la Vega, a professional footballer for Spain's Rayo Vallecano, has been arrested today along with two ex-professionals, Pablo Acosta and Zoran Matijevic (both from Spanish side Hercules) for belonging to a major cocaine smuggling operation with around a dozen other people. In fact Matijevic (a Serbian national with French passport) is the presumed ringleader of the gang. He was also the manager for French side Nice and, embarrassingly, an official F.I.F.A (the world football governing body) agent.

Spanish police have been tracking the gang since mid-2008, apparently. Under the guise of their frequent transatlantic trips to scout for footballing talent in South America, the group has been trafficking cocaine from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Today's raid has apparently caught the gang red-handed with a 600kg consignment of cocaine that left Argentina and arrived in Spain via Tangiers. At the time of this post the English-speaking press had not yet worked out a way of getting the name "Hugo Chávez" into their reports which explains the lack of coverage so far.

UPDATE: English language reports are starting to appear. This will make big news in Europe, for sure. Here's the Reuters version.

It's all quiet in Venezuela........

Luis Herrero is very silly man

.......now that a fool from Spain has gone home.

Spanish Euro MP Luis Herrero was invited by those that run these things to be one of the official observers of the referendum vote tomorrow. To ensure free'n'fair and all that stuff, there are 1,200 (I think) neutrals shipped in to watch over things...all quite normal. Well now there's only 1,199, as Rightwinger Herrero's (member of the Spanish PP party) idea of being neutral is saying the following 36 hours before the vote starts (via Ottotrans™):

"(Let Venezuelans) vote freely, and that they must never vote under the fear that a dictator is deliberately trying to impose upon them"*.

x

Result, Venezuela kicked him out of the country. So for sure we'll get exactly what Herrero wanted as the result, namely a diplomatic spat and more reason to shout "police state" etc. But the thing is that Herrero deliberately broke..nay smashed into pieces...his neutrality and respect for the role he was given in a ridiculous and childish way. I mean fer crying out loud here! What about some international observer checking out the recent US elections while wearing a T-shirt with "No Darkies" splashed across the front? That's about where we are here on the subtlety stakes.

It'll be interesting to see just how much fuss the rabid right makes about this indefensible that made a mockery of neutrality and got exactly what he deserved. How anyone could put this gillipollas in as a neutral observer and expect him to remain unbiased during the election tomorrow after what he said is beyond the ken of any reasonable person.

* Original Spanish: "votar en libertad y que jamás voten dejándose llevar por el miedo que premeditadamente un dictador está tratando de imponer".

Remittances: a looming problem for LatAm

Here comes another problem for LatAm economies, and Otto has the lowdown and lots of charts to illustrate. Remittances from the industrialized nations are dropping off quite sharply, and that means trouble aplenty for places like Ecuador and Bolivia.

US remittances to traditional receivers such as Mexico and the other Central American states are a well-followed story, so being the contrarian knucklehead that I am I decided to go have a look at the other main source of LatAm remittances, i.e. Spain. The picture that's developing is not a pretty one, sad to say.

Here we go with a few charts. First this one that shows remittances from Spain to all other countries up to 2q08 and is taken from the website remesas.org.

As we can see, the red line that shows the amount of Euros sent from Spain has dropped away for the first time ever. But this is only up to June 2008, so what can we expect for the rest of 2008 (and 2009 for that matter)?

If we look at the number of people from countries this side of the pond working in Spain, we can get some ideas. Here are some charts showing the number of legal workers employed in Spain since January 2006 on a monthly basis. It's worth emphasizing that these charts don't include the illegal workers over there, but all the same certainly give a good representation of the recent demographic trends.

Here is a chart that shows the five main LatAm countries of source for legal workers in Spain, namely Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina (FYI, next in line is Brazil with around 25,000 resident workers).

Now for some more detailed breakdown, starting with Ecuador as it has the largest number of legal LatAm workers over in Spain.

The drop-off in Ecuadorians working in Spain has been pretty sharp. The high summer season has 20,000 less workers than just two years ago, and since then the numbers have dropped sharply. October 2008 has less than 240,000 Ecuadorians on the Social Security register, and that's 10% down from the same month last year.

Second biggest source is Colombia:

The trend in seasonal workers is clear on this chart, but again we see a big drop in the last reported month of October.

Third is Peru:
Again the summer peak, and again the September and October figures are not forming the same rounded top of 2006 and 2007...the drop is much sharper.

Then it's Bolivia.

There are more Bolivians than ever in legal work in Spain and there hasn't been the same sort of drop as seen by the countries above....yet. Of all the countries mentioned, Bolivia has perhaps the most to lose. The absolute numbers of Bolivians in Spain may be lower, but their remittances account for around 10% of Bolivia's GDP so the effect on this country is significant.

Finally here's Argentina.

Notably, the number hasn't fluctuated so much here. This is likely connected with the lower numbers of Argentines who live and work in Spain in the lower paid, seasonal employment sectors.

This final chart shows the total number of non-European Union legal workers in Spain (includes other countries such as China, Morocco etc).

Again the trend is clear; the drop off in numbers has started much earlier after the Spanish high summer season. There are less migrant workers in Spain. Period. And with the way the world is going, those numbers are very unlikely to move higher for the time being.

These charts seem to indicate that LatAm is more exposed than ever to a downturn in Spain's economy in a very direct way, and that statement concerning my example nation of Spain is just as true for the other industrialized countries that are sources of remittances, such as the USA. The effect of an employment slump in any country is always felt first by the immigrant workers...it's just the way it is, Mr. Hornsby.

Boney M said it best: "Oh those Russians"

Very pointy boat

Russia is now launching a two-pronged attack on South America, hearts to the North and minds to the South.

The batting of the eyelids is steaming towards Venezuela right now. The nuclear powered battle cruiser "Pyotr Veliky" (Peter the Great) passed the straits of Gibraltar yesterday on its way across the Atlantic and is due to arrive in Venezuela for bi-national naval maneuvers at the end of the month. According to the ship's stats it carries cruise missiles (non nuclear tipped for this trip, so they tell us) with a range of up to 500km, so it won't be long before the US 4th Fleet coincidentally in the area right now is in range (if the Russkies feel like a potshot..which i doubt).

As for the business dealings (apart from the Russian takeover of Venezuela's gold industry slated for early 2009 and Russian oil company Rosneft trying to get its hands on a piece of prime Venezuelan real estate in the last couple of days), that's covered by today's news that Russia via its Gazprom state oil company wants to buy the 20% of Repsol (REP) currently in the hands of Spanish building company Sacyr Vallehermosa (who have announced intention to sell already). The Spaniards are clearly being semi-forced into an asset liquidation by the world downturn, as there wouldn't be much reason to sell its REP for a mooted €3.5Bn when it has the chunk on its books at €6.525Bn.

So with Repsol YPF a major part of Argentina's industrial life, the Russians are looking to open up a second LatAm front, as it were. Let's see how this one progresses.

So how did Repsol manage to hold on to its oil biz in Ecuador?

If these two rumble the Muffin will beat the Spaniard's tush again

The Muffin revealed all in his radio address today.

"Even the Spanish government intervened (i.e. lobbied on Repsol's behalf), and in consideration of that government we met with the Repsol executives (who) accepted every single one of our conditions."

Or in other words, KOW TOW! KOW TOW! KOW TOW!

Correa continued; "We are very happy that Repsol is staying in Ecuador. It is a very serious company, but we aren't going to let foreign companies impose the conditions (of the contracts)."

Gotta love this guy.