Jim Lawley is a former university lecturer who has lived and worked in Spain for 40 years.
England’s cricketers have just crashed to a second humiliating defeat against Australia, leaving them 2-0 down in the five-match series. With occasional exceptions, we have batted, bowled and fielded atrociously. It was, as Sir Geoffrey Boycott has written in the Telegraph, ‘a horror show’. England only narrowly avoided an innings defeat, in the end losing
‘Fine weather in Malaga’ proclaimed the banner headline of a Spanish newspaper in 1974 – that was the day’s big story. There was nothing about the country’s social and economic problems or the Carnation Revolution bringing democracy to neighbouring Portugal. After almost four decades in charge, the dictator Francisco Franco had effectively depoliticised Spain. ‘A
The winner of this year’s Booker Prize will be announced tonight. Of the six shortlisted novels, Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter looks like a good bet for the £50,000 award. It might even be a contender for best Booker novel ever. The prize’s judges have been known to make strange calls – and always bet responsibly! – but the
‘I have searched everywhere for the “city of dreams” and found it here, in Ronda,’ Rilke wrote. Hemingway was more practical: ‘[Ronda] is where you should go if you ever go to Spain on a honeymoon or if you ever bolt with anyone. The entire town and as far as you can see in any
‘Never join a queue.’ It’s not a bad motto. It keeps me away from tourist-choked hotspots. It means I don’t visit venues that offer free admission for children, advertise fast-track entry or are just one stop on ‘a multi-attraction sight-seeing experience’. My advice? If they want you to book a time slot, don’t go. As
Since early August, Spain has been reeling from its worst forest fires in decades. Exact estimates vary but so far more than 360,000 hectares – an area the size of Mallorca – have been destroyed in dozens of blazes. The flames have forced the evacuation of thousands of villagers, wiped out tens of thousands of
With the summer’s Test matches over, England’s cricket coach and captain will now be wondering how to avoid our usual trouncing in Australia this winter. Normally we try to win and we get walloped. On the last three occasions we’ve ventured Down Under, Australia have either whitewashed us 5-0 or beaten us 4-0 with one
Ávila, Spain At school I wasn’t much good at anything – until, that is, I had the good fortune to land in Mr Hodges’s French set. It wasn’t just the ten words of vocabulary and the irregular verb we learnt every day, it was the whole structured Hodges approach which gave me confidence, showing how
At yesterday’s Nato summit in The Hague, all but one of the 32 leaders agreed to increase their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP as President Trump has been demanding. The exception was Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. His insistence that actually 2.1 per cent will be enough has enraged President Trump. Trump
Ahead of next week’s Nato summit in The Hague, Spain’s socialist prime minister has refused to increase his country’s defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. Pedro Sánchez says that the increase, championed by President Trump and backed by Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, is ‘unreasonable’. His refusal has disrupted preparations for the summit
Conservative and Reform politicians have denounced this week’s post-Brexit Gibraltar deal as a betrayal. ‘Gibraltar is British, and given Labour’s record of surrendering our territory and paying for the privilege, we will be reviewing carefully all the details of any agreement that is reached,’ Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, said. Meanwhile, describing Labour
For years, the UK, Spain, Gibraltar and the European Union have been negotiating, on and off, to resolve the complex issue of Gibraltar’s post-Brexit land border with Spain. Now, ahead of next week’s meeting in London when Keir Starmer welcomes EU leaders to discuss a ‘reset’ in UK-EU relations, Spain’s Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, has
By six o’clock this morning, electricity had been restored to 99 per cent of Spain. Restoring people’s sense of security and a full return to normality, however, will take much longer. Portugal has been similarly affected as, briefly, were parts of southern France. The sudden outage occurred at 12.33 p.m. yesterday, leaving Madrid without electricity for
Just a week after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Spain to spend more on defence, the country’s socialist prime minister, has unveiled a massive defence development initiative costing over ten billion euros (£8.5 billion). This new plan raises Spain’s defence budget from a mere 1.4 per cent of its GDP, the lowest amongst Nato’s
‘You’ll be cutting your own throat,’ US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned countries thinking of aligning with China. The remarks were made just before Spain’s prime minister, socialist Pedro Sánchez, arrived in Beijing on Thursday with a delegation of ministers, seeking to boost trade, attract investment, and to position Spain as the EU’s chief interlocutor
Spain’s defence spending, at a mere 1.28 per cent of its GDP, lags behind all other Nato members. While most European Union countries have already reached the target of 2 per cent that was agreed back in 2014, at the present rate of progress Spain won’t get there until 2029. Such a leisurely approach is
Luis Rubiales kissed player Jenni Hermoso on the lips during the medal ceremony after Spain won the Women’s World Cup in August 2023. Rubiales, at the time president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, said the kiss was consensual but Hermoso said it wasn’t and filed a criminal complaint. Rubiales has now been found guilty
The trial of Luis Rubiales, former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, starts in Madrid on Monday. After Spain won the women’s World Cup in August 2023, Rubiales kissed player Jenni Hermoso during the medal ceremony. She says that the kiss was not consensual. Rubiales maintains that it was and, along with three of
‘There are only two families in the world, as a grandmother of mine used to say: the haves and the have-nots.’ Sancho Panza’s line in Cervantes’ famous novel was echoed by socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday when he worried that Spanish society was rapidly dividing into two classes: ‘Those who inherit properties from
It’s not often that a country can solve a serious, endemic problem quickly, easily and at no expense at all. But Spain can. The problem is some of the country’s left-wing politicians’ harmful ignorance of Spain’s 20th century history – and in particular about what actually happened during the Second Republic (1931-1936) and the resulting civil
