The shit in Spain falls mainly in the fan

[The Larch]

BTW, we didn't even get to comment on the nickname of Froilán's female companion during that night. 

Yeah, a Z-level socialite called "La pechotes" (or "Big boobs").

Again, he is the king Spain needed 

His grandfather would be proud to see how he follows with the family tradition. 

An update on this, apparently the rebellious princeling Froilán has been sent by her mother to Abu Dhabi to live with his grandfather the former king. It's funny how Abu Dhabi is turning into the place where we send our unwanted royals. 

[celedhring]

BTW, we didn't even get to comment on the nickname of Froilán's female companion during that night. 

Yeah, a Z-level socialite called "La pechotes" (or "Big boobs").

Again, he is the king Spain needed 

His grandfather would be proud to see how he follows with the family tradition. 

An update on this, apparently the rebellious princeling Froilán has been sent by her mother to Abu Dhabi to live with his grandfather the former king. It's funny how Abu Dhabi is turning into the place where we send our unwanted royals. 

The prelude to claiming the throne and becoming the new Carlist pretender?

[Josquius]

They could each get their own little palm island kingdom. Would make for a nice cyberpunk setup.

[The Larch]

BTW, we didn't even get to comment on the nickname of Froilán's female companion during that night. 

Yeah, a Z-level socialite called "La pechotes" (or "Big boobs").

Again, he is the king Spain needed 

His grandfather would be proud to see how he follows with the family tradition. 

An update on this, apparently the rebellious princeling Froilán has been sent by her mother to Abu Dhabi to live with his grandfather the former king. It's funny how Abu Dhabi is turning into the place where we send our unwanted royals. 

The prelude to claiming the throne and becoming the new Carlist pretender?

Over here we had a joke movement wanting to proclaim Froilán (as Froilán the IIIrd) as the true king of Galicia. 



Don't know if they're still active, though.

[The Larch]

And now for some proper news. As mentioned in other places in the forum, it's peculiar how European far-righters tend to just ape American talking points rather than developing their own. In the latest bout of this, Vox's VP of the Castilla y León regional government (their top elected official, as this is the only region where they're in a coalition government with the PP) has just announced a new anti-abortion protocol for the region (reportedly copied from one introduced in Hungary by Orban):

Spain's far-right introduce anti-abortion measures in Castilla y León

A regional government's move to restrict abortion rights in a large part of central Spain reignited debate on Friday on the issue, and in the run-up to this year's local elections.

Under the new measures adopted by the right-wing People's Party (PP) and far-right Vox coalition governing the Castilla y León region, women seeking an abortion there must be offered optional access to unsolicited resources by doctors before starting the procedure.

These include listening to the fetus's heartbeat, having a 4D ultrasound scan, and getting psychological advice, in a bid to reduce the number of abortions. Patients are free to turn down any of these suggestions.

The 'fetal heartbeat protocol', will be offered to women who are between six and nine weeks pregnant, the regional government's far-right vice president, Juan García-Gallardo of the Vox party explained, with the intention of allowing the parents to emotionally bond with their baby.

García-Gallardo stressed, however, that women would 'not be forced to listen to their baby's heartbeat if they don't want to'. The new measures were presented on Thursday by García-Gallardo.

Spain's regional governments have jurisdiction over public health policy at a regional level. The country faces local and regional elections in May-June.

'We are going to offer every parent who wants to see it a real-time video to see the head, the hands, the feet, the fingers. In short, all the parts of the body of the child that is being gestated,' García-Gallardo said.

The announcement drew strong criticism across Spain, from the central coalition government formed by the PSOE socialists and left-wing Podemos group, and even from the right-wing head of the Madrid region.

García-Gallardo insisted on Friday that the measures would immediately enter into force in Castilla y León, home to around 2.5 million of Spain's 47 million inhabitants.

According to data from 2021, the number of voluntary abortions grew by 7.2% in Castilla y León compared to the previous year, with 2,597, below the 2,674 recorded in 2019, before the Covid pandemic. Only 217 were made in hospitals, with 59 in public centres or 2.2%.

In response to García-Gallardo, Spanish Health Minister Carolina Darias said that no compromises would be allowed in the field of abortion rights.

Most of the many women ministers in the central government rushed to condemn what they described as an attack on women's rights — a main political banner for Spain's left-leaning governing coalition.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the PP head of the Madrid region, unexpectedly announced on Friday a new helpline for pregnant women. 'Women should be able to freely choose the information they wish to get,' she said.

In Spain, abortion is allowed up until the 14th week of pregnancy, and the country has recently made several moves to strengthen abortion rights nationwide.

Last year, the left-wing controlled parliament passed a law to ban the intimidation of women entering abortion clinics, where anti-abortion groups often used to demonstrate in a bid to make patients change their minds. The country also dumped the requirement for 16 and 17-year-olds to obtain parental consent before terminating a pregnancy.

Since this was announced last week, the regional government (headed by the PP) has been wavering back and forth on the topic, claiming that it's not mandatory, that it's just a recommendation for the doctors, and so on, and finally these measures were not officially published today, when they were intended to come into force. It's also peculiar how Vox announced this "coming from the top", as it was the region's VP that introduced them in a press conference, when the portfolio that'd have to cover them is not held by them but by the PP. It also mobilized the national government, as after the announcement the Health ministry had to send an official warning to the regional government on the topic.

This could not come in a worse moment for the PP, as this year we're going to have tons of elections in Spain (locals and regionals in spring, nationals at the end of the year), and this is a reminder that Vox, their #1 ally for any possible coalition government, are a bunch of nuts and extremists, with the galvanizing results that this tends to have on left wing voters. In a way it could be said that we're lucky that our far righters are such a bunch of idiots.

[Josquius]

Why are Castille and Leon one place anyway?

[The Larch]

Why are Castille and Leon one place anyway?

Merger in the early 80s of the regions of León and Old Castille.

Edit: Longer version, because I feel like it.

After the Napoleonic Wars, in 1833, Spain reorganized its provinces in a way that still lasts to this day. It also assigned provinces to different regions, but this was only for classification purposes, without giving the regions any devolved powers.



In this map, the current Castilla y León region was split between the Region of León (the three purple provinces to the West) and the Region of Old Castilla (the 8 green provinces to its east).

All over the XIXth century there were several proposals to reorganize the regions of Spain, without changing the underlying province system, but none of them came to anything. Several of these proposals involved reorganizing this region, including the maximalist "11 provinces" version that would come from joining León and Old Castilla.

During the 2nd Republic, the possibility for decentralization of government through the autonomy system for the regions was introduced, and before the Civil War started three regions got their autonomy, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia.

With very minor changes, this system lasted until 1983, after the approval of the current Spanish constitution, which allowed for the reintroduction of regional autonomy that Franco had abolished. At this point, the old regions of León and Old Castille merged into a single one, forming the current region of Castilla y León, which features 9 provinces, as two of the provinces of Old Castilla decided to leave and become single-province regions (Cantabria and La Rioja).

[Josquius]

Thanks for the big write up.

What I don't get more specifically though is why these two historically seperate areas ended up merged together with no desire to be seperate regions whilst you do have those small one province regions.

Leon is far enough in the past that there is zero nostalgia for it?

[celedhring]

Thanks for the big write up.

What I don't get more specifically though is why these two historically seperate areas ended up merged together with no desire to be seperate regions whilst you do have those small one province regions.

Leon is far enough in the past that there is zero nostalgia for it?

I'm not particularly well-versed on the regionalist shenanigans of that neck in the woods, but Cantabria and La Rioja have always seemed like pointless OPM's to me.

AFAIK there's some token separatist parties in León (as in, want to separate León from Castilla), so remembrance for the old kingdom is not much of a thing.

It's funny how nationalism works, btw, because on the instutitional level the histories of León and Catalonia run very in parallel, yet one tried to secede a few years ago and the other one, well, not. I suppose the reason is a mix of language and wealth (there is a Leonese language but it is on the verge of extinction).

[Duque de Bragança]

It's funny how nationalism works, btw, because on the instutitional level the histories of León and Catalonia run very in parallel, yet one tried to secede a few years ago and the other one, well, not. I suppose the reason is a mix of language and wealth (there is a Leonese language but it is on the verge of extinction).

That "Leonese language" might be on the verge of extinction, in Léon that is (Zamora and specially Salamanca more so), but is a real language, unlike Valencian ( a dialect of a language you certainly know)  . A language spoken in Asturias and in N.E Portugal, known there as Mirandês, from the local dialect name and localisation (Miranda do Douro). Some old Spanish books even called it "Leonés Braganzano" (sic)   

[The Larch]

What I don't get more specifically though is why these two historically seperate areas ended up merged together with no desire to be seperate regions whilst you do have those small one province regions.

As I said, during the XIXth century there were several proposals to reorganize the regions of Spain, and all of them involved shuffling around those particular regions, so it's not as if there was a huge underlying support for keeping them as they were, at least at that point.

For instance, this was proposed in 1847:



This was proposed in 1873:



It features the maximalist "11 province" version of Old Castille that I mentioned earlier.

And this was proposed in 1884:



After that, in the XXth century everything stayed as it was until the post-Franco constitution, only difference was the autonomist movement during the 2nd Republic, but it was about self-governance of the regions, rather than redrawing the map. Remember that until then the regions were mostly cosmetic, they served no particular purpose, as the state was much more centralized back then and only the provinces had some limited devolved powers.

How the 1983 regional map was drawn is not something I know a lot about, why León and Old Castille merged and why Cantabria and Rioja separated and went their own way. I'd have to ask my parents about it. Traditionally it is regional politicians of that time being blamed for wanting to have their own little fiefdom for those single province regions, AFAIK, but I don't know much about it. It has to be remembered that at that time Spain was in a huge state of flux following the dictatorship and the return to democracy. Already the process for granting self government to the regions was fraught with controversy. Originally it was only meant for the three regions that had self-government during the Republic to get it back, but then other regions requested it and it ended up being granted to all regions of the country, even to the ones where there was no appetite for self-government at all.

Leon is far enough in the past that there is zero nostalgia for it?

There is some remaining nostalgia for it, there's always been a small movement calling for the 3 provinces that belonged to the Region of León (León itself, Zamora and Salamanca) to separate from Castilla y León and become its own autonomous region withing Spain, but this has only a modicum of presence in the province of León, the other two provinces are not up for that at all. It kind of makes sense since León is actually quite different from the rest of the region, and more similar to Asturias or parts of Galicia than to other places in Castilla. In some of those XIXth century proposals they had Asturias and León joining, and I sort of think it would have been right.

[celedhring]

It's taken "only" 12 years,  but the Spanish Constitutional Court (which was renovated recently and now has a 7-4 progressive majority) has deemed the abortion law of 2010 constitutional. Abortion was already constitutional, but the 2010 law made it freely available until week 14, which was appealed by PP. It's now passed 7-4, and the conservative justices only objected minor aspects of the law. Nowadays even the current PP leader believes the law is "generally correct" and only has minor objections. Heck, PP weren't even able to strike down the law when they held the government in the 2010s, due to internal division.

So at least this particular bit of the culture war has ended.

[The Larch]

It's taken "only" 12 years,  but the Spanish Constitutional Court (which was renovated recently and now has a 7-4 progressive majority) has deemed the abortion law of 2010 constitutional. Abortion was already constitutional, but the 2010 law made it freely available until week 14, which was appealed by PP. It's now passed 7-4, and the conservative justices only objected minor aspects of the law. Nowadays even the current PP leader believes the law is "generally correct" and only has minor objections. Heck, PP weren't even able to strike down the law when they held the government in the 2010s, due to internal division.

So at least this particular bit of the culture war has ended.

And it was not even a very active war anyway, only the more recalcitrant sectors of PP (with the addition of VOX nowadays) were truly against the law, "mainstream" PP never had its heart in fighting the law. They just resorted to their usual lawfare to be able to claim that they're doing something without actually doing anything, and didn't actually do anything for real when they were in power. Same as with the same sex marriage law. They'll half-heartedly support the big demonstrations by the more hardcore religious movements and say a couple of things in their favour, and their more hardcore members will join the frontline (not the actual leaders, though), but at the end of the day they will not actually do anything significant to bring those laws down.

[Duque de Bragança]

It's no HS2 shenanigans but at least there are consequences for severe incompetence (corruption somewhere?) at RENFE and ADIF(infrastructure):

Layoffs at Adif (infrastructure) and Renfe after design debacle: train too big for tunnels


An error in the design of the new fleet for the Spanish metric gauge networks in Asturias and Cantabria will likely delay delivery of the rolling stock by several years. The current train design means that the vehicles will not fit through some of the tunnels on the routes. The Ministry of Transport has commissioned an internal audit, but two managers at Adif and Renfe have already been dismissed.

The first trains were originally planned to be ready around October 2024, the design failure will however delay operations with the new trains in the two regions. Renfe awarded the contract for the trains to Spanish manufacturer CAF in June 2020 for 258 million euros. 21 trains are assigned to the Cantabria metric gauge network and 10 trains to Asturias.

The Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda clarified the situation in a statement this week. The error in the definition of the train sizing was detected while still in the design phase, so no train had been manufactured yet and no public expenditure has been produced or incurred as a result of this situation. The error means a redesign is necessary, delaying the manufacturing process.

Where did it go wrong?
Although the results of the audit commissioned by the transport ministry are still pending, fingers are already pointing to Renfe as the presumed culprit. According to El Español, Renfe had been handling reports since 2021 warning that there were trains that would not fit in the tunnels, and it did nothing to remedy the situation. The newspaper says it has viewed a report of the State Agency for Railway Safety (AESF) from September last year. More specifically, it had a note issued by the AESF in which such a problem was put "in black and white".

The error in the train design is attributed to misinterpretation on the side of Renfe of the Declaration on the Network, prepared by rail infrastructure manager Adif. This declaration does not publish the gauge of railway lines.  Sources in the railway sector familiar with the situation told El Español that "it seems that Renfe interpreted that the standard gauges of the Gauges Railway Instruction are those existing throughout the network, without realising that they are the ones applied in new and refurbishment works."

The paper says that in March 2021, AESF confirmed that the current infrastructure it concerns does not comply with the GEE10 and GED10 gauges defined for new construction or refurbishment actions in the 'Gauges Railway Instruction' on numerous points. Thus, the application of gauges could lead to the manufacture of a train with dimensions considerably smaller than those of the current trains that it will replace.

New design to be completed by this summer
A working group led by the Ministry will be set up to monitor the next stages, in which the governments of Cantabria and Asturias have been invited to participate. According to the Transport Ministry, efforts are being made together with CAF so that the design phase can be completed this summer, speeding up the manufacturing time.

Currently, two persons with a responsibility regarding the situation have now been dismissed. Renfe president Isaías Táboas dismissed the person who was manager of the Material Management area of Renfe Viajeros at the time of the narrow gauge trains project from his responsibilities, the operator said in a statement. Adif has dismissed the head of its Inspection and Track Technology headquarters as a preventive measure, various Spanish media report. Spain's Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez had already said on Saturday that there would be dismissals at the public companies.

General Secretary for Infrastructures, Xavier Flores, stated in the broadcast 24 Horas that "It was the first time that we were faced with buying a train on this line." He assured that according to the strict application of the regulations followed for gauges "could cause the trains to be smaller than necessary" and added that "they already have a solution" and that they are working on it. Renfe has reached an agreement with CAF, Adif and the Railway Safety Agency to unclog the problem. Although no specific timeframe has been announced, it is speculated the error will delay the delivery of the train by two to three years.

https://www.railtech.com/all/2023/02/07/layoffs-at-adif-and-renfe-after-design-debacle-train-too-big-for-tunnels/?gdpr=deny

[The Larch]

Just to clarify, it's not true that the trains don't fit the tunnels because they're too big, it's a regulatory issue due to the peculiarities of the narrow gauge railways for which one of the possible solutions was a change of regulations. This was stated wrongly when it was first reported and is now being quoted by all other news sources that followed without being corrected.