The shit in Spain falls mainly in the fan

[grumbler]

Atlantis was thought to have many wonders...but I did not know satellite imagery was one of them. 

That's from a modern satellite that just orbited backwards to go backwards in time.

[Josquius]

Tartessos?

[Valmy]

I now want 1104 BC Google Earth.

[celedhring]

That place is still covered with a marsh (incidentally, super beautiful/eerie place). IIRC due to climate change it is feared it will get flooded again in the late 2000s.

[celedhring]

Indirectly, I presume. I expect some platitudes about "public powers have to be exemplary"

That was quite easy, I'll give myself one tarta de Santiago point.

Now I'm off to my (Covid-downscaled) Christmas family dinner. Hopefully I can avoid politics this year, it's so, so tiresome 

[viper37]

The Queen retains estates in Canada? You guys should've done like your southern neighbors.

hear, hear!

[The Larch]

So, for those in the know about the inner workings and the dark side of Spanish politics, PP have been embroiled during the last few years in a protracted legal battle dealing with their finances, which were apparently plagued with irregularities and/or downright illegal dealings. This mostly had to do with bribes from private companies in exchange for public contracts, which were kept partly in cash in PP's HQ, and used to suplement the incomes of the heads of the party over the years (via envelopes stuffed with bank notes) as well as to finance their electoral campaigns and other party expenses (most prominently and controversially, renovations to their HQ in Madrid's Génova street, which has turned in public imagination into a modern version of the eponymous thieves' den). Revelations from this case were the main cause of the downfall of Mariano Rajoy's government.

If you feel like digging deeper into it, check the following wiki links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCrtel_case

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A1rcenas_affair

In a recent development, one of the key players, Luís Bárcenas, PP's former treasurer, has agreed to cooperate with the judges, and his revelations might be more than juicy.

Ex-treasurer's revelations rattle Spain's Popular Party ahead of illegal funding trial
Luis Bárcenas has sent prosecutors a letter promising to cooperate and naming senior party officials who allegedly accepted regular payments of undeclared money

New revelations from the former treasurer of Spain's Popular Party (PP), Luis Bárcenas, who is serving a 29-year sentence over a sweeping graft case known as Gürtel, could affect the outcome of a new trial probing an illegal funding system run by the conservative group.
(...)
Now, with less than a week to go before the start of a trial over the PP's alleged illegal funding – in which Bárcenas is the main accused party and faces a five-year sentence – the former treasurer has sent prosecutors a letter expressing his "desire to cooperate with the justice system." José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, two former prime ministers who served at the time when the PP was allegedly running this parallel accounting system, will appear in court as witnesses.

https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2021-02-04/ex-treasurers-revelations-rattle-spains-popular-party-ahead-of-illegal-funding-trial.html

Now, in the latest development of this saga, and right after PP's rather bad results in Catalonia's regional elections this weekend, in which they were clearly overtaken by Vox, PP's current leader, the laughably terrible and ill qualified (fake Harvard degree and everything) Pablo Casado has just announced that PP will actually abandon their iconic (maybe not the right word, but you get the idea) Génova street HQ in order to cut ties with its corrupt past and stop being reminded that their very own offices are basically a synonim for public corruption in the mindset of many Spaniards. Of course, the scorn and the jokes in social media have been non-stop since then.

[The Larch]

For ilustrative purposes, this is the infamous PP's Génova street HQ.



By contrast, here's the far more modest PSOE HQ.

[celedhring]

The move reads essentially to me as "we can't afford paying for this without bribe money" 

[The Larch]

The move reads essentially to me as "we can't afford paying for this without bribe money" 

Yeah, owning an entire office building in the very center of Madrid for decades really was shouting out "this is paid with dirty money". 

[celedhring]

Spain's new nazi darling.





Catapulted herself into fame during an antisemite rally last week. She's been charged with incitement of hatred.

[Syt]

Maybe she was just hailing a cab?

[celedhring]

I doubt so...

Her whole speech felt straight from the 1930s ("the jew is guilty!"). There's some clips out there with english subtitles and all, but I won't share that nazi drivel here.

[Syt]

In Germany you have Naomi Seibt. She rejects man-made climate change, is against migration, feminism, against Covid-measures, etc.

Apparently the Heartland Institute in the US employed her as "Anti-Greta." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Seibt

[celedhring]

Isabel is hotter and probably nazi-er.