PrairiePundit

NY Daily News: Spain says it will take stranded ship filled with migrants after Italy and Malta refuse to let the vessel dock The African migrants appear to long for the colonial era when the Europeans brought stability to African governance.  Now they seek it in Europe.

Telegraph: The imam behind the Barcelona terror cell may have been radicalised in prison by one of the Madrid train bombers, it has emerged. Abdelbaki Es Satty, who is believed to have been the ringleader in last week's attacks, was sentenced to two years in 2012 for smuggling hashish between Morocco and Spain. He was jailed alongside Rachid Aglif, aka The Rabbit, who was serving 18-years for his role in the 2004 bombings, in which 192 people died and more than 2,000 were injured. Sources in Spain said Es Satty had not been religious prior to going into prison and may have fallen under the malign influence of Aglif and other terrorists while prison. ... Locals in Ripoll described how Es Satty, who taught Arabic to local children, regularly travelled to Belgium, which has been central to many of the Isil inspired plots. ... It is weird that liberals tend to talk a lot about Islamaphobia but never latch on the danger of infidelaphobia by radical Islamists.  Radical Islami...

Sunday Telegraph: Catalan investigators on Saturday raided the house of an imam in the town of Ripoll they believe may have overseen the cell which killed 14 people in twin terrorist attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils. Police are trying to piece together how a cell composed of multiple sets of brothers from the same sleepy Pyreenes town came to carry out the devastating attacks, amid reports they planned to blow up the Sagrada Familia. The home of the imam, named as Abdelbaki Es Satty, was raided overnight from Friday to Saturday, with officers reportedly seeking - among other evidence - DNA samples which might link him to a building in the town of Alcanar believed to be where the attack was prepared. El Pais, a leading Spanish daily, said they were investigating whether the imam, who apparently left Ripoll around a month ago, might be one of two dead bodies discovered in the Alcanar house. Sources involved in the investigation told El Confidencial they bel...

Reuters: German-Turkish author Dogan Akhanli was arrested in Spain on Saturday after Turkey issued an Interpol warrant for the writer, a critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, fanning an already fierce row between the NATO allies. The arrest of the German national in Granada was part of a "targeted hunt against critics of the Turkish government living abroad in Europe," Akhanli's lawyer Ilias Uyar told magazine Der Spiegel, which first reported Akhanli's detention. A German foreign office official said Germany was in touch with Spanish authorities demanding that Berlin be involved in any extradition proceedings and insisting that no extradition should take place. Any country can issue an Interpol "red notice", but extradition by Spain would only follow if Ankara could convince Spanish courts it had a real case against him. Ties between Ankara and Berlin have been increasingly strained in the aftermath of last year's failed c...

NBC News: When a gunman killed four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels in 2014 , police in Spain launched an effort to reduce the number of illegal firearms circulating in Europe. What they found was a arsenal large enough to supply an army — and all ready to be sold to terrorist groups and gangs. Spanish police announced Tuesday they had recovered around 10,000 assault rifles, pistols, machine guns, and revolvers, as well as 400 shells and grenades, in raids in the north of the country. They also arrested five suspects and recovered around $90,000. The raids, in Girona, Biscay and Cantabria, targeted a gang trafficking firearms on the black market that were destined to be sold to terror groups and gangs in Spain, France and Belgium. ... Who knew that terrorists do not obey laws restricting ownership of weapons?  That is a significant stockpile of weapons.  Authorities need to trace their origins and how they came to be in possession of the gang.

Telegraph: Spain is facing international anger as it apparently prepares to refuel a flotilla of Russian warships due to step up strikes against the beleaguered city of Aleppo. Politicians and military figures condemned the support from a Nato member, while the head of the alliance indicated Madrid should rethink the pit stop. Warships from an eight-strong group led by the carrier Admiral Kuznetsov will take on fuel and supplies from the Spanish port of Ceuta after passing through the Straits of Gibraltar on Wednesday morning, Spanish papers reported. Nato officials expect the flotilla to then sail onwards to the eastern Mediterranean and escalate air strikes on the only major rebel-help city remaining in Syria, where 275,000 people are trapped. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato's secretary general, said the carrier group, which passed through the English Channel last week, could be used to bomb civilians in the city. ... Some NATO members are critical of the move by a NATO ally.   A...

El Pais: In March of this year, Spanish police arrested Mexican national Juan Manuel Muñoz Luévano, aka El Mono (The Monkey), charging him with money laundering and working for the Zetas drug cartel. Since then, authorities have uncovered a money trail to the top of Mexican politics, as well as learning more about the organization’s European distribution network. Muñoz, now being held in a Spanish prison, is linked to Humberto Moreira, a former high-ranking Mexican politician, and Rolando González Treviño, a Mexican media mogul who has turned state’s evidence. According to González’s statements to US police, he helped Moreira funnel embezzled government funds. Moreira is also believed to have used some of the funneled funds to help finance the 2012 campaign of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Following Muñoz’s arrest, Spanish police found Excel spreadsheets on a laptop computer at his home detailing the handover of 59 suitcases containing a total of €63 million to Zetas boss...

NY Times: Venezuela Casts a Long Shadow on Elections in Spain Leaders of the leftist Podemos party once advised the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, a country whose economic collapse is an issue in national elections next Sunday. If they are responsible for the socialist path that has led Venezuela to ruin, then voters should avoid them in droves.  Venezuela should forever be an example of the failure of command economies and socialism.

AFP: Spanish police said they arrested seven people on Sunday with suspected links to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State groups and uncovered an operation to smuggle arms to jihadists under the guise of humanitarian aid. The arrests were carried out in the eastern cities of Valencia and Alicante and in Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta, the police said in a statement. "Five are Spanish nationals of Syrian, Jordanian and Moroccan origin, and two are Syrian and Moroccan nationals," it said. The arrests were made in the context of an investigation launched in 2014 into "foreign structures" providing logistical support for Islamic State -- also called ISIL, ISIS or Daesh -- and the Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, police said. One of those arrested was a man who dispatched "military material, money, electronic and transmission material, firearms and precursors for making explosives" to Syria and Iraq via a company, it said. ... ...

Benny Avni: Coordinated multi-arrest raids in Spain and Morocco this week indicate that it’s high time we do away with the “lone wolf” theory when fighting terror. Madrid and Rabat coordinated their simultaneous raids, and I’m told they acted partially on information from Paris. All in all, 14 men were arrested on various charges related to recruitment of fighters for ISIS. The raids followed last week’s much-publicized train incident in France , which could have become one of Europe’s bloodiest, but for the heroism of four Americans and several other train passengers who bravely disarmed the would-be terrorist. Everything in that incident screamed “lone wolf,” and indeed that’s how it was initially reported. The “wolf” in question was Ayoub El-Khazzani, a Moroccan-born 26-year-old who has lived in Spain and other European countries since 2007, where he was radicalized. He first pumped himself up watching ISIS-produced propaganda in the bathroom of a high-speed train traveling in Eur...

Fuel Fix: A Cheniere Energy subsidiary has agreed to a 20-year deal worth $5.6 billion to supply liquefied natural gas to Spanish power and generation company Iberdola, S.A., the companies announced Friday . Iberdola agreed to purchase 400,000 metric tons annually from Cheniere’s planned Corpus Christi facility once its liquefaction Train 1 comes online. That rate doubles once the facility’s Train 2 come online. The facility is slated to have a total of three trains. Once completed, Iberdrola’s commitment would equal about 6 percent of the facility’s capacity. Iberdola officials said it would use the natural gas to supply its markets in the UK and Spain. ... When the facility comes on line it should perk up the market for natural gas in the Eagle Ford.   It is just the start of the potential trade deals the US can get if it gets into the export market.

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix: Spain overtook Norway in March to become the region’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas. The southern European nation has never produced any of the fuel. The twist is a consequence of the crisis that left more than a quarter of Spain’s workers unemployed as the economy weakened for nine straight quarters. Utilities that contracted to buy LNG before the slump are now contending with a sixth consecutive year of diminishing domestic demand, spurring them to re-export cargoes. The trade is being underpinned by prices in Asia and South America that are about 30 percent higher than in Europe. Japan is importing more after shutting down its nuclear power plantsfollowing the Fukushima disaster in 2011. South American nations are accelerating purchases after a drought in Brazil limited the supply of hydroelectric power and cold snaps in the U.S. curbed pipeline flows to Mexico. “It doesn’t make much sense to bring a cargo into the terminal, unload it and then put i...

Bloomberg: A few years ago, fracking in Spain seemed as likely as bullfighting in Britain. These days, energy companies from Texas, Canada and Ireland are going after exploration and drilling permits in hopes of capitalizing on geology that indicates Spain has a sizable chunk of the 883 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in shale estimated to sit under Europe. What’s changed? A sluggish economy for one — the energy industry estimates fracking could eventually create tens of thousands of jobs in a nation with an unemployment rate of 26 percent. Unlocking gas deposits might ease what consumers pay for the heating fuel. It’s about triple the U.S. price. As important, the national government, with the economy in mind, took a pro-fracking stance even as regional and local authorities harden what’s long been widespread European environmental opposition to oil and gas development of any kind. In December, two years after ousting the Socialists, the People’s Party-led Parliament changed a la...

Daily Mail: Revealed: 'Spain and France spied on their OWN citizens' phones and handed intelligence to the U.S. The NSA was given the data by the friendly governments.  I suspect it was because the NSA has better analytical tools for sifting through the mass of data.

Ronn Torossian: ... Adelson, a high-profile Republican, serves as CEO of Las Vegas Sands, a publicly traded American corporation, and hopes to create tens of thousands of jobs for Spain, one of America’s closest allies, in a country grappling with an unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent.  David Axelrod, a proxy of Obama, attacked Adelson in a note to Antonio Miguel, a member of the assembly and a Socialist Party in Madrid. Adelson’s offense? Opposing Obama’s political beliefs. Sounds like Putin’s Russia where the President opposes business interests due to political differences. ... This is Chicago style thug politics.  It is a form of corruption where businesses decisions depend on whether you support the current regime.  It is not the free enterprise system that is taught at the University of Chicago. This is back room hardball corruption.

BBC: Louise Redvers filmed this footage showing how eerily quiet Nova Cidade de Kilamba is   The ghost towns of China, Ireland and Spain - full of large empty house estates - may be a phenomenon that is on its way to Africa. Built for people who never move in, they leave those who did with a worthless property they cannot sell.   Perched in an isolated spot some 30km (18 miles) outside Angola's capital, Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential development of 750 eight-storey apartment buildings, a dozen schools and more than 100 retail units.   Designed to house up to half a million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under three years at a reported cost of $3.5bn (£2.2bn).   Spanning 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres), the development is the largest of several new "satellite cities" being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola, a...

NY Times: Spain Holds a Trump Card in Bank Bailout Negotiations The euro zone’s fourth-largest economy is too big to fail and possibly too big to steamroll, changing the balance of power in bargaining over a deal to rescue Spain’s ailing banks. The incompetence of Spain's socialist has ruined the Spanish economy and put the government and its political subdivisions so deep into a hole they will have difficulty clawing their way out.  They made several mistakes, the biggest of which was investing heavily into "green energy" and then attempting to subsidize it despite its obvious inefficiencies. They pushed a  building frenzy that was based on selling homes to other Europeans and then undercut it with rulings that caused many "owners" to lose title to the property they had paid for.  That was about the time sales had begun to slow anyway and made matters worse.  Like Ireland they have whole villages of empty new houses that can't be sold ...

Guardian: Dead Spanish man lay undiscovered at home for up to 20 years I hope I have more attentive neighbors.

Miami Herald: Spain’s Repsol oil company announced Tuesday it was “almost certain” to withdraw from exploration in Cuba, after spending an estimated $150 million on a dry well and seeing far more profitable prospects in other countries such as Brazil and Angola. The announcement was a blow to Cuba’s hopes to strike it rich quickly, jump-start its stagnant economy and trim its dependence on Venezuelan subsidies, although another foreign company is currently drilling a separate test well and others have options to follow. “We won’t do another well” in Cuba, Repsol Chairman Antonio Brufau said in presenting the company’s 2012-16 business strategy at a news conference in Madrid on Tuesday. “The well we drilled turned out dry and it’s almost certain that we won’t do any more activity there.” Repsol spent about $150 million since 2000 exploring off Cuba’s northern coast near Havana, with one well in 2004 that did not find oil “in commercial quantities” and one this year that was dry...

Telegraph: ... In fact with its projected income, Spain's Ministry of Public Administration estimates that Pioz will take 7,058 years to repay its debts thanks to mismanagement and a vast programme of overspending during the boom years when credit flowed and developers stampeded to put up housing estates they could never realistically hope to fill. ... They do have a lot of empty new houses for sale, but who would want to buy into that kind of debt.  The Socialist really mismanaged Spain's economy and it may take several millenniums to overcome it.