Latest news with #People'sparty
UPI
3 days ago
- Politics
- UPI
Tens of thousands rally to protest Spanish prime minister
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez delivering a statement about the country's official recognition of Palestine's statehood in Madrid, Spain, in 2024. EPA-EFE/Borja Puig De La Bellacasa/Moncloa June 8 (UPI) -- Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in central Madrid Sunday to push back on the policies of Spain's socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, demanding an early election as his party continues to battle corruption allegations. Sunday's protest was organized under the slogan "mafia or democracy" by the opposition conservative People's party, and drew between 45,000 and 50,000 people, according to official estimates. Organizers put the attendance at closer to 100,000, the Guardian reported. Sanchez, his family and his Spanish Socialist Workers' party, have faced corruption allegations over the past year, but have intensified in recent days as a former member of his party was accused of initiating a campaign against the Guardia Civil police after officers investigated Sanchez's wife, Begona Gomez, his brother, David Sanchez, and former transportation minister Jose Luis Abalos. Demonstrators gathered Sunday in the midday sun in Plaza de Espana, carrying signs that read "Sanchez traitor" and "government resign." People's party leader Alberto Nunex Feijoo renewed calls for a snap election. "Spain needs a revolution of decent and freedom - and will lead that revolution from the streets and at the ballot boxes, Freijoo told the protestors. "Mr. Sanchez, stop hiding, stop lying and stop running. Spain knows only too well who you are and what you have done. Yield to democracy. Call an election: we want one now because no one voted for this, not even your supporters. Sanchez has pushed back on his opponents, accusing them of conducting a harassment and bullying operation against him and his family, calling allegations against his wife are designed to bring about his "personal and political collapse."
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Minister warns against blaming Spain's blackout on renewable energy
Spain's environment minister has warned against attempts to blame Monday's unprecedented blackout across the Iberian peninsula on the increasing use of renewable energy, defending the reliability of the national grid and promising a 'complete audit' to establish the causes of the outage. Speaking on Wednesday afternoon as a specially designated committee prepared to meet to investigate the blackout, Sara Aagesen pushed back at opposition parties' claims that the socialist-led government's drive to embrace renewable energy had compromised the grid's stability. She said Spain's electricity on Monday had been generated from a mix of different sources, with solar power accounting for almost 55% of the total, followed by 10% from wind power, 10% from nuclear power and almost 10% from hydraulic power. Related: 'No one knew what to do': power cuts bring chaos, connection and revaluation of digital dependency 'The system has worked to perfection with a similar demand situation and with a similar energetic mix [in the past], so pointing the finger at renewables when the system has functioned perfectly in the same context doesn't seem very appropriate,' she told reporters. Opponents of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, have suggested over recent days that he pushed ahead with plans to prioritise renewable energy over nuclear energy without thinking of the consequences, and is now trying to blame private energy companies for the blackout. The conservative People's party (PP) accused the prime minister of waging 'an information blackout' over the incident, while Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right Vox party, has blamed the power cut squarely on Sánchez and his 'disastrous energy policies'. Some have also seized on a recent financial report from Redeia – the parent company of Red Eléctrica, Spain's national grid operator – which warned that 'the high penetration of renewable generation without the necessary technical capacity to deal adequately with disturbances' could 'lead to production cuts'. It added that blackouts 'could become severe, even leading to an imbalance between production and demand, which would significantly affect the electricity supply'. Aagesen insisted that renewable energy was vital if Spain was to remain a competitive and strategically autonomous power producer. 'We have native resources – the sun, the wind – in our country and we don't have fossil fuels or uranium,' she said. 'We do have sun and wind and I think a lot of businesses share our commitment to transforming our energy system and making it more and more renewable.' Earlier on Wednesday, Red Eléctrica's president, Beatriz Corredor, said the company knew what had caused the blackout but was still poring over a huge amount of data. 'We know the cause and we have it more or less tracked down, but the thing is there are millions of pieces of information because signals are sent every millisecond,' Corredor told Cadena Ser radio. Corredor said she would not be resigning over the incident, adding: 'To do so would be recognise that the correct actions weren't taken, and that wasn't the case.' She also insisted it was incorrect to link the blackout to Spain's increasing reliance on renewable energy. 'The renewables mix is safe and it can form part of all the safety systems of the electrical operating system,' she told Cadena Ser. 'Linking what happened on Monday to renewables isn't correct. Renewables work in a stable way.' Sánchez himself has been blunter. 'Those who link this incident to the lack of nuclear power are frankly lying or demonstrating their ignorance,' he said on Tuesday, adding that nuclear power generation 'was no more resilient' than other electricity sources. Sánchez summoned the heads of Spain's private energy operators – including Corredor and representatives from Iberdrola, Endesa, EDP, Acciona Energía and Naturgy – to an urgent meeting on Tuesday evening to discuss the blackout. The prime minister has said the committee will be looking into the role of private energy companies and urged them to help the government get to the bottom of the blackout as soon as possible. Aagesen said some of the operators had already provided huge amounts of data, with the rest of the information expected over the next few days. 'As soon as we know what caused this event, we'll put all necessary measures on the table so that it doesn't happen again,' she said. The investigations are focusing on what happened at 12.33pm on Monday, when, for five seconds, 15 gigawatts of the energy that was being produced – equivalent to 60% of all the energy that was being used – suddenly disappeared. Spain aims to generate 81% of its electricity from renewables by the end of the decade. Last year, a record 56% of its electricity came from renewable sources.
The Guardian
30-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Minister warns against blaming Spain's blackout on renewable energy
Spain's environment minister has warned against attempts to blame Monday's unprecedented blackout across the Iberian peninsula on the increasing use of renewable energy, defending the reliability of the national grid and promising a 'complete audit' to establish the causes of the outage. Speaking on Wednesday afternoon as a specially designated committee prepared to meet to investigate the blackout, Sara Aagesen pushed back at opposition parties' claims that the socialist-led government's drive to embrace renewable energy had compromised the grid's stability. She said Spain's electricity on Monday had been generated from a mix of different sources, with solar power accounting for almost 55% of the total, followed by 10% from wind power, 10% from nuclear power and almost 10% from hydraulic power. 'The system has worked to perfection with a similar demand situation and with a similar energetic mix [in the past], so pointing the finger at renewables when the system has functioned perfectly in the same context doesn't seem very appropriate,' she told reporters. Opponents of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, have suggested over recent days that he pushed ahead with plans to prioritise renewable energy over nuclear energy without thinking of the consequences, and is now trying to blame private energy companies for the blackout. The conservative People's party (PP) accused the prime minister of waging 'an information blackout' over the incident, while Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right Vox party, has blamed the power cut squarely on Sánchez and his 'disastrous energy policies'. Some have also seized on a recent financial report from Redeia – the parent company of Red Eléctrica, Spain's national grid operator – which warned that 'the high penetration of renewable generation without the necessary technical capacity to deal adequately with disturbances' could 'lead to production cuts'. It added that blackouts 'could become severe, even leading to an imbalance between production and demand, which would significantly affect the electricity supply'. Aagesen insisted that renewable energy was vital if Spain was to remain a competitive and strategically autonomous power producer. 'We have native resources – the sun, the wind – in our country and we don't have fossil fuels or uranium,' she said. 'We do have sun and wind and I think a lot of businesses share our commitment to transforming our energy system and making it more and more renewable.' Earlier on Wednesday, Red Eléctrica's president, Beatriz Corredor, said the company knew what had caused the blackout but was still poring over a huge amount of data. 'We know the cause and we have it more or less tracked down, but the thing is there are millions of pieces of information because signals are sent every millisecond,' Corredor told Cadena Ser radio. Corredor said she would not be resigning over the incident, adding: 'To do so would be recognise that the correct actions weren't taken, and that wasn't the case.' She also insisted it was incorrect to link the blackout to Spain's increasing reliance on renewable energy. 'The renewables mix is safe and it can form part of all the safety systems of the electrical operating system,' she told Cadena Ser. 'Linking what happened on Monday to renewables isn't correct. Renewables work in a stable way.' Sánchez himself has been blunter. 'Those who link this incident to the lack of nuclear power are frankly lying or demonstrating their ignorance,' he said on Tuesday, adding that nuclear power generation 'was no more resilient' than other electricity sources. Sánchez summoned the heads of Spain's private energy operators – including Corredor and representatives from Iberdrola, Endesa, EDP, Acciona Energía and Naturgy – to an urgent meeting on Tuesday evening to discuss the blackout. The prime minister has said the committee will be looking into the role of private energy companies and urged them to help the government get to the bottom of the blackout as soon as possible. Aagesen said some of the operators had already provided huge amounts of data, with the rest of the information expected over the next few days. 'As soon as we know what caused this event, we'll put all necessary measures on the table so that it doesn't happen again,' she said. The investigations are focusing on what happened at 12.33pm on Monday, when, for five seconds, 15 gigawatts of the energy that was being produced – equivalent to 60% of all the energy that was being used – suddenly disappeared. Spain aims to generate 81% of its electricity from renewables by the end of the decade. Last year, a record 56% of its electricity came from renewable sources.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Spanish parliament vote on cutting food waste will end ban on wolf hunting
The Spanish parliament has voted through a measure that will in effect lift the hunting ban on wolves that was imposed in 2021. A coalition led by the conservative People's party, with the support of the far-right Vox party and Basque and Catalan nationalists, added an amendment to a law aimed at reducing Spain's estimated 1.2bn kilos of food waste. The amendment says that wolves create food waste in the form of 14m kilos of meat in the remains of the 14,000 sheep and cattle they allegedly kill each year. In Castilla y León, the region with the largest wolf population, farmers' organisations claim that in 2024 wolves killed about 6,000 head of livestock. But critics said there is no scientific basis for these figures. 'Today the parliament has presided over what is a dark day for nature conservation in Spain, using an underhand method and without any scientific justification to leave wolves unprotected,' Juan Carlos del Olmo, general secretary of the WWF in Spain, said after the vote. The WWF believes that a decision it said is 'based on political opportunism' opens the way for the indiscriminate slaughter of wolves and undermines the progress made on coexistence between farming and wildlife. 'This is profoundly irresponsible,' said a source at Spain's ministry for ecological transition. 'The conflict between wildlife and humans is nothing new and the only policy that benefits everyone must be based on coexistence.' The source said the vote was based on a denial of the facts and of science. 'Taking the wolf off the list of protected species in this way doesn't help anyone.' Figures released this week showed that the population explosion of wolf packs predicted by the pro-hunting lobby has not materialised. Numbers have remained stable in the north-west, home to a majority of Spain's estimated 2,500 wolves, an area where they have enjoyed protection only since 2021. Isidre Gavín i Valls of the Catalan nationalist party Together for Catalonia, which supported the amendment, said the party is opposed to the killing of even one wolf, but said that until now 'it's the shepherds who lack protection'. Last December the EU reduced the protected status of wolves from 'strictly protected' to 'protected' in a policy championed by the EU Commission president, Ursula von de Leyen, after a wolf killed her family's pet pony.
The Guardian
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Spanish People's party provoke fury with spoof Temptation Island video
Spain's conservative People's party (PP) has pulled a Temptation Island-themed video attacking the country's socialist prime minister, his wife and his colleagues after the short, AI-generated film provoked an embarrassing diplomatic incident with the Dominican Republic. The 30-second video – which aimed to piggyback on the popularity of the Spanish edition of the reality TV show – was the PP's latest attempt to capitalise on the corruption allegations surrounding both Pedro Sánchez's administration and his wife, Begoña Gómez. A bare-chested image of Sánchez featured in the video, as did a swimsuit-clad Gómez and a mock-up of the former transport minister, José Luis Ábalos, holding a cocktail. Gómez is being investigated by a judge after a self-styled trade union with far-right links accused her of using her influence as the wife of the prime minister to secure sponsors for a university masters' degree course that she ran. Ábalos, meanwhile, was suspended by his party in February last year after refusing to resign when his assistant was accused of taking bribes to facilitate mask contracts during the Covid pandemic. Both Gómez and Ábalos have denied any wrongdoing. Although intended as a domestic jab, the video, posted on the PP's social media channels, incurred the wrath of the Dominican Republic, where Temptation Island is filmed. The small Caribbean nation, which shares the island of Hispaniola with neighbouring Haiti, was angered by the juxtaposition of its flag and a map of the country with the message: 'Once Temptation Island has finished, the new adventures on Corruption Island begin.' The video also made mention of 'corruption, lust, ambition and lies'. On Thursday, the Dominican Republic's foreign ministry posted an angry message on X, decrying what it called 'the malicious and incomprehensible attack' on the country and stressing that it had made great strides in strengthening the rule of law and transparency. 'The exploitation of the country's image and the distortion of its national symbols is unacceptable – even more so when it's for domestic Spanish political ends,' it said. On Thursday evening, the PP pulled the video, which, it said, had been solely intended to 'denounce the corruption of Pedro Sánchez's government', adding: 'There was never, at any time, any intention to damage the image of the Dominican Republic, a country with a long tradition of friendship and closeness to Spain.' Despite being the butt of the backfiring stunt, Sánchez also apologised. Speaking after Thursday's summit of European leaders in Brussels, the prime minister said that he had been too busy to watch the video but still wanted to say sorry for its content. 'All I can say is that I'm deeply embarrassed and I apologise sincerely on behalf of Spain,' he said. '[The Dominican Republic] is a friend and an extraordinary country with which we have cultural and historical links.' The video was released in the same week that the former PP prime minister Mariano Rajoy appeared before congress to deny any knowledge of a shadowy political and police plot to target and undermine both Catalan independence leaders and senior figures in the leftwing Podemos party. Rajoy, who was prime minister from 2011 to 2018, lost power after Sánchez used a motion of no-confidence to unseat him following a string of damaging corruption cases involving PP members.
