Ex-regional president Carles Puigdemont among high-profile beneficiaries after MPs approve law by 177 votes to 172

Spanish MPs have given their final approval to the controversial and deeply divisive amnesty law that the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, offered Catalan separatists in return for helping him back to power after last year’s inconclusive general election.

The new law, approved by 177 votes to 172 in Spain’s 350-seat congress of deputies, will apply to about 400 people involved in the symbolic independence referendum of November 2014 and the illegal unilateral poll that followed three years later, which triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in four decades.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters

💾

© Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters

Catalan authorities ask relatives to provide DNA to help identify 522 members of International Brigades from US, Canada, Britain and Ireland

Researchers in Catalonia have identified 522 members of the International Brigades, including 286 American and 86 British volunteers, who died or disappeared in the region during the Spanish civil war, raising hopes their remains could be found and buried with dignity nine decades after they perished.

About 35,000 people from 50 countries travelled to Spain between 1936 and 1938 to join the brigades to help defend Spain’s democratically elected government against Gen Francisco Franco’s military coup.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, says the funding will improve Kyiv’s air defences, just days after Russia killed 18 people in Kharkiv

Spain will provide Ukraine with €1bn in military aid this year after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met in Madrid to sign an “enormously important”, decade-long defence and security deal.

Although the precise details of the agreement have not been made public, the Spanish government said its assistance would “allow Ukraine to prioritise its capacities, including its air defences”.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Museum’s experts realised painter’s Ecce Homo had been misattributed in auction catalogue

Four centuries after it was painted, three and a half centuries after it arrived in Spain and three years after it came perilously close to going under the hammer for just €1,500, a lost, luminous and lovingly restored Caravaggio has gone on display at the Prado in Madrid.

The Ecce Homo, painted in the Italian master’s dark and desperate last years, made headlines around the world after experts at the museum spotted it in an auction catalogue and rang Spain’s culture ministry to share their suspicions that the painting had been misattributed.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images

A deluge of visitors has locked locals out of the housing market - and protests are growing across the Balearics

In a hot, dusty car park within sight of Ibiza’s old town, but a world away from the Balearic island’s hedonistic clubs and bougainvillaea-fringed villas, Ami Mohamed-Ali sits in his van, patiently brewing the first of three late-afternoon cups of strong tea.

“The first glass is bitter like life,” says the 33-year-old seasonal worker from Western Sahara, quoting an old refrain. “The second is sweet, like love, and the third is soft, like death.” As he adjusts the camping stove and pours the liquid from glass to glass to ensure a decent head of foam, Mohamed-Ali ponders his living quarters without a trace of life’s bitterness. So what if this van is his home for the next six months?

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Patricia Escriche/The Observer

💾

© Photograph: Patricia Escriche/The Observer

Investigation under way after four people killed and 16 injured in Medusa Beach Club in Palma

Investigators on the Spanish island of Mallorca are looking into whether overloading and structural issues caused the collapse of a beachfront restaurant and club, killing four people and injuring 16 others.

The two-storey Medusa Beach Club in Palma de Mallorca collapsed at about 8.30pm local time (7.30pm BST) on Thursday night. One firefighter told the local newspaper Última Hora he had arrived to find a “nightmarish” scene, with people screaming and crying and rubble piled high on the ground floor.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Cati Cladera/EPA

💾

© Photograph: Cati Cladera/EPA

Two people arrested over theft of José Capelo portraits in Madrid in 2015 – one of which is still missing

Police in Madrid have recovered a portrait by Francis Bacon, valued at €5m (£4.3m), which was one of five works by the famously thirsty and hell-raising artist that were stolen from the home of the painting’s subject almost a decade ago.

The pictures, whose total value has been put at €25m, disappeared in 2015 after a break-in at the Madrid home of José Capelo, a Spanish banker and close friend of Bacon who sat for the painter.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: SPANISH INTERIOR MINISTRY/AFP/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: SPANISH INTERIOR MINISTRY/AFP/Getty Images

Recognitions point to erosion of US ‘ownership’ of Israel-Palestine peace process and open route towards statehood

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

💾

© Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

Irish PM declares ‘unequivocal support’ for two-state solution, as Israel recalls ambassadors from Dublin, Madrid and Oslo

Ireland, Spain and Norway have announced they will formally recognise a Palestinian state on 28 May, triggering an immediate response from Israel, which said it would retaliate by recalling its ambassadors from Dublin, Madrid and Oslo, and withholding vital funds from the Palestinian Authority.

The three European governments made the long-awaited announcements in coordinated moves on Wednesday morning that they said were intended to support a two-state solution and foster peace in the Middle East.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Damien Storan/PA

💾

© Photograph: Damien Storan/PA

Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei sparks diplomatic row with remarks about Spanish prime minister’s wife

Spain has said it is permanently withdrawing its ambassador from Argentina as a result of a growing diplomatic feud with the South American country’s radical rightwing president, Javier Milei.

Milei – a notoriously pugnacious ally of the fellow populists Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro – sparked the row last weekend by insinuating that Begoña Gómez, the wife of Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, was “corrupt”.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Pau Barrenatomas Cuesta/AFP/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Pau Barrenatomas Cuesta/AFP/Getty Images

Spain recalls its Buenos Aires ambassador and demands apology from Argentina’s populist president

The Spanish government has recalled its ambassador from Buenos Aires and repeated its calls for Argentina’s populist president, Javier Milei, to apologise after he reopened a festering diplomatic row by suggesting that the wife of Spain’s prime minister was “corrupt”.

Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” and sworn enemy of socialism, infuriated Spain’s centre-left government when he used a speech at a summit of international far-right leaders in Madrid on Sunday to revive allegations that Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, had engaged in corruption and influence-peddling.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Foreign minister also dead after aircraft went down in mountains close to Azerbaijan border

The hardline Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, has died in a helicopter crash in foggy weather in the mountains near the border with Azerbaijan.

The charred wreckage of the aircraft, which crashed on Sunday carrying Raisi, as well as the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six other passengers and crew, was found early on Monday after an overnight search in blizzard conditions.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Iranian Presidency/AFP/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Iranian Presidency/AFP/Getty Images

Le Pen, Orbán and Meloni rail against socialism and ‘massive illegal migration’ at ‘great patriotic convention’ in Madrid

International far-right leaders, including France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei, came together in Madrid to rail against socialism and “massive illegal migration” three weeks before hard-right parties are expected to see a surge in support in June’s European elections.

Sunday’s “great patriotic convention”, which was organised by Spain’s far-right Vox party, offered conservatives and far-right populists a chance to congregate and take aim at a variety of familiar targets, from the welfare state to “wokeness” and the agendas of Brussels-based bureaucrats.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Rodrigo Jimenez/EPA

💾

© Photograph: Rodrigo Jimenez/EPA

Fico remains in intensive care but has ‘emerged from immediate threat to his life’, Robert Kaliňák tells reporters

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, is out of immediate danger but remains in intensive care four days after he was shot by a gunman, the country’s deputy prime minister has said.

“He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care,” Robert Kaliňák, Fico’s closest political ally, told reporters.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Ferenc Isza/AFP/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Ferenc Isza/AFP/Getty Images

People in Kyiv and Kharkiv celebrate win in world heavyweight unification fight as symbolic achievement for the country

From the capital, Kyiv, to the heavily attacked region of Kharkiv, news of Oleksandr Usyk’s win over Tyson Fury brought war-weary Ukrainians a rare and very welcome moment of victory and celebration.

Usyk, who became the first undisputed world heavyweight champion this century after his victory in Riyadh in the early hours of Sunday, said his triumph did not belong to him alone.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA

💾

© Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA

A new study resets the timing for the emergence of bioluminescence back to millions of years earlier than previously thought.

© NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Deepwater Wonders of Wake