All posts tagged "Spain"

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman offered a scathing review of Trump's recent threat against a key American ally.

In March, Trump warned of a complete trade cutoff with Spain after the country refused to allow U.S. military bases for operations against Iran. Even though Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was unfazed, Trump again threatened to ignite a trade war with Spain during an outburst at the NATO summit in Turkey.

"It was completely crazy," Krugman said in a Substack post on Wednesday. "This is not something that is real, except that the President of the United States did say this."...

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that Spain has already agreed to cooperate with the United States on any war with Iran — but almost immediately, the Spanish government contradicted this.

As CNBC noted, when Leavitt was pressed by reporters on Wednesday about Spain's refusal to allow U.S. use of its military bases for staging such an operation, she replied, “With respect to Spain, I think they heard the president’s message yesterday loud and clear, and it’s my understanding, over the past several hours, they’ve agreed to cooperate with the U.S. military. The president expects all of our European allies, of course, to cooperate in this long sought-after mission, not just for the United States but also for Europe, to crush the rogue Iranian regime.”

However, Madrid swiftly disagreed, with Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares telling a local outlet that, “The Spanish government’s position on the war in the Middle East ... and the use of our bases has not changed at all.”...

A court in Madrid ordered the temporary blocking of the short message service Telegram in Spain on Sunday, citing a lawsuit from several companies claiming that Telegram was being used to violate copyright protections. Several media companies had brought the lawsuit involving Telegram. Consumer advocates in Spain, where there are several million Telegram users, criticized the measure as disproportionate. However, Telegram was initially still accessible from Spain and, even if instituted, the ban could likely be circumvented with relative ease using protected network connections known as VPNs. ......

By Raul Cadenas Susana Vera MADRID (Reuters) -About 170,000 people marched through Madrid on Saturday in the largest protest yet against an amnesty law which Spain's Socialists agreed over Catalonia's 2017 separatist bid in order to form a government. The demonstration, the latest in a series of protests in cities across the country against the amnesty, took place two days after Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez won a four-year term with the backing of Catalan and Basque nationalist parties in return for agreeing to the law. Protesters, many waving Spanish flags and holding signs ......

The death toll in a fire in the Spanish city of Murcia has risen to 13. Three nightclubs were affected by the blaze, the emergency services said. The flames broke out in one of the three nightclubs at around 6 am (0400 GMT) and quickly spread to the other venues. Murcia's Mayor José Ballesta declared a three-day period of mourning. The cause of the fire is still not known....

An incident involving “diarrhea all the way through the airplane” caused a Delta Air Lines flight to Barcelona to make an emergency landing last week. The Airbus A350 was forced to fly back to its location of departure at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport approximately two hours after takeoff, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware.com. The issue was reportedly a potential biohazard for those on board, and a spokesperson for the airline published a statement Tuesday evening seeming to confirm the report. “Delta flight 194 on Sept. 1 from Atlanta to Barcelona returne......