Santiago de Compostela airport closes temporarily, Spain mulls penalising online book purchases to protect small bookstores, Spanish ex-PM Rajoy denies ordering political spying at trial and more news on Friday April 24th.
US to invest in military bases in Spain despite tensions
The United States has included Spain in its new military infrastructure investment programme, despite the ongoing rift between Donald Trump and Pedro Sánchez of the Iran War and Spain’s Nato spending.
The plan includes $8.5 billion allocated to 64 military construction projects , some of them in Spanish territory, which places Spain among the countries considered strategic for the logistical and operational modernisation of the US Navy.
Trump has repeatedly accused Spain of not investing enough in defence and threatened to pull troops from the military bases in Rota and Morón de la Frontera.
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Santiago de Compostela airport closes for 35 days
The Galician city of Santiago de Compostela, famed for being the final stop of the Camino or Saint James’s Way, will be without a functioning airport for the next month due to renovations.
Even though operations were suspended for 35 days starting on Thursday April 23rd, scheduled flights will instead land at A Coruña airport, also in the northwestern region and an hour’s drive from Santiago.
Overall, A Coruña airport will see a 70 percent increase in its usual operations during the closure, with 1,486 flights more flights than usual.
Santiago’s Lavacolla Airport will reopen on May 27th after renovations on the runway are completed, which has not been updated since 2008.
Spain mulls penalising online book purchases to protect small bookstores
Spanish Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun told national radio station Cadena Ser on Thursday that the government is studying measures to protect local bookstores from online sales.
Urtasun proposed “making shipping costs mandatory for online deliveries from major platforms, so that it is no longer free.”
“There is more and more online buying and the market share of independent bookstores has decreased somewhat,” he pointed out.
“Buying a book in a small bookstore will never be the same as the online shopping experience , because they can advise you, you can discuss things with the bookseller.”
However, Urtasun stressed that Spaniards are reading more than ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, describing the figures as “absolutely record-breaking,” noting that “it is mostly women and young people who read.”
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Spanish ex-PM Rajoy denies ordering political spying at trial
Former Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy denied in court on Thursday ordering or knowing about an alleged spying campaign against his conservative party’s ex-treasurer who threatened to expose its corruption.
The high-profile trial affecting the right-wing opposition Popular Party (PP) centres on ex-interior minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz, who served under Rajoy between 2011 and 2016 at the time of the alleged skulduggery.
Fernández Díaz and ex-interior ministry officials are accused of a plot to spy on and silence ex-PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas, using public money and without any legal basis.
Bárcenas, who served as treasurer until 2009, entered pre-trial detention in 2013 for irregularities in PP accounts and had threatened to reveal secrets about illegal party financing because he did not feel sufficiently supported.
The clandestine police operation allegedly aimed to allow Barcenas’s driver to seize compromising documents held by the ex-treasurer and his wife.
“I did not know this police operation was happening, I found out afterwards,” in 2021, said Rajoy, who governed from 2011 to 2018.
With additional reporting by AFP.
