MADRID, June 1 — A Spanish court today dropped one of the charges against the brother of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in an influence-peddling trial, ruling the alleged offense had expired under the statute of limitations.

David Sanchez, a composer and orchestra conductor who trained and worked in Toulouse, Tokyo and Madrid, is accused of benefiting from the creation of a tailor-made position as coordinator of music conservatories in the southwestern province of Badajoz.

The role was later transformed into head of the province’s performing arts office.

He and 10 other defendants went on trial Thursday on charges including alleged abuse of office and influence peddling. All deny the allegations.

The judge hearing the case said Monday he had agreed with a defence request to dismiss the charge that David Sanchez accepted an illegal appointment in 2017, after finding the legal time limit for prosecution had run out.

The court said the offense carried only a minor penalty.

Prosecutors say the position was created in 2016, before Pedro Sanchez became prime minister in 2018. David Sanchez remained in the post until at least early 2025.

The job was under the authority of the provincial council of Badajoz, which at the time was governed by Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party.

The case adds to a growing list of corruption-related proceedings involving figures in Pedro Sanchez’s political orbit, increasing pressure on his minority coalition government.

His wife, Begona Gomez, is under investigation in a separate corruption case.

His former right-hand man, ex-transport minister Jose Luis Abalos, is awaiting a verdict in his own corruption trial, which concluded in May.

Last month, a court placed former Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a Sanchez ally, under formal investigation for influence peddling and other alleged crimes. — AFP

Pontiff appeals in Catalan for harmony on Barcelona leg of Spain tour after making football foes in city

To the delight of many, Pope Leo XIV kicked off the Barcelona leg of his week-long visit to Spain with a few words in Catalan, calling on the faithful who had gathered in the city’s cathedral on Tuesday “to build harmony and communion beyond all polarisation”.

The pontiff’s familiar and commendable plea for people to set aside their differences may, however, have come a little late. Three days earlier, while chatting to journalists on the flight to Spain, Leo had made an awkward confession.

LISBON, June 10 — Benfica yesterday parted company with coach Jose Mourinho, who is close to returning to Real Madrid, and announced an agreement with Fulham boss Marco Silva to replace him.

The Lisbon club said Real Madrid had “formalised their intention to sign Mourinho for a fee of 15 million euros (US$17.25 million)” in a statement sent to Portugal’s financial markets regulator.

The amount corresponds to the release clause in Mourinho’s contract.

Benfica subsequently announced they had struck a two-year deal with Silva, who left Fulham last week after five seasons at the Premier League club.

Florentino Perez’s re-election as Real Madrid president at the weekend paved the way for Mourinho to return to the Spanish capital.

Mourinho, 63, first joined Real Madrid in 2010, spending three seasons at the club.

During his tenure he won one La Liga championship, one Copa del Rey and the Spanish Super Cup during a period of fierce rivalry with Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona.

Appointing the divisive Mourinho will be a gamble on the part of president Perez after Los Blancos finished without a major trophy in 2025/26, making it a second consecutive barren season.

Real Madrid confirmed the departure of coach Alvaro Arbeloa earlier on Tuesday.

Arbeloa, who arrived in January to replace Xabi Alonso, had announced last month that he would be leaving his post at the end of the season. — AFP

Unconsciously, Mario Rielo adopted certain postures to conceal his pectoral malformation. At the beach, at the pool, when he took off his shirt, he would raise one arm and touch the back of his neck. The gesture stretched his chest, evened out his silhouette, and disguised the indentation he had on one side of his ribcage since childhood.

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Bad Bunny performs today, June 1, at Metropolitano Stadium. He played on May 30 and 31, and will return on June 2, 3, and so on, for a total of 10 shows. In the entertainment industry, this is known as a musical residency — a series of concerts an artist stages in the same venue over a short period of time. There’s no exact number that defines one, but one of the core ideas behind the concept is impact: the more shows, the better.

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If Polymarket had opened betting on its platform being blocked in Spain, surely a high percentage of users would have put money on it happening sooner or later. The trickle of countries that have imposed restrictions on the popular application, which makes it possible to win money by guessing the winner of the World Cup — not to mention the declaration of war or the start of a pandemic — continues to grow. Argentina suspended its use in March, while Brazil did so in April, India last week, and Indonesia on Monday. These are but a few examples. Other bans, like those of France and Switzerland, have been around longer, with prohibition in effect since 2024.

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Diego Luna was seven years old in 1985. A devastating magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck Mexico City just nine months before the start of the FIFA World Cup. He recalls that the overall feeling among residents of the capital was “really intense,” “very sad,” and that there was a “sense of helplessness” because of the state’s absence. Amid that, as in other tragedies that have hit the country, the actor says there was also a “very beautiful” feeling of solidarity and community response — but “it seemed like the destruction made it impossible to imagine a World Cup.” What lay behind Mexico becoming the first nation to host the tournament twice is a mix of true events, anecdotes, acts of corruption, and a few urban legends. Or at least that is how Netflix movie México 86 frames it: a satirical account of how those who run soccer off the field focused national efforts to turn the event into a symbol of unity and recovery after mourning, but which also helped trigger the Mexican national team’s ban from the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

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A year after staying in a nice hotel, you’ll have forgotten almost everything except the smell. That fragrance, designed to make you feel, for a while, slightly superior to the rest of humanity, will have been stored somewhere in your hippocampus with 65% accuracy, according to some studies. The day you return, you’ll immediately recognize the feeling: you’ve arrived at a place that smells expensive.

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Manuel Gual posted a photo:

Madrid 1974: A Retro Spy Comedy Through the Secret Files of a Chaotic Bureaucracy

Description

A cinematic retro series set in a fictional 1974 Madrid, blending spy comedy, bureaucratic absurdity, street chases, secret archives, analog surveillance and vintage Spanish urban life. The images recreate a world of confidential folders, smoky offices, rotary telephones, typewriters, old taxis, crowded markets, railway stations, rooftop antennas, hidden laboratories, newspaper presses and suspicious government corridors. The atmosphere feels like a lost espionage farce from the seventies: serious men in ill fitting suits, anxious messengers, improvised agents, comic confusion, urgent missions and a constant sense that every secret operation is seconds away from becoming a public disaster.

The collection moves between interior and exterior scenes with strong narrative continuity: intelligence offices full of papers, tense investigations, chaotic pursuits through Madrid streets, undercover activity in cafés and markets, and surreal technical experiments in improvised laboratories. Its visual language combines photorealistic period detail with comic exaggeration, creating a nostalgic but dynamic tribute to classic European spy parody, Spanish popular culture and analog detective fiction.

These images have been generated by Artificial Intelligence.

Manuel Gual posted a photo:

The Forgotten Archive of a Spanish Spy Agency. MORTADELO Y FILEMON

Description:
A cinematic retro espionage collection set in a fictional 1970s Spanish intelligence world, filled with dusty archives, classified files, typewriters, surveillance rooms, laboratories, old telephones, secret maps, dim offices, deserted streets, vintage storefronts, and mysterious objects that suggest abandoned missions, bureaucratic conspiracies, and forgotten undercover operations.

These images were generated by Artificial Intelligence.

U.S. Senator Rubén Gallego, an emerging figure in the Democratic Party, says it is highly likely the Donald Trump administration will opt for a new military intervention to force a regime change in Cuba. “Cubans in Florida have a lot of power and the State Secretary, Marco Rubio, is obsessed with the island,” he told reporters on Friday at the Real Instituto Elcano think tank headquarters in Madrid. “But I don’t believe Cuba is a threat to the U.S.; it’s a very poor country of nine million inhabitants,” he added.

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Employees in Spain worked an average of 36.3 hours a week in 2025, according to the latest figures released by Eurostat. That figure keeps Spain above the European average of 35.9 hours and far from the countries where the average working week is shortest. The latter include some of the continent’s most economically advanced states, the opposite of those with the longest hours and with less-developed productive sectors.

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