General Election
The countdown to the April 28th general elections started yesterday when the royal decree to dissolve the Courts was published, and the call to the elections was made.
The State Official Bulletin published the resolution, signed on Monday by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and approved by King Felipe.
The decree says the election campaign will start on Friday, April 12, and will conclude on April 26 at mdnight.
It also establishes that starting today, the Congress of Deputies and the Senate are dissolved.
Meanwhile
Far-right party Vox said it had raised more than 200,000 euros in crowd-funding from supporters in just two days to finance its election campaign.
The anti-immigration party needs to find money because it is too new and small to receive public subsidies ahead of the election.
Opinion polls show a fragmented political landscape in which the make-up of the next government is unclear, but far-right lawmakers are set to be elected for the first time in nearly four decades.
Bank Charges
BANKS will be forced to cap current account commission or ‘admin charges’ to just €3 a month by March 25 in a welcome move introduced this week by the government.
Depending upon where you bank, charges can vary from €1.50 to over €12 a month on each account.
The difference now is that the €3 a month maximum must cover credit and debit cards, and up to 120 annual withdrawal or payment operations within the entire European Union, not just Spain, to include direct debits, standing orders and transfers.
Once details of the new law are published in the State Official Bulletin on March 25, they will go live within 20 days and banks will be required to comply
Campaign Bus
A Barcelona judge has refused to impound a bus being used to campaign against Spain’s gender-violence laws and what its slogans describe as “feminazis.”
The bus, which was launched by the ultraconservative Catholic organization Make Yourself Heard on Friday in Madrid, reached the Catalan capital on Monday.
The public prosecutor called for the bus to be stopped on the grounds that sexist messages should not be allowed to circulate in the city
But the judge ruled that even though the campaign’s messages may be considered “abhorrent and even repugnant,” they were protected by “freedom of speech.”
The bus calls on Spain’s conservative political leaders to repeal the 2004 gender violence law and legal protections granted by Spanish regions to the LGBTQI community.