The survey by Metroscopia shows that Spaniards believe that 15-M, which sprouted in 2011, was a spontaneous movement that continues to have solid public backing as a peaceful protest drive.

Of the 14,000 people interviewed, 63 percent said they support the movement — a figure similar to that of two years ago and somewhat higher than that of 2012, a few months after the Popular Party (PP) landslide election victory. Support for the protests was higher among Socialist voters that those who support the PP, and among younger respondents.

Socialist dichotomy

The 87-percent support among Socialist supporters gives a clear idea of the dichotomy between the party’s own institutions and those issues its members feel more comfortable protesting about, such as the causes of the ongoing crisis.

The challenge facing any future Socialist candidate will be precisely to try to recover support for a party that has mainly been lost to the spontaneous social protest movements. Nevertheless, the origin of the peaceful protest has been blurred with the passage of time, but its supporters believe that it has become useful in demonstrating against the financial system, evictions and in questioning the institutional structures.

But so far it has not become a clear institutional policy option. A total of 78 percent of those polled say that the so-called “indignant ones” have good reason to protest, while four percent say they have doubts about the movement itself.

In terms of the ballot box, many more Spaniards would vote for the UPyD party and United Left (IU) coalition if the elections were held today. In a poll taken by Metroscopia, the PP would lose 47 seats in Congress, while 20 seats would be taken from the Socialists.

Either major party would need the UPyD and IU to form a governing coalition, according to the survey.

New younger voters, who claim to have negative feelings about the future, say they feel the furthest removed from Spain’s political and social institutions and are opting for a new model of government.

Blesa, who headed Caja Madrid between 1997 and 2010, made at least 12.4 million euros during the last three years of his tenure, which was marked by unbridled expansion despite the crisis. Shortly after his departure, the lender merged with six other savings banks to ward off bankruptcy. The resulting group, Bankia, required a record bailout two years later.

Once one of Spain’s most powerful business figures, Blesa is so far the only banker to see the inside of a prison because of his actions during the economic crisis. He might not be the only one, as an estimated 90 bank executives from nine savings banks are currently under investigation.

The Madrid judge investigating the case, Elpidio José Silva, believes that there are “highly relevant” indications that crimes may have been committed, including mismanagement, misappropriation of funds and document forgery.

A close friend of former conservative prime minister José María Aznar, Blesa was appointed to the post by the Popular Party (PP), yet the ruling party has shown no support for him during this predicament. On the contrary, it seems to be holding Blesa up as an example.

“For the government, the fact that the institutions are working normally and that the law is being applied equally is a very positive fact,” said Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría.

Judge Silva considers it an “aberration” that Caja Madrid should have bought the City National Bank of Florida for 1.12 billion dollars in 2008, during the economic "tsunami," and added that the “perfect storm” at the savings bank did not depend on the weather but on the “direct actions” of former chairman Miguel Blesa.

The operation lacked proper control mechanisms and caused a hole of 500 million euros in Caja Madrid’s accounts, the judge’s report reads.

 The magistrate found it odd that the purchase of the Florida bank was unanimously approved by the board of Caja Madrid without first requesting any expert report, even though more than one board member petitioned for it. There was no “minimally solvent viability and risk analysis,” the judge noted.

The fact that the board approved the operation is being used by Blesa’s defense to argue that their client is not directly responsible for the outcome. This particular transaction during Blesa’s 12-year tenure is one of the main reasons why the banker was sent to preventive jail.

Blesa, who headed up Caja Madrid between 1996 and 2009, is being tried for irregularities in the acquisition of the US bank, as well as for a loan of 26.6 million euros that was granted to Grupo Marsans, a travel agency that went bust with huge losses in 2010. Obscure right-wing union Manos Limpias is a plaintiff in the case against the banker.

Blesa was summonsed to court as a matter of urgency Thursday in relation to the 2006 purchase of City National Bank of Florida after Manos Limpias decided to extend its case beyond the initial complaint over the Marsans loan and on the findings of KPMG analysts, who confirmed that the loan did not meet legal requirements.

Blesa and former Marsans owner Gerardo Díaz Ferrán, who is also in jail as part of another investigation, are accused of corporate crimes and falsification of documents. On April 16, Judge Elpidio José Silva also issued summonses to six members of the bank’s financial committee.

Caja Madrid took control of City National Bank of Florida in 2008 after paying 618 million euros for 83 percent of the US lender in a deal approved unanimously by the Spanish bank’s board of directors in order to “strengthen” its presence in America. The Bank of Spain noted that as well as excessive investment in the US lender the purchase was carried out in such a way as to “elude the obligatory control of the tax and economy authorities in Madrid.”

That may have been the last bit of help that Blesa, 65, received from the Popular Party (PP), the political group that made him president of Caja Madrid in September 1997. A lawyer by trade, Blesa never concealed the fact that his close friendship with former PP prime minister José María Aznar was a key factor in his appointment to head Spain’s second-largest savings bank, with 190 billion euros in assets. Aznar and Blesa studied together to be tax inspectors, and before presiding Caja Madrid Blesa had served at FAES, the PP’s think tank.

Blesa, who was sent to preventive prison on Thursday on embezzlement charges, is one of the most representative examples of political interference in the running of Spain’s regional savings banks, which have undergone a major merger process to avoid bankruptcy after decades of overexposure to the property bubble and misguided loan policies based on political interests rather than sound business practices.

Blesa’s story illustrates the reason for the savings banks’ troubles: a president is appointed based on friendship with political leaders, rather than professional merit; the real estate bubble comes around, and money seems to fall from the sky; the industry watchdog fails to apply pressure, and managers end up ruining the businesses.

Even though he was on the PP’s wavelength, Miguel Blesa’s appointment received support from a CCOO union leader and the United Left coalition.

From the get-go, Blesa had a clear goal in mind: to double the balance, grow across Spain and expand the size of an institution that turned 300 years old in 2002, during his tenure. He wanted to open up new branches, hire more staff and multiply profits. In an interview with EL PAÍS in May 1997, Blesa rejected the idea of growing slowly. He felt hindered by the the fact that his company was linked to a region, Madrid, that did not comprise several provinces like many other Spanish regions. This placed him at a disadvantage compared to other savings banks. Thus his obsession with growing, even in the face of the upcoming storm.

Stock market operations and revenues from investment banking had a stabilizing effect on the business’ overall problems. Caja Madrid acquired stakes in Telefónica and Endesa, which brought in 600 million and 2.4 billion euros, respectively. This mitigated the losses of the commercial network, which expanded but never achieved much profitability.

By 2003, Blesa prepared a new expansion program. Bank of Spain reports show that “he took a long time to react to the loan default problems detected in 2006.” He was also accused of conducting an aggressive commercial policy without evaluating the risks.

Despite a sharp drop in the financial margin, in the middle of the property bubble Blesa got Caja Madrid into heavy debt in the international markets. He joined the rush to attract new customers among the immigrant population, and above all he invested billions of euros in real estate.

In 2008, he acquired the City National Bank of Florida for close to 1.12 billion dollars. It was probably not a very fortunate move, but far from the one that caused the lender the greatest losses. The expansion policy produced great benefits in the short run, but in the long run it was Blesa’s undoing – or rather, Caja Madrid’s undoing.

In 2009, when the crisis and international accounting rules made him feel the pressure, he issued massive amounts of preferential shares worth over three billion euros. “We have expanded the share issue because they’re flying out of our hands,” said Blesa to justify the increase from two billion to three billion euros. He did this even though the ratings agency Moody’s gave the May 2009 share issue junk bond status because it was very likely that Caja Madrid would be unable to pay the interest.

This is the same preferential share issue that has caused so many woes to customers who bought them and now stand to lose an average 40 percent on their investment.

Despite this ending, Blesa arrogantly told Congress in November 2012: “I do not admit to having caused damage with the preferential shares.”

Esperanza Aguirre, then the regional premier, had a great sense of ownership over Caja Madrid, and between mid-2008 and late 2009 she tried to eject Blesa from his post. She failed, but her maneuvering –a shameful example of political interference- helped destabilize the institution.

On his last day on the job, on January 20, 2010, Blesa presented the lender’s accounts, which showed a 68 percent drop in results due to the provisioning mandated by the Bank of Spain.

 “It is not pleasant to end things with such a sharp drop; I could have set less money aside, but I preferred to reinforce the institution,” he claimed. Yet his replacement, Rodrigo Rato, was forced by the end of that same year to provision a further four billion euros, proof of the gaping holes left in Caja Madrid.

 But the veteran lender’s real death sentence was its merger with Bancaja, another savings bank that was seriously affected by the property crash. It all ended with Bankia and the 22.4 billion euros that taxpayers had to provide to prevent bankruptcy.

 Despite all these figures, the 12 years that Blesa spent at the helm of Caja Madrid were extremely profitable to himself and his aides. Upon arrival, he multiplied his salary by 18. The money he made in the first few years is not known, but he made 12.44 million euros between 2007 and January 2010. His closest aides made between two to 9.7 million over the same period of time. The Bank of Spain asked for reports but placed no limits on the exorbitant wages.

 When he took over in January 2010, Rato –a former IMF chief- decided to cancel a 25 million euro bonus that Blesa had arranged for himself and nine other executives to receive after they left the bank. Nevertheless, Rato raised his own salary even higher. In February 2011, the Bank of Spain finally stepped in and ordered a 20 percent reduction on Rato’s and other executives’ bonuses, alleging the need for austerity and the fact that the bank had accepted public money.

 Blesa passed on his problems to Rato, who inherited an institution that “asked its branches for business volume. For 10 years it went well, but when the crisis hit, everything turned into non-performing loans,” says a former executive.

 Going to prison is the bitterest end of all for a man who was once one of the PP’s biggest bankers.

One direct consequence of the incident is the imminent introduction of a raft of new protection and surveillance measures, as well as the revision of security protocols, in the heart of the famous "Hidden Prado" — the vast collection of work that, despite its great quality and national heritage status, remains out of public sight in the museum archives for space reasons.

The measures are one of the revelations of a technical report looking into the actions carried out in the aftermath of the leak made by the Madrid museum's associate board of preservation and research, to which EL PAÍS has had access. The report will soon come to form part of a final document of conclusions resulting from the March 11 incident that the Prado board will have ready at the end of the month. The authors of the text have left no stone unturned in diagnosing the problems and implementing a battery of what they call "complementary measures for increasing the control of artworks in the reserve spaces."

The leak caused damage of varying degrees to several Spanish drawings from the 18th century and, above all, to several highly valuable paintings, including Jan Brueghel the Elder's The Wedding Banquet (1623).

Firstly, the technical report talks of the necessity of carrying out a review of the registry services in the vaults "in order to learn of the existence of sensitive points of special attention" in the Jerónimos Building. It also recommends a review of registry services in the Villanueva Building storerooms "in order to detect sensitive points."

The state of preservation and repair of the equipment and furniture in the storerooms, as well as their water tightness, is another of the priorities mentioned in the report. It also recommends that Prado restoration staff be included in at least two of the annual checks that registry technicians carry out on the artworks.

Another point in the document is the need to review the access protocols for the Prado storerooms, as well as to incorporate "practice exercises and drills" into the collections emergency plan. Lastly, it requests that the vaults from now on be considered "spaces of maximum protection and control" - something that rather implies that up to now they have not been.

"We are doing everything we can, but it is very normal for things like this to happen in buildings of a historic nature," Prado director Miguel Zugaza explained to EL PAÍS on Wednesday. Asked about the fact that the leaks occurred in the storerooms situated in the newest part of the museum — the area remodeled by architect Rafael Moneo in 2007 — Zugaza said: "It is supposed that the new parts of the museum were made to prevent these things from happening... but they happen."

From the report, it can be deduced that what happened on March 11 brought about a small revolution within the walls of the Prado. Proof of that is the fact that a total of 273 artworks were taken from their usual place in the storerooms after the discovery of the leak.

In the same way, the crisis team organized on the day of the discovery — comprising the museum director, the associate director of preservation and research, and the president of the board of trustees — took the controversial decision not to publicly announce what had happened and act as if nothing had occurred to try to limit the damage quickly and effectively. "We didn't think the news had much significance. These are things that happen in top museums," said Zugaza when asked about the decision.

As the technical report states, another of the decisions they took to try to prevent possible damage was to remove all the artworks housed between vaults 131 and 149 — those situated under the electric transmitter where the leaking water was detected. Days later, the works were rehoused in the north and south storerooms in the Villanueva Building. They also systematically checked all the paintings and drawings housed in the storerooms' 212 vaults. Vaults 131 to 149 remain empty to this day.

The disbelief was understandable. Granada in 1984 was a world away from London or New York, the late Strummer’s usual hangouts. Despite Spain’s La Movida countercultural movement gathering pace, flamenco still ruled and bands like 091 struggled to find anywhere to play in the city. There were no rock studios or bars until Silbar opened. 091 singer José Antonio García worked in Silbar at the time: “I’d been for a sandwich and when I came back they said to me ‘José, there’s a guy over there who we think is Joe Strummer!’ I said: ‘What have you been drinking? Let’s have a look!’ I went to the bar and there he was, Joe Strummer! Clear as day! But we asked him and he didn’t say yes or no. He said he was there writing, and sat jotting things down. We spent all night drinking then when the bar closed, I put on a record by a French band called Corazón Rebelde. I said to Joe: ‘You hear this band? Sounds just like The Clash, right?’ He started laughing and that was the moment when he admitted that yes, he was Joe Strummer.”

The news quickly spread. 091 bass player Antonio Arias remembers the rest of the band making him guess who they’d met: “Say a name! Go on!” knowing that never in his wildest dreams would he imagine their idol being in their local. It was to be the first of many drunken nights as their friendship was cemented. “We were all into clothes and our image so going out drinking with Joe Strummer, we were freaking out!” says Arias. “Every night was a unique experience.”

The band would look at each other in disbelief as they strolled around the city with Strummer in tow, looking every inch the rock star with a ghetto-blaster on his shoulder firing out his favorite reggae songs. He couldn’t have got away with this back in South London; it was the anonymity and the friends he made that drew him back time and again. The Clash was on its last legs in 1985 and although the band sensed he was fed up with things back home, he was always in good spirits. “He was the type of guy you never got bored of hanging out with, he was just fascinating,” says García. “He was just a normal guy, but a star as well.”

His knowledge of Spain’s recent history wasn’t quite up to scratch though. “He knew all about Hemingway and Orwell but not so much about the reality of the time,” says Lapido. “What he had in his mind was Franco and we had to say ‘Joe, now we’ve got a Socialist prime minister.’ He said ‘Yeah! What’s he called?’ — ‘Felipe González’ — ‘Ahh, like Speedy González!’”

091’s Arias and Tacho visited London around this time. As they passed a pub on the King’s Road they saw The Clash sat in the window, minus Strummer of course. They laughed about having heard the rumors that everyone had been desperately trying to find Strummer and the idea of strolling in and shouting “He’s with us! He’s in Granada!” was extremely tempting. But instead they left them to it. “It could have changed the course of the whole story!” giggles Antonio Arias.

Strummer loved 091’s music and ended up producing their second album Más de Cien Lobos. “He had a great ear, and knew what he wanted. He’d give us advice and play with the sound. We just loved that he was Joe Strummer!” says Lapido. Strummer rarely touched a guitar but was always playing around with ideas. “He’d change the rhythm in interesting ways; Joe was an inventive guy who was always thinking about how to improve things,” García remembers.

Strummer even ended up pouring his own money into the project but they were all to be bitterly disappointed by the record label’s disastrous final mix. “The truth is we didn’t really talk about it again,” says García. “Joe felt bad about it… I asked him to sign the copy I had but he didn’t even want to do that.” Despite this disappointment, it was an experience the band would never forget. “I loved being with him, [seeing] how he shaped the music and his lyrics, hearing about his experiences,” says Arias.

When Arias fell ill with tuberculosis soon after finishing the album, Strummer gave him a piece of cardboard with a drawn-on piano. “You said you wanted to learn to play, right? Well you can start with this.” Above his piano Arias now has a poster of The Clash to remind him of his friend and inspiration. “What we miss most is his kindness.”

As Granada gets ready to name a square in Strummer’s honor this week, there can be no doubt of the effect those 1980s punk-pioneers have had on the city, which is synonymous with alternative music due to the hundreds of other bands inspired by 091. The band themselves are still as active as ever; Arias fronts Lagartija Nick and Lapido is touring the nation. García still plays regularly as well.

“It was a dream come true,” says García. “To have got to know him in such a natural way, to make a record together and share that time together. It was just incredible.”

On May 8, a fax arrived at the environment department, announcing a "military exercise that will be conducted on Isla de Lobos." The issuer was a member of the Light Infantry Brigade of the Canaries.

Located north of Fuerteventura, Lobos is a small islet with a surface area of just five square kilometers. It is a protected preserve known for its diverse bird life where camping is prohibited and access restricted.

The coordinator of this natural park, Antonio Gallardo, says he is still puzzled at the Defense Ministry's plans to conduct a military training exercise in such a protected area. "And with helicopters!" he adds. A week later, however, the ministry stated that there would be no military maneuvers on Lobos, "either now or ever."

Agueda Montelongo, a PP deputy in the Canary Islands, as well as sources in the government delegation in the archipelago, now claim that "sometimes one announces things that are not done later."

Gallardo says he cannot understand why the military would pick Isla de Lobos out of the entire national territory. "We are still viewed like an inhospitable place," he says, adding that "behind the militarization of the island there are oil prospections and the tension it could generate with [nearby] Morocco."

The conservative Popular Party (PP) has introduced a few changes to its initial draft to try to accommodate objections raised by the State Council.

For instance, both religion class and its alternative, cultural and social values, will count towards a high-school student’s average grade, a determining factor in obtaining scholarships.

“What this measure seeks is to stop children from dropping religion class. They [the government] think that by making it count towards the average, they’ll stop the drain,” says Fernando Delgado, president of the secular association Europa Laica.

The bill also stipulates that the central government will advance money to private schools that accept students who cannot find enough classes in the Spanish language at public schools. This measure is tailor-made for Catalonia, where some families have complained about being forced to send their children to Catalan-only classes. What is more, the money will come out of Catalonia’s coffers, since Madrid will simply withhold the amount from routine budget transfers.

This has already drawn criticism from Catalan government officials. Education Commissioner Irene Rigau said on Friday that “this is not an education law, this is a recentralizing law.”

"Basagoiti is one of those people for whom politics has had a personal and financial cost," says a colleague of the scion of a family with business and banking interests. "He had everything and no need to accept an invitation to join a party where we know what suffering in silence means."

It was his aunt, Ascensión Pastor, then a senator, who urged Basagoiti to join the PP in 1995. A law graduate of Deusto University and a die-hard Athletic Bilbao fan - "the only thing I could agree with a [nationalist abertzale coalition] Bildu member on" - this lover of motorbikes and a good Cuban cigar could not bear any more for his daughters to be bullied in the schoolyard over their "fascist father."

In truth, say those that know him in politics and personally, Basagoiti has put up with "more than enough." And he has done so in silence until his final day in politics. Only after installing his successor, Arantza Quiroga, who will retain Oyarzábal as number two, has Basagoiti felt able to admit the truth: "I have killed myself for politics these last years."

"What really stands out is that he never had a bad word for anybody, even knowing that others did not feel the same way," says a PP colleague. Basagoiti does not have to worry about accounts being settled, either over former Basque PP leader María San Gil's challenge to Mariano Rajoy after the lost 2008 general elections, or the fight against ETA. The Gil affair led to Basagoiti's ascension to the regional leadership, an invitation he accepted in an uncomplicated manner despite an internal war waging within the party.

With the support of 82 percent of convention delegates in 2008 - in 2011 it rose to over 90 percent - Basagoiti took a risk in laying out a mandate to "open the party to society and play the role of centrality." He even retained Gil supporter Carmelo Barrio, precisely because of his sense of loyalty. But the favor has not been returned by Gil and her supporters, who criticized Basagoiti after the regional elections last October.

With 129,907 votes, 11.73 percent, and just 10 seats won, the result was the coup de grâce for Basagoiti's fading political fire. His agitprop style, seeking the young vote in a region now accustomed to living without fear of terrorism, was abandoned in the October ballot as Basagoiti became obsessed with the perceived separatism of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the electoral threat of UPyD. "It didn't sound like him," said a market researcher. "He gave a more hardened speech, without the openness that characterized him."

When ETA declared a cease to armed action in 2011, Basagoiti was pictured in the street in Bilbao, cigar in hand. "The most difficult things remain; respect, cohabitation and recognizing the damage caused, which will not come for free," he said. But since then Basagoiti and his family have had more freedom to travel within the Basque Country and without: after the summer, Basagoiti is to take up a post with Grupo Santander in Mexico.

The statement makes Ripoll’s stance clear on possible new lines of inquiry into the Princess’s alleged involvement in the case, in which her husband is accused of siphoning off millions in public funds via his non-profit Nóos Institute.

After the Palma High Court’s decision to quash Cristina’s indictment in the case, Judge José Castro had asked prosecutors to take up positions on possible new avenues.

On Thursday anti-corruption prosecutor Pedro Horrach asked Judge Castro to open a new line of inquiry relating to Cristina’s tax returns to look for possible evidence of financial crimes.

Horrach had originally fought to keep the king's youngest daughter off the stand in the investigation into Iñaki Urdangarin's business affairs, but has now asked that a report issued by tax inspectors in January over her husband's alleged wrongdoing be examined in relation to the princess. Cristina part-owned the Nóos Institute, through which Urdangarin is accused of siphoning off millions in public funds.

Balearic court magistrates had quashed Judge José Castro's decision to indict Cristina for influence-peddling, but said in their ruling that financial crimes by the princess through the couple's jointly owned Aizóon firm "cannot be ruled out."

However, Spain's National Intelligence Center suspects that Ziani was working for Moroccan intelligence and posed a threat to national security. The Interior Ministry signed off on the deportation order based on his promotion of radical ideology.

Lawyers acting for Ziani, who has lived in Spain for 14 years, intend to fight his deportation but believe it will be impossible as they expect the order to be handed to their client as he boards a plane — most likely the last flight to Rabat from Barcelona leaving on Thursday night.

Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz sought to distance the order from the Catalan self-determination drive and said the decision stemmed from Ziani's links to "radical Salafism." Some Catalan politicians have viewed the move as an attack on the sovereignty drive, which Ziani concurred with on Tuesday at the inauguration of an Introduction to Catalonia course for imams and Muslim cultural leaders when the order was first issued. "I would be surprised it is because of anything else."

CiU Euro deputy Ramon Tremosa called the decision "unjustified and arbitrary" in the European Commission and warned it could contravene the European Convention on Human Rights.

What WhatsApp has are more than 200 million users. Brian Acton (born in the USA, 1972) and Jan Koum (Ukraine, 1976) are hardly typical examples of the local species of entrepreneur. They are no longer crazy kids and their motto is to steer clear of all that is inessential. Their application WhatsApp, launched in 2009, has sent the SMS to the graveyard. Every day 40 people oversee the sending of nine billion messages and the receipt of 15 billion, the second figure being higher due to group messaging.

Koum had the idea. Acton joined the project soon after. In February 2009 the first version was launched. Then it was just a status application for iPhone, which issued warning that someone was not available at that moment through a preset message: “Don’t call me,” “I’m sleeping,” or “I’m at work…” They saw its potential and changed course. That summer they set to work on making it into the messaging service it is today. That was when Acton left his job at Yahoo! and joined up, not just as an employee but also as an investor. The team swelled to five people at the same time as they began to charge 99 cents for the app.

At the start of 2010, they took another step forward with the arrival of Nokia and Android smartphones. The team doubled to 10, and then again at the beginning of 2011 when WhatsApp for Blackberry was launched. At times they give the impression of being a couple of game show contestants, talking sotto voce and passing the questions between them: “This one’s for you, it’s your area.”

Question. How is it that a service with so many users seems so mysterious?

Jan Koum. We haven’t bothered too much about our image, but rather that of our users and we’re proud of that. We’re a technology company.

Q. In which countries do you have the most customers?

J. K. We try not to look at a single country. We offer a global product which has to work well in Brazil, India, Germany, Russia and Canada. Countries like Brazil and India are where we are growing most because they are getting more and more smartphones.

Q. What is your perception of Spain?

J. K. Spain is one of our most heavily used countries. We put a lot of effort into making sure our service is good there, like the translation on the app and the website.

Q. What is the next thing we will be able to send on WhatsApp?

Brian Acton. We’re going to focus on enriching the experience. The example I use is color television, and the SMS is black and white. We can’t reveal what we haven’t released yet but we never think we’re done.

Q. Some people complain they get loads of messages and alerts and it distracts them.

J. K. We’re the first company where you can silence alerts. In fact, we patented that. You can mute a group or a chat. You can also put a specific tone to a person to distinguish their messages. I know that with phone conversations and messaging going on, it can get a bit chatty. But we focus a lot on making sure our application is one of scales.

Q. But isn’t it invasive that you can receive a message from anyone?

J. K. This is not new for WhatsApp. If you know someone’s number, you can send them an SMS. We based our system on that service when we created WhatsApp and it seemed natural.

B. A. A lot of operators do not permit you to block incoming calls or messages from a particular number. We do. That’s the reason why some people have to change phone when they break up with their partner for example.

Q. Is WhatsApp free and how long will I have to pay for it?

B. A. It’s not free. We believe the best business is where the customer is the user and the customer is not the product. We can hear our users and improve our product better this way. I had a very bad experience in my previous workplace and ended up very fed up with advertising. We think one dollar a year is a reasonable price and we want the iPhone business to match the Android business.

Q. Is your service viable for one dollar a year?

B. A. Yes, we don’t pay for TV or celebrity endorsements [in reference to Line.] We rely on our active user base to recommend the service.

Q. Will you ever have advertising?

J. K. We are pretty clear on this. I mean, would you like advertising on WhatsApp? We wouldn’t. We want messaging to be as simple and easy as possible. We don’t want our application to be a social network or a gaming network, but a messaging network. Your phone itself is very personal to you. You wake up, you look at your phone. You go to sleep, you check your phone. We want to be purely about messaging.

Q. At what times do you see the greatest activity?

B. A. When there are things going on that relate to personal interests like soccer, when there is a big match, for example. So it’s big sporting events and royal weddings, but also world events, great natural disasters or security threats. New Year’s is also a great day for us.

Q. As it used to be for telephone operators. Are you aware of the damage you have done to their business?

J. K. It’s natural evolution in the way people communicate. You can make an argument that SMS replaced calls, which replaced telegraphs, which replaced people delivering messages on horses and carrier pigeons. The human desire to communicate and stay in touch is fundamental to our civilization. We live in a free market and people choose the best way to communicate.

Q. Are we going to see a computer version?

B. A. Our product plans are not something we talk about publicly. A computer is a way to communicate and it’s something we think about. But there’s still not much we can tell you about how it might work.

Q. Will there be a version for the Firefox operating system?

J. K. That is not in our plans, at the moment.

Q. If I change phone, how can I keep my messages?

J. K. If you back up do a full back up to ITunes. All your messages and everything you keep should be there.

Q. What phone do you use?

J. K. A Nexus 4 and a Blackberry.

B. A. A HTC One and a Nokia con a keyboard; I like a keyboard phone and that is getting hard to find.

Q. Where are my messages stored and how secure are they?

B. A. Since we are not an advertising-driven company, our goal is to know as little about the customer as possible. We don’t ask people their gender, their birthday, where they live or what their spending habits are. Once a message has been delivered to a device and acknowledged as successfully delivered, we don’t keep them.

Q. What do the little green check marks mean?

B. A. One means it has been received by our server. The double check mark means it has been delivered to the receiver’s phone. It doesn’t mean it has been read, just delivered.

Q. How much do you compress images?

J. K. Just what’s necessary to strike a balance between speed and quality. If someone wants to send a large image, for storage purposes, then there is email. WhatsApp is for direct communication and not to send 20-mega photos. We use techniques to compress and resize it so you get a good-quality image on your phone.

Q. What do you think of competitors such as Line?

J. K. How can there be a free product; what makes it free? There must be a hidden cost. Something can be free for a time, but not for ever. People realize that the no games-or-gimmick philosophy is a price worth paying.

The Moroccan national, who has no criminal record, was informed of the deportation order by Spain’s National Police on May 3. Sources familiar with the case said he spent the night at a Barcelona police precinct, and his lawyer, Fátima Zohra, said the deportation could be made effective at any time beginning on Tuesday.

The deportation order has angered Catalan nationalists, although for now there has been no official reaction from Rabat. “We are incensed at this new maneuver by the CNI,” said Àngel Colom, secretary of immigration for Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) and director of Nous Catalans, a foundation that actively seeks to get immigrants to adhere to the Catalan nationalist cause.

“What is the CNI trying to achieve with this deportation of Noureddin Ziani?” wondered this association in a press release issued in Arabic and Catalan. “To strike fear into the hearts of all immigrants who little by little feel closer to the right to decide and to the pro-sovereignty process in Catalonia?” Nous Catalans was created by CDC, and Catalan regional premier Artur Mas inaugurated its headquarters in Santa Coloma de Gramenet in 2012.

Colom knows Ziani quite well. He appointed him director of the Catalan-Moroccan office within his department, and last November both men toured a few of Catalonia’s mosques to preach the virtues of Catalan independence together.

“A Catalan state can bring you greater wellbeing,” the faithful were told.

Ziani, a native of the northern Moroccan city of Oujda who has resided in Barcelona for the last 14 years, is also the longtime president of the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers of Catalonia (UCCIC), a Muslim association that teaches Arabic and provides financial assistance to families, especially during Ramadan. Until recently, it was the second-largest beneficiary of subsidies granted by the Moroccan migration ministry to groups in Spain (158,700 euros in three years).

In fact, Ziani and Colom are so close that Fundació Nous Catalans doubles as the headquarters for UCCIC. For years, Ziani, who was once an imam, acted as the unofficial right hand of the Moroccan consul in Barcelona, Ghoulam Maichane, with whom he used to tour Catalonia and the Balearics to talk to Moroccans living there. Ziani also maintained close ties with the Catalan Socialists (PSC) until this party lost power in the region. When the CDC-Unió bloc (CiU) won the November 2010 elections, Ziani moved closer to CDC.

Rabat is concerned about hypothetical secessions in Catalonia and Scotland, fearing such developments will create new arguments for Western Sahara’s Polisario Front, which seeks independence from Morocco. That is why pro-government media there regularly attack “the opportunists who kindle the secessionist flame.”

The ship, which is 41.5 meters long, cost 3.5 billion pesetas at the time, or 21 million euros.

The monarch has decided to give it away to the Spanish government, because “it makes no sense” to keep it when all of Spain’s institutions are being forced to set examples of austerity, said sources at the royal palace of La Zarzuela. Filling up the yacht’s fuel tanks alone costs over 20,000 euros.

The cabinet will now have to decide whether to keep or sell the vessel.

The last time King Juan Carlos sailed in the Fortuna was in August of last year, for about six hours. For the rest of the summer, the royal family used the Somni, a more modest vessel owned by the shipbuilder José Cusí, who is a personal friend of the monarch.

Most of the 30-odd businesspeople who joined together with the Popular Party government of the Balearics to give the king the Fortuna were from the tourism sector and said they wanted to ensure the royal family would be a regular presence in the Balearics, as it would be good for tourism. Donors included Gabriel Barceló of Grupo Barceló; Gabriel Escarrer of the Sol Meliá hotel chain; Juan José Hidalgo of Air Europa; Carmen Matutes of the hotel group Fiesta; and Miguel Fluxà of Viajes Iberia.

Before this, the king had owned two other Fortunas, the second of which was a present from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in 1979.

Thirteen years after the king first sailed in the ship with his daughter Cristina, on March 22, 2000, the economic situation has led Spaniards to question the spending habits of every national institution, including the monarchy. A recent opinion poll gave the royal family a failing grade of 3.6 out of 10 for trust for the first time in history, as it found itself embroiled in a corruption scandal involving Cristina’s husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, who faces charges of embezzling millions of euros from public contracts awarded arbitrarily by the regional governments of Valencia and the Balearic Islands.

Dressed in his priest’s robe, Torres managed to convince the sisters of the Santa Brígida convent in Lasarte that the immediate future of the nunnery, built in 1675, was guaranteed.

The National Police arrested the phony priest in early March in San Sebastián, accusing him of fraud, aiding illegal immigration and infringing immigration laws.

There was a commission on the dreams. Torres extracted 13,000 euros from the Spanish nuns with the promise of new novices and 230,000 lempiras (around 9,000 euros) from a convent in the southeast of Honduras, Misioneras de Nuestra Señora de la Presentación de Intibucá.

At the church of San Pedro in Lasarte, Xabier Andonegi is officiating Mass. From the altar he can see the pews where the nuns of Santa Brígida sit. He knows all four of them. The oldest one is 95 and suffers from dementia, he says, while the youngest is 85. So the priest was surprised to see four young nuns sitting there one day in March 2008. He had never seen them before. After Mass, he came over and for the first time heard about Torres.

The fake priest had asked the Spanish nuns for financial help to bring the Honduran sisters over, at the price of 500 euros per novice. Torres returned to Honduras and suddenly changed the terms of the agreement, demanding between 1,300 and 1,500 euros per nun “alleging that the recent government change in Honduras had raised taxes,” according to the police.

The 12 Honduran novices were meant to have arrived in Spain in January 2008. In the end, only four young women showed up in March. They were wearing nun’s habits that Torres had bought for them. The fake priest had trained them for a month to act and speak like nuns.

But Andonegi, the local priest, did not take long to discover the fraud. After just one meeting with the alleged novices, he discovered that they were at the convent “to learn for a while, then look for a job.”

A simple e-mail to the Archbishopric in Honduras was enough to confirm that Torres was never ordained and that this was not the first time he had tried such a trick.

“How wonderful, how wonderful!” exclaims Sister Nolvicia, a member of the congregation of Misioneras de Nuestra Señora de la Presentación de Intibucá in Honduras, when she hears over the phone that Torres has been arrested in Spain.

She explains that he “demanded money from us to support the sisters in Spain.” He called them “loans” but the money was never returned. No novice ever left their convent to go to Spain, and it was they who reported the case to the police.

The phony novices were escorted to the airport and sent back home by a Spanish priest, while Torres disappeared for a while. But he returned to Spain, unaware that he was now a wanted man, and walked right into a police station because he wanted to obtain residency papers. He was arrested, but “still claims that he is a man of the cloth,” says the police.

The figures do not include the country’s local corporations. The shortfall in the central government’s books was 16.071 billion euros, or 1.53 percent of GDP, and that of the regions 1.235 billion, equivalent to 0.12 percent of GDP. The Social Security system booked a surplus of 2.410 billion, or 0.23 percent of GDP, although the ministry pointed out that the calendar for monthly payments and collections is different this year.

The release of the figures for the regions took place amid controversy about what some regional premiers of the ruling Popular Party claimed was the preferential treatment afforded to Catalonia this year in terms of its deficit with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government apparently accepting a target of 2.0 percent of GDP, compared with 1.2 percent for the regions as a whole.

There were complaints that Catalonia had been given such treatment because of the self-rule agenda of premier Artur Mas’s regional government.

The secretary of state for the budget, Marta Fernández Currás, described the performance of the regions in the first three months of the year as “satisfactory.” The regions booked a combined deficit last year of 1.73 percent of GDP, compared with a target of 1.5 percent.

Fernández Currás said there is a very competent working group within the Fiscal and Financial Policy Committee, which groups together the central government and the regions, which is working on the consolidation of the structural deficit based on “objective criteria,” which does not take into account the economic cycle.

“There is no other option as regards this,” Currás said. “In the end run we all have to meet the commitment of the Kingdom of Spain and the [regions] that are farthest away from this will have to make a bigger effort, and a consensus will have to emerge along those lines.”

Spain’s deficit target for this year is 6.3 percent of GDP, down from seven percent in 2012, excluding the EU bailout loan for the country’s banks that pushes the latter figure to 10.6 percent of GDP.

In recognition of the fact the Spanish economy has slipped back into recession for the second time in barely four years, Brussels has given Spain two more years to bring its public deficit back within the European Union ceiling of three percent of GDP.

EL PAÍS reported on Thursday that the German government would have preferred that Spain draw on the full amount granted to it to clean up the banking sector, instead of the 40 billion euros it accepted. Most of that sum went to recapitalize the three banks that were nationalized because of their over-exposure to the ailing real estate sector: Bankia/BFA, Catalunya Banc and NCG Banco.

Part of the loan also went to capitalize the asset management fund Sareb, the so-called bad bank set up by the government to absorb the toxic property assets of the banking sector.

“In the case of new capital needs or higher provisions, the needs will be minimal in comparison with the effort already made, and it won’t be necessary to [further] tap the European loan, because unlike last year, there are no problems of access to the [funding] markets on the part of the Treasury or the banks,” an Economy Ministry spokesman said.

Sources said Spain submitted its banking system to severe stress tests last year that indicated further levels of capitalization that have now been covered. They said two decrees were also issued on provisions for doubtful loans to the real estate sector, with such additional coverage also having been completed. They said that a total of 150 billion euros have been dedicated to cleaning up the sector, and also pointed out the toxic assets that have already been absorbed by Sareb.

The Bank of Spain’s recent decision to ask lenders to revise their valuations of the state of loans that have been refinanced sparked a number of overseas media to question whether there are still hidden losses in the sector that will require further provisions.

The Financial Times on Thursday said additional provisions for restructured loans, which amount to 200 billion euros, could come as yet another blow to the Spanish financial sector.

A top-ranking figure in the German government lamented Spain’s decision not to fully tap the bailout it was offered. Berlin believes that the European financial sector, beginning with the Spanish savings banks, have not fully dispelled the doubts about their solvency despite the stress tests to which they have been subjected.

The IMF’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, suggested a few weeks ago that serious doubts remain about the state of health of the Spanish banking sector, but later backtracked on those comments.

Berlin has also argued that if Spain had fully tapped the available bailout, its banks would be better capitalized and the lack of funding to small- and medium-sized enterprises would be less of a concern.

The lines to be closed are those middle-distance routes identified as least efficient by ministry consultancy Ineco, with an average occupancy rate of 8.4 percent and whose income barely covers 16.2 percent of their cost. These routes are used by 1.65 million passengers a year.

They include the Valladolid-Ávila, Madrid-Ávila and Vigo-Ourense-Ponferrada lines. The latter route is part of a Galician rail network that is set to be among the worst affected. Routes between Extremadura and the western Andalusian province of Huelva will also be seriously affected.

The plan will now be discussed in parliament and is subject to amendments. The details on the timetabling of the trains which will remain in operation along Spain’s middle-distance routes will be taken later on.

The case is being investigated by the Almería public attorney’s office. Under the Penal Code, denying people a service they are entitled to because of their disability constitutes an offense that can lead to one to four years of professional disqualification. “We didn’t go public with this to show that we are being victimized, but for educational purposes,” explains Agustín Matía, who runs the Down España association. According to this group, a worker at Down Almería asked a travel agency to ask three hotels for a quote. But one of the hotels, the CaboGata Plaza Suites, had replied: “We don’t accept groups of people with mental disabilities.”

When Down Almería contacted management directly, the latter not only confirmed the statement, but added that “this kind of people could bother the other clients in the hotel,” something that had “already happened in the past.”

Down España recalls two other cases in which young people with Down syndrome were barred entry: one was a nightclub in Sabadell last March and the other was a pub in Alicante in 2010. The owner lost his license a year later. In 2009, a parish priest refused to give a child from Teià (Barcelona) her first communion because she was “already God’s angel.”

But this week, Feijóo told the Galician parliament that he could not guarantee that he would be able to supply all of the information that is being demanded, given that all documents and files relating to contracts prior to 2003 — i.e., during the period that the pair were friends — have been destroyed.

According to Feijóo, of the conservative Popular Party (PP), the law only obliges the administration to keep these files for a 10-year period. “There is nothing prior to 2003,” he admitted on Wednesday.

The story of Feijóo’s relationship with Dorado broke in late March of this year, when photos were published in EL PAÍS of the pair vacationing together. At the time, Feijóo was 34 years old and was deputy secretary of the Galicia regional health department. The Galician premier admitted to having had a “personal relationship” with Dorado, who is a convicted drug trafficker and is currently serving a prison sentence. However, the politician argued that the photos were from 20 years ago and that he broke off contact once Dorado’s illegal activities became known.

In April, the crisis deepened after it emerged that business links existed between the regional government and firms owned by Dorado. Despite fervent calls from opposition parties in the Galician assembly, Feijóo continues to insist that he has done nothing wrong and that he will not be resigning.

Wednesday’s tense parliamentary session was dominated by questions relating to Dorado’s relationship with the regional premier. Feijóo was quizzed by the opposition about his friend Manuel Cruz, who was also Dorado’s front man and who died in 1999 in a traffic accident that was described as “strange” by the local press. The AGE party asked Feijóo what exactly he thought that Cruz did for a living, and also accused him of calling the regional health department to put a stop to an autopsy on the body. In response, Feijóo limited himself to accusing the AGE of trying to “stain” the parliament with its “political filibustering.”

On Thursday, Feijóo announced that he was considering taking legal action against the opposition parties — in particular the leftist AGE — given the virulence of its attacks on him. Speaking to the press, Feijóo said that the parties were “crossing all lines, and it’s getting worse each day.”

At the end of April, the AGE leader, Xosé Manuel Beiras, approached Feijóo’s seat in parliament and angrily banged on the desk in front of him, while shouting in Feijóo’s face that he was “unworthy of being premier.”

Spain and Italy suffered the greatest contractions of 0.5 percent apiece, Eurostat said.

Youth unemployment is one of the greatest challenges facing the bloc, prompting France and Germany to join forces to combat the issue. The leaders of the two largest economies in the EU are due to meet on May 28 in Paris at the launch of a plan backed by the European Investment Bank to tackle the problem on a continental scale. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will also attend.

Youth unemployment in the euro zone stands at around 25 percent, while in Spain and Greece the figure tops 50 percent.

The proposal is based on the use of a six-billion-euro fund set up in February as part of the European budget to obtain up to 60 billion in soft loans to be awarded to companies who hire people under the age of 25. The plan is to run between 2014 and 2020 and will be officially presented after the Berggruen Institute conference later this month, involving intellectuals, economic and political leaders from across the globe.

BEI president Werner Hoyer said his institution intends to do all it can to alleviate youth unemployment in the euro zone by “linking favorable lending conditions to the creation of jobs for young people.”

“We can only create sustainable growth if we don’t repeat the errors of the past, and naturally we must put a stop to youth unemployment as quickly as possible, and we will achieve this with all the instruments at our disposal,” said Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

On the very same day the commission denied Santos’s application, the 30-year-old from Foz in Lugo province was named the best young physicist on the continent by the European Physical Society (EPS), an award granted every two years.

After graduating from the physics faculty at the University of Santiago, where he penned a “magnificent thesis,” in the words of university dean Carlos Pajares, Santos was contracted for three years by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva. His work there on the Large Hadron Collider and B mesons in particular earned him the European accolade. When his contract at CERN expired he was taken on by the National Institute for Subatomic Physics in the Netherlands, where he began work six months ago.

But Santos’s desire was to return to Santiago or elsewhere in Spain or Italy, “where it’s not as cold as it is here,” he told the daily Voz de Galicia.

“The Ramón y Cajal program is for people under 35 and probably [the commission] favored those approaching that age so they wouldn’t be excluded definitively,” said Pajares. “I suppose that as Diego is younger, they felt he would have further opportunities.”

Santos can reapply next year, although he has not yet decided whether to do so.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels after a meeting of European finance and economy ministers, De Guindos said that guaranteeing bank deposits of 100,000 euros or less is not in doubt, but that there are moves to reach agreement providing protection for amounts of over 100,000 euros as well, in the case of exceptional circumstances and based on very strict rules.

“We have to send a very clear message: that deposits are adequately protected,” De Guindos said.

De Guindos also called for the introduction of the idea of shareholders and creditors sharing some of the burden for bank rescues to be delayed to 2018 as opposed to 2015, as proposed by some EU members, who want depositors with more than 100,000 euros to accept some of the pain of bank bailouts.

De Guindos said a common system of guaranteeing bank deposits was a key aspect in the creation of a European banking union.

Separately, De Guindos said Spain booked a trade surplus for the first time on record in March of around 600 million euros. “Spain had never had, since records began, a monthly trade surplus,” Bloomberg quoted De Guindos as saying. “This shows how exports have improved and that they are the main driver of Spain’s recovery and of the transformation of the economy.”

Twenty-two new destinations are on offer from Málaga-Costa del Sol alone. A direct flight to New York’s JFK is also entering its sixth operational year at the airport and Delta Airlines projects the route will enjoy 80-percent occupancy in June and July and more than 90 percent in August.

Among the new European routes are those to several German cities, including Berlin, Munich and Dortmund, as well as Belfast, Brussels, Oslo, Bergen, Copenhagen, London and Cardiff. Combined, Ryanair, Vueling, Aer Lingus and Jetairfly are offering 41 percent more seats than last year.

Seville’s airport has seen a 14-percent drop in passengers in the first quarter of 2013 and a total of 670,000 fewer travelers for the whole of 2012 over the previous year. It hopes to arrest this slide with new routes to Lyon, Geneva and Menorca. Vueling plans to offer 2.5 million seats out of Seville this year.

Almería airport has bet on Scandinavia, with new routes to Billund, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Oslo and Reykjavik.

The last six years have converted the grand design into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. "We are witnessing another example of an alarming lack of planning, in which infrastructure with 70 percent of its 12.5 kilometers constructed suddenly ends in a pile of sand. Spain is different," said UPyD spokesman Luis de Velasco in the regional assembly, ironically quoting the old 1960s tourism advertising slogan.

The Popular Party regional government of Esperanza Aguirre tendered the contract in 2005. Cintra lodged the winning bid to operate the toll road for 30 years. Its mission was to connect the M-203 and the A-2 at one extremity, and the M-208 and the R-3 at the other. But in 2007 tools were downed on the project. The vice-secretary for transport in Madrid, Borja Carabante, explains: "The infrastructure was an important link in the highway system and we did everything we could to correct the deficiencies in the project concerning authorization and permits. One, to create the pass beneath the Madrid-Barcelona AVE line and two, the connection with the R-3."

The deputy claims there were "permanent boycotts" by the central government and the Public Works Ministry in issuing permits. "We had no cooperation from Adif, which manages the rail line, from the department that has to authorize the connection, nor from the R-3, which is run under a Public Works concession. Quite the opposite," says Carabante. De Velasco adds that although a fix was found for the rail-link problem, "there is no way to connect with the R-3."

"The worst thing is that this obstacle was known about from day one," said Loreto Ruiz de Alda, a regional UPyD deputy. "When the project was still at the public information stage, the R-3 raised objections." UPyD believes the ministry did not issue authorization for the link because Accesos de Madrid, which runs the R-3 toll road "would suffer an economic deterioration, which the regional government would have to cover."

In spite of everything, work on the road commenced. Cintra noted that an agreement was required on the part of the regional government while the Madrid administration argued the concessionaire was responsible for obtaining the necessary permits. Cintra is now seeking the cancelation of the contract "because for six years work has been paralyzed and cannot advance because of various formalities that impede the fulfillment of the contract."

The company's move came in response to a letter from Carabante last October giving the contractor two months to restart work. In response, Cintra asked that the contract be torn up. In February, the constructor was again given a month by the Madrid authority to restart work on the highway "on the understanding that it is the sole responsibility of the concessionaire." Damages of five million euros were also sought.

"It is a problem that has been festering for years on the desks of various director generals and councilors and that nobody has been able to make a decision about. It was left up to the contractor to finally put an end to it," said Ruiz de Alda, whose party fears the taxpayer will be picking up the tab. However, the regional government has said the "infrastructure will not cost the public coffers a single euro."

The supervisor is beefing up its clemency program by specifically asking companies that blow the whistle on cartels they form part of to remain within the group in order to gather information on price-fixing and market quotas to help its probes. Those agreeing to collaborate in this way may be exempt from any fines imposed by the CNC in the case of a company being the first to alert the watchdog to illegal practices, or a reduced fine if they provide information that helps unravel cartels.

Under current regulations, companies found guilty of participating in illegal cartels may face fines of up to 10 percent of their revenues and, in the case of executives taking part, up to 60,000 euros.

The development conjures up Hollywood-style images of top managers recording secret conversations and photocopying documents in the early hours to hand over to the regulator - along the lines of a video produced by the Dutch anti-trust authorities that the CNC has dubbed into Spanish, showing a group of powerful businessmen in a luxury villa agreeing to inflate the price of their products and divide up the market among themselves. In the end, one of those in the cartel has a pang of conscience, spills the beans to the supervisor and benefits from the clemency on offer.

The Spanish Defense of Competition Law, which has been in force since July 2007, also allows for those who reveal to the CNC the existence of a cartel in which they form part to be granted a pardon. In order to encourage more informants to come forward, the CNC has asked the public for feedback on a program it has drawn up on the clemency option.

One of the points of the program, which will have no legal status, consists of the CNC asking companies that blow the lid on a cartel to remain infiltrated in the group.

"To allow the ongoing investigation of a cartel and not alert the rest of its participants, the investigation department may require the clemency applicant not to say he is ending his participation in the cartel and to authorize him to maintain the contacts or actions necessary to maintain the appearance of his continued participation for as long as it is necessary for the investigation management to prepare the appropriate measures," the program says.

The CNC guarantees that such espionage will not be deemed to constitute an infraction, as well as vouching for the anonymity of all informants. This has already been the arrangement practiced by the CNC in certain cases, but the watchdog believes this needs to be underlined to provide more guarantees.

Since it was set up in 2007, the CNC has imposed fines of 399 million euros in 16 probes initiated under the clemency arrangement. Of the total, it reduced the fines imposed on those who collaborated in the probe by 90.5 million euros. The United States goes further by giving the whistleblower part of the sums taken in by the authorities in fines.

Earlier this year the CNC imposed fines worth 44 million euros on 16 companies that had formed a cartel to divide up the market for election envelopes. The cartel had been operative during every election held since the restoration of democracy. One of the cartel members escaped a hefty fine by providing proof that helped dismantle the syndicate, while another two secured a reduction in their fines in exchange for collaborating with the CNC. In total, the clemency option saw a total haircut on the combined fine of 27 million euros.

Another well-documented case of whistleblowing occurred in 2011 and led to the break-up of a cartel for products for professional hairdressers that included well-known companies such as L'Óréal, Wella and the Colomer Group. Seven companies received a combined fine of 60.9 million euros. However, the CNC condoned a fine of 9.89 million euros imposed on Henkel for acknowledging the existence of the syndicate and identifying its participants.

The new protocol governing the clemency arrangement also allows for parent companies to be granted a pardon if they provide information on the illicit activities of their subsidiaries.

On a miserable night for Thunder star Kevin Durant, who ended up with 21 points on 5-for-21 shooting, Memphis had controlled the match in Oklahoma throughout, with Gasol scoring to make it 79-85 to the visitor with 25 seconds on the clock.

However, a Reggie Jackson three-pointer brought Thunder back into the game and when Grizzlies’ Zach Randolph missed twice from the free-throw line, Durant had one last chance to keep Oklahoma in the playoffs by forcing overtime. But the small forward missed with three seconds remaining and Memphis ran out an 84-88 winner.

The younger brother of the LA Lakers’ Pau Gasol, whose playoff season was short and best forgotten, Catalan Marc Gasol has now led the Grizzlies to its best-ever playoff performance, having twice overcome a home-court disadvantage to dispatch the Los Angeles Clippers and now Oklahoma City Thunder.

The center ended Wednesday night’s game with 10 points, seven rebounds and three blocks. Gasol’s teammate in Spain’s national side, Serge Ibaka, racked up 17 points and eight rebounds for the Thunder before fouling out in the closing stages. Memphis will play either San Antonio Spurs or Golden state Warriors in the conference final.

The south coast club had originally been excluded by the Uefa Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) from competing in any continental tournament it may qualify for over the next four seasons. The decision of the CFCB was based on Málaga’s debts and non-payment of its staff. However, the club said it found the decision “disproportionate and unjustified” and noted that it had complied with all the measures laid out last summer in order to satisfy Uefa’s Financial Fair Play criteria.

“It is good news for the club, and demonstrates that we have met our goals and that the appeal that we presented to the Court of Arbitration for Sport makes all the sense in the world. Málaga complies with all the requisites to play in Europe,” club sources said on Wednesday.

The Uefa license has been awarded to all Liga clubs with European aspirations except for Rayo Vallecano and Espanyol. Valladolid, Osasuna, Granada, Zaragoza, Deportivo and Celta have also been excluded from the list, but none of these have any chance of qualifying for European competition this season. Bottom-placed Mallorca, which was banned from continental action by the CFCB after qualifying for the Europa League in 2009, has been granted a Uefa license.

Málaga’s case before the CAS is due to be heard on June 4, when the club will aim to have its ban definitively overturned.

The concession is a boost to Málaga, which missed out on a place in the Champions League semifinals partly due to some extremely dubious refereeing decisions in its return leg match against finalist Borussia Dortmund, which drew some equally harsh words from the coaching staff and board. Manuel Pellegrini’s team currently sits sixth in La Liga, two points clear of Betis. A seventh-placed finish will suffice for Europa League qualification this season as Real Madrid and Atlético – both already in next season’s Champions League – will contest the cup final this Friday, the winner of which is awarded a Europa League berth the following year.

Pellegrini had been strongly rumored to move to Manchester City at the end of the current season, but Málaga has refused to confirm or deny whether the Chilean will remain on the Costa del Sol after three successful seasons.

The Metro de Madrid drivers' union is demanding 16.5 million euros it calculates its members are owed because management failed to pay them their negotiated salary increases.

Trains will run at 39 percent of regular frequency on Wednesday between 11am and 4pm, and at 52 percent on Friday between 7pm and 9pm.

However, labor union sources said that subway lines that run close to the Bernabéu will have more trains.

Among the proposals are a coordinated system of inspections, the results of which will be made public; greater rights for workers; and a financial commitment from retailers to improve conditions in factories in Bangladesh, the world's biggest exporter of clothes. "We hope for a broad coalition of signatures in order for the agreement to work effectively on the ground," H&M said in a statement.

Inditex founder Amancio Ortega has also pledged to support the pact, the final draft of which will be published on Wednesday. "The accord has not come out yet, but as you know we have played a very active part in its development," said a spokesman for the company, which includes the Zara chain. Six percent of Inditex's clothing was exported from Bangladesh last year, where factory workers earn the lowest minimum wage anywhere on the planet at 29 euros a month.

The Bangladesh government on Monday elected to close around 100 businesses in an attempt to calm street protests in Dhaka after the Rana Plaza factory disaster. The latest tragedy is the worst industrial accident since the 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide India Limited plant in Bhopal, which killed thousands of people. Last November in Bangladesh a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory in Dhaka cost the lives of 117 workers.

It's angrier. "Two years ago we had 4.5 million unemployed, and now we have six million," says veteran member Eduardo Maura, who has analyzed the movement since it set up camp in Puerta del Sol in the spring of 2011. He says that while the number of supporters has fallen, activists these days are making their dissent felt by organizing so-called escraches — noisy protests outside the homes and offices of government officials — as well as through lock-ins, squats, and trying to form a human chain around Congress. There has also been a move toward direct action against banks such as Bankia via hacking or setting up pickets outside branches. The slogan for this year is: "From indignation to rebellion: escrache the system."

It's in danger of fragmenting. Two weeks after they decamped from the Puerta del Sol, 15-M supporters moved into neighborhoods throughout the city, and began organizing direct action among residents through popular assemblies. Instead of protesting about homelessness in general, activists tried to prevent people who were unable to pay their mortgages from being evicted from their homes. "I can see a clear transformation of the movement," says Juan, a member of one of the capital's most active assemblies, in the Carabanchel district to the southwest of the city. Like all of the activists EL PAÍS spoke to, he would only give his first name. "At the start, the movement was huge, with well-attended demonstrations, but it has transformed into a network of autonomous collectives that use the assemblies to address specific issues. Each collective works on whatever issue interests it: evictions, health, education, social services..." The result, in the opinion of Manolo, a member of a group interested in economics, is that 15-M no longer leads the protests. "It is just another group." Or, as another activist puts it: "We have not grown, we have specialized in certain areas, looking for new ways to be active."

One foot in politics. Over recent months there have been several proposals to enter politics as a way of helping the movement grow. Achieving a genuinely participative democracy and opening up the electoral process is the chief political goal of hundreds of activists. Two examples: Confluencia, which aims to attract voters away from the Socialist Party and the United Left; and Partido X, created by a group of 20 activists who wish to remain anonymous. "Our program is the most modern in the world: democracy, that's it," says an anonymous member. "The aim is to make politics more participative. If another party achieves this first, we'll support them, and if not, we'll run for office and win. We need greater control over our institutions." In Andalusia, where the Socialist Party administration is drafting a law with just that aim in mind, groups linked to the 15-M movement have set up Democracia Digital Andalucía, which is already contributing to the proposed law.

Escraches and legal action. The movement has added to its repertoire of protest methods. The outbreak of escraches has angered many politicians, as well as most of the Spanish media — including EL PAÍS. Activists argue that the failure of politicians to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from losing their homes makes them justifiable targets. The 15-M movement has also brought legal action against former IMF boss Rodrigo Rato for his handling of Bankia, a savings bank that went belly up last year.

Mutual support. "You come to my escrache, and tomorrow I will vote to support public health, and the next day we'll join a lock-in at the university." Some activists are... well, very active. They are constantly on the lookout for new ways to register their indignation. The downside is that the movement is losing members, who are unable or unwilling to dedicate their lives to protesting.

Anger is spreading. The 15-M movement has made its presence felt in just about every kind of protest organization over the last two years. During the demonstrations called by Madrid healthcare professionals earlier this year, 15-M was present. "Doctors have proved to be good students," says Marta Franco, who writes for 15-M. "It's clear that the movement has influenced a lot of recent protests."

- Its membership is changing. Many of the founders of 15-M, who are tired of activism or who have gone abroad in search of work, have given way to new members. Two of the movement's founding members, leaders of the Democracy Now! group, and among its most visible in the early days, Jon Aguirre and Fabio Gándara, have moved on. Gándara has just co-published El cambio comienza en ti (or, The change starts in you), which he describes as "an overview of the last two years, of what is happening in Spain, and offering new ideas to open up the electoral process, and move on from indignation to doing something constructive."

It's slowing down. Activism is tiring, and 15-M is a hard taskmaster. "Most of those who started this are still involved, although we no longer give as much time as before. It is interesting to see new blood coming in, because those of us who have been involved since the beginning have become a little contaminated," says a lawyer associated with the movement. Patricia Horrillo, a journalist with close ties to 15-M, says it desperately needs new members: "Those who are constantly on the front line get tired; we need others to get involved and become politicized."

Manolo, the economist, says it is only logical that activists are lost along the way: "The 15-M movement has developed its political proposals over time, and this reduces the space within which it can be influential. As its members have increasingly put forward more radical proposals, those who were there at the beginning have naturally begun to feel more distanced from what is going on."

It was not the only alert received by the Córdoba police precinct that morning. Almost simultaneously, another caller reported an attempted theft at another warehouse nearby. It was there that law enforcement officers made an historic discovery: the largest hashish shipment ever seized in Spain; 52.6 metric tons. The police immediately connected the dots and realized that both events were related. It was the beginning of an operation to bust two major drug rings operating out of Seville. Four detainees are already in prison, but more arrests are expected in the coming days.

The discovery came just one day after the Civil Guard had broken the previous record after seizing 32 tons of hashish in the port of Algeciras, and also found 13,000 marijuana plants growing on an estate in Málaga.

Six days after finding that massive shipment, another 291 kilos of hashish were discovered inside a third warehouse. The following day, 10 more tons turned up inside two trucks in a fourth warehouse.

These findings reveal an unknown side to Córdoba as the logistics base for drug exports to Europe. But police are also puzzled by the fact that all the shipments should be concealed so close to one another.

“It goes against the logic of trafficking to accumulate such quantities in one place. The idea is to keep it for the shortest time possible and ship it out again. You have to be pretty stupid to do this,” said police sources familiar with the case.

The explanation might lie in an unexpected distribution problem for the gang, which is made up of two families from Seville. One of them is well-known to the police, as its members used to own a transportation company and were found with a ton of drugs on the French border some years ago.

Now, Córdoba has become the new Spanish base for storing and shipping Moroccan hashish to northern Europe, particularly Germany and the Netherlands. The never-ending stream of trucks coming in from Morocco used to stop in Seville, but the gang decided to move the business to the less suspicious city of Córdoba to throw off investigators.

The industrial park of La Amargacena could not be better situated. It is right next to the A-4 motorway, with direct links to Málaga, Seville, Cádiz and Huelva on the southbound lane, and to Madrid and the rest of the country on the northbound side. The daily bustle at the site, with vehicles of all sizes going in and out, affords the perfect cover.

“All three warehouses were rented out to different owners,” said police sources. The information contained in the leases helped with at least one of the arrests. All of the suspects hail from Seville, although two of them were arrested in Almonte, Huelva. What role did these warehouses play? All lines of investigation are still open, but police think the first one, where a worker walked into the beating, might have served as a “store” for retail drug sales. The second one, where the huge shipment was found, might be the “general warehouse.”

Investigators suspect the attackers were looking for the second warehouse. “It could be an attempt at theft among two rival gangs,” said the same sources. According to this hypothesis, after extracting the information from the bound men, the assaulters climbed into their cars, drove to the second warehouse and attempted to break the door down by ramming their vehicles into it, in what amounted to a failed smash-and-grab raid.

But the witness got himself out of the duct tape he’d been bound in, and called the police. The unit that was initially dispatched to the scene realized this was more than mere theft — there were wrappers on the ground of the type typically used to store drugs, and blood stains. The narcotics unit was also called in. Meanwhile, another worker walked by the second warehouse and saw the damage to the door. The police were informed of this as well.

Nobody at the industrial park suspected they were surrounded by tons of hashish, workers say. “I never saw anything going on there, nothing strange,” says an employee at a nearby scrapyard. La Amargacena is one of the busiest industrial parks in Córdoba. There are hundreds of businesses there, small and large, located next to workshops and warehouses. Its irregular layout, featuring numerous alleyways and backstreets for loading and unloading, makes visibility more complex.

It was in one of those backstreets, concealed behind a row of identical warehouses, that Spain’s largest discovered hashish stash was kept. Investigators believe the market value of the haul could be close to 80 million euros.

“It may be that you think you are safe, but believe me: you’re not,” said the missives sent to executives in Madrid, Catalonia, Santander, Cádiz and Alicante, among other cities. The Madrid Provincial High Court considered it proven that Jorge García Valcárcel created a batch of letters in 2008 “that carried the seal of ETA at the top and the bottom.”

García was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the court recommended he serve no more than a seven-and-a-half years.

The letters read: “The organization Euskadi Ta Askatasuna [ETA] informs you with this letter that it considers you one of the people responsible for the current state of conflict between Euskal Herria and the Spanish state.” The recipient was then told he was an “objective” of ETA and amounts varying between 15,000 and 50,000 euros were demanded.

According to the court report, García’s letters caused “great fear among their recipients” as ETA had brought a ceasefire to an end in June 2007. The letters told García’s victims to send an SMS to a cellphone number, leaving their names and telephone numbers.

"Comfortable situation"

García visited at least 11 businessmen in January 2008. When some of these alerted the police, anti-terrorist investigators immediately concluded that the author of the letters was not a member of ETA. The case was passed to the police’s kidnapping and extortion unit.

García was eventually arrested on January 15, 2008 as he was walking in Génova street in Madrid, where the offices of his Mosaico Consulting business were located. During his trial García denied sending the letters but was found guilty by a jury and sentenced for criminally threatening behavior.

The magistrates sitting on the case said they could not fathom why García had attempted to extort money when he was in a “comfortable economic situation.”

The court acquitted Massiel Teresa F. R., 29, García’s girlfriend, and Michael P. M. R., of acting as accomplices in García’s activities.

Police said Tuesday that nine of the arrests were made in Castellón, with a 10th in Cádiz. The footage featured children aged between 12 and 15.

The operation began in April with the arrest of one minor who was accused of making one of the recordings. A second suspect, aged 13, was identified as the author of a second video. A 16-year-old who featured in this recording was charged with sexual abuse against a 13-year-old girl.

The mother of one of the minors went to the police on April 6 to report a video obtained through an instant messaging application that featured several underage individuals, including her own son, conducting acts of a sexual nature.

Meanwhile, the police started receiving numerous alerts from internet users who had seen this recording, the police said in a statement. While the first video was being investigated, law enforcement authorities got wind of a second recording of a similar nature.

In late April, the police arrested 41 people in 18 provinces for the possession and distribution of videos depicting sexual abuse of children as young as eight.

The detainees were sharing P2P files through the website eDonkey. Half of those arrested were unemployed or retired people.

Andor insisted that his suggestion was not a formal recommendation by the European Commission, a clarification that Labor Minister Fátima Báñez picked up on, while arguing the Spanish Constitution was an obstacle to the introduction of a single contract that would eliminate the disparities between the rights of temporary and permanent workers. The Popular Party (PP) politician did not explain how this would breach the Constitution.

Speaking in Madrid where he is attending a series of events, Andor insisted that Spain had a serious problem with high unemployment, particularly among young people, adding that it was up to individual countries to find solutions, including changing the law in order to allow them to do so.

Spain’s unemployment rate currently stands at 27.2 percent, twice the European Union average, while the rate for workers under 25 is 57.2 percent. The country also has the highest rate of temporary workers within the EU. Spain overhauled its labor laws in February of last year, making it cheaper and easier to sack workers, although a number of different types of work contract continue to remain in place. However, those on permanent contracts still have far more rights than temporary workers

“What the European commissioner did was to back the flexibility of the labor reform,” Báñez said. “We have reduced the duality of contracts, lowering the percentage of people on temporary contracts by three points in a year as difficult as 2012 was.”

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Monday said he was “very satisfied” with the labor reform introduced last year, adding that there are no plans to change it.

However, Andor told reporters that the number of temporary workers remained one of the big problems of the labor market in Spain.

Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said Tuesday he expects the European Commission to approve the labor reform introduced by the government in its latest assessment of developments in Spain. “The government always listens to the recommendations made by the European Commission, but [Brussels] is satisfied with the labor reform,” the minister said.

De Guindos said the benefits of the reform will make themselves clear once the economy starts to pick up again. “The threshold above which the Spanish economy starts to create employment has been significantly reduced as a result of the labor reform,” he said.

Juan Rosell, the chairman of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), Spain’s largest employer group, said the idea of a single contract was “very bold” as it would require a complete overhaul of current labor legislation. However, he insisted that the current system (with 41 different types of labor contracts) needed to be simplified.

Ignacio Fernández Toxo, the secretary general of the CCOO labor union, was highly critical of the idea of a single contract. “It’s an undisguised attempt to take advantage of the circumstances to make hiring in Spain even more precarious,” he said.

The percentage is much higher among those born in Spain, 80 percent, in comparison to children who arrived in the country at a young age. "These results show a slow but positive advance in terms of integration," says Portes. This "favorable" process, says Rosa Aparicio of Ortega y Gasset, is also attributable to greater acceptance by Spanish society: less than 10 percent of immigrant children have felt discriminated against.

In the 2008 survey, Latin Americans felt the greatest identification with Spain. In the 2012 poll, it was Filipinos and Bulgarians who felt Spanish in the greatest majority, while Chinese and Bolivians felt being uprooted most keenly: "Maybe because of their longer relationship with their own community," says Aparicio.

Second-generation immigrants share career and education ambitions with young Spaniards: 70 percent wish to study at university although modest family incomes mean their expectation of being able to do so is only 57 percent. Of those surveyed in 2008 aged 17 and 18, 80 percent were still studying in some form in 2012, but only a "privileged five percent" had reached university while "a third were still trying to finish secondary education or vocational programs," says Princeton's Portes.

The study noted that Spanish children, Argentineans, Chileans and Filipinos stayed in education longer than Dominicans and Chinese. The latter "have an interesting profile," says Portes. "Chinese children are among the groups who leave school in the largest numbers to join the family business. However, those who stay at school advance further and get better results than anyone else."

The average grade among second-generation immigrants is 6.15 out of 10, just half a percentage point lower than the Spanish median. Those with the highest marks are western European immigrants, while Bolivians, Dominicans and Moroccans generally scrape through. However, school drop-out rates and youth unemployment are very similar between Spaniards and second-generation immigrants.

Despite this, and the relative disadvantages in terms of income, the vast majority of immigrant families are opting "to stay in Spain and ride out the crisis," says the report. Of the people surveyed in 2008, only 1.76 percent were located outside Spanish borders and of these, the report states, most had left the country "to gain university access in their countries of origin or in other countries, and not out of economic necessity."

"The results of our survey do not support alarming or negative conclusions about second-generation integration in Spain. The vast majority of children born in Spain or brought from other countries at a young age stay in Spain and continue their studies," say the authors, who note that "a small minority show signs of downward mobility such as early motherhood or fatherhood and run-ins with the police."

The relative similarity between immigrant and Spanish unemployment and school dropout rates lead to the conclusion that the former "have integrated with Spanish youth and their differences with children of native Spaniards are diminishing with time."

Spain "is no longer a country of immigrants," says Alejandro Portes, co-author of a report on integration among second-generation immigrants. In a study carried out by the Ortega y Gasset University Institute and Princeton University, a comparison between the same target group in 2008 and 2012 shows a 20 percent increase in the number of second-generation children who feel Spanish - from 30 percent to 50 percent.
The percentage is much higher among those born in Spain, 80 percent, in comparison to children who arrived in the country at a young age. "These results show a slow but positive advance in terms of integration," says Portes. This "favorable" process, says Rosa Aparicio of Ortega y Gasset, is also attributable to greater acceptance by Spanish society: less than 10 percent of immigrant children have felt discriminated against.
In the 2008 survey, Latin Americans felt the greatest identification with Spain. In the 2012 poll, it was Filipinos and Bulgarians who felt Spanish in the greatest majority, while Chinese and Bolivians felt being uprooted most keenly: "Maybe because of their longer relationship with their own community," says Aparicio.
Second-generation immigrants share career and education ambitions with young Spaniards: 70 percent wish to study at university although modest family incomes mean their expectation of being able to do so is only 57 percent. Of those surveyed in 2008 aged 17 and 18, 80 percent were still studying in some form in 2012, but only a "privileged five percent" had reached university while "a third were still trying to finish secondary education or vocational programs," says Princeton's Portes.
The study noted that Spanish children, Argentineans, Chileans and Filipinos stayed in education longer than Dominicans and Chinese. The latter "have an interesting profile," says Portes. "Chinese children are among the groups who leave school in the largest numbers to join the family business. However, those who stay at school advance further and get better results than anyone else."
The average grade among second-generation immigrants is 6.15 out of 10, just half a percentage point lower than the Spanish median. Those with the highest marks are western European immigrants, while Bolivians, Dominicans and Moroccans generally scrape through. However, school drop-out rates and youth unemployment are very similar between Spaniards and second-generation immigrants.
Despite this, and the relative disadvantages in terms of income, the vast majority of immigrant families are opting "to stay in Spain and ride out the crisis," says the report. Of the people surveyed in 2008, only 1.76 percent were located outside Spanish borders and of these, the report states, most had left the country "to gain university access in their countries of origin or in other countries, and not out of economic necessity."
"The results of our survey do not support alarming or negative conclusions about second-generation integration in Spain. The vast majority of children born in Spain or brought from other countries at a young age stay in Spain and continue their studies," say the authors, who note that "a small minority show signs of downward mobility such as early motherhood or fatherhood and run-ins with the police."
The relative similarity between immigrant and Spanish unemployment and school dropout rates lead to the conclusion that the former "have integrated with Spanish youth and their differences with children of native Spaniards are diminishing with time."