It has been a strange spectacle watching the optimism generated by Pedro Sánchez’s general election victory at the end of April turn sour. The stop-start slow-mo negotiations between the Socialist Party and Unidas Podemos to form a new government never really seemed...
Guy
Hedgecoe
Print and broadcast journalist
Behind Spain’s news
The brother-in-law (part two)
Last October, I joined a group of foreign journalists for an off-the-record meeting with Ciudadanos party leader Albert Rivera. We’d had plenty of these kinds of events with leading politicians before, and several with him, but on this occasion he seemed different to...
Jack Sparrow versus Spain
One of the top headlines on El País’s website earlier this week read: “The Spanish black legend spread by Hollywood”. The article beneath reported how the Defence Ministry has given an award to historian Esteban Vicente Boisseau for a book he has published on how...
Mainland dreams
Moroccan teenagers in Ceuta's port area. Photo: Guy Hedgecoe The desperation of migrants attempting to reach their dreamed-of destination has become a familiar sight on our TV and computer screens, its impact inevitably diluted by the 24-hours cycle. But on a recent...
The Editor
In the spring of 2015, El Mundo’s Asia correspondent David Jiménez was unveiled as the newspaper’s new editor. A year and 366 editions of the paper later, he was sacked. Jiménez recounts his eventful tenure in a newly published book, El Director (“The Editor”). Having...
Curtain call
Members of the Kamikaze theatre company in Jauría, by Jordi Casanovas. Photo: Vanessa Rábade “We have to accept that theatre is entertainment. But you can’t take the word ‘enjoyment’ to mean the avoiding of reality. Theatre should be a widening of reality.” – Alfonso...
Adults in the room
It’s still early days in the Supreme Court trial of 12 Catalan leaders for their role in the 2017 failed independence bid. But, with all the defendants having given an initial testimony and several of the highest profile witnesses having taken the stand, certain...
Arrimadas’s Waterloo “happening” kicks off Spanish electoral season
Spanish general election campaigns aren’t supposed to begin like this. They tend to kick off in echoey sports centres in Zaragoza, or lifeless conference halls in Marbella, with amp-busting canned music and kitsch flag-waving. But you could make the case that the 2019...
The Real Spain
A couple of weeks ago, Irene Lozano, head of the Spanish foreign ministry’s España Global department, launched a campaign called “This is the real Spain”. The idea was to try to ensure that outsiders got an idea of the country that was removed from the dark, Francoist...
Spain’s people of 2018
Spain’s year began with a hangover from the traumatic recent events in Catalonia and moved into what looked like a semi-permanent state of political turmoil. There was upheaval as the corruption-plagued Popular Party was ousted from power and replaced by the...
Blog
11M, still
On the morning of 11th of March 2004 I didn’t hear the bombs that blew apart three carriages of a commuter train in Madrid’s Atocha station, even though I was living nearby. I’d just had soundproof new windows installed in my flat and the noise of the blasts didn’t...
Lyncanthropy
“A real politician…never betrays his country to an outsider. He betrays it to himself. He is the enemy within.” Guy Endore, ‘The Werewolf of Paris.’ Pablo Casado: belligerent and uncertain. Photo: PP The seemingly never-ending stream of national opinion polls in the...
Recent work
Spain at the sharp end of Europe’s energy crisis
TV report for BBC News, broadcast October, 2021 (camera: Juan Domínguez) https://youtu.be/xehatna9EP0
‘The Technician’ goes on trial
How José Manuel Villarejo’s deep-status apparatus shook the establishment October 12th, 2021. Published by POLITICO. MADRID — For the past half-decade, José Manuel Villarejo has been the most mysterious and vilified person in Spain. Now he is due to have his day in...
A tale of 2 candidates in Madrid
May 5th, 2021. Published by POLITICO. MADRID — They were born in the same city, Madrid, on the same day in 1978. But 42 years later, the fortunes of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Pablo Iglesias have diverged dramatically. Díaz Ayuso, the conservative president of Madrid,...