Spain
Golden couple of Spanish cinema return to open Cannes festival
Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem will return to Cannes this week. Photo:AFP
It was where Javier..
Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem will return to Cannes this week. Photo:AFP
It was where Javier Bardem memorably declared his love for Penelope Cruz in 2010 — now the golden couple of Spanish cinema will open this year's Cannes film festival together on Tuesday.
The Oscar-winning actors both star in Iranian master Asghar Farhadi's Spanish psychological thriller "Everybody Knows", which will kick off the festival and is up for the top Palme d'Or prize.
Watch the official trailer:
The fiercely private couple's glowing return to the spotlight in Cannes comes after Bardem emotionally proclaimed his feelings for Cruz there eight years ago as he accepted the best actor award for "Biutiful".
"I share this joy with my friend, my companion, my love, Penelope. I owe you a lot and I love you so much," he said as Cruz blew kisses to him from her seat and her eyes welled with tears.
Cruz has also won at Cannes, sharing the 2006 best actress prize with five other women for their work in acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar's drama "Volver".
READ ALSO: Discovering Madrid through the movies of Pedro Almodóvar
First Spanish Oscar-winners
Bardem, 49, and Cruz, 44, have two children together and married in 2010 on an island in the Bahamas owned by their friend, US actor Johnny Depp.
They also share a notable distinction — they are respectively the first Spanish man and woman to win an acting Oscar.
Bardem won his best supporting actor Academy Award in 2008 for his role as a determined murderer in the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men".
The following year Cruz took home the best actress Oscar for playing a fiery artist in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona".
But the couple live discreetly in a Madrid suburb, where they try to keep the spotlight away from their son Leo, seven, and daughter Luna, four.
They have starred in nine films together, including last year's "Loving Pablo", by Spanish director Fernando Leon de Aranoa, in which Bardem plays Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and Cruz a journalist who falls in love with the infamous narco.
After filming a particularly difficult scene, Bardem joked that Cruz "did not want to see me anymore".
"She told me: 'Get rid of the moustache. Shave and go sleep in the living room'," he recalled in an interview in March.
'Passion for everything'
Bardem was born in 1969 on Spain's Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. His mother, actress Pilar Bardem, raised him after she separated from his father.
Bardem dedicated his Oscar to his mother and her line of the family, which includes many actors.
Cruz was born in 1974 to a modest family in a working class suburb of Madrid.
Her father owned a store and her mother ran a beauty salon, where Cruz said she learnt to act by observing how clients behaved.
Both stars often say that they owe everything to the late Spanish director Bigas Luna, who brought them together for the first time in his 1991 movie "Jamon, Jamon".
Cruz was just 17 at the time, and Bardem 22.
In the film, their characters have a famous sexual encounter on top of a pinball machine, one of the most torrid scenes in Spanish cinema.
The two then crossed paths in several other movies, but only began dating after shooting "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" in 2007 in Barcelona.
While Cruz usually avoids mentioning her husband in interviews, Bardem has spoke of his wife's passion to the media.
"She feels passion for everything. It's what I find attractive in her. You have to have beauty and know how to be sexy. Penelope has both," Bardem told GQ magazine last year.
Both declare themselves leftwing and were criticised in Hollywood in 2014 for their fierce condemnations of Israeli bombings in Gaza.
This year they took part in a campaign by a Spanish NGO which rescues migrants at sea.
By AFP's Laurence Boutreux
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Spain
Golden couple of Spanish cinema return to open Cannes festival
Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem will return to Cannes this week. Photo:AFP
It was where Javier..
Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem will return to Cannes this week. Photo:AFP
It was where Javier Bardem memorably declared his love for Penelope Cruz in 2010 — now the golden couple of Spanish cinema will open this year's Cannes film festival together on Tuesday.
The Oscar-winning actors both star in Iranian master Asghar Farhadi's Spanish psychological thriller "Everybody Knows", which will kick off the festival and is up for the top Palme d'Or prize.
Watch the official trailer:
The fiercely private couple's glowing return to the spotlight in Cannes comes after Bardem emotionally proclaimed his feelings for Cruz there eight years ago as he accepted the best actor award for "Biutiful".
"I share this joy with my friend, my companion, my love, Penelope. I owe you a lot and I love you so much," he said as Cruz blew kisses to him from her seat and her eyes welled with tears.
Cruz has also won at Cannes, sharing the 2006 best actress prize with five other women for their work in acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar's drama "Volver".
READ ALSO: Discovering Madrid through the movies of Pedro Almodóvar
First Spanish Oscar-winners
Bardem, 49, and Cruz, 44, have two children together and married in 2010 on an island in the Bahamas owned by their friend, US actor Johnny Depp.
They also share a notable distinction — they are respectively the first Spanish man and woman to win an acting Oscar.
Bardem won his best supporting actor Academy Award in 2008 for his role as a determined murderer in the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men".
The following year Cruz took home the best actress Oscar for playing a fiery artist in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona".
But the couple live discreetly in a Madrid suburb, where they try to keep the spotlight away from their son Leo, seven, and daughter Luna, four.
They have starred in nine films together, including last year's "Loving Pablo", by Spanish director Fernando Leon de Aranoa, in which Bardem plays Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and Cruz a journalist who falls in love with the infamous narco.
After filming a particularly difficult scene, Bardem joked that Cruz "did not want to see me anymore".
"She told me: 'Get rid of the moustache. Shave and go sleep in the living room'," he recalled in an interview in March.
'Passion for everything'
Bardem was born in 1969 on Spain's Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. His mother, actress Pilar Bardem, raised him after she separated from his father.
Bardem dedicated his Oscar to his mother and her line of the family, which includes many actors.
Cruz was born in 1974 to a modest family in a working class suburb of Madrid.
Her father owned a store and her mother ran a beauty salon, where Cruz said she learnt to act by observing how clients behaved.
Both stars often say that they owe everything to the late Spanish director Bigas Luna, who brought them together for the first time in his 1991 movie "Jamon, Jamon".
Cruz was just 17 at the time, and Bardem 22.
In the film, their characters have a famous sexual encounter on top of a pinball machine, one of the most torrid scenes in Spanish cinema.
The two then crossed paths in several other movies, but only began dating after shooting "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" in 2007 in Barcelona.
While Cruz usually avoids mentioning her husband in interviews, Bardem has spoke of his wife's passion to the media.
"She feels passion for everything. It's what I find attractive in her. You have to have beauty and know how to be sexy. Penelope has both," Bardem told GQ magazine last year.
Both declare themselves leftwing and were criticised in Hollywood in 2014 for their fierce condemnations of Israeli bombings in Gaza.
This year they took part in a campaign by a Spanish NGO which rescues migrants at sea.
By AFP's Laurence Boutreux
Spain’s third largest political group in the national parliament, the far-right Vox party, is looking to make gains in the local and regional elections due to be held across the country on 28 May.
Since it entered a regional government for the first time in Castilla y León last year, Vox has attacked the unions and pushed polarising positions on social issues, including abortion and transgender rights.
It is now poised to spread its influence beyond the sparsely populated region near Madrid, with the party hoping to make gains in the elections at the end of May.
Surveys suggest the main opposition, the right-wing People’s Party (PP), could need the support of Vox to govern in half of the 12 regions casting ballots, just as it did in Castilla y León last year.
Polls also indicate the PP is on track to win a year-end general election but would need Vox to form a working majority and oust socialist (PSOE) Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his coalition government from office.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal [pictured at a recent rally in Chinchón, near Madrid] has called the PP-VOX coalition government in office in Castilla y León since March 2022 a ‘showroom’ and ‘an example of the alternative Spain needs’.
It is Spain’s first government to include a far-right party since the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
In Castilla y León, Vox has slashed funding to unions, which the party has vowed to ‘put in their place’ if it comes to power nationally. Trade union UGT was forced to lay off 40% of its staff in Castilla y León last month and scale back programmes to promote workspace safety. Spain’s other main union, the CCOO, is reportedly preparing to follow suit.
Vox has also angered LGBTQ groups by refusing to allow the regional parliament to be lit up in the colours of the rainbow, the symbol of the gay rights movement, for Pride festivities as in past years when the PP governed alone.
In addition, the regional vice-president, Vox’s Juan García-Gallardo, has railed against a law passed by Spain’s leftist central government that extends transgender rights.
The 32-year-old lawyer warned earlier this month that women would now be ‘forced to share locker rooms with hairy men at municipal swimming pools’.
Vox’s most contested initiative was a proposal that doctors offer women seeking an abortion a 4D ultrasound scan to try to discourage them from going ahead with the procedure.
The idea was swiftly condemned by Spain’s leftist central government, and Castilla y León’s PP president Alfonso Fernández Mañueco stopped the measure from going ahead.
The issue highlighted the hazards for the PP of joining forces with Vox, which was launched in 2013 and is now the third-largest party in the national parliament.
Read from: https://www.spainenglish.com/2023/05/19/spain-far-right-vox-may-local-regional-elections/
The price of TTF natural gas for delivery next month has fallen below 90 euros on Friday for the first time in almost two months and closes a week marked by the decision of the European Commission to cap gas with a drop of 29, 36%.
According to data from the Bloomberg platform, gas closed this Friday at 83 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh), 8.9% less than the day before and the first time it has lost 90 euros since last October 31.
After months of negotiations, the EU agreed on Monday to set a cap of 180 euros on contracts linked to the Amsterdam TTF index with a price difference of at least 35 euros above the average price of liquefied natural gas in the markets.
EU countries agree on a cap of 180 euros for gas with the support of Germany
In a report this week, the Swiss investment bank Julius Baer indicated that the chances of the mechanism being activated are low and pointed out that the chosen formula was not very effective in avoiding the multiplier effect that gas has on the price of electricity. However, he reiterated what was said in other previous reports: “Energy supply risks are minimal and prices should continue to decline in the future” due to the availability of raw materials from Asia to offset cuts from Russia.
Gas tends to fall during the hot months due to lower demand, but this summer it has reached historic heights as European countries were buying to face the winter with their tanks full and reduce their dependence on Russia. The price fell in September and October due to lower demand once the warehouses were full due to the high temperatures at the beginning of autumn, but in November it picked up again and 66% more expensive.
This article was originally published on Público
Ordinary retirement at age 65 ends for those who have contributed less than 38 years. In fact, 2023 will be the last year in which this can be done since it will be necessary to have a contribution career of a minimum of 37 years and nine months to be able to retire with the reference age of the last century, since it was established in 1919, and once the year is over another quarter will be added to be able to do it without cuts in the benefit.
This requirement means that to access ordinary retirement at age 65 without loss of pay, it will be necessary to have been working, at least, since April 1985 for those who exercise this right in December 2023 and since May 1984 for those who intend to do it in January.
More than ten million contributory pensioners
In the last decade, and coinciding with the implementation of the delay program, the real retirement age of Spanish workers has increased by one year, from 63.9 in 2012 to 64.8 in mid-2022, according to data from the Financial Economic Report of the Social Security included in the General State Budget.
Contributory pensions will have a historic rise of 8.5% as of January as a result of the disproportionate increase in the CPI, while for non-contributory pensions the revision will be 15%. This review will place the average pension of the contributory system at 1,187 euros per pay, while the retirement pension will rise to 1,365, the disability pension will reach 1,122 and the widow’s pension will reach 847, as a result of applying the 8.5% increase.
The Social Security forecasts point to next year, and while waiting to find out the real effects that the rise may have on the payroll due to its “call effect” to bring forward retirement given the opportunity to alleviate with it the penalties for anticipating it, the number of pensioners will consolidate above ten million, with almost two-thirds of them (6.37) as retirees, to which will be added 2.3 million widows and almost one affected by work disabilities.
This record number of pensioners will place the cost of pensions at 209,165 million euros, the bulk of which (196,399, 93.8%) will be used to pay benefits, including non-contributory ones. Health care has a budget of 1,890 million euros and social services another 3,791, while the remaining 7,144 are dedicated to operating expenses.
On the revenue side, the largest contribution comes from the contribution chapter, which will amount to 152,075 million and will leave the gap with contributory benefits at 36,765.
The imbalance will be covered by a contribution of 38,904 from the Government, to which is added a chapter of others worth 18,116 and which includes everything from sanctions to asset disposals, among other concepts.
Read more of this from the source Público
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