Spain’s central bank chief confirms bailout extension option

The governor of the Bank of Spain has confirmed that the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy may in October decide whether or not to ask for an extension on the maturity of the loan it received from its European partners to bail out the country’s banks.

As EL PAÍS has published, the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF — the so-called troika — have been pushing Spain to seek to extend the period in which the loan remains available in order to provide a cushion against any further volatility in the sovereign debt markets as a result of additional bank stress tests to be carried out on European lenders. The Bank of Spain has also recently tightened coverage for loans that have been refinanced or restructured that could lead to banks being required to make more provisions.

The Rajoy administration has argued that should the nationalized banks need more capital, it will be able to fund this in the market. But it is not averse to seeking to extend the maturity of the loan provided that this does not come with additional conditions.

Spain has only tapped around 41 billion euros of the 100 billion made available to it by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Most of the 41 billion euros went to recapitalize Bankia, Novagalicia and Catalunya Banc, which have been nationalized.

“The government will have to take this decision and I suppose that will be in October,” Linde said at a seminar in Montreal on Monday.

“When you look at whether additional provisions might be necessary, we’re talking about banks that are under state control,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We don’t expect these banks will need a new injection of capital, but we will have to wait until September to see how the economy evolves and the earning of the banks.”

Civil Guards raids capture two wanted ETA members in Gipuzkoa

Two suspected ETA members were arrested in early-morning raids Tuesday in the Gipuzkoa localities of Andoain and Urnieta. The Civil Guard said that Jon Lizarribar Lasarte and Rubén Gelbentzu González formed part of the Izarbeltz terrorist cell, which carried out four bombing attacks in 2002 against the University of Navarre, the Corte Inglés department store in Zaragoza and two local businesses in the Basque Country.

The operation was the fruit of analysis of documents seized from several ETA leaders in France. The Civil Guard said the current investigation into the Izarbeltz cell remains ongoing.

Gelbentzu, 35, and Lizarribar, 36, had previously been arrested in 2003 and 2004 respectively and charged with belonging to a terrorist organization. Lizarribar was sentenced to six years in prison by French authorities after being arrested in a stolen vehicle with a firearm and false documents in the southwestern area of Billac. At the time of his arrest a European warrant was in force for his capture.

At his 2007 trial, prosecutors stated he had spent time at several addresses with other ETA members in Limoges, Coulaines and Le Mans, suggesting he was a member of the organization's logistics network and responsible for harboring terrorists on French soil.

Gelbentzu's arrest in 2003 was part of a police operation against ETA's recruitment apparatus. Twelve other suspects were detained in the operation but Gelbentzu was released on bail and ordered to report weekly to court.

Anti-terrorist security sources told Europa Press that the two detainees were not active and did not maintain contact with the organization's hierarchy. ETA declared an end to armed action in October 2011.

Urdangarin collected 10,000 euros for meetings, says former partner

Iñaki Urdangarin, the king's son-in-law who is the target of a public fraud investigation, charged 10,000 euros for each meeting he held with businessmen to help drum up support for conferences and sports events that his non-profit Nóos Institute was organizing, a witness testified Monday.

Álex Sánchez Mollinger, a friend of Urdangarin who also participated in some of the meetings, told a Palma de Mallorca judge that the Duke of Palma collected 30,000 euros from the Valencia soccer team in exchange for a pledge to look for sponsors. The search failed to bear fruit but Urdangarin still collected his cash.

Previously, another witness, Fernando Roig, testified that Urdangarin was paid 600,000 euros for a similar task on behalf of the Villarreal team.Roig serves as president of the soccer club.

Judge José Castro, who is spearheading the inquiry, also took a statement from Mario Sorribas, who was once a close aide to Urdangarin, about Aizoon, the real estate and property firm the royal co-owned with his wife, Infanta Cristina. Sorribas revealed that there were no workers at the firm.

The judge is specifically looking at whether Aizoon was used as a front company to allegedly avoid paying some 240,000 euros in taxes from 2007 to 2008. Castro has opened an investigation into Princess Cristina's tax returns. She was initially officially implicated in the embezzlement case against her husband but that decision was later left in abeyance.

Urdangarin is being investigated for fraud, tax evasion, falsifying documents and embezzling six million euros in public funds as head of the non-profit Nóos Institute.

Bogus kung fu master is not mentally ill, say police

The kung fu martial artist Juan Carlos Aguilar, who faces murder charges in connection with the deaths of two women, is mentally fit and not suffering from any psychiatric condition, according to a medical report prepared by the Basque police.

Aguilar, 47, was arrested in Bilbao on Sunday after neighbors reported hearing the cries of a woman inside his gym. The regional Ertzainta police found Mauren Ada Ortuya tied up and severely beaten. The 29-year-old Nigerian national died on Wednesday after spending several days in a coma.

Police identified a second woman, Jenny Sofía Rebollo, 40, as another possible victim. Rebollo, a Colombian national, had called her mother in Colombia to say that she "was very happy" because she had been offered a job giving massages at a local gym and would soon be able to send money back home.

"My sister was always happy, she would always talk and laugh with us," said Rebollo's sister Yira in an interview with the daily Meridiano de Córdoba. They last spoke was on May 21.

Aguilar reportedly told police that he may have killed a woman on May 31 but he wasn't sure. The police medical report states that he was diagnosed with a brain tumor two years ago.

At the same time, more details have emerged about Aguilar. Witnesses said that he often frequented a bar across the street from his house and may have met the women there.

One client doesn't think that Rebollo and Ortuya ever met because the Colombian woman often went alone. "It was a normal bar; it wasn't any type of nightclub or strip club," the client said.

The bar has since been closed for different violations, the police said.

If convicted Aguilar could be sentenced to up to 25 years for each murder.

Villarreal earns promotion back to Primera

A year after it found itself relegated from the top flight of Spanish soccer, Villarreal bounced straight back to Primera on Saturday.

The Yellow Submarine secured second behind Segunda champions Elche with a 1-0 win over Almería at El Madrigal. Jonathan Pereira's 54th minute strike proved enough to dispatch the third-place Andalusian team, which had gone into the match level on points with the Castellón side.

Club president Fernando Roig can take much of the credit for enabling the 2006 Champions League semifinalist to climb back out of the hole it had dug for itself. Two days after his team was relegated last year, he decided to sell his 2.5-percent stake in supermarket chain Mercadona, valued at around 71 million euros, and use the funds to clean up the club's accounts and remodel the team.

However, the search for a coach began tragically when former Sporting Gijón boss Manolo Preciado died of a heart attack as he was about to be presented as the chosen candidate. Youngster Julio Velázquez stepped into the vacant position, but with Villarreal languishing mid-table at the halfway stage he was replaced by Marcelino García Toral whose alterations have now catapulted the team back into the top tier.

Almería now heads into the playoffs where it faces Las Palmas, while Girona plays Alcorcón in the other tie. Both first matches are due to be played on Wednesday with the second legs on Saturday. The winners will then battle it out for the final promotion spot.

At the other end of the second tier, Murcia provisionally avoided the drop to Segunda B with a 1-0 win over Las Palmas. Last week the Professional Football League (LFP) announced that Guadalajara would be relegated due to irregularities in the process of capital increase carried out by the club last year. Thus Murcia, Racing Santander and Huesca all had an unexpected final chance to save their skins on the final weekend.

Guadalajara has said it will contest the LFP's decision.

Nadal rewrites the history books at Roland Garros

Neither rain, a court invasion nor the very best that David Ferrer could muster prevented Rafael Nadal from writing a new chapter in the history books in Paris on Sunday. The Spaniard’s straight sets win over his Davis Cup teammate made him the only player in history to win the same Grand Slam eight times, and his 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 victory was his 59th at Roland Garros, another record. Nadal has only been beaten once in nine years on the Paris clay, when Robin Söderling achieved what nobody else had before or since in the fourth round. A record of one win in his previous 16 matches against Nadal going into the final did not bode well for Ferrer.

Indeed, the score line does not really reflect the contest. Nadal was made to work extremely hard by his opponent and by damp conditions in the French capital, which did not lend themselves to the champion’s heavy forehand top spin. Ferrer had not lost a set coming into the final and displayed the resilience that is his own trademark early on when an early break brought up 2-1 and harrowing images of last year’s semifinal, in which Nadal thrashed his countryman for the loss of just five games.

But Ferrer broke back immediately and unveiled part of his game plan in doing so — to attack everything that Nadal left slightly short, go for the lines and come to the net when necessary.

Although Nadal broke again later to claim the first set, the match statistics show something close to parity in break point opportunities — 13 for Ferrer to Nadal’s 16 — but merely carving out the chances is a mammoth task against the Mallorcan in Paris. Ferrer was able only to convert three but even in the second set his tenacity could be measured in numbers. Few 6-2 partials take almost an hour to complete.

Despite the best on-court efforts of Ferrer, it took a masked, shirtless protestor invading Philippe Chatrier to break Nadal’s concentration. The world number four was unable to serve out the second at 5-1 but then regained his composure and added Ferrer’s next service game to the dusting of red brick on the main show court, taking the set with a crushing break to love.

The third began in much the same way as the first, both players exchanging breaks as the drizzle continued.

At 2-3, Ferrer was distracted by a sneeze from the crowd behind him during his service action, staring icily at the perpetrator before displaying sang-froid to hold for 3-3. But that was the last game he would claim as Nadal broke again in game eight to serve for the match. It was the champion’s turn to be unamused when the crowd got a little ahead of itself at 40-15 but a signature thumping serve and forehand combination sent Nadal to the floor for the eighth time on Philippe Chatrier in nine years.

It was the culmination of a comeback from seven months on the sidelines that had been tailored to deliver Nadal to Roland Garros in as close to top shape as possible. If it had seemed the Spaniard would struggle with the five-set format after so long on the sidelines when Daniel Brands relieved him of a pair of sets in round one, Nadal’s epic semifinal with Novak Djokovic was proof that he is back at the peak of his powers.

On clay, whether it be Monte Carlo (eight titles), Rome (seven), Barcelona (eight) or Paris, there is every sense that the ambidextrous Nadal could well try a new trick at this rate: the first player to win the same tournament with his left and right hand.

Nadal must now be considered the greatest clay-courter in history. With 12 Slams under his belt he stands third in the all-time list alongside Roy Emerson, two shy of Pete Sampras. The king of clay should also now be mentioned in any discussion regarding the greatest player on all surfaces.

Elías Querejeta, legendary Spanish film producer, dies at 78 

If anybody in the Spanish movie industry ever worked hard to earn the title of “The Producer,” that is Elías Querejeta, who died on Sunday morning in his Madrid home at the age of 78.

A driving force behind Spanish cinema (he produced 55 movies and wrote 23) and a prestigious figure in European film, the Basque-born Querejeta leaves behind a legacy of essential viewing for scholars of European art film. His work also serves to help younger generations understand the role of a producer; Querejeta gave wings to the careers of directors such as Carlos Saura, Jaime Chávarri, Emilio Martínez Lázaro, Fernando León de Aranoa, Víctor Erice and his own daughter, Gracia Querejeta.

“I always have fun with my work, whether as a producer or a director,” he once said in an interview with EL PAÍS. “I am even present during the film editing, and I couldn’t conceive of this (job) without passion and commitment.”

Early in his career, his role model was the legendary MGM producer Irving G. Thalberg. “I was always interested in his passionate approach to production.”

Yet Querejeta did not seem like a natural-born filmmaker at first. His earliest memories were of a happy childhood and a passion for soccer. By the age of 18 he was making his debut in the Spanish first division with San Sebastián’s team, Real Sociedad. But his career in sports ended in 1958, when he moved to Madrid to set up his own film production company.

 In 1960 and 1962, he directed the short documentaries A través de San Sebastián (Through San Sebastián) and A través del fútbol (Through soccer) in partnership with his close friend Antonio Eceiza. He did not direct again until 2009 when he made another documentary, Cerca de tus ojos (Near your eyes), about a journalist doing human rights research.

I always have fun with my work, whether as a producer or a director”

 “It’s true that all my work in this genre follows a line of thought that concerns itself with specific subject matter, and a certain way of viewing that I call the documentary movie,” he said about this aspect of his work.

But those documentary beginnings quickly evolved towards fiction in partnership with the director Carlos Saura, who would go on to solo fame with movies such as Tango and Flamenco. Together, both men gave the world an impressive list of award-winning titles, including La caza, which won the Best Director award at the 1965 Berlin International Film Festival; Peppermint frappé, winner of the Berlin Silver Bear in 1967; La prima Angélica, which took the 1974 Jury Prize at Cannes; and Deprisa, deprisa, winner of the 1981 Berlin Golden Bear.

In a documentary about Querejeta released in December of last year, Saura stated that eventually the partnership eroded in much the same way as a romantic relationship withers away. “But he never tried to meddle with the script,” the famed director noted. “We are like an elderly couple with a lot of successful children.”

Another director who worked with Querejeta, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, admitted that the producer “sticks his nose everywhere.”

More recently, Querejeta partnered with Fernando León de Aranoa to create Mondays in the Sun (2002), an award-winning drama about unemployment featuring actor Javier Bardem.

His daughter Gracia, an actress and director, said that even after she told him she wanted to pursue a career in film, her father forced her to get a university degree first.

Querejeta received all the honors that Spain can bestow on its filmmakers: the National Film Award in 1986 and the Film Academy’s Gold Medal in 1998, when he was told by academy president José Luis Borau that “Spanish cinema has followed in your wake for a long time, feeding off your prestige, your cheek and your courage.”