🌍 Spain’s election results spell gridlock

Hi there Intriguer. Time to polish up your LinkedIn profile: the new ‘micronation’ of Slowjamistan in the Californian desert is recruiting ambassadors. You’d just need to swear allegiance to the ruling sultan/DJ, and abide by his constitution (no wearing Crocs, no ‘reply all’ work emails, and no speeding unless you’re bringing home tacos).

Today’s briefing is a ~5 min read:

• 🇪🇸 Spain’s election results spell gridlock.

• 🇨🇦 Canada’s dockworkers set to end their strike.

• ➕ Plus: Banning war, how the papers are covering Sri Lanka’s president visiting India, and why Canadians are bidding on a doner kebab mascot costume.

1. 🇺🇿 Uzbekistan: The governments of Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan agreed last week to build a 760km railway linking the three countries. Uzbek officials say the route will cut travel time by five days and costs by 40%.

2. 🇳🇱 The Netherlands: Amsterdam is banning cruise ships from docking at the city’s ports in order to tackle over-tourism. Industry experts say the city of ~800,000 could see as many as 18 million overnight visitors this year, in addition to 25 million day visitors.

3. 🇰🇭 Cambodia: General Hun Manet could take control of Cambodia as soon as next month according to his father Hun Sen, who’s ruled the country since 1985. Hun Sen claimed a landslide victory in elections yesterday (Sunday), following his years-long crackdown on rivals.

4. 🇧🇴 Bolivia: President Luis Arce announced last week (20 July) that Bolivia has discovered an additional two million tonnes of lithium. The new find cements Bolivia’s position as having the world’s largest deposits of lithium, which is in high demand for batteries.

5. 🇪🇬 Egypt: Prominent civil rights activist Patrick Zaki landed in Milan yesterday (Sunday), days after an Egyptian court sentenced him to prison for "spreading false news". Italy (where Zaki studied and worked) reportedly played a role in convincing President El-Sisi to pardon him.

🇪🇸 Spain | Elections

Political gridlock in Spain

As broadly expected, Spain's conservative bloc won the most seats in elections yesterday (Sunday), but not enough for an outright majority.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, once described as "shockingly hot", called these snap elections in a gamble to wrong-foot his opponents, after his Socialist Party copped a drubbing in May's regional/local elections.

Specific issues like cost-of-living were on voters’ minds, but ultimately it came down to a choice between two competing visions for Spain:

• ☜ Sanchez warned Spain's conservatives would "undo the country's advances" by partnering with the populist Vox party (further to the right) to form a government, while

• ☞ His opponent Alberto Núñez Feijóo promised to end 'Sanchismo', a catch-all term for what critics contend is a leftist Sanchez movement propped up by various secessionist parties

In the end, Spain’s voters landed somewhere in the middle, with the conservative opposition slightly ahead but lacking the 176 seats needed to take power.

So what happens now?

King Felipe VI (who rocked some quality menswear at Wimbledon) will likely invite the opposition to try to form a government. But many MPs have refused to back any government that includes the controversial Vox party.

So the prime minister could hold onto power, but he’d need some controversial partners of his own: secessionist parties could demand a referendum on Catalan independence in return for their support.

In the end, Spaniards may be back at the ballot box again later this year.

Intrigue's take: All governments have messy inboxes these days, and frustrated voters often turn to smaller parties promising sharper solutions. But in Spain, it seems something else happened: smaller parties mostly lost seats, but they’re now shaping up as king-makers.

So it’ll be a while before all this dust settles, but that's kinda the point of the parliamentary system: it's not ‘winner-takes-all’, but ‘winner-takes-months’ …to keep negotiating until a representative government emerges.

Also worth noting:

• JPMorgan foreshadowed last week that an inconclusive result “could be the least market and growth friendly outcome for the additional uncertainty it would trigger.”

• Spain took over the six-month rotating EU presidency on 1 July.

📰 How newspapers covered…

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s visit to India

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🇨🇦 Canada | Supply chains

Are Canada’s dockworkers going back to work?

Port workers in the Canadian province of British Columbia could return to work by Thursday (27 July) after weeks of on-and-off strikes.

Around 7,400 workers at some of Canada’s largest ports went on strike from 1 July, seeking pay rises and job security. After some back n’ forth, it seems they might accept an offer including a 19% pay rise over four years.

And folks across North America will be happy if they do. The strikes:

• ✊ disrupted more than USD$10B in cargo

• 🚢 diverted ships to (and congested) ports across the US, and

• 🔗 disturbed supply chains that’ll take 2-3 months to recover.

Intrigue’s take: Canada, like many others, is wrestling with a couple of issues here. One is inflation: price spikes have eroded real wages, driving workers to demand raises. Inflation now seems to be cooling in Canada.

But the other issue is heating up: automation. 50 international ports are already on that path, and it’s hard to see how much longer Canada’s own ports can hold out.

Also worth noting:

• According to one World Bank report, the Port of Vancouver is the world’s second least-productive international port.

➕ Extra Intrigue

Your weekly roundup of the world’s more amusing news:

• A bidding war has started in Canada over an old doner kebab mascot costume nicknamed ‘Donair’. The top bid is now over $5,000.

• A Japanese policeman left a bag of live ammo at a supermarket while picking up his lunch.

• An event in Australia marking nine years until the Brisbane Olympics was cancelled after hundreds of drones fell into a river.

• Police in Berlin were on the hunt for a lion on the loose… which turned out to just be a wild boar.

• A study has found a possible genetic predisposition to… participating in genetic studies.

🗳️ Poll time!

📜 This day in history

On this day 94 years ago…

… the Kellogg-Briand Pact to outlaw war came into effect. The treaty didn’t work quite as intended (almost every signatory was at war a decade later). But it offered a legal basis for prosecuting criminals after WWII, earned US Secretary of State Kellogg the Nobel Peace Prize, and remains in effect today.

Thursday’s poll: Is the current trend of shifting assets and operations away from China likely to persist?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🚚 Yes, the risks are too high, and more companies will follow (90%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⌛ No, it's more of a phase, it'll be over soon (9%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🖋️ Other (write in!) (1%)

Your two cents:

• ⌛ L.L: “Business is more nimble than geopolitics.”

• 🚚 T.S: “As tensions and worker wages rise in tandem, the risk-reward ratio of investing in China will continue to worsen. This will make it harder for multinationals to justify large capital investments. ”