Spanish top-flight soccer club Real Betis Balompié has launched a new uniform made from an unexpected material ― the invasive algae, Rugulopteryx okamurae, that, due to climate change, is posing an increasing threat to the ecosystem of the Mediterranean Sea and beyond.

The Seville-based La Liga team, currently mid-table, unveiled its uniform (including recycled ocean plastics) last week in the southern Spanish coastal town of Tarifa, whose coastline has been hit by the ecological invader, according to the club.

Divers symbolically retrieved the message-sending jerseys from the seabed ahead of their presentation. Betis players will wear the uniform for Sunday’s clash with Real Sociedad.

“The presence of invasive algae on our coasts is destroying our ecosystem,” the club wrote on Instagram. “To confront them, the first kit made with fibers created from these algae was born.”

The brown algae are native to the North Pacific Ocean and arrived off Spain’s coast circa 2015, most likely “through the ballast waters of merchant ships,” marine biologist Candela Sánchez Atienzar told the AFP news agency.

“When it arrived it started to spread out of control, there’s no invasion in the history of science described on this scale,” Sánchez recalled.

Climate change has seen algae proliferate off Spain’s coast in recent years, and there are no signs of slowing down as the Mediterranean Sea’s surface temperature soars to record highs each summer.

Spain is frequently referred to as “ground zero” of the climate crisis in Europe, with hotter summer heatwaves and devastating storms.

Removing the algae is an expensive process that now costs the southern Spanish coastal town of Estepona alone more than $1 million per year, reported El País newspaper.

Tarifa itself, meanwhile, is seeking to turn the algae into electricity and sustainable fertilizer using an experimental bioreactor.

MADRID (AP) — The former president of the Spanish soccer federation, Luis Rubiales, goes on trial Monday accused of sexual assault for kissing forward Jenni Hermoso after Spain’s victory at the Women’s World Cup final in 2023.

The kiss, which Hermoso said was without her consent, marred the celebrations of the women’s team’s achievement.

It sparked widespread outrage in society beyond football, and ignited one of the most embarrassing scandals in the history of Spanish soccer.

Rubiales also grabbed his crotch in a lewd victory gesture while standing near Spain’s Queen Letizia and Princess Sofia amid celebrations of Spain’s victory over England in Australia. He has denied any wrongdoing, but was forced to resign and was banned by FIFA. Rubiales had said he was the victim of a “witch hunt” by “false feminists.” He said the kiss was consensual.

The 47-year-old Rubiales is accused of sexual assault and of trying to coerce Hermoso to publicly support him. A judge ruled that Rubiales’ kiss was “unconsented and carried out unilaterally and in a surprising fashion.”

Rubiales could face a fine or a prison sentence of one to four years if found guilty, according to court officials. A new law eliminated the difference between “sexual harassment” and “sexual assault,” sanctioning any unconsented sexual act. Prosecutors, Hermoso and Spain’s players’ association want a prison sentence of two and a half years for Rubiales, plus a payment of 50,000 euros ($51,800) for damages, and for him to be banned from working as a sports official. Hermoso is also asking for a court order banning Rubiales from being near her.

The judge also ruled that along with Rubiales, former Spain women’s national team coach Jorge Vilda, former sports director of Spain’s men’s team Albert Luque, and the federation’s former head of marketing, Rubén Rivera, should be tried for allegedly pressuring Hermoso to defend Rubiales, something she refused to do. They all also deny wrongdoing. According to the judge, there was sufficient evidence that Rubiales unsuccessfully pressured Hermoso to appear in a video he produced and published while public outrage over his actions mounted. The judge said there was also reason to believe Vilda likewise pressured Hermoso’s brother. Luque and marketing head Rivera were also involved in the alleged attempt to coerce her to support her disgraced boss, according to the judge. Prosecutors, Hermoso and Spain’s players’ association want a prison sentence of one and a half years for the three defendants.

The trial begins on Monday and is expected to last at least 10 days. Hermoso is set to testify on the first day. Among the nearly 20 witnesses who are also expected to testify are Spain’s men’s national team coach Luis de la Fuente and some of Hermoso’s teammates in the women’s national team, including former world player of the year Alexia Putellas. Rubiales is obligated to attend only the first and the last day, according to the court. The four defendants are expected to speak toward the end of the trial next week. Rubiales’ daughters are also set to testify at some point.

Hermoso and her teammates refused to play as long as Rubiales was in charge and returned to the team only weeks later when the government mediated an agreement with the federation interim president to overhaul its protocols and give more support to its women’s side. That included the elimination of the term “women’s” from the official team name. FIFA banned Rubiales for three years until after the men’s 2026 World Cup. His ban will expire before the next women’s tournament in 2027. Spain’s sports authority also ruled him unfit to hold a post in sports management for three years.

Rubiales’ other trouble

During his time as president of Spanish soccer’s governing body, Rubiales overhauled the format of the Spanish Super Cup in 2020, creating a four-team mini-tournament and moved the competition to Saudi Arabia as part of a deal that was reportedly worth 40 million euros (then $42 million) per tournament to the federation. Prosecutors opened a probe of that deal in 2022 following leaked audio between Rubiales and then-Barcelona player Gerard Piqué regarding millions of dollars in commissions. Piqué’s sports entertainment company Kosmos was involved in the deal with the federation and Saudi Arabia. They denied wrongdoing.

MADRID (AP) — Spain is planning a raft of measures to address its brewing housing crisis, including an up to 100% tax on properties bought by people who are neither citizens nor residents of the European Union.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the plan this week to tackle housing affordability and high rents in the Southern European nation. He said that the overall goal was to provide “more housing, better regulation and greater aid.”

“The West faces a decisive challenge: To not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and the poor tenants,” Sánchez said as he announced the plan.

However, it remains unclear if the plan put forth by Sánchez’s minority coalition will pass in parliament. Here’s a look at what’s happening:

Spain’s housing affordability crisis

Like most rich countries, Spain is in the throes of a growing housing affordability problem. Skyrocketing rents are particularly acute in cities like Barcelona and Madrid, where incomes have failed to keep up, especially for young people. Housing prices are also steadily rising, especially in cities and coastal areas.

Rental prices have also been driven up by short-term contracts mainly offered for tourists. Spain sees more tourists than almost any country in the world, having received more than 88.5 million visitors in 2024. Tourism is one of the country’s key economic drivers.

The negative aspects of mass tourism have caused tension at times between visitors and residents concerned about rising costs, the proliferation of short-term rentals on platforms like Airbnb, and water supplies that can be stretched in some parts of the country, including the Canary and Balearic Islands.

Last year, protesters took to the streets on various occasions across the country to express their frustrations about the growth of tourism and high rents. Barcelona’s town hall has pledged to completely eliminate all short-term rentals to tourists in the coming years.

“What citizens expect from us here is action,” Spanish housing minister Isabel Rodríguez told reporters on Tuesday about the plan.

Curbing foreigners from buying houses in Spain

Spain plans to limit the number of homes foreigners purchase by raising taxes by up to 100% on properties bought by people who are not EU citizens and do not reside in an EU country — often buyers of investment or vacation properties.

Sánchez didn’t provide a timeline or details on how he plans to implement the tax.

“This would be massive,” said Sarah Conroy, an English real estate agent who has been working in realty in the upscale Marbella market in southern Spain for over three decades. She didn’t give figures on how many non-EU clients she had, but said they included post-Brexit British buyers as well as clients from Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

“They need to do something because the people living here can’t really rent anything because it is so expensive,” Conroy said. “Personally speaking, around 80% of the people I sell to are buying second homes.”

Last year, Spain announced that it was scrapping its so-called “golden visa” program that allows wealthy people from outside the EU to obtain residency permits by investing more than half a million euros (roughly 515,000 dollars) in real estate.

Joan Carlos Amaro, a real estate analyst and professor of economics at the Esade Business School in Barcelona, said that while Spain is suffering a housing crunch, he can’t see how the tax will lead to homeowners or real estate promoters guaranteeing that these normally high-end properties end up in the hands of middle-class Spaniards.

“Anything that puts up barriers and stops the market from functioning ends up hurting everyone,” Amaro said in Barcelona. “These foreigners that come, they spend money, the houses they live in have to be built and that creates jobs.”

Amaro added that he saw it more as a political move than one with a sound economic rationale.

Some of the other measures put forth

Spain plans to build more public housing and allocate around 2 million square meters (21.5 million square feet) of residential land to a newly created public housing agency.

Other proposed measures include higher taxes on holiday rentals, tax breaks and protections for landlords who provide affordable housing, and amending laws to speed up construction processes and expand the availability of land for private construction.

Why is housing politically important in Spain?

The rising cost of living has driven voter discontent across many wealthy countries in recent years, including the United States.

But as one of Europe’s leading Socialist politicians, the housing crunch is a crucial question for Sánchez to resolve as he tries to keep his left-wing minority coalition afloat after winning another four-year term in 2023.

Also, according to the Spanish Constitution, all Spaniards have the right to enjoy a “decent and adequate” home. In theory, at least, the government has a duty to allow citizens to exercise that right.

Wilson contributed from Barcelona.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The Barcelona subway grinds to a halt, the doors slide open and commuters pour out to go about their daily business.

Little do they know that as they do so, a burst of energy is sent up to street level to help charge an electric car.

Barcelona has put together a package of clean energy technologies to help public transportation go greener, while also doing its part to combat climate change and aid Europe’s difficult shift to the privately owned electric vehicle market.

Sixteen stations of Barcelona’s subway system are part of its new MetroCharge project, whereby the energy from the underground trains’ brakes is used to power the trains and the stations themselves, while the remainder is sent snaking through cables to the surface to power plug-in stations for privately owned vehicles.

Bernardo Espinoza, a 49-year-old engineer, commutes daily by subway. He also owns a hybrid car and had just found out that he had a new place to plug in.

“I am pleasantly surprised, because I have an electric car and am always looking for where to plug it in,” Espinoza said before catching the subway in a working-class area of southern Barcelona. “And if it is from energy from the metro’s brakes, then even better.”

Regenerative brakes have been in trains for decades and are also used in some cars. They consist of an electric motor which captures energy used in the braking action that would be lost as heat by conventional brakes. That energy can be immediately used to accelerate the vehicle or, in the case of the Barcelona subway system, sent along cables to supply electricity for the station or for electric car chargers.

Alvaro Luna, professor of electrical engineering at the Polytechnical University of Catalonia, said that the system is innovative in so far as it allows for recycled energy to be redirected to specific local uses — in this case powering electric cars parked nearby. That, he says, boosts efficiency.

“Since the recharging stations are installed nearby, the energy, instead of being put back into the general electric network, goes directly to the charging stations, and that allows the provider to potentially offer lower prices,” Luna said. “We can say that the innovation is one of urban planning, of being able to bring together energy uses within a city.”

Making better use of energy has become a key pillar of reducing rising global temperatures. Last year, countries at U.N. climate talks and the members of the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging-market nations agreed to double energy efficiency by 2030.

Jordi Picas, head of systems for TMB, Barcelona’s subway, said that the public company estimates that it can recover the 7.3 million euros ($7.6 million) spent on MetroCharge, which includes European Union funding, in four years thanks to reduced energy costs.

The system, which also includes solar panels, provides all the energy needs of 28 of the 163 subway stations, from the lights to the elevators and ventilation systems, and saves 6% of the total energy spent by the metro, according to Picas. An average of 2.3 million people take the Barcelona metro on any given workday.

This clever program comes while doubts are emerging about the speed and cost of the EU’s green transition as the 27-member bloc seeks to eliminate combustion engines and remain a world leader in standards for environmental protection.

Spain, like other Mediterranean countries, is feeling the burn of climate change, experts say, with the frequency of prolonged droughts and extreme weather events like the recent devastating floods in Valencia set to increase over the coming years.

In 2021, Spain’s government rolled out an ambitious electric car plan backed by the EU’s post-pandemic transition funds. The public incentives have succeeded in encouraging private investment like last week’s announcement by Chinese battery maker CATL and carmaker Stellantis to build a lithium battery factory in Zaragoza. The plan also included help for consumers.

But Spain hasn’t been immune to the stumbles in the industry across Europe as the EU moves toward tariffs on Chinese EVs to try to help continental carmakers catch up.

Spain, with its wide expanses for a Western European country, faces the extra challenge of deploying recharging stations. Spain has 37,000 charging points, below the goal of 100,000 the government had set for now in 2021, according to ANFAC, the Spanish Association of Automobile and Truck Manufacturers.

So while the Barcelona subway concept can help chart a course for urban planners, there is still a lot of work to do.

Ángel García said that he agreed with the spirt of the initiative while plugging his hybrid taxi into a charging point fed by the Barcelona subway.

But he also said that the government should do more to help shoppers buy electric cars because “people don’t really go for electric cars here.”

Hernán Muñoz contributed to this report.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Isak Andic, the founder of Spanish fashion brand Mango, has died after suffering an accident, the company said on Saturday.

“It is with deep regret that we announce the unexpected death of Isak Andic, our non-executive chairman and founder of Mango, in an accident that occurred this Saturday,” Mango CEO Toni Ruiz said in a statement, without providing details.

Spanish news agency EFE and other media outlets, including La Vanguardia newspaper, said Andic died following a fall while hiking near Barcelona.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez paid tribute to Andic on social media, lauding his “hard work and business vision that transformed a Spanish brand into a global fashion leader.”

Andic’s family moved from Turkey to Spain when he was young.

He opened Mango’s first store in Barcelona in 1984 and over the following decades helped Mango grow into one of Europe’s leading fast-fashion makers.

Mango has 2,700 stores in 120 markets around the world.

It set a company record of 3.1 billion euros ($3.2 billion) in sales in 2023. It is currently expanding in the U.S. and plans to have 65 stores there by the end of 2025.