Spain formalized, Black Sea and rising diesel prices: five afternoon updates

The day closes with Spain moving from political announcement to legal formalization. This morning we reported Pedro Sánchez’s decision to dissolve the Cortes and call elections for November 29, following the rejection of housing decrees and weeks of street protests. In the afternoon the Boletín Oficial del Estado published the Real Decreto that makes the dissolution operative, with a precise calendar: campaign from November 13 to 27, vote on the 29th, installation of the new Chambers on December 23. The morning’s assessment holds: this is not a political hypothesis but an electoral process already under way in its formal acts.

The rest of the afternoon updates four fronts. On the international front, Chancellor Merz’s surprise visit to Kyiv — with an aid package of over 1.3 billion euros — runs alongside, with no connection stated by sources, a separate episode of tension in the Black Sea: two merchant ships hit by drones off the Bulgarian coast. In France, the mobilization of students and teachers is now measured against two figures that should be read separately: the overall estimate of nearly two thousand schools involved, and the more limited ministerial figure of 891 high schools with suspended classes.

On the economic front, the Btp-Bund spread fell below 105 points and the Ftse Mib closed higher, but since last night the excise duty on diesel has increased: the decree that was supposed to activate the compensation mechanism has not been published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale. In the technology sector, the resignation of OpenAI’s head of security comes against a backdrop of institutional investigations under way in California and at the federal level. On the health front, we note a suspected case of pneumonic plague in Siberia: the report currently comes from a single journalistic source, without independent confirmation, and we report it with this stated limitation. Rounding out the picture is the full program of the Rome Film Fest, with Javier Bardem and Monica Vitti as the edition’s protagonists.

We have no updates on Cronache, Cultura, Italia beyond the Brevi, and Sport: the articles published this morning at 6:30 remain in place. Tomorrow’s edition returns at 6:30.