The normally scenic streets of Seville have taken a turn for the unsightly thanks to an ongoing garbage collectors' strike that is entering its second week.

The narrow alleys of the ancient city -- one of Spain's most popular tourist destinations -- are currently choked with more than 4,500 tons of trash, according to UPI. Garbage workers in the city are striking in response to proposed austerity measures that would reduce their wages by 5 percent while increasing their working hours. What does the slow pileup of 4,500 tons of trash look like? It's not pretty:

EPA/RAUL CARO

Jorge/Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

Jorge/Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

Jorge/Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

Gross? Certainly. But still not as gross as Naples.

This just in from Spain, where apparently equal rights trump biology: The European Union Court of Justice has ruled that Spanish working fathers have the same rights to breastfeeding leave as do working mothers.

From CNN:

Thursday's ruling grants Spanish dads the same rights as the mother of their child to leave work up to twice a day for a total of an hour or to shorten their workday by 30 minutes for the first nine months of the baby's life.

The court called the law "an unjustified discrimination on grounds of sex" that fathers weren't granted breastfeeding leave in the same instances as women were.

All jokes aside, cheers to Spain for recognizing that mothers and fathers should take an equal part in childrearing. The court ruled that the prior law, which only allowed fathers to apply for breastfeeding leave if the mother of their children was fully employed, was "liable to perpetuate a traditional distribution of the roles of men and women by keeping men in a role subsidiary to that of women in relation to the exercise of their parental duties."

The United States State Department got a crash course in the perils of social networking over the weekend.

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero and his family posed for a picture with Barack and Michelle Obama at the U.N. What the Zapateros didn't know was that the picture would be posted online to the State Department's Flickr page. This wouldn't normally be a problem, except that the people of Spain have never seen any pictures of the prime minister's daughters before.

Spanish Goths/Punks approve of the picture because, well, let's say the girls appear to shop at Hot Topic. (Asunto Caliente?)

Spanish media was conflicted over the photo, many of them published it on the front page; however the state-owned news agency, EFE, did not run the photo. EFE said, "They should not have their personal rights prejudiced by the prime minister's decision to take them to New York."

The prime minister's office was trying to get all of the photos down, claiming he tries to keep his children out of the public eye. A noble cause, it seems there should be some middle ground between the Spanish case and this.

Photo via Gawker.

Although Britain's expenses scandal hurt politicians on both sides of the aisle, the Labour Party did bear the brunt of the blow, with several cabinet ministers resigning in the aftermath. The opposite may happen in Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel's health minister is under fire after her official car was stolen, but, fortunately for Merkel, the health minister is from the opposition.

The German health minister, Ulla Schmidt, has been criticised after her official car was stolen in Spain, where she was using it during her vacation.

The 90,000 euro (£78,000) Mercedes S-class was stolen in Alicante.

Mrs. Schmidt flew there at her own expense. Her chauffeur drove 2,400km (1,500 miles) to meet her so she could carry out some official business.

But opposition politicians want to know why she needed her car in Spain, when embassy vehicles are available.

Schmidt has filled the role of Health Minister since 2005, when Merkel's Christian Democrats formed a grand coalition with the opposition Social Democrats. Schmidt's scandal comes at a particularly poor time for her party, as Merkel's party has increased its lead in the polls to 12 points only two months before a new round of elections. 

Also, German ministers get a Mercedes S-class for official business? Snazzy.

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It's the biggest international sports story of the summer: the £80 million ($131 million) transfer of Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo from English club Manchester United to Spanish club Real Madrid. The amount is even more amazing given that Real broke a transfer record they set just last week: £56 million for AC Milan's Brazillian star Kaká.

And yet, as the financial crisis deepens, football clubs throughout the world are struggling with debt. Top leagues in Spain, England, and Italy all have teams collectively owing billions. Famous clubs like Liverpool and Valencia have had to delay stadium expansion, restrict new player acquistions, and (in the worst cases, like Valencia) even sell most of their stars.

But even though Real Madrid probably has the most debt of any club in Spain (almost €500 million (corrected), even before this summer's spree), they have been able to spend with abandon while the economic crisis cripples their rivals. Some of these reasons are legitimate: Real has the biggest fan base in Spain and one of the two or three biggest in the world, along with an excellent television contract (in Spain, contracts are negotiated on a team-by-team basis, not collectively as in most other leagues in Europe and in US sports). As a result, they consistently have among the highest revenues in the world. But, unlike almost every other club, Real has a trump card:

Finally, there's Real's status as, effectively, a non-profit social trust. This means they do not need to generate £30 million a year just to service their debt (like United).

Whatever debt they hold (and detail here is murky) is with local banks, many of whom are under political and social pressure not to tighten the screws. Real are too big and too important to fail or to come under the kind of debt pressures that affect traditional clubs. The club's social, political and economic significance dwarfs that of any other club in the world, with the possible exception of Barcelona. In that sense, they play by a different set of rules.

In other words, unlike almost any other operation in the world (with the possible exceptions of their rival Barcelona and the United States government), Real can keep on spending almost forever, knowing that their debts will never be called in. It really does give a whole new meaning to "too big to fail."

Alex Livesey/Getty Image