Live News From Spain As It Happens

A 'FRIENDLY' between veteran FC Barcelona and Manchester United players will raise money for victims of terrorism in both cities this coming Saturday at Old Trafford.

Ruud van Nistelrooy, Patrick Kluivert, Edwin Van der Sar, Eric Abidal, Park Ji-Sung, and Edgar Davids are expected to be playing for Man U, according to their trainer Bryan Robson.

The former Red Devils captain said: “Manchester is no stranger to the devastating effects of terrorism and we can understand just how difficult it is for the people of Catalunya to get back on their feet after the recent attacks.”

Barça's former defender Albert Ferrer, who will captain his old team in the charity friendly, added: “The two cities [Manchester and Barcelona] have become united by terrorism this year, and I think it's important to show the world that they are very together.”

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SCIENTISTS in Catalunya have found out how to predict a heart attack up to three years in advance from a simple blood test – a method which, if it becomes widespread, could save hundreds of thousands of lives every year.

According to research team leaders Professor Lina Badimon and Dr Teresa Padró, from the Catalán Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, both acute miocardiac heart attacks and chronic ischaemic heart failure can be predicted.

One of the problems of modern-day medicine is that it is hard to tell when a patient is likely to have a heart attack due to 'current markers being relatively insensitive' to detection.

But during their study, the team found microscopic particles circulating in the blood, which come from both living cells, dead cells and those in the process of dying off.

All cells in the body release particles into the bloodstream in small quantities, but the amount increases when certain pathologies are present at the early stages, including arterial thrombosis, or blood clots, and hereditary high cholesterol.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TRANSPLANT operations in Spain could be 'revolutionised' thanks to a new system using Artificial Intelligence which predicts donor-patient compatibility.

According to Dr Pedro Antonio Gutiérrez, from the research team in Córdoba, the method has been tested with liver transplants and carries a 76% reliability level.

The current method, known as MELD, only measures the severity of a patient's liver disorder and no other factors, neither does it measure the donor's own physical makeup.

Dr Gutiérrez says this can lead to 'unfair situations' – those with less-serious conditions having to wait many more years for transplants, whilst good organs are wasted when priority candidates' bodies reject them.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

NATIONAL department store El Corte Inglés plans to reabsorb Hípercor hypermarkets, which started out life as part of the chain.

Spain's largest private-sector employer – currently with 91,690 members of staff plus those who work for brand-name concessions and who run into tens of thousands – El Corte Inglés says the acquisition is aimed at improving customer service and variety and keeping Hípercor stable financially.

Nobody will be made redundant – in fact, one of the reasons El Corte Inglés took back its old subsidiary company was to prevent possible job losses.

No other working conditions will change, except possibly for the better.

Hípercor will keep its historic brand name and corporate image, and its wide range of quality, cutting-edge produce will still be sold, although extra lines may be introduced as its former, and now future, holding company wants to promote and expand the grocery section.

Pooling resources and intra-company advertising in both stores will help increase efficiency, says group chairman Dimas Gimeno.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SECURITY workers at Barcelona airport will restart their strike from next Friday (September 8) and those in Madrid will follow suit a fortnight later.

In the case of Barcelona, staff working for the franchise, Eulen, which operates the hand-luggage scanners at the entrance to departures, called off their industrial action on the day of the city's devastating terrorist attack which has left 15 dead, plus a 16^th in Cambrils (Tarragona province) later that night.

But after a three-week break from their strike, they will resume in order to put pressure on the ministry of public works to heed their demands for a pay increase of €250 a month over 15 monthly pay cheques per year.

In Madrid, security is operated by the franchise Prosegur and falls under the Association of Airport Security Guards (AVA), set up in January in response to 'general dissatisfaction among employees'.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

MOBILE phone technology and social networks have been shown to save lives – and a case of a couple lost in the hills in Galicia has once again proven this to be true.

They had been out walking in the Fragas do Eume nature reserve outside the town of Monfero (A Coruña province, Galicia) with their seven-year-old daughter when they completely lost their way.

By around 22.00 they began to panic and called emergency services, but were unable to describe where they were as they were simply surrounded by greenery as far as the eye could see.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

THE WORLD'S oldest man is Spanish and lives in the village of Bienvenida (Badajoz province) – which, curiously, translates as 'welcome' – having taken the top spot after the recent death of Yisrael Kristal, from Israel.

Francisco Núñez Olivera has always lived in the same town, which currently has 2,200 inhabitants, since he was born there in late December 1905.

He hopes – and fully expects – to live until at least the end of 2017, when he will be 113 years old.

Until he was 107, Francisco still went for walks around the village on his own, although when he became tired he would simply stop on street corners to chat to the other locals.

Now in a wheelchair, but still healthy, Francisco lives with his daughter María Antonia, aged 81.

He mostly puts his long life down to genetic factors – Francisco's brother Luis, who lives in Asturias, is 95 and his sister Jacoba, who also lives in Bienvenida, is 93 – but he has also enjoyed a healthy diet and the loss of most of his teeth with age has not changed this.

Francisco mostly eats vegetables and pulses he grows himself on his allotment – which he has tended to and lived off since earliest adulthood – and enjoys a 'decent glass of wine' regularly.

María Antonia, visibly proud of her dad, says his extremely elegant demeanour earned him the nickname of 'Marchena', after the famous flamenco singer of the same name from Sevilla.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A WEEK today (Wednesday) will see the population of a small Valencia province market town double as visitors from every continent hurl ripe tomatoes at each other – and security has been upped drastically in light of the Barcelona terror attacks.

Two lorryloads of salad fruit – 160 tonnes in total – will end up coating the faces and clothing of thousands of Japanese and Australian tourists, who are some of the most regular at the unusual festival in Buñol.

A total of 22,000 people will be on the street next Wednesday wearing goggles and their worst clothes – in a town where the resident population is around 10,000.

This year, security was already going to be increased due to the sheer size of the festival, known as the Tomatina, and in line with Spain's terror alert level 4 which was introduced two years ago as a tool to enable the public to stay safe.

But plans have been revised further since the massacres in Barcelona and Cambrils (Tarragona province), and a total of 740 police, firefighters, Civil Protection volunteers and paramedics will be on duty.

And this is not the final figure – more may be brought in at the last minute.

In recent years, Buñol council has been charging visitors €10 for tickets to the Tomatina, given how much it has grown, in order to limit numbers and help with funding.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TWO Spanish footballers have quit the Northern Ireland-based Sofía Farmer FC after the team put them up in 'third-world' accommodation.

Álex Gil and Toni Jiménez, from Córdoba, were signed up by team manager Alberto del Barro – from Portugal – and were provided with housing in the UK region.

The players, aged 25, said they were charged 500 pounds (currently around €550) a month in rent.

They later found out the club was renting the house for just 330 pounds (€363) and pocketing the difference – something they discovered when they stumbled upon a copy of the contract whilst cleaning.

As if that was not enough to choke them off living and working in Britain, the players say the house had no electricity, the beds were broken and the mattresses filthy.

They had been told they would be living together in a self-contained flat, but discovered they were actually sharing with another couple who had no connection with the team.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A SOLICITOR from Valencia who has spent eight years in jail for the alleged 'kidnap' of her daughter has finally made it home to Spain and is looking forward to an emotional reunion with the little girl, whom she has not seen since 2006.

María José Carrascosa spoke to the press as she landed in Manises airport, her father José carrying her cases, explaining that although she was released from prison in New Jersey after eight years, she was still not able to leave the country due to legal processes that were still ongoing.

And the US court had banned her daughter from leaving Spain until she was 18, meaning they were only able to talk on the phone or via Skype.

María José's American ex-husband had filed criminal proceedings against her after she took her daughter home to Valencia, denouncing her for kidnap, which led to her being sentenced to 14 years in prison.

A Spanish court had awarded her custody of the child, withdrawing the youngster's passport so her father could not take her out of the country, but a court in the USA overturned the verdict. 

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

ONLINE megastore Amazon is about to open a new logistics centre in the Greater Madrid region which will create 500 permanent jobs.

The hub will be up and running in Getafe by the autumn at the latest, and the entire complex will be around the size of seven football pitches, the company reveals.

With a delivery centre in Getafe, Amazon Spain will be able to supply the whole of Europe, which will involve increasing staff numbers in the country by 50%, from the existing 1,000 to 1,500.

It will mainly be attending to small and medium-sized businesses which trade via the global internet store Amazon Marketplace – a set-up which has enabled even single-branch family-run outfits and sole traders to go international and export their wares without the prohibitive expenses this would normally involve.

Amazon, which started out life as a web-based book, CD and video shop and now sells literally everything including food, clothing, electronics and household products, has been keen to invest in Spain and its network of support centres and delivery hubs in the country is growing rapidly.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A FLIGHT from Málaga to Birmingham was tracked so closely by a French fighter jet that the passengers were able to read the number along the side of the craft.

Low-cost carrier Jet2 has called for explanations from France's Air Force as to why one of its fleet was apparently shadowing their plane for as long as 15 minutes as it crossed French air space.

The fighter jet eventually disappeared, and worried travellers who asked the crew on board flight LS1204 what was going on were assured there was 'nothing to panic about'.

THE terrorist who drove a hired van into crowds on Las Ramblas in Barcelona killing 13 people has been shot dead in the town of Altos de Subirat after threatening police with activating a suicide belt.

Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, was surrounded by the Mossos d'Esquadra – Catalunya's armed police – at around 16.30 today (Monday) and displayed a bomb waistcoat whilst shouting Allah-u Akbar, meaning 'God is great'.

Officers opened fire and he was killed instantly.

Photographs of Abouyaaqoub distributed via the media and calling for the public to give any information they could leading to his whereabouts bore fruit when a woman in the village of Subirats raised the alarm, believing she had seen him in the area.

Realising the police were on his trail, Abouyaaqoub fled into nearby vineyards, but was swiftly surrounded.

He has been identified as the driver who killed 13 people and injured 132 on the Ramblas before dumping the van and vanishing into the Boquería Market.

Abouyaaqoub has since been named as the man who ploughed into police at a checkpoint in Sant Just Desvern just outside Barcelona later that same night, injuring a female officer.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A GENERAL strike across 25 of Spain's airports will run for 25 days from September 15 as workers protest ofer job conditions and pay – a move that is independent of the current industrial action at Barcelona's El Prat security gates.

The strikes will be joined by workers across the board – car park staff, firefighters, luggage-belt operators, electricians, retail and catering, security, IT and control tower maintenance.

Anyone who works for the airport infrastructure governing body AENA or the airport management public-sector run Enaire will be called to strike.

Three major unions – USO, the CCOO (Labourers' Commissions) and UGT (General Workers' Union) – have filed notice of industrial action with the Commission for Interpretation, Surveillance, Conciliation and Arbitration (CIVCA), a body set up to mediate between employees and airport authorities and which comprises five AENA representatives and five union spokespersons.

The UGT says it is 'confident' strike action will be avoided by successful negotiations ahead of the dates.

Staff will down tools for 24 hours on September 15, 17, 22, 24 and 29, then on October 1, 6, 11, 15, 27, 30 and 31.

Strikes will continue on November 3 and 5 and on December 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 and from December 26 to 30 inclusive, affecting Christmas travel.

The CCOO, USO and UGT say AENA's 'extraordinarily good' financial results have not been passed onto staff who, with inflation and higher taxes over the past few years, have lost up to 8% of their spending power as their salaries have not moved.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A DOLPHIN calf has died on a beach in Mojácar (Almería province) after the stress caused by hundreds of bathers handling and crowding round her led to her suffering a heart attack.

According to the marine fauna rescue charity Equinac, she was surrounded by fascinated sunseekers who picked her up, played with her, passed her around and posed for selfies with her.

The beach lifeguard was 'losing it', Equinac said, trying to get everyone to leave the calf alone.

Eventually a young man managed to push the crowds out of the way – but by the time he reached her, it was too late.

“It's possible we may not have managed to save her anyway, but we would at least have tried,” laments the charity.

The dolphin was a lactating calf who had been separated from her mother and was already very frightened.

“There are so many people who are incapable of feeling empathy for a living creature, alone, dying of hunger, without its mother and terrified,” Equinac complained.

“This obsession with touching and taking pictures of animals that are really sensitive to stress, even if the creature suffers, is just selfish.”

Dolphins, like whales, are not fish, but mammals, and they can breathe outside the water, Equinac says.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

FAMILY members of a young man killed at a bull-running in a Castellón village are suing the council for €400,000.

The 36-year-old man entered the street outside the safety barriers at the festival in honour of the patron saint, Sant Xotxim, in Vilavella in the summer of 2016.

He tripped over and was gored so badly that his injuries caused nearly instant death.

Other members of the public in the street at the time were also caught unawares, some suffering minor wounds but most escaping unharmed.

The man's parents and other relatives say security measures at the event were deficient and directly caused the accident.

And the town council is legally responsible for any loss, damage, injury or death at its public events, even though most fiesta acts such as bull-runs, discos and concerts are organised and funded by outside companies, and parades are financed and arranged by subscribing fiesta club members, which anyone – even residents from other towns – are welcome to join.

Vilavella council, however, says safety barriers were in place and fully checked, and that all security requirements stipulated in its fiesta bye-laws were adhered to.

These include not allowing access to the bulls' area of the street to under-18s or anyone 'not in full control of their faculties', such as the disabled or anyone who has consumed alcohol.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A MIGRANT raft sailed into Cádiz province shores yesterday (Wednesday) when the beach was full of bathers soaking up the rays.

Sunseekers on the Los Alemanes beach in Zahara de los Atunes looked on in amazement as an overcrowded rowing boat sailed in, with crowds gathering and rushing forward to get a better look.

At least a dozen, possibly 20 or so sub-Saharan Africans were on board and, no sooner had their boat hit the sand, they bailed out and made a run for it

EMERGENCY flights have been thrown on to get tourists home to Spain from the Portuguese island of Madeira after storms led to planes being cancelled and holidaymakers stranded.

Regional carrier Air Nostrum – the Iberia arm which operates internal flights – said three extra trips in either direction would be run between Madrid and Funchal, 'weather permitting'.

Passengers who originally flew from other airports in Spain will be taken on to these via connecting flights.

It is believed some of the tourists are already home.

They were stuck at Funchal airport in the first half of this week after hurricanes battering Madeira made flying unsafe.

With over 60 flights cancelled, some 15,000 travellers needed emergency hotel accommodation, which has been proving very difficult since Madeira is full to capacity with its usual hordes of summer tourists.

CONSUMER authorities in Catalunya recommend travellers affected by the Barcelona airport strikes take photographs of the queues at security to help them with their compensation claims and give regional watchdogs more fuel when fighting passengers' corner.

Inspectors have been on duty every two to three days at El Prat airport to monitor waiting times, said Montserrat Ribera of the Catalunya Consumer Agency in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio.

“But photographs of the queues taken by passengers will help us evidence what is going on,” she stressed.

As yet, the Agency does not have official numbers of travellers affected, but based upon airlines' own calculations, it is thought that at least 1,000 have missed their flights due to waits of between 90 minutes and four hours at security.

Claims for compensation can be made to the nationa airport governing body, AENA, and also to the ministry of public works as the State is liable, says Sra Ribera.

“We're talking about security – a basic airport service – and security is what the ministry is required to be able to guarantee; but they're not doing that,” she argues.

Eulen, the company the security staff works for, says negotiations have reached stalemate as the pay rise demanded by striking employees is 'prohibitive' and 'unacceptable'.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

ROYALTIES for audio-visual artists will be paid through an additional tax on technology capable of recording records, films and books now that a law drafted during the previous socialist government's reign has come into force.

Mobile telephones with recording functions will be taxed with an extra €1.10 on the purchase price, whilst USB pen-drives and external hard drives by 24 cents.

Tablets will be taxed at €3.15 at the point of sale; video, DVD, cassette and CD recorders by €5.45 and all other external recording devices by €6.45.

Only one tax will apply, meaning a tablet, laptop or desktop computer will not be levied twice if they have more than one recording function.

Blank CDs, cassettes, DVDs and video tapes will attract a tax of between eight and 28 cents, whilst printers will be levied at €4.50 to €5.25 and CD recording devices by between 33 cents and €1.86.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

FEWER than 35% of Spanish residents 'switch off' from work when they are on holiday, according to separate studies carried out by recruitment agencies Adecco and Randstad.

The former cites 34.8% of workers continuing on the job in some form or another whilst on annual leave, whilst the latter gives a figure of 32.5% - meaning effectively, two-thirds of the country is still somehow 'working' whilst on holiday.

The '24/7 culture' affects both sexes and all ages, but the typical profile of an employee who does not use their holiday as complete down-time is a male aged under 25, and he is generally unhappy with how long he has for his holidays.

Women, in 72.5% of cases, claimed they did in fact 'leave the office behind' when they were away from it, according to Adecco.

Randstad says nearly half of those who stay connected to their job whilst away – 48.1% - do so because they 'find it difficult to shut their minds off' to work-related issues, whilst 27.5% say they cannot switch off because their companies still contact them while they are out of the office.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

LA LIGA has blocked an attempt to force Neymar to pay his own record €222 million transfer fee to break off his contract with FC Barcelona and move to Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), calling it 'financial doping'.

The 25-year-old Brazilian, whose purchase price from FC Santos in his home country was already among the highest in history and has since led to Barça falling foul of the Spanish tax authorities, travelled to Madrid yesterday to hand over his contract release fee.

But the Spanish premier league, or La Liga, rejected the cash, saying the player's payment breached UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules.

These rules came into effect six years ago, and forbid any club in Europe from spending €30m or more in excess of what they earn.

Paris Saint-Germain is funded by the State of Qatar, and La Liga chair Javier Tebas has criticised the club for 'financial doping', a form of 'unfair' competition used by State-supported teams that, according to Tebas 'could destabilise professional football in Europe'.

Neymar is still free to sign up with PSG, since in cases such as these the FIFA grants a provisional transfer.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A TWITTER user who championed the death of a policeman run over during a smuggling operation and wishing instant demise upon all other officers has been arrested and charged under Spain's hate speech laws.

Identified only by her initials of I.M.L.P., the 22-year-old's barely-literate rant targeted not only the National Police officer killed during a patrol car chase in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz province) involving smugglers who had crossed the Gibraltar border, but all other security forces in the country.

She wrote on Twitter that the officers involved in the chase were 'an embarrassment' and 'sons of b*****s', that it was not the smuggler's fault that their colleague had been killed, but that she 'was happy about' his death.

Next she tweeted that she 'hoped all police officers would die' because 'for all the use they are' she 'couldn't care less what people thought', and stated in very plain terms that she thought they were 'boot-lickers' – at least, this is the cleaned-up version.

Officers from the Specialist Crime and Violence Unit (UDEV) managed to trace the author of the insulting tweets, finding she was resident in the same town as the fatal police accident.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN is considering a veto on allowing anyone connected with Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from entering the country after a constituent assembly giving him increased power went through on Sunday.

The European Union has already declared it does not formally recognise the constituent assembly as legally valid.

Spanish president Mariano Rajoy says: “I have just spoken with Alfonso Dastis [his foreign affairs minister] because, logically, this is a subject which worries us all, as democrats, but we are particularly concerned about the people of Spain due to our close cultural and historic ties with Venezuela and the high number of Spanish nationals living there.

“I already sent out instructions on Sunday for a press release to be issued stating that Spain would not recognise in any way, shape or form this constituent assembly, which is illegal, anti-democratic and a botched job.”

Rajoy says he has also spoken with the EU's head of diplomatic affairs, Federica Mogherini, and with the foreign affairs minister in Perú who is calling a meeting with his counterparts in every other Latin American country 'to see what steps will be taken against the government of Venezuela'.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

OVER 36 million holidaymakers travelled to Spain in the first six months of this year – the equivalent of 77% of the country's resident population and a rise of one in 10 on the same period in 2016, which was then considered a record year.

The Frontur survey, carried out by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), shows tourist numbers were up by 11.6% over the period of January to June inclusive based upon the same six months last year, and Brits continue to be the number one nationality opting for Spain for their holidays.

Of the exact total recorded of 36,366,010 foreign visitors, those from the UK made up 8.6 million, or 23%, having risen in number by 9.1% on last year's figures.

Germans were the second-largest national group, with 5.5 million, up by 9.6% on 2016, and the French were the third, with 4.7 million, an increase of 4.9%.

Catalunya was the top destination, with as many holidaymakers altogether as there were Brits travelling to Spain as a whole, an increase of 10.3% on the first six months of last year.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

REAL Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo refused to speak to reporters after testifying in court over his allegedly having 'defrauded' the tax authorities out of €14.7 million, despite a huge stage with spotlights, loudspeakers, TV cameras and microphones having been set up for him to address the media.

Although the Portuguese Ballon d'Or winner entered the court via the back door to avoid the press, it had been agreed that he would give a statement after the hearing.

Given the huge media interest worldwide, hundreds of thousands of euros had been invested by private-sector TV firms in setting up a stage worthy of a prestigious rock star giving a concert, based upon Ronaldo's PR people having confirmed he would give a press conference.

At least 30 foreign media channels among the 200-plus camped out by the court in Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid since the early hours waiting for the trial to start at 11.00.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com