Live News From Spain As It Happens

ELECTRICITY in Spain became the cheapest in the European Union on Thursday and has remained so ever since – the second time this has happened in a fortnight.

Retail prices per megawatt per hour (MWh) dropped to €22.91 a week ago, then doubled on Wednesday, only to fall to €27.73 again the following day – a reduction of 37%.

This meant the price of energy in Spain fell far below those of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which typically register the lowest in the EU and the EEA at around €41 per MWh, and even below Germany, which beat the Scandinavian countries at €38.

Meanwhile, France recorded retail power prices of €44.90 and Belgium €48, and in Italy and the UK it more than doubled Spain at €52 and €58 respectively.

This plummeting in costs is partly due to a greater production in wind energy providing electricity to the national grid – with storms having re-entered Galicia from the Atlantic this week and now sweeping Spain as a whole, wind farms have seen energy generated soar by 62.7% this month compared with March last year, to 6,937 gigawatts per hour (GWh), or 32.9% of the total, way ahead of nuclear sources, which made up just 19.2% of the total power created.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN'S first express charging point for electronically-powered and hybrid cars will beset up shortly halfway down the A-3 Valencia-Madrid motorway.

One of the disadvantages of electric cars is that they can take several hours to completely refill, and charging points remain limited on Spain's roads.

But the green light has been given for one to be set up on motorway running from the capital to the east coast and the country's third-largest city which will have enough posts for 10 cars to charge all at once, and will be extra-fast to allow drivers to get back on their route quickly.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

NEXT year's Barcelona World Race has been cancelled due to 'political instability' in Catalunya and the State budget's not having been approved due to disagreements among parties in national Parliament.

According to the Barcelona Oceanic Navigation Foundation (FNOB), the prestigious round-the-globe yachting regatta was due to set off in January 2019, but in addition to financial uncertainty due to the budget delay, the race organisers have had problems finding sponsors due to the political crisis in the north-eastern region.

The FNOB said it had applied 2015 for the Barcelona World Race to be classed as 'an event of exceptional public interest' to ensure funding, but this status was not awarded until April last year.

This has set back the entire race organisation calendar, and the 'climate of institutional non-definition' in the region has led to 'lack of confidence' among potential sponsors who say they need to be able to guarantee they will have 'complete political support necessary for a sporting event of this size'.

Seven teams had already been confirmed and had set aside the budget needed for the race, whilst another 11 were in the final process of seeking funding.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN will coordinate the landing of Chinese space station Tiangong 1 on behalf of the European Union on Easter Sunday, according to the Centre for the Development of Technological Industry (CDTI).

The Tiangong 1 has been floating dormant in orbit, unused, since 2016 and Spain's space monitoring centre at the military base in Torrejón de Ardoz (Greater Madrid region) will work with the CDTI on bringing it down.

Although the planned date for the space station to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere is this Sunday, April 1, a margin for error of around 20 hours has been allowed to ensure the operation is as accurate as possible.

According to head of Space and Technology Returns for the CDTI, Jorge Lomba, the Tiangong 1 has been gradually losing height and, until it is only around 120 kilometres up, it is not possible to predict the time and place of its landing to any precise degree.

Torrejón de Ardoz will use data gathered by five radars in Germany, Spain, France and Italy and three laser stations in Spain, Italy and the UK, as well as the two giant telescopes based in Spain and Italy.

China's space programme said a few days ago that the Tiangong 1 would burn up completely once it made contact with the Earth's atmosphere, meaning none of its remains will hit the ground, although the EU calculates that around 60% of it will disintegrate before it enters terrestrial sky, due to the friction caused by the more dense layers of the atmosphere.

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SPRINGLIKE climates across Spain will vanish over Easter weekend with heavy rain and plummeting temperatures setting in from tomorrow (Thursday), creating even greater headaches for drivers and passengers of nine million cars expected to be on the country's roads during the holidays.

For the last week, stable weather conditions and sunshine caued by high pressure led much of Spain to believe summer was just around the corner, but today (Wednesday), a cold front hit Galicia in the north-west and is expected to spread across the mainland, reaching the Mediterranean coast by around Good Friday.

The grim weather is likely to carry on until Easter Monday at least.

As a result, the tourism industry is not optimistic about the four-day bank holiday and predicts a significant fall in bookings compared with previous years.

Barcelona is feeling the pinch for two reasons – the unseasonal weather forecast, and the ongoing Catalunya political crisis, even though no demonstrations are planned over Easter as yet.

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CATALUNYA'S former education minister Clara Ponsatí is expected to hand herself in to the police in Edinburgh today (Wednesday) in light of the European arrest warrant issued in her name.

She and three other ministers joined deposed president Carles Puigdemont in fleeing for Belgium after the disputed independence referendum, but Dr Ponsatí has since moved to Scotland.

Before being minister, she was head of studies in the faculty of psychology at St Andrew's University, and went back to her old job a few weeks back.

Dr Ponsatí says she will appeal against the order, and her solicitor, Aamer Anwar, says the professor is determined to fight to avoid being extradited to Spain.

She is charged with 'violent rebellion' and 'misuse of public funds', given her role in helping to organise the referendum.

Dr Anwar said Dr Ponsatí, 61, was due to attend St Leonard's police station at 09.30 local time today (10.30 mainland Spain time) and would give a press conference just beforehand.

She was then due to appear before a judge in a preliminary hearing at 13.00 UK time (14.00 in mainland Spain) lasting between half an hour and an hour. 

Dr Anwar would be requesting she be released with charges pending trial and that a date would be set for the case to decide whether or not she would be extradited.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A SUNKEN galleon full of gold coins and precious stones which both Spain and Colombia claim ownership of would cost €57.2 million to bring to the surface, according to a recent estimate.

The San José was famously shot down by British pirates on June 8, 1708 off the coast of Cartagena de Indias on Colombia's Caribbean coast.

It was heading for this city, now a popular tourism destination, from Spain, having stopped at the fair in Portobelo (Panamá) to collect a consignment of 11 million gold and silver coins of eight escudos each.

Also on board are several million emeralds, pearls and other precious stones, according to historical archives.

Its exact location was not known until December 4, 2015.

The sunken San José and its lucrative cargo are a hugely famous chapter in history in both Spain and Colombia – in fact, the late Colombian Nobel Literature Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez dedicates several pages of his iconic novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, to the hero attempting to locate the ship and its treasures in order to win the heroine's heart.

Spain claims it has UNESCO's support in its claim of ownership over the San José, since it was originally a 'State-owned' vessel, although Colombia insists it is the rightful proprietor as the treasures were being taken there when the British shot it down.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

ANOTHER night of protests has swept across Catalunya in response to former president Carles Puigdemont's arrest in Germany – this time with three motorways being blocked.

Throughout the day and right up until late evening, the AP-7 motorway close to the French border was barricaded by demonstrators, as was the A-2 motorway and the N-340 inter-provincial highway in Alcanar (Tarragona province).

Police did not succeed in reopening them until past 19.00 last night.

Bearing riot shields and truncheons, officers forced over 200 demonstrators off the A-2 through Soses and in Alcarràs (Lleida province), where they had been since the morning, pushing them onto the hard shoulder.

Several hundred more barricaded the N-340 in both directions in L'Ampolla and Alcanar for most of the evening, forcing police to set up a traffic diversion via the N-235.

After the A-2 and N-340 were reopened, some time around 19.00, protesters blockaded the AP-7 motorway in L'Ampolla with a slow march on foot in the Barcelona direction, causing a tailback of over two kilometres.

The motorway was not clear again for at least another two hours, or some time after 21.00.

Protesters had already blocked the AP-7 in Figueres (Girona) in the morning and police took until 14.15 to move them on, although they moved straight onto the N-11 in Ller, which was shut for several hours.

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SPAIN is one of 17 European Union member States to have deported Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire (UK) on March 4, both of whom are in hospital and not expected to recover.

Council of Europe president Donald Tusk says the EU supported British prime minister Theresa May in her decision to remove 23 Russian diplomats from their posts, and in total 56 have been ordered to clear their desks.

This response is a 'direct consequence' of the Council of Europe's discussions about the Salisbury attack last week, and is 'without prejudice of additional measures', including further sackings, 'in the next few days or weeks', Tusk said on Twitter today (Monday).

The EU leaders' Summit on Thursday, after Mrs May sent the Russian foreign office workers home, concluded that it was 'highly probable' that Russia was behind the poisonings and that there was 'no other plausible explanation' for them.

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench near a shopping centre in the Wiltshire city over three weeks ago just after having eaten at the restaurant Zizzi and been to the bar The Mill, and traces of a nerve agent known as 'Novichok', which is manufactured in Russia, was found in the former spy's and the young woman's systems.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

'OVER-CONFIDENCE' is one of the main car crash risk factors in the over-65s, according to research by the Spanish Drivers' Observatory (DUCIT).

Nine in 10 motorists of retirement age, when questioned, called themselves 'very good drivers' and said they were 'capable of dealing with dangerous situations' when at the wheel.

According to DUCIT's data, whilst drivers over 65 are far less likely to be fined for speeding or drink- and drug-driving, they tend to overestimate their road skills, believing they are better than they actually are because of their extensive experience and high mileage.

Middle-aged motorists do not realise or accept that their reaction times are slower than when they were much younger adults, their concentration ability reduced, and their faculties are less responsive, with hearing and eyesight being less sharp, and that they are more likely to get tired quicker or be afflicted with muscular and joint pains.

THE first-ever direct flight from Barcelona to China was unveiled today (Sunday) at El Prat airport and will replace the existing route which stops for refuelling in Vienna, Austria.

Air China will increase its Barcelona-Shanghai routes from three a week to four as well as creating the non-stop Barcelona-Peking flight, which will also run four times a week in either direction.

Once in Shanghai or Peking, connecting flights via Air China can be taken to national and international destinations in Japan – mainly Tokyo - South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Vietnam and Australia.

Until now, the Barcelona-Peking route has taken 12 hours and 15 minutes with a connection in Vienna, but is now reduced to 10 hours and 50 minutes with the direct flight.

NOBEL Literature Prize winner Bob Dylan will be in Spain for his first concert in the country in many years, starting tomorrow (Saturday) in Salamanca.

A small affair to promote his new album, Trouble No More, the American pop-rocker's Spain tour will start with the Sánchez Paraíso community hall in the Castilla y León city, which has seating for 4,500,

Dylan, who has just finished performing in Lisbon, has already checked into an undisclosed hotel near the Plaza Mayor, and tourists and residents are on constant alert to see if they can spot him in public.

He will be preparing the concert tonight from 22.00, where photographers will be allowed in, since the actual concert does not permit any pictures – even official ones.

Next, Dylan will head for Madrid, where he will perform for three nights from Tuesday to Thursday (March 26 to 28 inclusive) at the National Auditorium, then to Barcelona where he will hit the stage at the Liceu Grand Theatre on Good Friday and Easter Saturday, March 30 and 31.

This will be the artist's first trip to Spain since he unexpectedly received the Nobel Literature Prize in 2016 for his 'new poetic expression' within the 'great tradition of the American song genre' – an award he took weeks to formally accept as he was so stunned at the news.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A VALENCIA councillor wants Local Police to enforce a 'silent time' during the massive March Fallas festival where fireworks cannot be thrown.

Anaïs Menguzzato reveals that calls complaining about noise from bangers being thrown constantly have gone up this year to 492 from last year's 317.

Although Local Police are authorised to 'monitor and denounce' what is ambiguously termed 'inappropriate use' of bangers and other fireworks, this has not been clearly defined.

At the very least, Sra Menguzzato wants fireworks banned between the time the falla marquées, or casales, finish their parties for the night through to the despertá, or 'awakening' of the fiestas in the morning.

This, however, would only leave a gap of about four to six hours, since parties in the casales often carry on until around 04.00 and in some cases, bars and nightclubs are given permission to open until 06.00 – then the 'awakening' starts at around 07.00 or 08.00.

And the problem is not just the occasional banger being thrown down, says Menguzzato – in some parts of the city, they are hurled en masse around the clock.

Although in general Menguzzato is pleased with security measures at this year's Fallas – far fewer incidents were recorded, and new evacuation routes have proven effective – she says next year's fiestas will need a rethink as fire engines had difficulty accessing the monuments to soak the area around them when they were burnt down on Monday night, during the cremà which marks the end of the festival.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN'S Royal Football Federation says Malta's claims of players using performance-enhancing drugs during the UEFA Euro Cup of 1984 are 'totally false'.

Malta's historic 12-1 defeat in the qualifier was discussed on the island's national TV show Fiebre Maldini ('Maldini Fever') with the then national team trainer Scerri and players Bussutil, Fabri and Demanuele.

They all claimed the Spanish team was guilty of doping, and even made out they drugged the Maltese side.

The show guests say 'a man in a small white dress' gave them lemons which had been laced with narcotic substances to slow down their reactions.

But it has taken over 34 years for the Maltese national team of the time to make these accusations – their epic loss at Spain's hands, which put paid to their chances of a place in the UEFA Euro '84, was on December 21, 1983.

It has not taken the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) long to respond.

“[We] strongly reject these accusations made recently by some of the members of the Maltese national team who participated at the match [in December] 1983 at Sevilla's Benito Villamarín stadium, and which have been picked up by various communications media,” said a press release.

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HAYFEVER sufferers could be in for a rough ride in Spain this spring – especially in the provinces of Toledo (centre), Sevilla (south), Vitoria (north-east) and in the western region of Extremadura.

Pollen forecasts issued by the Spanish Allergy and Immunology Clinic (SEAIC)'s Aerobiology Committee are similar to those of last spring, but levels in 2017 were lower than expected due to warmer than average temperatures in April and May.

The Committee says southern Castilla-La Mancha will see moderate to high pollen counts over the next three months, especially in the province of Ciudad Real and even more so in Toledo, both south of Madrid, and also to a certain degree in Madrid itself, both the city and the wider region.

Extremadura as a whole is likely to be affected, as are the Andalucía provinces of Jaén and especially Sevilla, and the Basque Country province of Vitoria.

Aragón and Castilla y León will see 'moderate' pollen levels, between 4,000 and 6,000 grains per cubic metre of air, although less so than in the other areas mentioned.

Toledo is expected to have the highest pollen count in Spain between the end of March and late June.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TWO British tourists who filed a fake sickness claim after a holiday in Benidorm have been ordered to pay €17,200 in compensation to the travel operator, TUI.

Jamie Melling and his girlfriend Chelsea Devine, from Liverpool, are the latest Brits to be caught inventing a claim for food poisoning to get their money back on their holiday, although so far tens of thousands of complaints, with the sole aim of obtaining compensation, have been made against Spanish hotels.

Touts driving vans with ambulance signs and slogans asking if trippers want a free holiday have been seen in the Canary Islands over the last year or so, and actually approach British tourists to encourage them to put in claims.

They only have to show a purchase receipt for a box of diarrhoea tablets.

British Prime Minister Theresa May pledged last summer to crack down on the scam, which has left many resorts running the risk of going out of business.

Hotel bosses say they only ever seem to get claims from British holidaymakers, never from any other European tourists.

Ms Devine, 21 and Mr Melling, 22 claimed €2,800 each from TUI, which would automatically be recovered from the hotel or resort in question, but a judge in Liverpool commented that they continued posting selfies of their trip in which they seemed healthy and happy.

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BOTTLED butane gas goes down in price today (Tuesday) by 5%, dropping to €13.96 from the current €14.68 due to a fall in the cost of the raw material, cheaper transport and the strengthening of the euro.

This first price fall of the year has come after many months of increases – 1.6% in January and 2.1% in November, with sharp hikes in summer last year of up to 5% in each cost review.

Only in September did prices go down, by nearly 5%, although they had gone up already by this much in summer.

As yet, gas bottle prices appear unlikely to drop to the historic low of July 2016, when they fell to just €11.25.

Price hikes in summer were due to a deficit from previous months rather than the cost of raw material having risen.

The new cost of €13.96 will remain valid until the next bi-monthly review on the third Tuesday in May.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

ONLINE retail giant Amazon is facing its first possible strike in Spain and what will be the company's largest in Europe to date.

The store, which started out life as an internet-based book, record and video shop and has now branched out into clothing, cosmetics, electronics and even food, has only had its own division in Spain since 2011 and, since then, it has opened three huge logistics centres in the country – one each in El Prat de Llobregat and Martorelles (Barcelona province) and one in San Fernando de Henares (Madrid).

The Madrid delivery centre, the first of the two to open, employs 1,100 people on permanent contracts and a further 900 temporary workers, all of whom have been called by their union to join a 48-hour strike over Wednesday and Thursday this week (March 21 and 22).

Staff representatives say Amazon is trying to force a new logistics industry-wide working conditions agreement on them, substituting the existing one which was unique to the firm, and which will lead to a reduction in their rights.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

MAYOR of the last town in southern Spain before Gibraltar, Juan Franco, was due to travel to Brussels today (Monday) to discuss Brexit and how it will affect residents, British and Spanish alike.

La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz province) is home to numerous Spaniards who commute daily to Gibraltar for work, and also British expats, some retired and some who are also employed on the Rock.

Brexit would, in theory, mean a hard border between Spain and the British-owned enclave, potentially adding long passport control queues to the morning trip to the office.

Even with the post-Brexit transition period agreed now until December 31, 2020 – during which the UK will remain in the Customs Union and common market, but will not participate in any decision-making within the EU – the long-term future for the Gibraltar-Spain border still needs to be resolved.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A TOUGHENING up on compulsory vehicle inspections, known as ITV tests, is coming into force this May and will mean more stringent measures to improve safety on Spain's roads.

A new Bill of Law, or Royal Decree coming into force on May 20 means ITV stations will he equipped with tools that detect emissions fraud, or software installed to mask CO2 and NOx output.

After the 'Dieselgate' scandal, which saw hundreds of thousands of cars and vans recalled after Volkswagen was found to have doctored emissions readings, and in light of figures that show air pollution – of which motor vehicles are the main culprit – is directly responsible for over six million deaths a year round the world, Spain is determined to tighten up on any attempts to repeat the scam.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

THOUSANDS of demonstrators gathered in Madrid today (Sunday) calling for laws to protect the Iberian wolf, an endangered species unique to Spain and Portugal.

Ecologists in Action, the WWF, European Alliance for Wolf Conservation and the group Lobo Marley ('Marley the Wolf') were behind the march, which was headed up by Rocco, a domesticated wolf walking on a lead, complete with his 'entourage' of another seven dogs who are part-wolf.

Around 3,000 people clamoured for the Iberian wolf to be included in Spain's list of specially-protected species throughout the whole of the country.

They marched from Atocha station to the central Puerta del Sol square.

Wildlife experts have shown that wolves, in the wild, do not need to be a threat to sheep, meaning they have no need to be shot by farmers if they take the right measures.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SUPERMARKET chain Mercadona's chairman and founder Juan Roig says he has no plans to open Sundays because the store 'loses money' whenever he has to do so.

One of Spain's top-five richest men, Roig, based in the province of Valencia, was recently asked about his region's trading law changes which allow shops to open whenever they want in officially-recognised tourism belts, rather than – as previously – being legally banned from operating on Sundays and public holidays.

Roig says the issue is 'complex', admitting that some industries are in favour and others against.

Mercadona stores only open on Sundays or bank holidays when not doing so would mean shutting two days on the trot, something it never does.

A common example is over Easter or the March Fallas festivals – especially during one recent year when the two coincided and left a string of up to six non-working days linked together.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

ONE man has died and three remain missing in Andalucía as a result of the freak weather conditions caused by 'Storm Gisele', which hit Galicia earlier in the week and is making its way across the mainland.

Two hikers have vanished in the mountains of the province of Cádiz, a Guardia Civil officer has been swept away by the current of a river in Sevilla, and a motorcyclist who disappeared in Jaén has been found dead, emergency services report.

The motorcyclist went missing after being swept away by the Salado stream – which had become a gushing torrent - near the city of Jaén on Saturday, and his body has been found today (Sunday) 15 kilometres from where he was last seen.

A 52-year-old Guardia Civil officer fell into a river on Saturday night in Guillena (Sevilla province) whilst trying to rescue three people trapped in their car, and was swept away.

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A VERDICT by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has found that burning photographs of the King of Spain comes under the heading of 'freedom of expression' and those who do so cannot be convicted of 'incitement to hatred'.

At the same time as Amnesty International issued a warning that Spain was 'going too far' with its criminal convictions for 'exaltation of terrorism' – with 119 people under investigation or already sentenced for comments on Twitter and Facebook, which include what have been described as 'tired' jokes about attacks more than 40 years ago – the ECHR has described action taken against anti-monarchy protesters to be 'disproportionate'.

Enric Stern and Jaume Roura were sentenced after burning photographs of the now-abdicated King Juan Carlos I in Girona in 2007.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

MASS pensioner protests across the country have been planned for this coming Saturday (March 17), despite president Mariano Rajoy saying he would increase retirees' income once the budget was approved.

As yet, the State budget remains inconclusive, and Spanish pensioners, yet again, only received the minimum increase allowed by law in January.

Every January since 2012, State pensions have gone up by just 0.25%, the lowest amount permitted by legislation, meaning they have not kept up with inflation.

If the budget is finally approved, Rajoy has promised to increase 'the lowest State retirement pensions' and also widows' and widowers' pensions, although he has not said by how much.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

VALENCIA'S fallera queens and their entourages opened the city's spectacular March festival yesterday (Tuesday) with their usual procession, but this time each of them carrying a white fish in memory of eight-year-old Gabriel Cruz Ramírez.

Before Gabriel's body was found and when his family – and even the police – were hoping to find him alive, the boy's mum, Patricia, urged the public to 'flood Spain with little fishies' so he would know the entire nation was thinking of him.

From when he was very tiny – practically as soon as he was able to talk – Gabriel knew the names of 'hundreds of species' of fish and has always been fascinated by them, Patricia Ramírez said. 

She and Gabriel's father Ángel Cruz said their little boy wanted to be a marine biologist when he grew up.

Even the police investigation was named 'Operation Nemo' from the start.

Gabriel was nicknamed Pescaíto ('Little Fishie') by his parents due to his love of sea creatures.

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POLICE in the provinces of Almería and Burgos have reopened the case of the death of Ana Julia Quezada's four-year-old daughter in 1996, which at the time was considered 'accidental'.

Quezada, 44, had moved to the Burgos area in 1995, when she was around 21 years old, with the daughter she had had through a relationship with a man in her native Dominican Republic.

A year later, the infant fell out of a seventh-floor window and was killed instantly.

By then, the child had a sister, then aged two, whose father was Quezada's new boyfriend from Burgos.

The surviving sister is now 24 and lives in Burgos with her dad.

After discovering through the media that her mother had been arrested and charged with eight-year-old Gabriel Cruz Ramírez's murder two weeks after the child had gone missing in the 100 metres separating his grandmother's and his aunt's homes in Las Hortichuelas, near Níjar (Almería), the daughter in Burgos was reportedly taken to hospital after suffering a panic attack.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

PARENTS across Spain have called for a 'homework-free Easter' for their children in the latest step of the ongoing debate about how advisable or otherwise it is for kids to spend their free time in front of their schoolbooks.

The Spanish PTA Confederation (CEAPA), which has around 11,000 members nationwide, already staged a 'homework strike' in 2016 in which mums and dads wrote to teachers to tell them their children would not be undertaking any work at weekends, but instead would be spending quality time with their families, in the fresh air and taking part in physical activity.

CEAPA members also raised a petition calling for homework to be axed altogether, or at least over weekends and school holidays.

Even primary school children in very early years have homework every night, and the average pupil in Spain is glued to his or her textbooks for around two to three hours once home from class.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TWO Spanish women were on board a private jet which crashed in Iran on the way back to Istanbul from the United Arab Emirates, leaving no survivors.

Eight passengers, two pilots and a flight attendant – all women – were returning from Mina Basaran's hen party in Dubai when it went down yesterday (Sunday).

The craft, owned by the company Basaran Holdings, crashed in the Sehr-i-Kurd area to the south of Isfahan in the Helen mountains, bursting into flames as it hit the ground.

According to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, the bride - Mina, 28, daughter and heiress of the chairman of the company, Huseyin Basaran – was with five other Turkish women and two Spanish ladies, all guests at her hen party.

She was due to get married in April.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

THE killing of eight-year-old Gabriel Cruz Ramírez would qualify for a lifelong prison sentence subject to review – a punishment several political parties want to scrap and which the families of murder victims are campaigning to keep in force.

Aimed at preventing potential reoffenders and those who cannot be reformed from walking the streets again, permanent custodial sentences regularly reviewed fall within the terms of the PP government's controversial Public Safety Law and apply where specific aggravating circumstances apply.

These include victims under the age of 16, victims who are especially vulnerable, or when sexual violence is perpetrated before or after the murder.

They also cover serial killings, those committed by organised crime gangs, those perpetrated against the Crown – defined as the King, the Queen Consort or any of the monarch's ascendants or descendants – genocide, obstructing the recovery of the victim's body, murder following kidnap, serial rapes, rape of minors following kidnap or torture, deaths caused deliberately through arson, or by releasing nuclear or radioactive elements.

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CENTRE-RIGHT political party Ciudadanos – the fourth-largest in Spanish Parliament – wants to do away with temporary job contracts and launch a series of reforms including 'anti-crisis insurance' for the self-employed.

Party leader Albert Rivera says his team's proposed 'rucksack of rights' includes an insurance policy which will help prevent small businesses and the self-employed from having to shut up shop for good because they cannot pay redundancy money to employees during a recession.

The 'rucksack of rights' also offers financial assistance to companies who never, or rarely, sack staff or make them redundant.

Rivera's 'new professional model' and 'fight against job insecurity', as he refers to the proposals, would be a 'balanced, innovative and brave' law which would 'bring Spain in line with the rest of the EU', pointing out that the percentage of Spanish residents whose jobs are only temporary doubles that of the European average.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A 'SMART fridge' for transporting human organs and blood samples which controls its own temperature remotely via wi-fi connection has been launched by the Catalunya-based technology firm Perspectiva.

As well as keeping the storage unit at the right temperature from a distance using bluetooth, internet and radio-frequency, the technology involved allows it to be traced, meaning the contents are safe even if they are mislaid.

It can also be used to transport other samples of bodily fluids for testing, including biopsy cells, plus medications and vaccinations.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

OVER five million workers in Spain have downed tools today (Thursday) for the International Women's Day strike – around a third of the country's workforce – including a number of men.

International Women's Day, first celebrated in 1911, is marked this year in 177 countries worldwide with 41 of them going on strike.

In the West, where issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriage and being barred from education, employment or freedom of movement without a male relative as a companion are extremely limited and generally outlawed, March 8 is partly about celebrating women's achievements throughout history and partly about calling for solutions to aspects of gender equality that remain unresolved.

Figures show that on average, across European countries including the UK and Spain, it will take until the 22ndcentury before the gender pay gap is closed, based upon progress to date.

Statistics for Spain show that, according to region, between a third and a half of women who work are in part-time jobs – either because they need to in order to look after children and other dependents, or because they cannot find a full-time job – that the number of women unemployed exceeds that of men, and that on average, ladies earn 30% less than their male counterparts.

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FOR another year running, Spain is the world's eight-largest car manufacturer after churning out 2.84 million vehicles in 2017 alone.

Ninth-placed Brazil is not far behind, producing 2.69 million, up by 25% with just 150,000 fewer than Spain.

According to the International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers' Organisation (OICA), speaking at Geneva's World Automobile Fair, despite Spain's having seen a 1.3% reduction in the number of cars produced last year – failing to meet its target of three million – it has retained its place at number eight in the world, even though the gap has closed considerably with Brazil due to the South American country’s buoyant results.

The previous year, Canada was number nine, with 2.37 million cars produced, or 516,000 fewer than Spain.

But taking into account the sizes of Brazil and Canada compared with Spain shows that its results are still impressive in a global context.

Although the shrinking of the industry in Spain means it is in danger of losing ground, the country still makes 2.9% of the world’s vehicles, a slight drop on its 3% quota in 2016.

And it would be very hard to compete with the top three countries given their deeply-entrenched manufacturing industries: China produced 29.1 million cars last year, making it number one in the world, up by 3.2% on 2016, whilst the USA manufactured 11.18 million, an increase of 8.1% and Japan’s production rose by 5.3% to 9.69 million.

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THE first-ever housing development financed entirely through crowdfunding is about to go up in the Cantabria regional capital of Santander.

A plot of 5,500 square metres, or one-and-a-third acres on the C/ Resconorio has been earmarked for the urbanisation, which will involve an investment of around €2.9 million.

It will house two apartment blocks of three storeys apiece, each with 17 flats, and 51 parking spaces, or an average of 1.5 off-road bays per property.

City councillor for planning and infrastructure, César Díaz, says crowdfunding is 'certainly a new thing' in the housing market but could provide a 'sustainable alternative' to the usual system of bank loans secured on the eventual properties.

THE Women's Day strike across Spain on Thursday this week (March 8) will affect rail traffic along with many other areas of service – so far, 300 trains have been cancelled, reports transport board RENFE.

'Minimum service' requirements dictate that 75% of trains will be running during rush hour, but 105 high-speed AVE and long-distance links and 199 medium-distance routes have been axed all day tomorrow.

A total of 72% of AVE and long-distance trains will run and 68% of medium-distance routes.

For the Cercanías, or outer suburban lines, 75% will run during the rush hours and 50% the rest of the day.

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AIRPORT taxes for next year will go down by 12% - three times as much as initially planned – in a bid to encourage growth in the air travel industry.

According to minister for public works Íñigo de la Serna, taxes – which were frozen for 2017 – will still only go down by 3% in 2018 as originally announced and by 5% in 2020, but for 2019 they will be slashed by 12% instead of the 4% agreed at first.

De la Serna made this announcement during the opening ceremony of the World Air Travel Management Conference, and said these reductions would means Spain's airport taxes became the lowest in the European Union.

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A NEW law covering wholemeal bread could mean shoppers have to check labels thoroughly to see what they are buying.

Many brands of bread claiming to be 'wholemeal' are in fact manufactured with refined white flour, but with a handful of wheat, rye or barley bran thrown in – and few, if any, loaves are made with completely wholemeal flour.

At present, Spanish law defines wholemeal bread as that which has been made 'with wholemeal flour', but does not specify the percentage of this type of flour which must be used.

'Wholemeal flour' is defined as the result of cereal grains being ground up and of which 'the composition corresponds with that of the wholegrain cereal grain'.

But again, it does not state what percentage of the wholegrain should be present in it.

This creates a legal loophole which allows bread, biscuits and other grain-based products to be legitimately labelled as 'made with 100% wholemeal flour', when in practice, the amount of '100% wholemeal flour' used is negligible.

For this reason, the ministry of food, agriculture and the environment is seeking to abolish the 34-year-old law covering wholemeal bread – Royal Decree, or Bill of Law number 1137 of May 23, 1984 – and create a new one 'adapted to current market demands' and aiming to 'provide sufficient information to the consumer to enable him or her to make informed choices'.

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SPAIN'S Óscar Husillos is 'gutted' after finding out midway through a live interview on national television that he had been disqualified from the World Athletics Championships, lost his gold medal, and that his new world record would not count.

The runner from Astudillo (Palencia province, Castilla y León) completed the 400-metres indoor race in 44.92 seconds, the fastest time ever seen in 30 years, and was in the middle of dedicating his gold medal to his friends, family and trainers on TVE when a 'special envoy' from the channel in Madrid notified the presenters of his disqualification.

He is said to have put part of his foot outside the track.

Exactly the same has happened to the Dominican Republic's Luguelín Santos, who was stripped of his silver just minutes after winning it.

Óscar's gold would have been a third medal for Spain in the world event in Birmingham, UK after the bronzes earned by Ana Peleteiro in the triple hurdles and Saúl Ordóñez in the 800 metres.

“From heaven to hell in seconds for the sake of a few centimetres,” Óscar, 24, wrote on Twitter, “and not without falling into a lake of tears first. A dream come true that vanished in smoke in minutes.

“But please know I won't fall in Berlin – my trainer and I will show what we're really worth.”

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A TARRAGONA man who grew and sold cannabis 'to top up his pension' has been arrested and at least 290 marihuana plants have been confiscated.

The accused, 63, said he was struggling to make ends meet on his State retirement pension and had been dealing home-grown hash on the side to supplement his income. 

Guardia Civil officers found enough plants to create 7.2 kilos of the drug in a house in the offender's home town, El Pla de Manlleu.

The property was in the name of a person who had died, and the cannabis farmer was the deceased's son-in-law.

The smell of the plants, together with alerts from the electricity board about exceptionally-high consumption that could not be accounted for, led police to launch a probe in January which culminated this week with the discovery of an underground plantation and laboratory.

The arrested man is said to have hooked up illegally to the electricity supply to enable him to use it without paying the bills.

Generally, police are not concerned about ordinary householders who grow a plant or two for personal consumption, but selling the fruits of these crops or exchanging them for goods or services is considered 'dealing' and is a criminal offence.

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MURCIA'S new airport will be ready for commercial flights to operate from this December, although its actual launch date will depend upon when the various airlines running from it are ready to start.

Chairman of airports governing body AENA, Jaime García-Legaz, says the process of checking and signing off the various parts of the future Juan de la Cierva terminal for health, safety and completion will take several months, having started a week ago tomorrow (Saturday).

The next step will be drumming up interest from airlines.

This new terminal, in the village of Corvera near Murcia city, will replace the existing terminal in San Javier, closest to the Mar Menor coastal area and the town of Cartagena.

Corvera airport will not start to operate until the last plane has flown out of San Javier, García-Legaz confirms. 

He sought to reassure staff at San Javier that their jobs were safe, as they would continue in their roles but in the new terminal in Corvera.

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DEPOSED Catalunya president Carles Puigdemont has decided not to continue with his candidature for the role, despite the pro-independence parties having collectively ratified him as their ideal choice.

Still in exile in Belgium and unable to return to Spain as he would be arrested immediately, Puigdemont is in an impossible situation as he can only be sworn in as regional president at a ceremony in Catalunya's Parliament building in Barcelona.

In an announcement this evening (Thursday), Puigdemont said the Spanish government had effectively prevented him from exercising his elected role by forcing him to stay out of his native country, and that he had therefore decided to 'provisionally' step aside.

As his replacement, Puigdemont has nominated Jordi Sànchez, leader of the campaign group Catalunya National Assembly (ANC) and number two in Puigdemont's party Junts per Catalunya ('Together for Catalunya', or JxCat).

But Sànchez is still in prison for sedition for his role in helping the disputed independence referendum go ahead and for staging a protest outside Parliament which ended up hindering the police when they tried to enter the building.

Also in custody for the same reasons is Jordi Cuixart of the pressure group Òmnium Cultural.

Puigdemont describes Sànchez as 'a man of peace' who is 'unjustly locked away in a Spanish prison'.

The former president of Catalunya has urged regional Parliamentary chairman Roger Torrent to start the ball rolling as soon as possible to nominate Sànchez as the new presidential candidate.

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A SEARCH party has resumed for an eight-year-old boy who went missing on Tuesday afternoon from the tied hamlet of Las Hortichuelas in Níjar (Almería province), after being forced to stop for the night. 

Gabriel Cruz Ramírez had gone out at around 15.30 to play with friends at a neighbour's house, barely 100 metres from where his grandmother lives in the Cortijo La Molina area right in the heart of the Cabo de Gata-Níjar nature reserve. 

Although the Guardia Civil believes the little boy may have 'got lost', they 'find it strange' that 'nobody has heard or seen anything'. 

The child was wearing black Adidas tracksuit bottoms and a red jacket when he was last seen.

Missing persons charity SOS Desaparecidos is offering a €10,000 reward for any information leading to Gabriel's being found.

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