Live News From Spain As It Happens

ALL FIVE Spanish tourists trapped in the volcanic national park of Rinjani, Lombok island after the recent earthquake have now been rescued, Spain's foreign office reports, and they are all in good health.

Earlier today (Tuesday), Indonesian authorities confirmed it had evacuated 543 hikers from the mountain range, a popular holidaymaker attraction, after the tremor blocked the entrances and left them unable to get out.

Only 10 climbers, all Indonesians, were said to be still awaiting rescue and are expected to be airlifted down tomorrow.

Among those trapped were 189 foreigners, 173 Indonesians, 31 tour guides and 150 porters, according to National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugrohooy.

So far, one visitor to the Rinjani volcano is known to have died, an Indonesian man.

It was initially believed that as many as 689 may have been stranded up the Rinjani, based upon the national park's entrance register, but the final total is now thought to have been about 553.

All foreigners trapped there have now been safely removed.

The earthquake on Lombok island on Sunday reached 6.4 on the Richter scale and was even felt on the island of Bali.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

LAST August's Barcelona terrorist attack is now only partially sub judice and the National Court has called up two witnesses under special protection.

Magistrate Fernando Andreu has summoned the as-yet unnamed pair to appear from 10.30 on Monday, August 6.

They will be allowed to view five of the nine pieces of evidence concerning persons killed or injured, property damage, notifications and other elements of the ongoing investigation.

The remaining four files will be kept under wraps and only accessible to police and the court.

They include information from property raids, telephone calls and other communications, including pictures of the terror cell handling explosives and of the fatal van attack on the Ramblas, both before the vehicle entered the pedestrianised street and after it left, plus footage of walkers being run over.

The wildfire that broke out this morning (Monday) in the Manilva area of Málaga has been stabilised and the 400 people who were evacuated from their homes and from a nearby hotel have now been allowed back.

The fire started at around 2am in the Martasina area and an emergency was declared by local authorities at 5.17am.

A spokesperson for the fire prevention and control committee of the Junta de Andalucía, Infoca, told reporters that the fire was brought under control at around 8.15am, but that field- and air-based firefighting teams are still in the area to make sure it is fully extinguished.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

Lifeguards and police officers joined forces yesterday (Sunday) to rescue a manta ray which had got caught in a net near the shore at Playa de la Mata in Torrevieja.

The ray, measuring almost two metres across, was carried away from shore on a stretcher suspended between a a jet ski and a rigid inflatable boat and released three nautical miles out to sea.

read more at thinkSPAIN.com

EX-ASTRONAUT and science minister Pedro Duque has explained to former Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas about how the moon landing happened after he commented on Twitter that it was just a set-up in a film studio.

So far, the goalkeeper – who is now based in Oporto, Portugal – has received over 310,000 replies after launching a straw poll on his social media site.

Duque, who became every school child's hero in 2003 when footage of him floating in zero gravity graced their TV screens, added his own reply.

“The facts won't change, whatever people believe,” wrote the minister, who spent 19 days in space, of which 10 were on board the International Space Station.

“The apparatus they took with them, the footprints, the laser reflectors will still always be there. The photo which awakened the sense of conservation of the earth will continue to exist.”

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A BRITISH court has agreed to the body of a Spaniard to be exhumed to see whether he was a victim of organ-trafficking before he died.

Miguel Ángel Martínez was 45 when he set off from his native Basque Country on April 28, 2005 with €11,000 in his pocket and the intention of travelling around Europe for a while.

His family heard nothing more from him until, exactly six months later, they received a call from Bilbao National Police to say his body had been found floating in a fjord in the Stockholm suburb of Lidingö in 'an advanced state of decomposition'.

Swedish police had attributed his death to suicide and, a year and a half later, sent the family a copy of the post-mortem which confirmed he had drowned

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

COASTGUARD officials in Andalucía have rescued 484 migrants in just one day as they attempted to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and the Alborán Sea on jerry-built rafts.

A total of 27 overcrowded toy boats carrying 334 migrants, mostly sub-Saharan Africans, were intercepted off the coast of the province of Cádiz yesterday (Tuesday), and their occupants – who have all survived – were taken to Barbate, Tarifa and Algeciras.

Due to lack of space, with dozens or even hundreds of migrants arriving by the day, about 200 of them had to spend the night on a lifeboat and othes were taken to the Andrés Mateo sports centre in Algeciras' El Saladillo neighbourhood.

Those given beds in the leisure centre were 'priority' cases, such as children and pregnant women.

Another boat carrying 35 sub-Saharan Africans, two of whom are women, also reached Spain safely yesterday after they were spotted by emergency services near Alborán Island, about halfway between the province of Almería and the Spanish-owned enclave of Melilla on the northern Moroccan coast.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPANISH emergency response workers have been helping out with the Greek forest fire that has already destroyed the picturesque town of Mati, close to Athens, and killed 74 people.

Last night (Monday), Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras sent out an appeal to countries across Europe, and Spain and Cyprus were the first to respond.

Israel, Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, France and Italy followed suit and Tsipras has received calls from Council of Europe chairman Donald Tusk and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker pledging their support.

Spain has been assisting with tackling the blaze and in the rescue operations, but Greece has now cancelled its international request as weather conditions are improving and it appears the inferno may be closer to being contained.

Spanish president Pedro Sánchez has since tweeted: “I have had a conversation with @PrimeministerGR, Alexis Tsipras, to offer all possible support from the Spanish government in dealing with the tragedy Greece (#Grecia) is goimg through. Spain remains at the Greek people's disposition via the European mechanisms and the Civil Protection.”

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A NEW fault line has been found in the Alborán Sea by members of Spain's High Council of Scientific Research (CSIC).

As part of their ongoing marine geophysics studies on board the craft Hespérides in May 2016, the CSIC's data have finally been analysed and revealed a potential earthquake zone in the south-eastern sea between the province of Almería and the Spanish-owned enclave of Melilla on the northern Moroccan coast, close to the Algerian border.

The fault line lies along the point where the Eurasian and African tectonic plates meet in the westernmost point of the Mediterranean and is thought to continue as far as the shores of Morocco, following the arc of Gibraltar between the Iberian peninsula and Africa towards the west, and also northwards, affecting the Campo de Dalias region of the province of Almería.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN is home to the largest number of marine fauna species in the European Union – a total of 10,000 in 900 types of habitat – but is also the bloc's fifth-largest producer of plastic with an average of 3.2 items of rubbish, of which 2.3 are plastic, lounging in every square metre of beach.

Plastic items take decades or even centuries to break down and disintegrate – drinks bottles, for example, do not biodegrade for over 500 years.

Latest records show plastic pollution on Spain's coasts is so serious that it makes up 75% of all rubbish cleared off beaches, but this is not the only danger to the country's vast marine biodiversity.

Illegal fishing, overfishing, excess noise and, of course, global warming affect ecosystems, but only 1% of the world's seas are under conservation orders.

This spring, the previous Spanish government, led by the PP, set up the Life IP Intermares plan as part of the Biodiversity Foundation within the ministry for the environment, agriculture, food and fishing – the largest and most ambitious marine conservation project in Europe, financed out of various EU funds totalling €50 million to care for the entire network of protected parts of the continent's seas.

It will involve breeding programmes covering all marine species in the Red Natura 2000 ('Nature Network 2000'), Spain's catalogue of endangered fauna, with the aim of increasing protected offshore reserves tenfold – reflecting the rest of the planet as a whole, 1% of Spanish seas are usnder conservation orders, but the Life IP Intermares programme seeks to increase this to at least 8% immediately, rising to a minimum of 10% by the year 2020.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

FRUIT has gone up at more than three times the rate of general living costs, by two-thirds in 12 years and by 14% in the past year, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

Only cigarettes, up by 102% and university tuition fees, which have increased by 68%, fruit has gone up in price more than any other consumer goods or services since before the start of the financial crisis.

Weekly fruit shopping cost €20 just over a decade ago, but now comes in at €33 – yet farmers are not benefiting from this increase and conclude that retailers must be giving themselves a higher profit margin.

A national farming union, the UPA, says the fruit industry is 'rife with speculation' and agricultural workers are having to produce far more nowadays just to break even, and many are dropping out of the sector altogether.

Stallholders believe the price hike must be due to climate change and shrinking harvests.

In fact, some fruit farmers – particularly watermelon-growers in the provinces of Almería and Murcia – are considering giving up because they are afraid of running out of irrigation water due to the ongoing drought.

Retailers say fruit now costs more because a higher amount is exported, as producers know they can earn more from selling their crops abroad – in fact, exports have risen by 67% in the last decade, much of which goes to the UK and Germany.

According to a national association of supermarket chains, the costs of sustainable waste management have gone up and the quality of the fruit in general has improved, which has had an impact on the end consumer price.

Fruit becoming more expensive means residents in Spain are buying less of it to save money – around 12% less, in fact, than five years ago, or down from nearly 4,800 tonnes to just 4,200, or from 103 to 92 kilos per person per year.

Despite the fall in consumption, the amount spent per capita on fruit remains the same as five years ago at €134 annually.

Figures show that some fruit rises in price by as much as 500% between field and supermarket shelf – this is the case with Golden Delicious apples, which sells at €2.22 per kilo in shops compared with 37 cents per kilo at source.

Other types of fruit where the margin between source and consumer is huge include clementines, which retail at €1.53 per kilo but for which farmers are paid 32 cents per kilo, a difference of 378%; oranges, which go up by 207%, from 63 cents to €1.94 per kilo; pears, from 56 cents to €2.01 per kilo or 258%, and bananas, with a difference of 397%, increasing from 43 cents to €2.14 per kilo.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

ALL babies aged under a year must be vaccinated against measles if they are to travel within the European Union following an outbreak in infants that has been particularly widespread in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Greece and Romania.

Normally in Spain, babies are given the so-called 'triple virus' vaccination – against measles, mumps and rubella – when they are exactly 12 months old, but Dr Francisco José Álvarez, secretary of the Vaccination Advisory Committee, part of the Spanish Paediatric Association (AEP), says parents planning to travel should do so earlier.

“Right now in Europe, we have a terrible measles epidemic which is affecting countries that tend to be popular destination countries for Spaniards going on family holidays,” Dr Álvarez explains.

The areas in question are also likely to be among common countries of origin of European expatriates living in Spain, who may wish to travel to see their families with their babies.

“If it is strictly necessary to travel to these countries with infants of under a year old but at least six months old, we recommend bringing the 'triple virus' vaccination forward,” Dr Álvarez says.

“But remember that it cannot be given until the infants are six months old.”

Many children get through the typical 'childhood diseases' with few problems, but in infants and toddlers, as well as in adults – especially the elderly and pregnant women – they can be very serious and even fatal, or at least leave behind permanent sequelae.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

RYANAIR has been ordered to guarantee 100% of flights between mainland Spain and the islands during its two-day cabin crew strike and 59% of international connections.

Between 35% and 59% of internal flights are required to run during then industrial action on July 25 and 26.

All flights due to take off before the strike starts, even if they are scheduled to land during strike hours, must be guaranteed.

The airline is expected to take whatever legal steps it can to ensure minimal disruption, including placing passengers on flights operated by other airlines.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

Left-wing opposition party Podemos has come up with an ambitious renewable energy and anti-pollution plan that would see all nuclear and fossil fuel plants shut down by the year 2026.

The party led by Pablo Iglesias said employees affected by the closures would be offered the chance to relocate within their companies or, if they were not willing or able, plans would be set up ahead of time to give them similar jobs within 'more sustainable sectors' in the same towns.

Their aim is to cut CO2 emissions by 35% by the year 2030, by 70% for 2040 and by 95% by 2050, based upon levels registered in the year 1990, and to have all of Spain's energy needs provided from renewable sources by the year 2050.

Podemos refers to scientific evidence showing that air pollution is one of the biggest causes of preventable death – six million people on earth lose their lives every year as a direct result – and showing that climate change could have 'potentially devastating' effects and that not enough is being done on a global level.

The year 2016 was the warmest since 1880 and, in Spain, emissions rose by 4.4% between then and 2017.

Podemos wants to encourage self-sufficient energy supply, which will mean axing the so-called 'sun tax' aimed at compensating utility giants for the growing number of residents who use solar panels rather than connecting to the mains.

The party also wants to see incentives for individuals, public institutions and small and medium-sized businesses to invest in renewable energy.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

Valencia-based 'super-surgeon' Pedro Cavadas has successfully reconstructed the base of a tetraplegic patient's spine, meaning he can move his upper body for the first time since he was nine years old.

Wilmer Arias' backbone broke away from his pelvis following a serious accident involving a gun when he was a child, and the last few years he has been bedridden due to complications in the lumbar region.

He has been paralysed from the neck down since the accident.

After an operation at the hospital in Manises, the nearest town to Valencia airport, the young man – originally from Guatemala – is now back in a wheelchair and able to move his hands and arms, a vastly improved outcome compared with his previous situation.

Dr Cavadas used a foot bone to connect the spine to the pelvis.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

THE CONTROVERSIAL Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system used at the World Cup in Russia has come to Spain for the first time – and has not yet caused any disputes.

A friendly between Hércules FC and Villarreal CF in the latter's stadium in the province of Castellón used seven cameras to monitor the match, which ended in a 1-1 draw with goals by Álvaro Salinas – set up by Óscar Díaz – and by Gerard Moreno, who was bought from Catalunya-based club FC Espanyol for €20 million.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A SKELETON of an extinct breed of rhinocerous has been found in the province of Barcelona and is believed to date back over 160,000 years.

Similar to the African black rhino, the Stephanorhinus Hundsheimensis discovered in Castelldefels by the Quartenary Research Group (GRQ-SERP), part of Barcelona University, typically lived in open spaces and was a very fast runner.

The rhino found was young – about seven years old – and still has some of its milk teeth.

It was unearthed in what is known as the Rhinoceros Cave, where other rhino bones were found in 2015 during an ongoing archaeological excavation, and is believed to have fallen into the grotto and died whilst trapped there, since this would not have been its natural habitat.

Two front legs, the ribs, part of the spinal column and the skull with both jaws have been dug up intact.

Castelldefels' Rhinoceros Cave is a huge dig which covers a very long period of prehistoric eras, with findings dating from 80,000 to 200,000 years old, most of which are very diverse, well-preserved and abundant.

Remains of several types of animals from several geographical eras spotted in the cave have given historians plenty of valuable information about life in the wild tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

POLICE in the Canary Islands have debunked claims in a British tabloid that a terrorist attack is imminent in the region and has called for the public to 'ignore hoaxes' – although they recognise this is difficult when they are printed in a mainstream newspaper.

The Daily Star published a report titled, “REVEALED: White Widow recruiting suicide bombers to attack Spanish beaches this summer.”

It spoke of a white 'British Jihadi' called Samantha Lewthwaite who has 'enrolled dozens of women – including white converts to Islam like herself – to strike at hotspots across Europe'.

“The Spanish Costas, Greece, Turkey, the Canary Islands and Cyprus have all been identified as potential targets – along with resorts in the UK,” the report claims, referring to 'shocking details' from 'encrypted emails, phone calls and via foreign Intelligence services'.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPANISH and foreign holidaymakers' favourite destinations have been revealed by the Business Federation of National Travel Agencies' Associations (FETAVE), and mostly involve beaches and the top three cities in the country.

According to industry leaders, Barcelona is one of the most-visited cities in Spain year-round, and tourists normally flock to the Sagrada Família cathedral, the Gothic District, the colourful Gaudí-designed Güell Park and the Ramblas, or central pedestrianised boulevard, as well as the excellent beaches in Spain's second-largest metropolis.

Mallorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands, is also the most popular, although its neighbours – Ibiza, Menorca and Formentera – are by no means short of tourists.

LOW-COST airline Ryanair has reportedly fired four flight attendants who said they had flown more than the legal maximum number of hours, and allegedly sent a memo to the rest of its cabin crew warning similar attitudes would lead to disciplinaries.

The staff members, based in Mallorca, said they were due to work on four flights on July 8 – from Palma to Madrid, then to Cologne (Germany) and back to Palma – which would total at least 12 hours on that one day and could even have been as much as 15 hours.

They alerted the captain that they were physically and mentally exhausted and had reached their limits.

The four cabin crew members are said to have been sent to a hotel in Cologne before being flown to Ryanair's head office in Dublin, via a connecting flight in Manchester, for a disciplinary hearing.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

HEALTHCARE reforms on the cards will include a gradual return to free prescriptions for State pensioners – including those whose pension comes from another country, such as retired expats, announces minister Carmen Montón (pictured).

Pensioners always used to get free prescriptions irrespective of their income until around 2012 when the then right-wing PP government began to apply a charge of 10% of the retail cost of their drugs – a figure that also applies to anyone whose gross annual income is less than €18,000.

For those with gross earnings of €18,000 to €100,000, most prescription drugs, other than some which are subsidised and attract only a 10% charge, are payable at a rate of 50%, despite the clear difference in spending power between the two income levels, and the fact that gross earnings translate to very different net income for the self-employed versus employees – for the latter, €18,000 a year works out at around €1,320 an month, whilst for the former, it translates to €1,000 a month.

As a result, a high number of residents – workers and pensioners alike – admit they do not bother to collect their prescriptions or stop taking their medication because it is 'too expensive'.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A BEACH in the Basque Country has been voted the sixth-best in the world, beating others in the Seychelles, Sydney and Cape Verde, whilst Madrid's El Prado art museum has squeezed into the global top 10, according to the latest TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards.

San Sebastián's La Concha beach (first picture) – so-called because of its shell (concha, in Spanish) shape had some tough competition in a list topped by Grace Bay in Providenciales, in the idyllic Caribbean island nation of Turks & Caicos, followed by the Bahia do Sancho in Fernando de Noronha in north-eastern Brazil, Varadero beach in Cuba, Eagle beach in Aruba and Seven Mile beach in Grand Cayman.

In fact, the top 10 is dominated by beaches in the Caribbean, with Seven Mile beach in Jamaica eighth, Bávaro beach in the Dominican Republic ninth and the north beach in México's Las Mujeres Islands 10th – the only one outside of this area, aside from Bahia do Sancho and La Concha, is Clearwater beach in Florida, USA.

Lower down the list and in descending order are the beach in Elafonissi, Greece; Falesia beach in Olhos de Agua, Portugal; Fig Tree Bay in Protaras, Cyprus; Bournemouth in the UK; Anse Lazio beach on Praslin Island in the Seychelles; Manly beach, across the harbour from Sydney, Australia; Santa Mônica, in Cape Verde; Agonda, in India; Kleopatra beach in Alanya, Turkey; Galápagos beach in Tortuga Bay in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador; La Spiaggia dei Conigli ('Rabbits' Beach') in Lampedusa, Italy; Sharm El-Luli in Marsa Alam, Egypt; Nungwi in Tanzania; Punta Uva in Costa Rica, and finally at number 25, White beach in Boracay, Malaysia.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

FLIGHT and ferry discounts of 75% subsidised by the State for residents in non-mainland areas of Spain have been agreed today by the Council of Ministers, responding to a long-running demand by those living in the Canary and Balearic Islands and the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the northern Moroccan coast.

Reduced prices have always been available for these residents, who normally tick a box online when booking flights, but governments of these regions have long been pushing for them to increase to 75%.

Discounts are necessary not just for holidays or visiting family on the mainland or other islands, but sometimes even for medical appointments or general administration – those who have to visit their provincial capital in the Canary Islands, for example, would need to get a flight or ferry to either Santa Cruz de Tenerife or Las Palmas de Gran Canaria if they live outside of either.

Minister for public works and transport infrastructure José Luis Ábalos says the discount, which has risen from 50% to 75%, would apply to all tickets sold from 09.00 mainland Spain time – which is also the case for Ceuta, Melilla and the Balearics – or 08.00 Canary Island time on Monday, July 16.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN'S two most successful football teams have invited the 12 Thai schoolboys and their sports coach to a match once they are fully recovered after their ordeal of more than two weeks in a flooded cave in the northern province of Chiang Rai.

Real Madrid noticed via the TV news that one of the boys from the Thailand-based Wild Boars Football Club was wearing a shirt for the Spanish premier league team and contacted the embassy in Bangkok to invite the group to the Santiago Bernabéu stadium as a 'reward' for their 'bravery and aplomb'.

Not to be outdone, Real Madrid's main rival FC Barcelona decided to invite them to the Camp Nou stadium to take part in football-related activities, tour the grounds and watch a match while they were in the country visiting the team based in the capital.

They will be able to join in the annual Barça Academy meeting and take part in Masía 360 events.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

AN INFORMAL survey launched by the European Union is aimed at finding out what residents think of the twice-yearly hour change, and to give reasons to expand on their views.

Always a controversial issue in Spain, which is an hour ahead of its natural geographical time zone, and equally in the UK where a decision to prevent night falling before 16.00 in the winter would mean children in Scotland walking to school in the dark, the European Union recognises that the reasons for which the clock changes were created, and later maintained, are now obsolete.

Debate continues to rage in Spain, where the popular theory is that the reason for the mainland and Balearic Islands being on Central European Time (CET) in winter and Central European Summer Time (CEST) in summer is that, during World War II, dictator General Franco moved the clocks forward to align with his allies in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and that this has never been changed.

More recently, however, physics experts have debunked this hypothesis, explaining that it was a post-war decision by France's Général de Gaulle in a bid to keep mainland western Europe on the same time zone to aid in maintaining peace.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A DIVER from the central Spanish province of Ciudad Real is in Thailand helping rescue the children trapped in a cave with their football instructor.

Fernando Raigal, 33, currently works as a professional scuba-diver for petroleum companies, is highly-skilled and experienced, and has lived in Thailand for many years, according to his friend Antonio Molina.

Molina, who still lives in Ciudad Real, says Raigal was invited by the Navy Seal to help rescue the schoolboys, who vanished along with their coach 11 days ago but were, miraculously, found alive.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A 30-YEAR-OLD woman has died after spending two hours cleaning her kitchen with ammonia, according to emergency services in Madrid.

Paramedics say they were called out to a home on the C/ San Herculano in the San Blas neighbourhood of the city when the victim began to feel 'dizzy and light-headed', at around 15.00 yesterday (Monday).

By the time they arrived, she had collapsed unconscious and was not breathing, and ambulance workers could not find a pulse.

After half an hour of giving her CPR, they pronounced her dead at the scene.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A NINE-YEAR-OLD boy pulled out of a public swimming pool in cardiac arrest has come round after paramedics spent more than an hour giving him CPR.

Normally, first-aiders have just 30 minutes to restart a patient's heart and breathing, since any longer than this nearly always results in death.

On very rare occasions, people have come back after longer, but it is not common, and revival within eight minutes is necessary to prevent brain damage.

In today's case, emergency services were called out at 12.45 to the public outdoor pool in Colmenar del Arroyo (Greater Madrid region) after the unconscious child was lifted out of the water.

Using manual means and a defibrillator, ambulance staff worked on the child for an hour and were on the point of giving up when they discovered his heart was beating and he was breathing.

He has since been intubated and admitted to intensive care at Madrid's 12 de Octubre Hospital.

The next few hours, or possibly days, will be critical.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPANISH residents spend €1,311 per head every year in restaurants, including in coffee shops and bars that serve food, according to the most recent report on the subject by the ministry of agriculture.

This works out at €25.11 per week, or €109.25 per month.

A total of 68.2% of this - €894.10 per year, or €17.19 per week – is spent on actual food, and around a quarter of the full sum is spent on cold drinks.

The most popular food consumed outside the domestic environment or the workplace includes cakes and pastries, ice-cream and general 'nibbles' or small snacks, accounting for 45% of the total spend.

Eating out at night costs residents €305.46 per head per year, or €25.44 – 23.3% of the overall spend – whilst 16.2% of the total goes on breakfast or elevenses.

According to the report, eating between meals – something not often seen in Spanish culture – is an increasing habit, having risen by 13.2% in the past year.

One in three get their food and drinks consumed outside the home or workplace from bars, cafés and breweries, whilst fast-food outlets only account for 15.7%.

And for every 10 times a person consumes food or drink whilst out, one of these will involve snacks or beverages from petrol stations, corner shops, sweet shops or vending machines.

When going out to a restaurant, family members remain the most common companions – on 37.4% occasions, dining partners will be relatives – compared with friends, romantic partners or spouses 20% of the time.

Dining alone is something the average Spanish resident does 13.4% of the time, the report claims.

Per year, every Spanish resident eats 14.26 kilos of fruit and vegetables, six kilos of bread, 5.66 kilos of meat, 4.01 kilos of fish, 1.6 kilos of cakes and pastries, and 9.8 kilos of small starter snacks.

Since the end of 2016, the number of people who go out for drinks has increased, with consumption rising by 0.2% in terms of volume and 1.5% per capita, which works out at around 60 litres of drink per year at an additional cost of 1.3% per head, rising to a total of €260.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN'S medications agency has withdrawn drugs prescribed for high blood pressure after finding they may contain a substance that could be carcinogenic.

At least 100 types of prescription medicine containing the active ingredient 'Valsartan' have been removed from circulation and the healthcare products agency, AEMPS, urges anyone who has been taking them to go straight to their GP and arrange to be given a substitute.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Agency for Research into Cancer (IARC) has detected a substance in Valsartan known as N-Nitrosodymethylamine (NDMA) in Valsartan which is not suitable for human consumption and can cause cancer.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TWO men in their 20s have been arrested in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for stealing a coffin out of the back of a parked hearse.

A witness saw them carrying it along the Paseo San José and called the police, who notified the funeral directors.

One of their employees accompanied officers on their search after finding that a briefcase containing makeup used in the embalming process had been taken along with the coffin.

Police went round to a home they believed to be occupied by one of the men, who turned out to be in and admitted to the theft.

Both the coffin, which was empty, and the briefcase, said to be worth around €1,500, were returned to the funeral parlour.

Three hours later, whilst hunting for the second thief, National Police were called by a witness who had spotted a young man 'in a very agitated state' and 'kicking and punching parked cars'.

This same witness said the young man and a female friend had threatened to kill him as a 'grass' over the stolen coffin.

HIGH-RANKING regional politicians from Catalunya are in the process of being moved to prisons nearer their homes as a step towards a meeting of minds between the separatists and the national government.

Spanish president Pedro Sánchez has so far arranged for former deputy leader of Catalunya, Oriol Junqueras and Parliamentary spokesman Raúl Romeva, plus the leaders of the Catalunya National Assembly (ANC) and Òmnium Cultural, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart respectively, to be moved to jails in the province of Barcelona so that their families can visit them.

Until now, they were based in the prisons in Estremera and Soto del Real (Greater Madrid region), but they will shortly be admitted to Lledoners penitenciary centre in Sant Joan de Vilatorrada (Barcelona province).

Ex-Parliamentary spokeswoman Carme Forcadell and former regional minister Dolors Bassa, who are currently in the Alcalá Meco women's prison in Madrid, will be moved to the Puig de les Basses jail in Figueres (Girona province).

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A 25-YEAR-OLD holidaymaker has died in a fall from a third-floor apartment in Magaluf, Mallorca – on exactly the same street as an Irish tourist was killed less than a month ago.

Emergency services were called out to the apartment complex on the C/ Torrenova at 04.55 this morning (Monday), where they found the young man on a patio that they described as 'very difficult to reach'.

The youth, whose nationality has not been revealed, had suffered multiple fractures and was assisted on site before being taken to Palma de Mallorca's Son Espases University Hospital in an ambulance equipped with intensive care facilities.

He later died after being admitted.

The cause of his fall is under investigation, so it is not known whether it was accidental or whether it was a case of the foolhardy stunt known as 'balconing'.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

RESIDENTS with a gross income of between €12,000 and €18,000 per year will save around €500 a year thanks to the new tax reductions announced in the recently-approved budget, the Bank of Spain calculates.

Those whose gross pay is less than €12,000 are not subject to income tax in any case and, if they pay it through retentions on invoices or via their monthly payslips, will normally receive a rebate when they file their annual declarations.

Other taxpayers with gross annual incomes of more than €18,000, subject to upper limits, will also see their dues reduce thanks to the 2018 budget if they fall into certain special categories – large families, the disabled, and those with care duties to elderly or disabled relatives or dependent children with disabilities.

In total, around 3.1 million taxpayers will benefit from the cut, according to the Bank of Spain, at a cost to the State of €1.5 billion – somewhat less than the €2.2bn cited in the budget paperwork.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com