Live News From Spain As It Happens

SPECULATION is rife on social media as to whether ex-Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas, his wife Sara Carbonero, or both, have been 'all-cleared' from their respective serious illnesses which saw them grappling their way through summer.

In May, just a month before his 38^th birthday, Iker – who is now with FC Oporto – collapsed with a heart attack whilst training and was rushed to hospital, where he was diagnosed with a myocardial infarction, or narrowing of the arteries.

Days after he had stents fitted and was pronounced out of danger, reporter Sara, 35, revealed she had been diagnosed with early-stage ovarian cancer and needed surgery.

A month after her operation, she received the welcome news that the cancer had been completely removed and that, after the corresponding follow-up treatment, she would be 'fully cured', according to her medical report.

Since then, other than reflections on the precious nature of life and posts about their two young sons, and a few photographs from the couple's summer split between their native villages in central Spain, little has been revealed about how either are coping.

Iker is determined he will not retire from football until it is forced upon him, and is due for tests in December which will tell him whether or not he is likely to go back into play.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

BANKS are no longer allowed to charge an overdraft fee in addition to non-payment interest following a landmark verdict by the Supreme Court brought by a customer of a Basque Country-based high-street entity.

Kutxabank, formerly known as the BBK and which operates all over Spain, has been rapped over the knuckles by the highest contentious court in the country for charging €30 each time a customer goes into unauthorised overdraft or his or her monthly mortgage repayment is more than a week late.

The verdict refers to a case in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of October 3 this year – the 'Gyula Kiss' case – which states that the consumer must be able to check there is no overlap between fees charged and services provided.

Another ECJ hearing of February 26, 2015 – the 'Matei case' – found a clause involving a charge for late payment of a loan or mortgage to be 'abusive', since it constitutes a 'sanction' for the 'simple risk banks run in providing credit', despite 'sanctions' already being provided for in terms of 'legal and contractual consequences'.

In other words, defaulting on a loan or mortgage eventually allows a lender to take legal action to reclaim the debt, such as seizing secured assets, after a set period of time or percentage of the credit unpaid – in the case of mortgages, no action can be taken until either the unpaid monthly instalments total at least 20% of the overall debt or a full year's worth of quotas have been missed, whichever comes first, according to an EU directive which Spain has recently incorporated into national law.

And the risk the bank takes in lending money to consumers is one that the entity itself is required to bear, protected by these legal measures, but by charging a penalty fee for late payment, in addition, means removing some or all of this risk, going against the fundamental nature of this business venture.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

IF YOU'RE hoping for a dry, sunny Hallowe'en where you might even be able to relax on the beach, the Mediterranean or the Canary Islands are where you should be – everywhere else is going to be wet and, at high altitudes and in the far north, cold, too, say weathermen.

This Friday (November 1) is a bank holiday across the country and in many other parts of Europe and Latin America for All Saints' Day, when it is traditional for families in Spain to visit their local cemeteries and dress the graves of their departed loved ones.

Most town councils throw on free buses throughout what is sometimes known as 'the Day of the Dead', and for florists, in the run-up to November 1, more trade is conducted ahead of this one day of the year than in several months at any other season, with the exception being in Catalunya – Saint George's, or Sant Jordi's Day, on April 23 sees flower and book stalls lining the streets of every major town and city.

As All Saints' Day falls on a Friday this year, many Spanish residents will take advantage of three days off work on the trot and go away for the weekend, so it is likely literally millions of cars will be out on the roads, particularly those heading for countryside holiday hotspots and the coasts.

Anyone planning to travel between Thursday night and Sunday night should allow plenty of extra time and keep abreast of traffic authority (DGT) bulletins to help them avoid the worst of the gridlocks.

Starting Wednesday, it is expected to rain heavily in Galicia, Asturias and western Castilla y León, possibly spreading to other parts of the north and north-central areas of the mainland, although the sun will be shining brightly elsewhere.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

POLLS are predicting a clear win for Pedro Sánchez's socialist (PSOE) party in the November 10 elections – although still short of a majority, meaning he would have to reach deals with Unidos Podemos at least to be able to govern.

Out of a total of 350 seats in Parliament, the likelihood of any one party gaining an outright majority has been virtually nil since before the 2015 elections, due to the increasing presence of independent outfits – until then, each election was more or less a straight contest between the 'Big Two', the left-wing PSOE and the right-wing PP.

Constant repeat elections – this will be the fourth in as many years – have occurred because of the party with the most seats falling far short of a majority and being unable to gain support from the opposition to govern, or unable or unwilling to compromise or negotiate with smaller outfits of similar values.

Given that the general view is that the latest repeat, of the April elections, could have been avoided by more flexibility on the part of the parties involved and, in particular, the PSOE as the most-voted, speculations were rife that forcing Spain to go to the polls yet again could see Sánchez's popularity plunge.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A BRITISH woman with a rare condition that means a simple turn of her head could be fatal is hoping to travel to Barcelona for pioneering surgery.

Rachel Pighills, 33, and her husband Guy, 39 have been trying to raise the €150,000 necessary for her rare condition to be operated on – only three surgeons in the world know how to do it, and one of them is in Spain.

She explains that, in layman's terms, her neck cannot withstand the weight of her head, and if she turns her head to the left, she could partially dislocate the cervical column in her neck.

If it dislocates completely, it would be 'like an internal decapitation', says Rachel, and she would 'die instantly'.

Guy says he worries all the time when he is at work.

Rachel wears a collar, but only for four hours a day, since any longer would mean losing muscle mass in her neck and head, which would exacerbate the problem.

Her condition is known as Basilar Invagination, which means the upper part of her cervical column pushes against the base of her skull.

She also has an atlantoaxial instability, or compression of the spinal cord, making it difficult to move her neck, and platybasia, a developmental deformity of the base of the skull which flattens it and pushes the vertebrae into it, and cervical medullary syndrome, which is caused by her craniocervical instability and brainstem compression.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPANISH wine is cheap; that's universally acknowledged, as any expat from the UK who's just been on a return trip will bear witness. Low prices do not always indicate poor quality, either – even if you set your top budget at €2.50, you can find some very decent wines in the supermarket that will leave you with some change, and the house wine at most restaurants, from your family-run, scruffy-but-cosy bars to your three-Michelin-starred eateries, is nearly always very drinkable.

That's largely because Spain produces so much of its own wine that it does not have to import any – and, in fact, rarely does – unlike the UK where, apart from a few experimental vineyards in Suffolk and Kent that are more of a tourist attraction than a real mass production enterprise, pretty much all wine is bought in from elsewhere.

But if the thought of paying a couple of euros for a bottle is still a bit embarrassing and you want to push the boat out to impress your mates, there's plenty of potential for it among Spanish wines. Got a spare €1,650 you're just itching to part with? Well, the top-priced wine from Spain on the Parker List comes in at about what you'd pay for a week's full-board package trip to India departing from Madrid airport, all excursions included. worth it – even if only footballers and rock stars can afford them.

The Parker List – 41 years of tasting the best wines

It's great work if you can get it, and Robert Parker has it. Based in Baltimore, USA, he's one of the world's most acclaimed wine-tasters and critics, and anything that meets with his approval automatically acquires a price tag of three or four figures in dollars, euros or pound sterling. His bi-monthly magazine, The Wine Advocate, which he founded in 1978, classifies wines on a scale of 50 to 100 points based upon its appearance, colour, aroma and 'bouquet', flavour, finish and potential or actual global acclaim.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

IT'S NOT just an easy destination for European holidaymakers seeking sunshine and superb beaches – although it is that as well, we can't deny it. But Spain is home to more UNESCO heritage sites than anywhere else in the world besides China and Italy, making it the perfect spot for culture vultures and ideal for exploring at any time of the year, not just the height of summer.

Now is a good time to visit one of its UNESCO sites – the centre of San Cristóbal de la Laguna in Tenerife, the original capital of the island and the first of Spain's colonial cities without a boundary wall that retains its ancient design almost intact.

When it was founded by the Spanish colonisers, its location was deliberate: water was abundant thanks to the now-defunct lagoon which gave the city its name, it was far enough from the coast to be safe from pirates, and tucked in the Aguere valley, right on the edge of the Anaga mountain, it was protected enough that it did not need a fortress built around it.

Built in 1496, it would become a UNESCO heritage site 503 years later, and now, the city council is organising a series of exhibitions, guided tours and other events to mark the 20^th anniversary of this prestigious title.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

LITTLE has been mentioned in the past year about the Europe-wide plan to stop turning the clocks back in winter – and, once again, from this weekend, it will get dark an hour earlier in Spain and on the rest of the continent.

Europeans who took part in an online survey voted overwhelmingly for more daylight – over 90%, especially in more northern countries where the skies are black in the mornings and residents go home from school and work in the dark, but also in Spain, where it was felt that longer hours of light would be beneficial for the tourism industry.

The European Commission decided that March 2019 would be the last compulsory hour change among the 28 member States of the Union, but as yet, no single country has passed legislation opting to do away with the twice-yearly clock change.

This said, European Parliament is aiming for the twice-annual clock adjustment to be scrapped from the year 2021, so it could be that within two or three years, nobody will have to worry about it again except when they travel outside the continent.

A leading neurologist has warned of the health effects Saturday's change will bring and how to alleviate them – although these are only temporary.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A TOTAL of 635 refugees will be arriving in Spain thanks to an agreement between president Pedro Sánchez and the city council, with 200 of them due to be sent over imminently.

The Secretary of State for Migration (SEM) visited the seven centres proposed by Madrid's local government on Sunday, and has approved four of them.

Red Cross workers will join the team in helping the arrivals with their initial basic needs and setting up a programme to aid them in their quest for a new life in Spain.

The Nuestra Señora de la Paloma residence in the Madrid satellite town of Cercedilla is ready to move into, the SEM said, meaning the first 200 can be taken in straight away.

Madrid is currently working on making the Red Cross III Pavilion on the Avenida de Portugal suitable for living in, so it can house another 85 refugees.

Two disused primary schools have been signed off – the Antonio Gil Alberdi in the suburb of Moratalaz, and the Manuel Bartolomé Cossío in the central Latina neighbourhood - but the government says they will need a series of renovations first.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

EUROPE'S most expensive honey – and the second-priciest in the world – comes from a village in the land-locked centre-northern province of León and will be presented at the International Organic Fair in Sweden next month.

It is created via the cooperative in the village of Camponaraya, in the district of El Bierzo, and even has a waiting list – given that it is certified as Halal, meaning it is suitable for retail in Muslim communities, it has buyers throughout the Arab world and demand has far outstripped supply.

Orders taken now cannot be met until at least the beginning of 2020.

Its price tag of €150 per kilo means a standard supermarket-sized jar could come in at between €30 and €37.50, or around 10 times the cost of mass-produced honey found on the shelves.

But when considering how much work is involved in honey production, even at €150 a kilo, bees should be demanding a pay rise.

To create a kilo, nectar from over a million flowers is needed, so each standard jar bought from supermarket shelves contains the fluid from about 200,000 to 250,000 flowers, and to collect enough, bees need to travel around 7,000 kilometres (4,350 miles) – the equivalent of from Valencia to Miami or from the Costa del Sol to India.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

DICTATOR General Francisco Franco's body could be removed from the war memorial and mausoleum known as the Valle de los Caídos as early as this Thursday – despite the opposition criticising president Pedro Sánchez for exhuming the fascist leader ahead of the official national electoral campaign period.

Franco, who died in 1975 after having maintained the country in the iron grip of a far-right dictatorship since he won the Civil War in 1939, was buried in the Valle de los Caídos ('Valley of the Fallen') in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Greater Madrid region – but in recent years, his resting place has caused major controversy among those who remember life during his reign and whose relatives perished or suffered at his hands.

The mausoleum and basilica is supposedly a burial ground for the dictator's victims, and their families do not consider it appropriate that they should be resting in the same grounds as the man who brought about their deaths.

Now Franco's family has lost its appeals against his exhumation and transfer, the late leader will be lifted from his current site this Thursday, October 24, in their presence and moved to the cemetery serving the Madrid towns of Mingorrubio and El Pardo, from 10.30 in the morning.

Spain's government had set a deadline for his transfer of October 25, before the cabinet knew they would be putting their jobs on the line again in the fourth general election in as many years on November 10.

State operators, the funeral directors commissioned by the government, and justice minister Dolores Delgado acting as notary will be present, as well as Franco's family, who have confirmed they will be attending the reburial despite their objections to not being given a choice as to where he will be interred.

The Franco family wanted him to be buried in Madrid's Almudena Cathedral, but as this is a public place of worship and a tourist attraction, the Supreme Court ruled against it.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

WHEREVER you are in the world, you will probably have seen pink loops somewhere in the run-up to this weekend, and may have watched a sponsored run cut through your town with everyone dressed in pink – yesterday (Saturday) was International Breast Cancer Day and, in Spain, it had made headline news on almost every level.

Locally, because of fun runs and other activities to raise money for breast cancer care and research, and nationally, with everyone from sports teams to shopkeepers wearing pink.

Real Madrid Basket, defending champions of the Endesa League, played Galicia-based team Obradoiro yesterday in the fifth day of the ACB – and Obradoiro wore pink versions of their uniforms for the game, before signing them and putting them up for auction with all proceeds going to the Association Against Metastatic Breast Cancer.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

DRIVERS may soon have no need to carry their licences with them when they are in the car – although they can only escape doing so if they have a mobile phone on which they can download Apps.

At present, the law that requires motorists to have their driving licences on their person when they are at the wheel carries a €100 fine for failing to do so and 'offenders' are statistically more likely to be women – each time you use a different handbag or switch purses, you have to remember to put your licence in your new one, whilst men are more likely to keep theirs in the wallet they use all the time no matter what colour shoes or outfit they are wearing.

Failing to renew a licence when it is due – every 10 years for a Spanish one up to age 70, then every five years thereafter – and being caught with an out-of-date version can lead to fines of €200, whilst having a licence that is not valid at all can cost €500.

This is something British nationals, especially on holiday, will have to bear in mind after Brexit, since their UK licences will no longer be valid for driving in Europe and they will need to obtain an international motoring permit from the post office before each trip and, if they intend to live permanently in Spain or any other EU country, will need to exchange their licences for one issued by the State they reside in.

Fines are even stiffer if the person not possess a licence, either through having been banned, having had their permit withdrawn on health grounds, or not yet having passed a test, and can even lead to a suspended jail sentence on top.

But Spain's General Directorate of Traffic (DGT), part of the ministry of public works, has announced a new App is being developed which lets drivers show their licences to police on their screens if they are stopped.

The App also allows for paying fines, checking points totals – in Spain, drivers start off with 12 points and lose a set number for offences, leading to a ban when they have wiped out all 12; the reverse of the UK system – access traffic statistics, check warnings, traffic alerts and the state of roads, carry out the most common types of administrative transactions, and access and amend their personal data where necessary.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A COLD front is set to hit Spain this weekend and could cause torrential rain in the Mediterranean on Monday and Tuesday, according to the State meteorological agency, AEMET.

After an extra-long summer and with temperatures still exceptionally mild for mid-October, weather experts have said another 'Atmospheric Depression at High Levels', or DANA, is heading across the Atlantic.

“A new displacement of polar air will bring rain and a significant drop in temperatures,” according to reports.

This will mainly affect the north, starting from Galicia – the nearest region to the American continent and the one which is always first to be hit by weather phenomena crossing the Atlantic – and spreading over the weekend to Castilla y León, Asturias, Cantabria, La Rioja and Navarra, before stretching down the western third of the mainland to Extremadura, which borders Portugal.

“Over the weekend, rain will remain intermittent across the centre and north of the mainland, with the possible formation of a DANA at the start of the week,” AEMET says on Twitter.

“Between Monday and Tuesday, a new DANA will cross the Mediterranean area, including the Balearic Islands.

“If a pocket of cold air clashes with sea winds, rainfall could be intense.”

One of AEMET's Twitter posts about forthcoming weather conditions reads: “You'll need your big coat.”

Often referred to as a gota fría, which translates as 'cold drop', a DANA is not necessarily 'cold' but tends to bring extremely heavy downpours.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

ASTRONAUT-TURNED-SCIENCE minister Pedro Duque has revealed a hidden talent which has gone viral on Twitter: He speaks fluent Russian.

Duque, who inspired children all over Spain to want to be spacemen and spacewomen when he appeared on their TV screens 15 years ago and was the first Spaniard to travel to the moon, was interviewed on Russian television channel Rossiya 24 about the political crisis in Catalunya sparked by the Supreme Court verdict on the regional politicians involved in the disputed independence referendum of October 1, 2017.

High-profile party leaders and ministers including Oriol Junqueras and Dolors Bassa have been sentenced to between 10 and 13 years in prison, and a European arrest warrant for deposed regional president Carles Puigdemont – who has lived in Waterloo, Belgium for two years – has been revived.

In response, protests have taken over major cities and large towns in the north-eastern region, some of which – led by radicals such as the CDR and dubbed a 'Democratic Tsunami' – have turned into riots with violence, vandalism and arson.

Rossiya 24 is one of the dozens of TV channels worldwide reporting on the growing unrest, and Pedro Duque spoke to them because his Russian is fluent – probably from his days in space, given the huge eastern nation's major rôle in these missions.

“Spain has a consolidated democracy, one of the best in the world,” Duque told a reporter on Rossiya 24's programme Vesti News.

“We need to start a new phase for everyone's sake.

“The quality of Spanish institutions guarantees we can all live together safely and legally.”

Duque tweeted a video of his slot on Vesti News, along with a transcript of what he said in Russian, and a translation of it into Spanish.

Social media users were stunned, as the minister's firm grasp of the Russian language is not something widely known.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A GROWING number of Spaniards are opting to cut meat out of their diets – as many as one in 10, and particularly women and young people, according to recent research.

Consultancy firm Lantern's report, The Green Revolution: Understanding the veggie revolution shows that 0.5% of the Spanish population follows an exclusively vegan diet, 1.5% vegetarian – without meat or fish – and 7.9% refer to themselves as 'flexitarians', meaning they are basically vegetarian but very occasionally eat meat or fish.

No figures are available for those who identify as 'pescatarian' – who eat fish but not meat – possibly because until recently they would have been considered vegetarian, although the definition is now changing and a 'true' vegetarian is said to be someone who does not eat fish either.

In total, including 'flexitarians', those who never or very rarely eat meat account for 9.9% of the Spanish population, the 'never' totalling 2%.

The Lantern report says that over last year, meat-free diets increased by 27% in Spain, and nowadays, 817,000 Spaniards do not eat meat at all.

Three main reasons are behind the decision to stop eating meat or to go completely vegetarian or vegan, Lantern says.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

THE BIGGEST digital library on earth in the Spanish language adapted for the blind has just opened, with over 64,000 works accessible to anyone in the world with serious vision problems.

According to the Spanish National Organisation for the Blind, ONCE – which runs a daily lottery to raise funds for the disabled – a total of 285 million people worldwide are either completely non-sighted or have very serious vision problems that practically impede their eyesight at all bar the most functional levels, such as recognising the position of large objects when navigating their homes.

This translates to 4% of the planet's population – a significant minority – all of whom could potentially read the contents of any published text on earth as long as they understood Spanish, the third-most spoken and read language globally after Mandarin Chinese and Hindi in terms of numbers and of native speakers, the second-most in terms of distribution, and the fourth-most when counting non-native speakers.

Whilst English is the most widely-distributed language and the third-most spoken, it is the only language on earth which has more non-native than mother-tongue speakers, so Spanish is practically level-pegging.

Huge numbers of blind people in the USA will be able to access the library set up by the ONCE, given that native speakers of Spanish alone, not counting those who have learnt it, total over 50 million – more than in Spain.

In total, the library has 34,000 texts in DAISY (Digitally Accessible Information System) format, 27,000 in Braille and 3,000 in sounds.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPANISH-MADE technology will be used for the next mission to Mars, planned for 2020, in what will be a huge year for national science – especially for researchers based in Valladolid (Castilla y León).

Two unmanned missions – one by NASA and another by the European Space Agency (ESA) will set off for the red planet next year from around July, and will take about seven or eight months to complete, using a monitored crewless craft which will analyse the surface of Mars in depth.

The idea is to see whether it could ever have been inhabited at any time, or if it could potentially house life.

Spain's rôle will be significant – enough to put it on the world science map, according to Dr Fernando Rull, retired dean of Valladolid University and founder of the Raman Applied Cosmogeochemical and Astrobiological Infrared Spectroscope (ERICA).

He has come out of retirement to join the team, and his star invention will play a major part.

ERICA's participation will involve creating calibration cards that form part of the SuperCam built into the space vehicle – a task that has already taken three years to develop.

The SuperCam allows for highly-detailed analysis of the planet's surface in a very simple operation.

Spain's part in the ESA mission will involve creating a spectometer to examine material found beneath the planet's crust in a bid to seek out possible traces of life.

For the NASA mission, the project carried out in Valladolid started between the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 when Dr Rull approached two US operations with his ideas, and a contract was signed in 2015 to the value of around US$2 billion (about €1.81bn).

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A GLOBAL study on anti-depressant use in which Spain took part has shown that these highly-prescribed drugs are, in fact, safe, even long-term.

Published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, the investigation is 'without doubt the most conclusive' into the long-term safety of various types of anti-depressants, including tricyclic and SSRI medication, according to Dr Eduard Vieta, scientific director of Spain's Mental Health Research Centre (CIBERSAM).

“It shows that, properly used, they provide much greater benefit than risk,” Dr Vieta reveals.

A total of 4,471 case studies and 252 full-text articles with data from 1,012 individual effect-size estimates were used in 45 meta-analyses – or reviews of existing research reports – albeit some of the newer drugs available, such as the Danish-created Vortioxetine, retailed as Brintellix, did not have enough information to hand at present.

But the other most popular types, such as Prozac, Seroxat and Sertraline are said to be 'very safe' with 'no convincing evidence' of major health risks.

According to the JAMA Psychiatry report, typical adverse effects include an increased suicide risk in patients aged 18 and under, pre-term births or autism spectrum disorders in children whose mothers or fathers had taken SSRIs before or during conception or pregnancy, sexual dysfunction, bone fractures caused by acquired osteoporosis, and upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

THE LINES between life and work sometimes become blurred, but rarely to such an extent as at Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron hospital: seven nurses in the neo-natal unit are all pregnant.

A photo of the expectant mums, along with their department head – who is, fortunately, immune, being a man – has gone viral since it was posted on Twitter and staff who are not planning to have kids any time soon have joked about identifying the chair their colleagues have been sitting on in order to avoid it.

“We've found the solution to Spain's falling birth rate,” the post, on neo-natal boss Dr Félix Castillos' Twitter page, reads.

“At the moment, it's just a transmitted outbreak with a known cause and seven cases identified.

“But we're hoping it'll become an epidemic. The only problem will be covering for them all at once.”

In keeping with Spain's high average age for becoming a mother, all bar one of the seven are between mid-30s and mid-40s.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TENNIS ace Rafa Nadal has hinted that his retirement from the sport may be earlier than expected – at least, for fans who have always suspected he would carry on forever.

Now aged 33, the Mallorca-born star has announced – nine days before his planned wedding to high-school sweetheart Meri Perelló – that he is 'in the final phase' of his career on the court, although intends to stay in the world of tennis as far as he can afterwards.

His eponymous sports academy in his and Meri's home town of Manacor, where some of the best young tennis players in Spain are currently training, is Rafa's 'great project for the future'.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

LOW-COST carrier Ryanair has announced new routes to and from Spanish airports for next summer, although some of these will be open within a few weeks.

The earliest new links to go live will be from Valencia, with a direct connection to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev taking off within a few weeks and running twice-weekly year-round.

Although already in place in and out of high season, the route from Valencia to the Portuguese capital of Lisbon – a flight of just under an hour and a half – will increase in frequency to three times a week from summer 2020.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

OVER 33,400 British tourists in Spain stranded by the Thomas Cook collapse were flown home by Sunday – the last day of 'Operation Matterhorn', the UK's biggest repatriation exercise since World War II – according to public works and transport minister José Luis Ábalos.

Congratulating his own government for their 'rapid reaction' to the 178-year-old tour operator's going out of business overnight, Ábalos said Spanish authorities 'deserved praise' for its swift response, 'especially as we only have a caretaker government'.

British holidaymakers stuck in Spain – mostly in Andalucía, Catalunya, the Comunidad Valenciana and the islands – were flown home between September 23 and October 6 on 177 planes chartered by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Ábalos says the new bill of law covering measures to protect Spanish tourism businesses in the wake of Thomas Cook's sudden closure will be brought to the table on Friday this week at the next Council of Ministers.

A total of 13 steps include extending the 50% Social Security contribution discounts in the sector to run from October to March inclusive, providing incentives for firms to offer permanent year-round jobs, and financial help for companies, such as hotels, who have suffered major losses due to not being paid by the British tour operator.

Reductions in and exemptions from airport tax for certain routes and carriers are on the cards to encourage more flights to Spain to fill the gap left by Thomas Cook, and extra funding to shore up and promote the tourism industry.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

Electric scooter users and cyclists will soon be prohibited from both riding and parking on pavements under a new set of regulations being prepared by the Traffic Department.

The new rules were outlined today by Pere Navarro, Director General of Traffic, in his official presentation of the latest campaign on behalf of wheelchair users -  "I can't go here, I can't fit through there" (Por aquí no puedo, por aquí no paso) promoted by the Association of People with Spinal Injuries & Severe Physical Disabilities (ASPAYM).

"Pavements are for pedestrians, wheelchair users and for people pushing prams and pushchairs," he said "and our intention is that vehicles such as scooters will not use them in any capacity."

"Current regulations prevent scooters and bikes traveling along the pavements, but we also want to prevent them parking there too," he added.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

New EU rules just announced, and due to come into force in April 2021, will ensure that household appliances will last longer and use less water and electricity.

The legislation has been prompted by complaints from consumers across Europe frustrated by machines that break down when they are just out of warranty - the planned obsolescence controversy.

Under the EU's new standards, manufacturers will have to make spare parts, such as door gaskets and thermostats, available for a period of up to ten years.

But campaigners for the "right to repair" say they do not go far enough as only professionals - not consumers - will be able carry out the repairs. Campaigners say individual consumers should also be allowed to buy spares and mend their own machines. But manufacturers said this would raise questions about risk and liability.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

Stargazers are busy preparing for the annual autumnal meteor showers known as the October Draconids, which occur as the periodic comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner passes by Earth.

From Monday 7th until Thursday 10th October the meteor showers named after the constellation Draco, where they seemingly come from, will be clearly visible from Earth. The Draconids are best viewed after sunset in an area with a clear dark sky and little light pollution.

The Draconids occur when particles of dust and rock left behind by the comet in its orbit enter the Earth's atmosphere and evaporate. These particles create a luminous effect, making it possible to see these meteor "showers". 

They will be visible in the whole northern hemisphere and in the Tropics.

The most intense Draconid meteor showers in recent history occurred in 1933 and 1946 when thousands of meteors per hour were recorded as the Earth ploughed through particularly dense streams of comet debris. Although the Draconids occurs every October, it is usually difficult to know just how active each year's meteor shower will be.

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For over six months now catching any fish in the Strait of Gibraltar has become extremely difficult. On hurling their nets into the waters with the hopes of catching sole, bream or cuttlefish, the only catch they have managed to haul in was worrying amounts of brown algae. However, this is no ordinary algae. Rugulopterix Okamurae has set its eyes on the Southern coast of Spain and it is attacking with unseen malice. The entire marine biodiversity is under threat as are the beaches where it is quickly spreading.

Representing close to 200 ships from Conil, Tarifa, Barbate and Algeciras, Nicolás Fernandez, the secretary of the Cádiz Federation for Fisherman’s Associations claims “it is an environmental catastrophe.” In agreement is Pedro Benzal, president of the Estepona Fisherman’s Association who says “I have never seen anything like it.”

It is the trammel net ships that have been affected the most. According to the fisherman, they have lost practically 100% of their catches. Trawlers, however, have managed to haul in at most 50 % of theirs. It was back in 2015 when this invasive species was first noticed off the coast of Ceuta in North Africa. In little under 4 years, it has managed to spread as far as Cadiz, covering its entire coast and stretching as far as Huelva and Marbella on the Atlantic coast. Tarifa’s mayor, biologist Francisco Ruiz Giráldez, noticed the algae was becoming a real problem 18 months ago. He says “it’s relentlessly taking over the entire seabed of the Strait”. The algae currently dominate up to 50% of the space between 5 and 25 metres of depth.

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The Prado Museum has announced that 'El Cid', a spectacular oil on canvas by French artist Rosa Bonheur, which has been in storage at the museum for over 100 years, is now finally on show.

The painting was a gift to the Prado from Ernest Gambart in 1879, the same year the work was completed, but it has remained in storage ever since, except for a brief outing in 2017 as part of a temporary exhibition.

A Twitter campaign calling for the work to be put on show was launched by graphic designer Luis Pastor at the end of December 2017. Thousands of Twitter users joined his campaign using the hashtag '#UnaRosaParaElPrado' which reached its peak popularity last July. 

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The acting Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, has announced that the Government has approved the extension of 50% discounts in Social Security contributions for fixed contracts in the months of October and December after the collapse of tour operator Thomas Cook.

This measure, designed to promote employment, will be extended to all new contracts in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, will take be tabled at tomorrow's cabinet meeting, which aims to address problems arising from the collapse of the Thomas Cook travel empire.

These discounts are already in place for the months of February, March and November, and with this proposal the government seeks to make an extension to incentivise continous employment in seasonal occupations.

"There will be more employment measures to come," said Maroto, who stressed the importance of keeping tourist sector workers in employment after the fall of the tour company.

Another matter to be discussed tomorrow will be the need to talk to other airlines "as soon as possible" in order to mobilize the volume of visitors that has been lost as a result of the Thomas Cook crisis.

On Tuesday, after meeting with the Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce for the Canary Islands, Yaiza Castilla, British airline Jet2.com and its tour operator Jet2holidays announced that they will offer 168,000 additional seats between the United Kingdom and the Canary Islands after the recent bankruptcy of Thomas Cook.

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The mayor of Valencia, Joan Ribó, has approved plans to build a new 'adventure park' as part of the established Bioparc complex. Taking its inspiration from the tropical rainforests of Cambodia, the new park will offer canyoning, abseiling, climbing and a multitude of slides, alongside a park and an area to bathe and relax.

The project - proposed by Rain Forest, the company that currently manages Bioparc - will aim to recreate the temples of Angkor on Spain's Mediterranean coast. The head of Rain Forest, José Maldonado, said the project would be aiming for a "very natural" look, with "semi-ruined" buildings like the famous temples in Cambodia.

For his part, Ribó expressed his "satisfaction" with the initiaive, believing it to be "an important step" towards "completing the range of attractions for familes and young people in the city". He said it would be "a very novel experience" that would put the finishing touch to the Parque de Cabecera area of the city and to Bioparc in particular, and promised to let the project go "full steam ahead" and that he would request a "small land re-classification" in order to be able to present it "without delay" to the Generalitat". 

Rain Forest's Maldonado underlined the importance for him of developing a project that would be "interesting for the people of the city, both environmentally friendly and cultural" while at the same time being "viable", given that over €25 million of private investment is involved. 

He believes this adventure park will complete the "circle of emotional, intuitive and artistic vision of nature that is at the heart of Bioparc with a more active and entertaining vision of nature." We will be bringing an "attractive, fun, unique and novel area" to Valencia, he added. 

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In a small village in the province of Valladolid, Castile and León, in the late 1950s, the combined ingenuity of a young veterinary surgeon and a doctor on the verge of retirement made it possible for a baby weighing less than 900 grams to survive, against all odds, thanks to the makeshift incubator they improvised together.

That baby was Eugenio Ampudia, a renowned conceptual artist, who came to the world "suddenly", in the middle of a heavy snowfall, on January 16th 1959 in Melgar de Arriba, a village of just 600 inhabitants.

Ampudia is preparing to tell his story at the inaugural session of the XXVII Congress of Neonatology and Perinatal Medicine, which will be held from October 2nd to 4th in Madrid, to give hope to parents who face the anguish of a premature child.

Eugenio was the son of a young vet who had come to the village from the city a few months earlier to open a practice, and who teamed up with the local doctor, Cesidio Villalba, to build a makeshift incubator in his house, "half equine, half human", with "whatever they had to hand".

An insulated room with a cot surrounded by glass bottles filled with hot water that kept the room at a constant temperature was the "small R&D project" that the two medical professionals devised, trying to solve problems as they arose, "without an instruction manual".

"The main thing about this story is that they combined their knowledge of human medicine and veterinary medicine, pooled their information and built something that worked at a time when such a premature baby had little chance of survival and much less so in a remote village."

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The International Jazz Festival of Granada celebrates its 40th anniversary next month with a programme that will pay special tribute to the late Celia Mur and will feature stars like Lizz Wright, Charles McPherson and Fred Hersch.

Granada will become the jazz centre of Europe this autumn thanks to a programme "full of soul" that will premiere at the Federico García Lorca Centre and has been designed to commemorate forty years of the festival

Over the past four decades, figures such as Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, Tete Montoliu, Dizzy Gillespie, Wayne Shorter, Diana Krall, Bebo and Chucho Valdés, Stanley Clarke, among others, have passed through the Jazz Festival.

The "exquisitely intellectual" Fred Hersch Trio will kick off the festival on November 1st, bringing their experience of more than three decades of performance, 40 recordings and countless awards such as "Best Jazz Group" by DownBeat Critics Poll.

The director of the Festival, Mariché Huertas, and the Councillor for Culture, Lucía Garrido, today officially presented the programme that also includes performances and activities "in parallel", in which more than 80 establishments participate.

This year's festival will pay "deserved tribute" to Celia Mur, one of Spain's biggest jazz stars who passed away recently, with a special concert scheduled for November 2nd and led by the guitarist and director of the Big Band from Granada, Kiko Aguado.

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SPAIN is the world's second from top in foreign visitor numbers, the second in terms of tourism income volume and the most competitive holiday destination on the planet, according to the United Nations' World Tourism Organisation.

For numbers, Spain continues a trend it set around five years ago in coming second to France but above the USA, with an average of 82.7 million visitors from abroad annually – nearly double its resident population.

France is ahead with 89.4 million and the USA, despite its much larger land mass, is slightly behind on 79.6 million.

China, Italy, Turkey, México, Germany, Thailand and the UK make up the rest of the top 10.

With 1.4 billion people on earth having gone abroad for a break in the last full year – from 2017 to 2018 – a clear upward trend has been reported, with 5% more people taking holidays out of their resident country than in the 2016-2017 period.

And Spain's holidaymaker numbers have rocketed: at the start of the financial crisis, in 2009, and at a time when the country was a far-from-competitive destination compared with much cheaper tourism hotspots relatively close by, annual foreign visitors did not greatly exceed the population, coming in at 52 million, compared with the USA's 54.9 million.

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SANTANDER Bank boss Ana Botín has been named the 'world's most powerful woman' by Fortune magazine in its latest annual '50 Most Influential Women', where she shares the podium with GlaxoSmithKline CEO Emma Walmsley and Gree Electric Appliances chair Dong Mingzhu.

Ana Botín has returned to her number one spot after dropping to second a year ago, with Fortune commenting on the 'progress' she has made since taking over as chairwoman in 2014 in 'reinforcing the bank's capital', 'increasing customer loyalty' – with the client base having grown by 40% since 2015 – and 'digitalising platforms', with the number of online banking customers having risen to 32 million by the end of 2018.

Fortune refers to the 'solid global effort' made by Santander bank in 2018, with a turnover of over €48.4 billion.

“This growth has been achieved largely thanks to the bank's activity in Latin America – mainly Brazil and México – and has been supported by a reduction in costs in Europe,” the article states.

Ana Botín's being named as 'world's most powerful woman' comes on the fifth anniversary, almost to the date, of her taking over running Banco Santander, which broke into the UK in 2004 by buying up Abbey National.

According to Sra Botín herself in a presentation for shareholders this week in London, profits have risen by 87% in these five years, reaching €7.8bn, whilst its profitability on the RoTE scale has risen by 210 points, to 11.7%.

Additionally, Santander group has reinforced its level of CET1 Fully Loaded capital to 11.3%, an increase of 350 points, also in the last five years.

The '50 Most Influential Women' list has become a barometer for female influence in business and major corporations – according to Fortune, only 14 women were at the head of the boardroom table in the largest 500 companies in the world, although this is a slight increase on the previous year, when there were just 12.

A third of the women in the top 50 are new entries this year, having been placed at the head of large multi-national firms, and include Jessica Tan, CEO of China's Ping An Group; Ilham Kadri, CEO of the Belgian chemical company Solvay, and Emma Fitzgerald of Puma Energy, one of the biggest companies in Singapore.

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