Live News From Spain As It Happens

2020 has been an unusual year in many respects, with most of us wondering what on earth could happen next. Well, the next peculiarity 2020 has in store for us will certainly be visible from earth, but will actually occur in the night sky on October 31st - a Halloween blue moon.

A blue moon is a second full moon in a calendar month and it occurs about seven times every 19 years. The last time this phenomenon occurred on Halloween was in 1944 and according to NASA, the next Halloween blue moon won't be seen until 2039.

Although it's called a blue moon, the moon doesn't actually look blue. On the rare occasions that the moon does show a blue tinge, it's usually due to "particles thrown into the atmosphere by natural catastrophes" like volcanic eruptions says NASA.

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As the All Saints bank holiday weekend kicks off, the Spanish government has taken steps to try to slow the second wave of coronavirus contagion by restricting movement around the country.

Spain currently has over 40 million people in lockdown and a new daily record in the number of COVID-19 cases registered, although many would argue that these figures are due, in large part, to the enormous rise in the number of tests being done.

The latest State of Emergency declared by the government on October 25th limits travel around the country in an attempt to avoid, above all, the usual huge exodus from major cities like Madrid and Barcelona to coastal areas for the long weekend.

Whilst Madrid is only applying perimeter closure over the bank holiday weekend, all the other regions of Spain (with the exception of Galicia, Extremadura, the Canary and Balearic islands) have announced perimeter closures until November 9th. The Catalonian regional government announced the perimeter closure of the autonomous region for a full 15 days and stricter local lockdown over the weekend. These measures come into force at 6am on Friday 30th October, with 6am on Monday 2nd November being considered the end of the weekend.

Travel outside the regional perimeters will only be permitted in the following circumstances:

- To attend health or medical centres.
- To fulfil employment, professional, business, institutional or legal obligations.
- To attend universities or schools, including nursery schools.
- To return to usual or family residence.
- To care for elderly people, children, dependents, vulnerable people or people with disabilities.
- To go to banks or insurance companies or to go to petrol stations in adjacent municipalities.
- To attend urgent or compulsory appointments at public institutions, courts or notary offices.
- To renew licences or official documents or to carry out urgent administrative procedures.
- To sit exams or official tests that cannot be postponed.
- Due to force majeure or an emergency.

People crossing regional borders for one of the reasons listed above need to have a document justifying their travel. Regional authorities can provide the necessary documentation, which needs to show the person's name, their DNI/NIE, the reason for their travel and their origin and destination addresses. If a person crosses a regional border in order to fill up with petrol, it's imperative to keep the receipt showing the time and date in case of border controls. In order to prove one's normal residence, in the case of those returning home, a certificate of residency or 'empadronamiento' available from the local town hall is sufficient.

Healthcare
In order to attend health centres or hospitals, people will need a doctor's certificate, a referral note, and in the case of a pharmacy visit, people will have to show a receipt for medication purchased.

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IF YOU speak Spanish, you're in good company: One in every 15 people on earth do so, according to the Cervantes Institute.

The global Spanish language standards entity, based in Madrid, revealed this week that as at the beginning of 2020, the national tongue of Spain and much of Latin America had a total of 585 million speakers.

They include those who have had to learn it, or whose main native language is not Spanish, as well as mother-tongue speakers – and, as has been the case for a very long time, the country with the most native Spanish speakers is the USA, a nation where it is not even the official language.

Of the 7.5% of the world's population who speak Spanish, a total of 489 million were born in a country where it is the official language, and the remaining 74 million are either learning it or are already fluent in it.

The latter covers those who have studied and learnt Spanish to a fluent level as well as those whose parents or grandparents are from a Spanish-speaking country but who, themselves, were born in a country where it is not the official tongue, and who have grown up using the language with their family.

Numbers are continuing to increase, says the Cervantes Institute, which says those learning or perfecting their existing knowledge of the language have multiplied by 60% in the last decade and by half a million in the last year, to a total of 22.4 million.

Nine in 10 people who are studying Spanish, either officially for a qualification such as a degree or Cervantes Institute exam, or informally for pleasure, for work or because they live in or have second homes in a Spanish-speaking country, are based in, or come from, the USA, Brazil and European Union countries.

Spanish is the second-most spoken native language on earth in terms of numbers after Mandarin Chinese and the most-spoken in terms of distribution or number of countries.

Around 20 years ago, it was the third-most spoken native tongue on earth after Mandarin Chinese and Hindi.

In terms of actual speakers, Spanish is the third-most used and Mandarin Chinese is the second, since English has the peculiarity of being the only language on the planet with more non-native than native speakers – even though it is the most-used tongue worldwide, it only comes third in numbers of mother-tongue users.

Overall, numbers of Spanish-speakers have risen by five million in a year.

By the year 2068, it is expected that 724 million people in the world – one in 10 of the current population – will be speaking Spanish either as a foreign language or a native tongue.

Coordinator of this year's Cervantes Institute report, David Fernández Vítores, says after the next 50 years or so, it is likely the numbers of Spanish-speakers will start to level off.

“It's a trend that has been gradually occurring for many years: The natural growth of Spanish-speaking countries is slowing down,” he says.

“The conclusion is that, if we want Spanish to continue to be an influential language, we cannot expect demographics alone to be a sufficient factor.

“One always talks about the 'law of third-generation immigrants'. For example, a grandchild of Italian immigrants in the USA no longer has any real desire to speak Italian, meaning the family language eventually dies out.

“At the moment, it's still quite possible that the grandchild of Hispanic immigrants in the USA will break this trend, because it seems third-generation Hispanic migrants are still interested in being able to converse in Spanish.

“There's already a critical mass: The USA has Spanish-language TV, music, information, news, and there's work for Spanish-speakers.”

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LIVING in Spain means getting so used to eating late at night that, wherever else you travel in the world, restaurants seem to shut too early – and holidaymakers on Spanish soil quickly learn not to get hungry before at least 20.00 in the evening.

But a temporary 'curfew' across the country, with everyone having to be indoors by midnight or, in some regions, as early as 22.00, means the usual dead-of-night dining is off the agenda.

Eateries throughout Spain are worried this will mean a drop in custom, except for those based in cosmopolitan areas with an international clientèle who turn up for their meals out at 19.00 or 20.00, or even as early as 18.00.

So they have started a nationwide campaign urging Spaniards – and long-term expats who have got used to national habits – to 'dine like they do in Europe'.

The association Hostelería de España ('Spain Hotel and Catering') wants people to carry on eating out in the evening, but to start earlier – typically at 20.00 rather than the usual 21.00 or 22.00.

This is especially the case in regions such as Castilla y León and Catalunya, where the 'curfew' starts at 22.00 and, in the former, a multiple mix of European residents is rare, but will also help keep restaurants open in regions such as the Comunidad Valenciana on the east coast, where the 'curfew' starts at midnight and where literally hundreds of nationalities all live together in the same communities.

About 270,000 restaurants throughout the country have joined the 'Go European' campaign and are brandishing the hashtags #AdelantaTuCena ('bring your evening meal forward') and #SalvemosLaHosteleria ('Save the Restaurant Industry'), with a logo featuring a plate-cover bearing the time of 20.00.

One of Spain's most useful quirks is the fact that members of the public can often, during 'normal' times, waltz into a restaurant at 23.30 and still find a table free and the kitchen in full operation if they feel peckish – what other countries would call a 'midnight feast' is merely a 'slightly-later-than-usual-dinner' for Spanish consumers – but the entire country is having to suddenly change its habits, at least for the next fortnight.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN'S government has U-turned on the nationwide curfew and announced it will only be enforced until Sunday, November 8 inclusive – after which it will be up to regional authorities to decide whether to prolong it.

From Sunday (October 25), when another 'state of alarm' was declared, the whole country – except the Canary Islands – was ordered to restrict movement overnight, but given some freedom as to the exact hours.

The 'core' times during which nobody is allowed off their home premises except for medical or care issues or emergencies are 23.00 to 06.00, but regional governments are permitted to move both boundaries an hour in either direction.

Some of the worst-affected parts of Spain, such as Aragón, the Basque Country, La Rioja, Navarra and Catalunya are likely to stretch the curfew hours out – possibly to the extreme of from 22.00 to 07.00 – although others with far better epidemiological data are expected to stick to the minimum allowed, from midnight to 05.00.

Madrid, although one of the hardest-hit areas – and having already banned residents from leaving 32 suburbs, neighbourhoods and towns – has set its overnight lock-up between midnight and 06.00 and has not yet decided whether to prevent travel into or out of the region.

Most coastal provinces continue to be free from fresh restrictions other than a ban on overnight movement for the next two weeks.

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PROVING he has more than one string to his racquet, tennis ace Rafael Nadal has just come sixth in the Balearic Professional Golf Championships in a gruelling 54-hole tournament won by Sebastián García.

The Manacor-born star – who recently scooped up his 13^th Paris Open title at Roland Garros, his 20^th Grand Slam win – handed in his card with 74 strokes today (Monday), the third day of the championship, out of a total of 225.

This was just 10 strokes more than García, and on Saturday and Sunday, Nadal's 72-stroke round meant he was right on par.

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TOURISM is responsible for fewer cases of Covid-19 in Spain than practically any other activity besides shopping and hairdressing salons, according to data published by the Secretary of State for Health.

Since the end of lockdown, or about the beginning of June, only 91 cases – linked to 14 'outbreaks' – have been detected in the country in hotels and other holiday accommodation, and all of them affecting workers rather than tourists themselves.

An 'outbreak' is when several people test positive for Covid at once after having caught it in the same place or from the same source, and does not necessarily mean hundreds or even dozens; a group of four friends or immediate family members all catching it at the same time, for example, is considered an 'outbreak'.

In the case of tourism employees, the average between summer and mid-October, or about four-and-a-half months, was 6.5 cases per 'outbreak'.

None have been detected in the tourism industry since around October 8, or before the long bank holiday weekend of October 9 to 12 – only a few isolated cases.

This low incidence is true of national and international tourism – although the latter has been very much reduced this year, around 25% of the usual total of foreign visitors still came to Spain for their holidays, and no known outbreak has occurred as a result.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

AUTUMN often seems like that boring bit of the year between summer and Christmas, with only three saving graces – the extra hour's sleep, that it still isn't really that cold, and that it has plenty of bank holidays.

If this is how you feel, you probably need some colour in your life.

Natural, oxygen-giving colour.

Like trees.

Yes, really: Did you think deep reds, pale golds and flaming oranges were a northern European concept? Had you always believed Spain was just cacti and palm trees?

Actually, pines are far more common than either, oaks and maples are bursting with shades of fire all over the Mediterranean, and north of the capital, you can find entire traffic-light beech forests with more in-between shades than a paint chart.

Spain has no shortage of autumn leaves, even if you live in a densely-populated town or a big city, because most of these have a park or several (Madrid, too; you can get lost in the 'rural wilderness' of the Retiro; Valencia's Turia riverbed, the green 'moat' around the metropolis, is one of Europe's largest urban gardens). You don't have to go to one of the National Parks, major nature reserves, mountain ranges or UNESCO forests to find the splendour of the autumnal palette.

But why not? There are enough of them, after all. Too many to describe here, so we'll singled out a small handful to whet your appetite for a post-Hallowe'en getaway.

Just when you thought you knew what Spain looked like, its landscape throws up yet more unexpected delights – here are 15 of them which will make you fall in love with autumn again.

Asturias

Spread across three mountains and 55 square kilometres, the Muniellos nature reserve (first photo, from Pinterest) is home to Spain's largest and one of Europe's best-preserved oak forests – you'll find it between Cangas de Narcea and Ibias.

Only 20 visitors are allowed in per day, as it's also a protected bird sanctuary, so you have to book in advance – but once there you'll see why it's been the backdrop for Asturian mythology and legends for centuries.

Lagoons, rivers, and even the remains of glaciers from the ice age stretch out before you

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SPANISH teenagers are among the most 'respectful and accepting' of other cultures and nationalities in the world, scoring well above the average for developed countries as a whole, according to the latest PISA study.

Criticisms of the annual Global Competence 'health check' on compulsory education about how it only evaluated academic achievement – in maths, literacy and sciences – and overlooked other 'hugely important' and more qualitative, social issues have borne fruit, and now, the PISA study takes into account attitudes towards migration, including culture, religionr, languages, countries of origin, and their views on rights and integration.

Spain scored 512 points – 13 more than the average for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which covers all developed and some emerging nations on earth.

It was only beaten by Canada (554) and the UK (534), although several regions in Spain scored higher than the national average: Castilla y León came out top with 534 points, Asturias with 527 and Cantabria with 526.

The lowest were the Spanish-owned city-provinces of Ceuta (438) and Melilla (473) on the northern Moroccan coast, and the lowest-scoring on the mainland was the land-locked western region of Extremadura, whose points total nevertheless was exactly that of the OECD average, at 499.

In the latest PISA study, researchers asked: “Are students ready to prosper in an interconnected world?”

Responses, as every year, are those of 15-year-olds, but the data can be easily extrapolated to other age groups and does not just mean only pupils aged 15 are respectful and accepting of other cultures: The PISA presupposes that showing these attitudes a year before their compulsory schooling ends means they must have developed over their childhood and early teens, and are likely to prevail from 16 onwards.

Spanish pupils showed 'a significantly greater interest than the OECD average in learning about other cultures and respecting people with a different cultural background', although their attitudes were 'less positive' about other 'global issues' – undefined, but which could range from anything from world politics to capitalist systems, for example.

AN ALGORITHM able to decipher 'dead languages' could throw light on one of Spain's biggest linguistic mysteries: Where the Basque tongue, euskera, comes from.

Spanish, and all of Spain's regional languages except euskera, have their roots in Latin and are known as the 'romance languages', along with, for example, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.

Other groups include Germanic, which covers the Scandinavian tongues, and Celtic, which embraces Ghàidligh, Irish Gaelic and Cornish.

But euskera, said to be incredibly hard – in fact, nearly impossible – for non-native speakers to learn to a level of effective communication on any subject, appears to have no known roots; no other language on Earth has been found to be related to it.

Another, older linguistic 'mystery' is that of íbero, or the Iberian language – the indigenous tongue spoken by some of modern-day Spain's earliest human inhabitants, which stretched as far as southern France in one direction and inland Andalucía in the other.

Its native speakers would have been alive between about the seventh and first centuries BCE, or around 2,020 to 2,600 years ago, and was most in use before the Migration Era, thought to have been in the late fourth century CE (AD).

Iberian is thought to have died out in the first 200 years of the last Millennium, since the spread of the Roman Empire into what is now mainland Spain and Portugal saw Latin becoming the most-used tongue.

It is referred to as a 'Paleohispanic language', of which euskera is the only one left and has no links to any other tongue in current use.

Speakers make up just under three in 10 inhabitants of the Spanish Basque territories – the Basque Country's three provinces, and neighbouring Navarra – and three former provinces in France, just over the border; a total of around 751,500 all told, or roughly equivalent to the population of Valencia city, and of whom over 90% are on the 'Spanish side'.

If, as some linguistic experts suspect, euskera is derived from the original Iberian tongue, this would make it the oldest language in Spain in modern use.

Researchers from the Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a programme which, using only a few thousand words of a given language, can point towards its possible roots.

According to Professor Regina Barzilay of the MIT team, it works through accessing a corpus of texts of modern and ancient languages, drawing on existing linguistic history knowledge, to make comparisons.

Language evolution has largely been predictable, Professor Barzilay explains: As an example, if a given language retains or omits a complete sound, it is likely that a comparable sound-substitution will be included, so a 'p' in the 'main' tongue might be replaced with a 'b' in an offshoot language, but would probably not be replaced with a 'k', which is a completely different phonemic sound.

Working with PhD student Jiaming Luo, the pair devised an algorithm which detects microscopic changes and similarities in pronunciation to form a logical rule-base through 'chopping up' words in an ancient language.

Last year, they wrote a paper after deciphering the dead Ugaritic tongue – a semitic language which had been extinct since the 12^th century BCE but was discovered by archaeologists in what is now the city of Ras Shamra in Syria – and also the so-called Linear B written language system, used in Mycenaean Greece during the end of the Bronze Age, from around 1600 to 1100 BCE.

Read full story at thinkSPAIN.com

SCIENTISTS in Spain have developed a form of treatment for a 'lethal' type of lung cancer which has made it curable in many cases, and doubled survival rates.

According to the report in The Lancet Oncology, research by the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP) through their 'NADIM' study has found that a 'different approach' to treatment is producing positive results.

Survival rates for the strain of lung cancer in question have historically been very low indeed, and treatment has typically involved surgery followed by chemotherapy.

But over two years, researchers treated patients with an immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy before operating, and found that during this period, 89.9% survived, and in 77%, the cancer did not progress.

In fact, nearly two-thirds – 63.4% - were cancer-free after the drug treatment and surgery.

With the usual method – operation followed by chemotherapy – only around 30% of patients were still alive after three years, with rarely more than 20% surviving for longer, says the GECP.

Its scientists stress that the drug combination they have used is 'completely safe'.

Only three in 10 patients experienced side-effects, and in all cases, these did not interfere with the surgical process.

Giving drug treatment before surgery allows oncologists to target the specific makeup of the tumour and start building up the body's 'immune memory' at an earlier stage, which increases defences long-term.

They targeted patients whose cancer was at a 'medium stage' – operable, but having already spread to the nearby lymph nodes, albeit not to any other organs.

The CEGP says lung cancer is usually diagnosed when it is 'locally advanced', meaning it is generally considered 'terminal', in broad terms, since 'likely long-term survival is very limited'.

Until now, it says, research has focused on very advanced stages of lung cancer, meaning 'there has been no progress in the last 20 years'.

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EVEN though it's more than two months away, high-street stores have already announced vacancies for staff to cover the Christmas rush.

Figures have shown that the pandemic has not had a negative impact across the board on some retail sectors, and in fact, a number are seeking to increase their payroll rather than reduce it – supermarkets and the food industry in general has been recruiting heavily of late, and clothing chains appear to be following suit.

Sportswear brand Decathlon is seeking to take on another 406 employees for its stores nationwide, particularly in the province and city of Barcelona.

It says no special qualifications are needed, except to be 'a lover of sports', and anyone who practises a sport regularly will 'score extra points' in the recruitment process.

Irish low-cost clothing chain Primark is seeking 50 new staff members for permanent jobs, although it is also offering temporary ones and part-time positions for weekends, which may suit students or people with existing jobs who want to top up their income.

Primark needs staff on the tills, in the warehouses, and for re-merchandising in its branches.

Most of its vacancies are in the stores in Madrid and Barcelona.

Entry-level salaries in Primark for till-operators are an average of €918 a month, and till-operators who also work in re-merchandising and stock-taking earn an average of €1,214 a month, although these sums vary according to experience, duties, and type of job contract.

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HOTELS seeking to recoup their pandemic-related losses have started opening as co-working centres and 'luxury' offices, and letting rooms for daily use.

Chains nationwide, such as the Marriott, Meliá and Barceló, and the French network B&B in its Spanish and Portuguese premises, are advertising their facilities to people working from home: Throughout the day, they can bring their laptops and phones, use the hotel Wi-Fi and sit in comfort whilst they go about their daily duties.

B&B pioneered the idea, offering its facilities for €9 a day from 09.00 to 19.00 – either to workers themselves, or to companies to set up their staff in rather than using an office building – and Aloft Madrid Gran Vía, part of the Marriott's Aloft Hotels brand, has followed suit.

The latter has created comfortable working spaces – in shared areas, but with desks spread far apart for safety reasons – that can be used from 09.00 to 18.00 for €12 a day, with access to premium Wi-Fi, breakfast, and up to 20 photocopies all included in the price.

Meliá is offering a similar service in several of its hotels in Spain and also in Germany, Italy, the UK and USA – customers get a private suite to use from 08.00 to 20.00 for prices ranging from €49 to €109, depending upon where they are, what category of hotel, and which other services they opt for whilst working there.

Barceló Hotel Group says it has always offered its facilities for people to sit and work from its city hotels, but has now started to advertise this more and is seeing a rise in demand since the pandemic started.

NH Hotel Group has piloted the idea in México, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Argentina and is considering doing so in Spain, whilst Palladium Hotel Group has converted some of its suites and communal areas in the Only YOU Atocha hotel in Madrid into shared and private offices and meeting rooms.

Riu Hotels & Resorts is thinking about doing so in its branch in Madrid's Plaza de España.

Aloft Gran Vía says keeping hotels open 'creates confidence' in the market, and that as most bookings at any time of the year tend to be within the same week of travel or, at most, a week in advance, a hotel being shut down means opportunities are lost.

Its management decided to open its rooms as luxury offices when it saw that many of the co-working centres in the heart of Madrid had not reopened after lockdown – especially as hotels are 'generally already geared up for' this type of use.

One advantage of hotel co-working areas is that they can be booked and paid for as they are used – typically, a dedicated co-working space requires a monthly fee in advance, however many times the customer actually uses them.

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THE MAJORITY of Spain's coastal regions are considered 'low' or 'moderate' risk for Covid-19 contagion and will escape heavy restrictions proposed for territories which come under 'high' or 'extreme' risk areas.

Based upon a 'traffic light' system, red or 'extreme' covers Aragón, the Greater Madrid region, La Rioja, Castilla y León, and the Spanish-owned enclave of Ceuta on the northern African coast, directly across the Strait of Gibraltar.

Orange or 'high risk' includes the latter's neighbour Melilla – closer to the Algerian border – Navarra, the Basque Country, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalunya and, for the moment, the Murcia Region.

Whilst only two regions are on green, or 'low risk' – Galicia and Cantabria – at least half the Canary Islands is expected to be moved onto this level in the next few days and will also form part of the European Union's 'green' countries on its 'safe travel' map.

And yellow, meaning 'medium' risk – or third-lowest out of four categories – covers land-locked western Extremadura and also the rest of Spain's coastal regions: The Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Comunidad Valenciana (the provinces of Alicante, Valencia and Castellón), southern Andalucía, and northern Asturias.

No 'blanket' national lockdown is expected in the near future, since this was an emergency measure taken when fast action was needed at the beginning of the year, it would not make sense to confine areas with no or hardly any cases just because other zones are badly affected, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) has stressed that any form of movement restriction should be a 'last resort' due to the potential long-term harm it could cause to local and national economies and psychologically for residents.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SPAIN'S long-awaited new legislation covering home-working employees has come into force, and answers some of the questions businesses and their staff had been asking – but remains fairly flexible overall.

Key to all aspects of the new law is that a signed agreement covering all eventualities is required between firm and worker, and that nothing can be 'imposed' in either direction.

With an estimated three million employees in Spain currently working from home as standard practice – up from one million in 2019 – and predictions that at least 50% of all working hours in the country could be off-premises within a decade, the need to ensure legal coverage was pressing, and the government has been working against the clock to lay down guidelines and rules.

Although the idea of working at least part of the time from home or from another location such as a café or even park bench would appeal to most employees, many may have their reasons for not wanting to do so, and legally, any arrangement to switch to this mode of operation must be voluntary on the part of both the staff member and the firm.

It must also be reversible, so if the worker finds out three months down the line that he or she is just not productive away from the office, finds it difficult psychologically – isolating, for instance, or there are too many distractions at home – or the company finds it needs staff on the premises more often, or all the time, the original deal struck between the parties means the arrangement can be undone.

Refusal to work from home, exercising one's right to reverse the set-up, or finding out that off-premises working impedes ability to carry out one's duties, can never be considered justification for an employee's being fired or for his or her working conditions or pay to be significantly altered for the worse.

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TOURISM authorities in Spain have praised the EU's new regional system of 'colours' indicating contagion levels to help travellers make decisions before setting off, and has called for PCR tests at departure point and arrival instead of random quarantining.

Perhaps unfortunately for Spain, the fact that colours are given by complete regions means over half the country is on darkest red at present and the rest on light red, with only the Canary Islands and Galicia on orange – but it should be borne in mind that in terms of driving time, an autonomous region in Spain can take several hours to cross in any direction and the differences between towns and districts is enormous.

Very dark red means more than 240 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, or where Covid-19 'positives' make up at least 0.24% of the population, and this is the case for the regions of Murcia, Madrid, Aragón, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, the Basque Country, Navarra, and La Rioja.

Pale red, or dark orange, means between 120 and 239.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, or between 0.012% and 0.02399% of the population, and covers Asturias, Cantabria, Catalunya, the Balearic Islands, Andalucía, Extremadura, and the Comunidad Valenciana – effectively, all of Spain's coasts apart from Murcia, with the exception of Galicia and the Canary Islands on light orange, meaning 60 to 119.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (0.006% to 0.01199% of the population).

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

RUSHING frantically round an airport trying to find check-in, security, restaurants and toilets will be a thing of the past in Spanish terminals for anyone who has a SmartPhone, laptop or tablet – a new interactive map has been created to help you find your way about.

National telecommunications giant Telefónica, along with Spain's State-owned airport management company AENA, have jointly devised a system which works along the same lines as Google Maps: Your current location is shown, and you can type in your required destination and be given a route to it, with the 'dot' displaying where you are as you walk along.

Although Spanish airports are well signposted anyway – meaning even the biggest international ones, such as Barcelona's El Prat and Madrid's Adolfo Suárez-Barajas, are not too scary for first-time visitors – nobody wants to walk farther than absolutely necessary when dragging a suitcase, when they need to get in a last-minute coffee and sandwich before boarding, or when nature calls and they have to get to the ladies' or gents' as soon as possible.

It also helps to know how long you've got before you start setting off for crucial points like security and boarding gates – there's nothing more stress-inducing than finding out your gate number 20 minutes before the flight closes and realising you're a half-hour walk away.

AENAmaps helps you calculate how long it will take you to get somewhere, and also shows up everything else along the route – that way, if you find out there's a shop you'd particularly like to pop into on the way to the gates, you can plan to set off earlier.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

EVERY region has its 'day' in Spain, some with more pomp and circumstance than others, and pretty much all of which are bank holidays in the territory they pay tribute to – unless they land on a Sunday, when they're written off; but the workforce is generally not too bothered, since barely a month goes past on Spanish soil without a well-earned public holiday.

For Valencia, its 'day' was yesterday, October 9 – not just in Spain's third-largest city, but its wider region, comprising three provinces in an area roughly the size of Wales about halfway down the east of the mainland on the Mediterranean coast (if you still can't place it, it's got Benidorm in its southern third).

Usually a lowish-key affair, and even more so this year with the traditional parade in Valencia city called off due to the pandemic, its closeness to 'National Festival of Spain' on October 12 means it becomes a bit of an Antipodean Easter week for most employees – a chance to get some proper rest and relaxation, visiting, cleaning or decorating done. On those rare, welcome years when 'Valencia Day' falls on a Friday, such as this year, it's also a chance to get away for a short holiday without eating into your annual leave.

As a tribute to 'Valencia Day', we've decided to thrust the region into the spotlight in the most glamorous and roaring-twenties' way possible: Listing its favourite locations according to social media influencers.

We didn't do that yesterday, because we didn't want to interrupt your annual October 9 'R&R'. We're generous like that, you see.

Social media ambassadors

Influencers – models-cum-advertising agents, who include professional Instagrammers and YouTube vloggers, among others – are paid to put things, people, places and products on the map, which also provides a service to the general public by making them aware of what's out there. The key App for doing so right now is Peoople (no, that's not a typo. Get with the programme), where everything you needed or wanted is recommended and commented on, your commercial research done for you before you make a purchase.

Local influencers are good news for their home territories, too: They're popular and modern ambassadors for them, in the same way as F1's Fernando Alonso is for Oviedo (Asturias), tennis stars Rafa Nadal and David Ferrer for Mallorca and Jávea respectively, and arts celebrities like Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Rosalía are for Spain as a whole, as well as for Madrid, Málaga and Catalunya.

To mark their regional day, a handful of influencers from the provinces of Valencia, Alicante and Castellón have revealed their top 20 locations, either for photographing, visiting, or simply being.

In Valencia city

As the biggest municipality in the region – around 775,000 inhabitants – it's hardly surprising that the majority of the 20 favourites are somewhere within the city; and the great news is that if you visit it yourself, practically all of them are within close walking distance of each other.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TREE-LINED, lush, green and on the edge of the Sant Llorenç del Munt i Serra de l'Obac nature reserve, Matadepera is home to just 10,000 people, 30 kilometres from Barcelona, about 10 kilometres from Sabadell and six from Terrassa – and has just knocked a Madrid celebrity belt off the number one spot as the richest town in Spain.

Pozuelo de Alarcón had held onto its crown for at least the past five years, with its average gross annual income per resident having risen from €70,298 in 2016 to €79,506 by the end of 2018.

Residential areas in the élite commuter town of around 90,000 inhabitants are largely made up of gated urbanisations, the most famous being La Finca, where former Madrid CF and FC Oporto goalkeeper Iker Casillas and his reporter and fashion designer wife Sara Carbonero own a 2,000-square-metre villa, currently let to tenants as they have just returned to the capital region after a five-year stint living in Portugal.

They are far from being the most blue-chip residents in Pozuelo de Alarcón, however – they're among equals in terms of fame and fortune. Actors, sports personalities, politicians and property tycoons are some of the typical fabric of the local community, although given that their earnings probably run into hundreds of thousands a head, it does seem that it must be home to a hefty number of much more average-to-low-income earners if the mean figure is only just short of €80,000 each.

Also in the Greater Madrid region, Alcobendas comes immediately after Pozuelo, with pre-tax per-capita income of €68,842, leapfrogging Boadilla del Monte, with the average resident earning a before-tax annual income of €61,910, despite having been ahead of Alcobendas until this year.

Number-seven wealthiest town in Spain is also in Madrid – Majadahonda, where a typical inhabitant nets €54,506 a year, gross – and numbers five and six are in Catalunya, both in the province of Barcelona: Sant Just Desvern, with a mean average gross pay per resident of €58,875, and Sant Cugat del Vallés (€57,565).

Avinyonet del Penedès was ahead of Sant Just and Sant Cugat last year, with a typical individual inhabitant getting €57,843 a year before tax, but for reasons that have not been explained, this has now plunged to less than half – a gross annual €28,347 per head.

So Matadepera, with a yearly pre-tax income per capita of €218,788, leaves them all standing.

And the richest town in Spain joins these three in being within the same province as the second-largest city in the country – but its profile seems very different.

Quaint, pretty and low-key: What's in Matadepera

As well as being considerably smaller than those that typically hog the top 10 or so, this big village in the department of Vallès Occidental is almost entirely residential, rather than commercial or industrial: It is split into neighbourhoods and urbanisations, such as Les Pedritxes, Cavall Bernat, Can Robert, Rourets and Pla de Sant Llorenç.

Matadepera does have what would be considered 'essential services', such as a GP clinic, nursery schools, primary and high schools, a library, a music school, a municipal police force and – fruit of its being in the depths of hundreds of acres of dense woodland – a volunteer fire brigade and forestry brigade.

Here, though, you won't find shops, aside from the bare necessities like supermarkets, nor shopping centres, industrial estates, nightclubs, or even many bars or restaurants to speak of.

It's nestled at the foot of the La Mola mountain, which stands 1,104 metres above sea level and serves as a base for the attractive Sant Llorenç del Munt monastery (second picture), built from local stone in the 10^th century but largely reconstructed about 120 years ago (Napoleon's troops destroyed the original in 1809), and also for the Can Pobla stately home, commissioned in the early 20^th century by the then owner of the mountain, Antoni de Quadras.

Over half the village is nature reserve, and its other attractions include the mid-14th-century Santa Agnès hermitage chapel on the slope of the El Drac cave (fourth picture, by Ramon2222 on Wikimedia Commons); the chapel and estate known as La Barata, restored in 1940 after being wrecked during the Civil War; the Torre de l'Àngel, or 'Angel's Tower', which isn't a tower at all but is actually a modernist-style house designed by local architect Lluís Muncunill in 1907; the old Romanesque-style Sant Joan de la Mata Xica church, rebuilt in the 17^th century; the 'new' Sant Joan Baptista church, built between 1911 and 1917, and the Can Roure estate, which is said to date back to the 13^th century and serves as the grounds for the Sant Joan de la Mata Xica church.

This beautiful ivy-covered building in acres of verdant gardens was recently the venue for an open-air concert to mark the 25^th anniversary of the 'Musical Autumns' (Les Tardors Musicals) festival, and dedicated to a much-loved local resident, Sílvia López, who 'left us in November 2019', according to the town hall.

The photo of the church (third picture) and a close-up of the concert (fifth picture) are both from its Instagram page, ajmatadepera, and the first picture, of its main annual fiestas, from the town hall website.

How Matadepera became Spain's richest town

Fewer than half the inhabitants in this quaint little town, or 4,812 in total, filed a tax declaration in 2018, the year for which gross income was calculated to work out which was Spain's wealthiest municipality – according to its local government, of whom 12 out of 13 councillors are on pro-Catalunya independence parties, this was because the others were either exempt from doing so due to having worked for the same firm all year with their earnings below the required figure to declare them in this situation or because what they actually got did not reach the minimum taxable threshold.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

HAVE you noticed anything strange about the beach in this picture?

At first glance, the more observant of you may have thought it was a lake, or inland beach, perhaps man-made.

But no – it's actually right on the coast.

We'll give you a clue: It's unlikely you'll get carried off by the 'current', or if you did, you wouldn't get washed away far, and you wouldn't make much progress if you decided to set off from it by boat.

That's right – Gulpiyuri beach in Llanes, Asturias is backwards. The usual mountain-sand-sea landscape is the wrong way round, and the sea stops at the mountain on the 'horizon'.

It's also largely thought to be the smallest beach in the world.

At just 50 metres long, it would take you less time to walk around a small flat than to stroll from one end of Gulpiyuri beach to the other.

And by the way, it does indeed have tides.

How does this happen?

Well, the sea – the main body of it, that is; the Cantabrian Sea along the northern strip of Spain, 'fed' by the Atlantic Ocean – filters into this 100-metre circle through a hole in the rock, so even though the sea off the actual Gulpiyuri beach is bordered entirely by mountains along its horizon, it still gets waves and something of a current.

Just that even at high tides and on a choppy, windy day, it's a bit too small to practise kite-surfing in, given that it's only double the length of a standard swimming pool.

The sea comes through a complex labyrinth of channels and caves in the mountain from the beach on the opposite side, landing in a dip in the sand, deepened over time and the action of the waves to form a permanent pool, complete with tides.

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PROBABLY not the best place to live if you suffer from vertigo, but ideal if you want an unrivalled view from your lounge window, taking a wrong turning out of Castellfollit de la Roca could be the last mistake you'll ever make. For your Facebook cover picture, though, it's perfect.

Residents in the 'explosive' village in the La Garrocha (La Garrotxa, in catalán) district of the province of Girona know all about living on the edge: Their long, thin municipality is balanced on a ledge with a sheer drop on either side of over 50 metres (164 feet).

The actual site of the village was formed through erosion from the rivers Fluvià and Toronell on the remains of lava currents, frozen in time following volcanic eruptions approximately 200,000 years ago, creating a ridge of about a kilometre in length.

In fact, Castellfollit de la Roca is home to the only active basalt (cooled lava) mine in Spain, which is still being exploited – it has been in the hands of the Ortiz family since 1929, and the rock is used as building material.

And actually, the majority of its houses are made from volcanic rock.

But whose decision was it to construct an entire village along the ridge in the first place?

According to the town hall, its origins are Mediaeval, which would make sense: It was a time when being hard to reach by enemy invaders, and high enough up to be able to spot them long before they arrived, carried more weight when designing your dream home than a south-facing terrace and a heated swimming pool.

Zip forward 1,000 years or so, and such a strategic location is also a handy way of making sure no invasive building development pops up to spoil the view or lead to overpopulation and a strain on public services; there simply isn't room for either.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TYPICAL diets in Spain are becoming more healthy – at least, if supermarket shopping trends are anything to go by.

Kantar Worldpanel's research, carried out for German chain Aldi, found that consumers in Spain are tending to buy more fruit and vegetables, less meat, and although they do not go grocery shopping so often, are spending and buying more on their less-frequent trips.

The gradual leaning towards vegetables and fruit and away from meat, and larger shops more spaced apart, was seen over the first six months of this year compared with consumer habits in the last few years, but is unlikely to be entirely due to lockdown, since a follow-up study has seen a similar tendency over July, August and September.

According to Aldi's research and analytics director Ignacio Cid, purchases of fresh produce rose by 9% between January and June inclusive.

Compared with the same period in 2019, the fresh produce which shifted the fastest was eggs, with sales of these shooting up by 23%, followed by vegetables, with 18% more sold, and fruit, increasing by 12%.

Overall, in the last five years, fruit and vegetable consumption has risen by 7% and 13% respectively, according to the study.

Protein from animal sources – fresh meat, sausages, cheese, fresh fish and seafood – went down in that time by 2.5%.

Whilst these trends were already gaining ground slowly since 2015, lockdown was what accelerated the change in habits – and also the amount spent per shop.

A combination of fresh produce, fruit and vegetables costing more than processed foodstuffs, together with eating at home rather than in restaurants, means the average household now spends €2,069 a year on fresh goods, compared with €1,921 a year in 2019.

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SPANISH films which won various Goya Awards have been nominated as pre-candidates for the 2021 edition of the Oscars – and their writers, directors, cast and crew will find out on November 3 whether they will get through to the final.

A total of 58 full-length feature films – 22 more than for the 2020 edition – were gunning for a place in the top three semi-finalists competing for Best International Film Award, and the Oscars next April could be the second on the trot with productions from Spain in the running, after a 16-year absence.

This year, cult director Pedro Almodóvar's semi-autobiographical Dolor y Gloria ('Pain and Glory') was nominated for Best International Film and its lead player, Antonio Banderas, up for Best Actor – the first time Spain made it to the last leg of the contest since The Others' director Alejandro Amenábar reached the final in 2004 with Mar Adentro ('The Sea Inside'), starring Skyfall villain Javier Bardem.

Nominee for the 2020 Goya for Best Direction for its creator Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia this year, and winner of Best Special Effects, El Hoyo ('The Platform') is one of the three pre-candidates for next year's Oscars.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

IN A BID to compete with Amazon Prime, Spain's largest department store has launched an online platform with a set annual fee which allows unlimited deliveries of its goods, including supermarket produce.

El Corte Inglés has set up an App, for mobile phones and other devices, where, for €19.90 a year, customers can order anything they like and have it delivered within 24 hours.

At the moment, the service is available in 36 of Spain's 50 provinces, and in 54 cities nationwide.

Linked to the El Corte Inglés store card, which does not carry an issue charge or 'maintenance' commission costs – you only pay if you use it, and only for what you spend on it – the system allows consumers to choose between paying off the cost in one hit or doing so in instalments.

The El Corte Inglés card makes the first charge for purchases on day one of the second month after buying, and customers can choose a set repayment amount, where interest is minimal since, like most credit cards, it is linked to the Euribor, or Eurozone interest rate.

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HURRICANE Alex has moved on after battering Spain on its journey north-west towards the UK, and most of the country is now set to enjoy an 'Indian summer', according to the met office.

Temperatures on the Mediterranean are expected to reach around 30ºC, and could rise to as much as 33ºC in Murcia and the provinces of Sevilla, Córdoba and Huelva.

Elsewhere, at least 25ºC is expected in the shade in the middle of the day.

Beach season may not be over yet, even though it is rare not to need at least a light jacket 'just in case' over the October bank holiday weekend, which covers Monday 12 nationwide and also Friday 9 in the Valencia region.

The end of the bank holiday weekend could be rather wet in the north and on the Mediterranean, however, warns the State meteorological agency, AEMET.

But it is not expected to involve storms, floods or high winds, so should not put paid to too many sightseeing plans for anyone intending to spend the four-day break on a trip away.

'Storm Alex' brought winds of over 120 kilometres per hour, with gusts as high as 148 kilometres per hour in the Basque Country, and waves reaching nearly 4.5 metres (14'8”) off the coast of Almería – the highest seen since 1998 – and nearly double that in the Bay of Biscay, at 8.32 metres (around 27 feet).

Rainfall was particularly torrential in parts of the north, with 172 litres per square metre (17.2 centimetres, or six-and-three-quarter inches) near Bilbao and 165 litres per square metre (16.5 centimetres, or six-and-a-half inches) in Santander, Cantabria.

The weather was not especially cold in the southern half of the country – coats were not needed, only umbrellas – but in the Pyrénées in the provinces of Huesca and Lleida, the mercury plunged below zero.

No real chaos or damage was reported as a result of the storm, however – other than high winds fanning a forest fire in Oliva, southern Valencia province, where the arrival of sudden rainfall turned out to be a godsend and helped emergency services in their efforts.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

THERE'S an International Day for just about everything, and if there isn't, it'll soon be invented – and this week, on Thursday, it was the turn for probably one of, if not the, most-consumed beverages on earth: Coffee.

If you were in Spain on October 1, you were in a great place to celebrate with a coffee, given that ours is universally acknowledged to be among the best in the world. And it remains cheap – wherever you are in the country, prices are fairly standard and you'll rarely have to ask how much it is before committing yourself to ordering.

It helps to know the standard varieties in Spain, all of which are typically under €2 in almost every bar, café or restaurant – and if you're not a fan of the strong stuff, ask for it flojo ('weak') or corto de café (literally, 'short on the coffee'). Otherwise, Spaniards are largely fans of a full-bodied cup, so you may find it a little OTT if you're new to it.

A basic white is a café con leche, which is normally quite milky and comes with the foam on top, or a basic black is a café americano, an espresso is a café solo, and two other common varieties are the café bombón (sometimes referred to as a café biberón), which is espresso on the top half of a small glass and condensed milk on the bottom half, and it's up to you whether you mix them to get a sweet, creamy cupful or whether you down the extra-strong black coffee on the top in one and then spoon out the condensed milk separately; or the café cortado, in a small glass with half espresso and half steamed or cold milk (they'll usually ask you first; if they don't, it'll be steamed), which is milky but very strong indeed – although, surprisingly, low on the caffeine, because the dried, ground coffee only filters through the machine in split seconds, rather than being left to percolate.

You can ask for any of these descafeinado, however, or if you prefer, a glass or cup of hot milk with a sachet of instant coffee is a café con leche de sobre or café cortado de sobre.

Of course, coffee isn't, by a long way, the only pep-up drunk in Spain; Spanish people are fond of their wine, beer, fizzy drinks and, in the Valencia region, horchata, or sweetened tigernut milk.

So we've found some fascinating headlines about some of these, as well as about coffee, which attracted our attention.

Is coffee the secret to a long life?

Ask anyone over 100 or even over 90, or their younger relatives who know them well, and they'll all have a secret or two which they maintain has kept them on the planet, often in reasonably good health, for the best part of a century or even more – secrets that vary from diet to attitude. The longest-living woman, and actually, person, on earth was Jeanne Calment, who was well into her 123^rd year when she died – this amazing French lady gave one of her keys to longevity as a glass of wine a day and eating a kilo of chocolate a week throughout her life. So, if you needed an excuse, there it is.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

ORDINARY, everyday roadworks in an ordinary, everyday town in central Spain have uncovered the largest-ever Roman settlement in the country.

Workmen digging up land alongside the main La Solana highway through Valdepeñas (Ciudad Real province, Castilla-La Mancha) literally stumbled upon a 1,500-square-metre Roman villa and giant wine-cellar which could be between 1,600 and 2,000 years old.

Close to the Baños del Peral area, where Roman remains have been found, the 'exceptionally well-preserved' wine-cellar is the part that has most fascinated local historians: 31.6 metres long and 11.08 metres high when it was fully built, taking up 350 square metres in total – about the size of three modern-day apartments of three or four bedrooms.

Around one-seventh of the space would have been used for pressing the grapes, and another 18 square metres for treading them.

The biggest settlement yet uncovered in what was then Ancient Hispania, it is thought to have been built initially in the first or second century AD, and completed or still in use until the fourth or fifth century AD.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

'BROWN' coins landing in charity piggy-banks on bar and shop counters may be history by some time in 2022, depending upon the outcome of a Eurozone-wide opinion poll.

By the end of 2021, the European Commission will decide on whether or not to phase out one- and two-cent coins if it considers they are not used enough to justify continuing to mint them.

Firstly, the Commission will need to carry out full research to work out the impact on household and commercial finances, since eliminating the two coins of the smallest denomination of the euro would inevitably mean prices rounded to the nearest five or 10 cents.

Already, Finland, Italy, Belgium, Ireland and The Netherlands have approved legislation covering rounding up or down, but the remaining Eurozone countries do not have any specific laws.

This is likely to cause widespread debate, as the lowest incomes could be the hardest-hit: The most common non-rounded price seen anywhere ends in 99 cents, an age-old marketing trick designed to make a consumer think goods are cheaper than they are by paying attention to the first figure only.

Prices of, for example, €5.99, are viewed almost by reflex as being €5-and-something, rather than, effectively, €6.

Rounding up if one- and two-cent coins are scrapped means an extra cent added onto anything with a price ending in 99 cents; also, other random prices could rise by more.

In Spain, for example, the typical cost of a supermarket own-brand litre of milk is 57 or 58 cents, sometimes with the lower of the two applied if buying them in a box of six litres – this could mean an extra two to three cents a day per person added to the shopping bill for milk alone.

For a four-person household, just the milk bill could increase by €10.95 a year, without totting up all the extra rounded-up prices.

Items costing 56 cents or €5.22 or €2.51, as a guide, would typically go down, but these are much less common except in the weigh-your-own fruit-and-veg counters.

Whilst most middle-income households would not notice the difference, those at the lower end of the income scale would see an impact.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com