Live News From Spain As It Happens

BUYING a new home – to live in, as a holiday bolthole, or an investment – normally means having to stick to a budget, and the breadth of your choice of bricks and mortar is usually dictated by the size of either your bank account or what said bank is willing to lend you. 

Usually. Not always. Some of you reading this might be in the fortunate position of being able to buy exactly what you want, because cost is no issue. 

And if that's the case, you can afford to splash out on true luxury...so why not?

Where can you find it, though?

Spain's National Institute of Statistics (INE) has compiled a list of the top 10 most expensive streets in the country for residential property purchase, and also the number one most pricey for each of the nation's 15 regions on the mainland and the two encompassing the islands.

It could be you already own a home on one of them – maybe you even bought it years or decades ago with the biggest mortgage you could get a bank to lend you, and had no idea just how much it had earned in equity since; if you're looking to sell, you could use the proceeds for several ultra-high end properties in another location, hopping between them as the mood takes you, or keeping them as a nest-egg.

And it turns out that Spain's most expensive area for buying a home is also the most pricey in the whole of Europe.

Here's where to look if nothing but the most élite will do.

Benahavís (Málaga province)

Although the INE data cover individual streets, the number one most expensive in Spain is, actually, an entire urbanisation. It's in Benahavís, on the Costa del Sol, a town which appears twice in the top 10.

La Zagaleta is at the peak of luxury property in Spain – any home on this residential complex will have an average price tag of just under €10 million.

More precisely, buying a villa here will set you back a mean figure of €9,956,525.

But that's only the average price. Here, you can easily spend up to €34m on a home if you've got it.

Benahavís also comes in at number five for the most costly homes in Spain in 2022 – if you buy one on the A-397 urbanisation, you'll be spending an average of €7,016,897.

Calvià (Mallorca)

Although the most exclusive properties in the Balearic Islands always seem to be in Ibiza, the largest of the region's four inhabited enclaves, Mallorca, is where you'll find four of the 10 most expensive home-buying streets – two of which are in Calvià.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

OVER 1.27 million swimming pools – private and communal – mean Spain has one for every 37 inhabitants, and some towns have as many as one pool for every three, according to land registry data.

The figures do not include municipal pools – outdoor ones at bars, restaurants or run as a lido for summer heat relief inland, nor council-owned leisure centres, or those at hotels – but cover purely those at private homes.

They are either individual pools at residential properties, or communal ones on an apartment or villa complex which all residents, and summer visitors renting properties on the estate, can use.

Although the average is one pool per 37 people, numbers vary widely according to areas of the country and types of municipality, with out-of-town urbanisations more likely to have them, and regions with warmer climates seeing more of them.

The Balearic Islands, with one per 17 people, and the Comunidad Valenciana, with one for every 21 residents – and towns such as Jávea with up to one pool per three residents – comfortably exceed the national average.

Only 1% of pools are indoor, and the ratio is lower in the north of Spain where summers are less humid and shorter, meaning those who do not have a beach on the doorstep are not so likely to need them.

'Need' may sound a strange notion, but cooling down by jumping into a large body of water is a health necessity in summer – to such an extent that a high number of towns and villages a long way from the coast have set up river beaches or lidos for their residents.

Regions with the most pools

Despite being thought of as a southern or Mediterranean phenomenon – and it usually is – the region with the third-highest number of private or communal residential pools per inhabitant is the centre-northern Castilla y León, a huge inland high plain which habitually has some of the country's coldest and harshest winters. 

In much of Castilla y León, average winter temperatures hover around 6ºC in the daytime and -2ºC at night, with snow at street level being common and often very deep.

But it still has a pool for every 25 residents.

That said, heated pools are also a great asset in winter – relaxing in very warm water while the air temperature is in single figures is a ritual in much of northern Scandinavia.

Andalucía comes below Castilla y León, even though its three land-locked provinces – Sevilla, Córdoba and Jaén – are colloquially referred to as 'the frying-pan of Spain', but is still well above average with a pool for every 28 people.

Murcia, on the south-east coast and one of the regions with the warmest winters, has a pool for every 30 inhabitants, and the land-locked western region of Extremadura – where the province of Badajoz has a long string of blue-flagged inland beaches – has a swimming pool for every 34 residents.

Towns with the most pools are in Madrid, Andalucía and the Comunidad Valenciana

Towns, villages and cities with the highest outright number of pools, irrespective of inhabitant numbers, are Madrid (13,842), Córdoba (11,538), and Marbella, with 10,662, or one for every 14 people.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

THIS SUMMER'S drought has proven a mixed blessing for a Barcelona-province town and its visitors – a swamp has completely dried up, uncovering a church that had been underwater for decades.

Vilanova de Sau has seen an unprecedented influx of tourists since the Sant Romà church reappeared as Catalunya's reservoirs and lakes drop to an across-the-board 39% of their total capacity, some of them losing every drop of water.

This is the case with the Sau swamp, which filled up in 1962 after a dam was built in the river Ter, flooding out the dip in the land in the Guilleries-Savassona nature reserve.

Barely 38% full, with some parts literally dust, the entire church has never emerged before, although in past years during periods of drought, the water reduces enough to show part of the bell-tower and even the roofs of the now-defuct village of Sant Romà de Sau.

Thousands of people have been travelling from all over Spain to see it, thanks to what the town council calls 'the Instagram effect', and has even led to a whole new genre of holiday being named: 'Drought tourism'.

Such has been the furore that, from June 24 and, unless anything changes, until September 11, visitors now have to book one of 90 parking spaces a day to see the church, at a cost of €5, or €2 for motorbikes.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SOME spend their whole lives trying to break that elusive world record, and a tiny minority achieve it, giving them bragging rights for all eternity.

But then there's Christian, who clocks up a handful every few weeks – in fact, by the time we finish telling you about his latest milestone, he's likely to have surpassed it.

So forgive us if Spain's record recordman's most recent round number is already old news before you get past the first paragraph of this article.

After all, the sports instructor and motivational speaker from Cabañas de Sagra (Toledo province) normally only needs a few seconds to break a world record, which means it's tough keeping up.

When we introduced Dr Christian López to our readers in November 2020, the sporting ace was 32 years old and we boasted on his behalf about how he had one-and-a-quarter world records to his name for every year of his life.

That seemed like small fry when, in May this year, we told you about how he had upped his total by almost 75%, to 67.

Back then, he ran up Spain's fourth-tallest building – the Torre Emperador tower block in Madrid, with its 56 storeys and 230-metre (754-foot) structure – in under eight minutes, but not to set a record. It was merely practice for breaking his 68th which, by now, would have meant two for every year of his life.

And barely three months on, the 'Toledo Turbo' has left his own achievements standing: Christian has just smashed his 90th.

While we were lazing on the beach, moaning about the heat and feeling so lethargic we could barely be bothered to move to turn the fan up a notch, the man who already held more world records than anyone else in Spain was adding another 23 of them to his list.

In the past year and nine months, New Yorker Ashrita Furman – who holds the most Guinness World Records on earth – has upped his own total from 200 to 600, but at Christian's current pace, we wouldn't rule out his overtaking the present global leader one day.

Christian has spent eight months training for this specific record, number 90, and one which is fairly typical of the other 89 feats he has accomplished: The fastest 200-metre run backwards, whilst juggling with three items.

He had to complete it in under 48.59 seconds to earn his place in what will be his eighth consecutive Guinness Book of Records, and comfortably undercut the previous fastest time by six seconds, finishing in 42.59.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

TOP tennis ace Rafael Nadal and his wife are set to be parents some time soon – Mery Perelló has reportedly checked into a room at a private clinic in Palma de Mallorca.

She is not due yet, being 31 weeks in, but 'might' be due for an operation at some point Thursday 'as recommended by her doctors', according to reports in numerous media sources.

The nature of the operation is not yet clear, but Mery, 33, is said to be 'in observation as a precaution' at present.

Her baby, thought to be a boy, is the couple's first, and is believed to be due around late October.

This means his arrival would coincide, approximately, with their third wedding anniversary.

Mery, a former MAPFRE insurance office manager and PR assistant for Endesa electricity, is project leader for her famous tennis star husband's eponymous charitable foundation, and her mother-in-law, Ana Parera, is its director.

Rafa's sister Maribel, Mery's closest friend and the person who introduced the couple in the beginning, is marketing manager for the Rafael Nadal Tennis Academy.

Maribel, along with Mery's parents, is said to be accompanying the mum-to-be at the hospital, since Rafa is on the other side of the pond preparing for his next Grand Slam date, the US Open.

He was 17 and Mery was 14 when the latter's classmate and the former's sister introduced them to each other, and within two years, they were a couple – but it would take them until October 2019 before they wed in an hermetically-sealed ceremony at La Fortalesa estate in Pollenca, Mallorca.

They had become engaged in Rome in May 2018 – during a moment Rafa jokingly admitted was anything but romantic, given the length of time they had been together – and honeymooned in the Bahamas a couple of months before the wedding.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

EUROPE'S move to cut energy use in a bid to reduce its dependency on Russian gas, to curb climate change and tackle ever-increasing fuel costs has led to action affecting the high street in Spain – but, despite reports in some international press about how tourists will 'fry in summer and freeze in winter', the actual impact is set to be minimal.

And steps taken elsewhere on the continent are at least similar to those of Spain or, in some cases, even more restrictive.

Since a week ago, private- and public-sector buildings – including workplaces, hotels, bars and restaurants – are required to set their summer air-conditioning to a temperature no lower than 27ºC.

Once winter weather starts in earnest, indoor temperatures must not rise above 19ºC – which, in most of the southern half of the mainland, will involve the same air-conditioning devices as those used to regulate heat and cold in summer, since they double up.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

'SPECIAL Guest' appearing on a DJ session's flyer might make revellers think they're about to enjoy an up-and-coming band or artist, perhaps one they haven't yet heard of and will be able to brag about seeing live before they were famous – but one of Ibiza's top nights had a much bigger card up its sleeve.

Electro-pop band Lufthaus performed at 528 Gardens in Benimussa, in Sant Antoni de Portmany – otherwise known as San Antonio – and their 'support act' was none other than former Take Thatter Robbie Williams.

Could it be magic? Well, it was certainly a surprise for those who'd bought tickets for a night of poolside club music, especially when legendary Robbie gave a full hour-and-a-half-long concert.

The Let Me Entertain You, Feel, and Rock DJ star, now 48 and having been so successful as a soloist that he's been a fan-favourite of a whole generation born too late to experience the Take That furore, delighted clubbers and put Lufthaus' name on the map ahead of a string of gigs it has planned for the rest of the summer.

Producers behind Lufthaus, Tim Metcalfe and Flynn Francis, have already worked with Robbie Williams on several tracks, and the Stoke-on-Trent-born singer and songwriter is still very active with no sign of bowing out of the music scene.

But the double act had never been seen live before, meaning 528 Gardens' partygoers were witnessing a world première.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

HIGH-SPEED trains will soon run from the Costa Blanca to the far north-western region of Galicia, covering 928 kilometres (577 miles) in just five hours.

National rail board RENFE reveals the AVE line to Ourense – capital of Galicia's only land-locked province, just above the Portuguese border – will set off from Alicante for the first time on September 13.

This has been made possible thanks to an express train tunnel opening between Madrid's two largest stations, Atocha and Chamartín, allowing the AVE to cut straight through the capital.

Before, the ultra-fast rail service was able to run from Madrid to the west and north-west, or east and south-east, but anyone wanting to travel right across the country would have to book two trains and change in the capital.

They would need to catch a metro, or underground train, from Atocha to Chamartín to head west, or Chamartín to Atocha to go east, adding extra inconvenience and journey time, as well as waiting around – the two AVE rides would have to be booked far enough apart in time to allow for delays in crossing the city.

Now, passengers will just sit on the same train from departure to destination.

The AVE line to Ourense only opened on December 21 last year, so it has only been on track for eight months, but is already set to be one of the best-connected routes on the express network.

RENFE is exploring linking the Ourense AVE to Valencia, also on the east coast and around 200 kilometres north of Alicante.

As yet, Ourense is the only destination in Galicia on the express line, since the region's other cities farther north have a different, narrower track network which is not suitable for the AVE, meaning anyone travelling from Madrid to the rest of Galicia would have to change onto a slower train at its southernmost provincial capital.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

MAKING an embarrassing mistake and the whole town finding out is not exactly on everyone's bucket list. The world's press reporting it with a picture of you is rare if you're not a pop star, silver-screen artist or international sports personality, but is exceptionally traumatic if it does happen. And your blunder turning your sleepy little village into a global tourism magnet raking in millions for local traders is almost unprecedented.

Yet a 91-year-old lady living in an Aragón care home can proudly say she has achieved just that.

Cecilia Giménez was younger then, and more active – 81, a regular churchgoer and keen watercolour painter with passion and talent.

Purely for her own enjoyment, she restored a canvas of the Virgin Mary at the Santuario de Misericordia ('Sanctuary of Mercy'), her local parish, saving the committee a fortune, and she sought to do the same with a post-war fresco of the head of Christ, by the little-known artist Elías García Martínez.

Oil-on-fresco does not tend to last, and García Martínez's failure to use the correct materials meant his 66 x 40 centimetre (about 2'2” x 1'4”) portrait titled Ecce Homo was in a very poor state when Cecilia started work on it.

Much later, she insisted that she hadn't finished it, and that's why the photos of it in the regional newspaper, El Heraldo de Aragón, showed it looking nothing like the original.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

For a whole year-group of young adults, these few weeks are a terrifying, but exciting, time: It's that turning point when they decide which university they will spend the next years of their life at and which, far from just impacting on anything from one to six years of their immediate future, are likely to end up defining their entire career for them between now and retirement.

A huge responsibility to bear at a tender age, meaning those turning 18 in 2022 are not going to be the only ones facing it. Some may have opted to defer their choice by another year, to ensure they get it right, to improve on their grades and widen their options, or to gain valuable work, travel, volunteering or language-learning experience first...

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

NEARLY 300 Afghans who worked with Spanish service personnel in the Asian country have arrived in Spain with their families, and will be granted refugee status upon application, according to foreign affairs minister José Manuel Albares. 

Along with Secretary of State for Migrations, Isabel Castro Fernández, Albares confirmed the safe arrival this week of a plane chartered from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad at the military airbase in Torrejón de Ardoz (Greater Madrid region).

A year on from the mass rescue operation that saw Afghan nationals flown to safety after the Taliban returned to power – 20 years on from the start of the war when they first entered government – a group made up of support workers, including interpreters, who cooperated with Spanish authorities and troops during the nation's long mission, plus partners, children and other immediate relatives, have been evacuated.

Among the family members who have travelled with them are 'about 15 babies', Albares and Castro revealed.

They had not been left in danger in Afghanistan all this time, however – the group of 294 who arrived in Spain this week have mostly been in the neighbouring nation of Pakistan.

Spain has so far rescued around 3,000 Afghans and resettled them on home turf – about 2,000 of whom were flown to Torrejón de Ardoz in the 11 days between July 16 and 27, 2021, straight from the capital, Kabul.

After this, the remaining 1,000 or so have been gradually brought to Spain from nearby nations including Pakistan, Iran and Turkey.

Prior to the 294 new arrivals this week, the last group arrived a month or so back, Albares and Castro recall.

As each of the latest incomers entered the air terminal, they were informed about how to seek asylum in Spain, and given the opportunity to do so as soon as they got through border control.

Advisors on site were from United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR, known as ACNUR in Spain), and the interior ministry's Asylum and Refuge Office.

Given that the Spanish government assumed ahead of their landing that all those on board would want to apply for refugee status in the country, authorities arranged for charities and social support associations to join them in transferring all arrivals to asylum centres.

Read mroe at thinkSPAIN.com

ONE THING is for everyone who visits your town, province or country to tell everyone else how wonderful it is and to give it lots of stars on TripAdvisor, but quite another is when the European Union itself endorses a destination and even pays you handsomely just because you're good.

Founded in Brussels in 2009 in conjunction with the European Commission's EDEN (European Destination of Excellence Network), an extensive, exhaustive portal covering destinations all over the continent – not just in the EU – viewed annually for holiday inspiration by over six million people, publishes rankings by year and permanent ones by category, most through public votes from those who have experienced the places mentioned in person, and some through official criteria set down by the 27-country bloc.

European Best Destinations (Europeanbestdestinations.com) gets around half a million votes per category, and those which make the annual lists get free publicity in the world's top glossy magazines and search engines.

The crème of rankings, the European Best Destination 2022, was won this year by the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, whilst Spain came in at number two with Costa del Sol holiday hotspot Marbella, which also featured top in the Most Exclusive European Destination 2022 poll.

And European Best Beaches 2022 had five Spanish locations among the 22 most-voted.

Other lists are more or less fixed, such as 'Best Blue Water Destinations' and 'Best Sustainable Destinations', where three parts of Spain appeared between the two.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

If there is something I love about summer, it is the possibility of enjoying a great variety of seasonal vegetables, fresh and tasty vegetables that with really simple techniques can be transformed into authentic delicacies.

Great cooking skills are not necessary here in order to enjoy this season; salads, barbecues and grilled vegetables or cold soups are some of the dishes that we can make with minimal effort and with wonderful results. Light dishes that help us cope with the heat in the best possible way.

If you have already tried gazpacho in all its versions: salmorejo, white garlic or even with melon, you will almost certainly love this delicious cold courgette soup I am going to share with you today.

This fresh courgette soup is really very simple to make, just follow the steps below:

INGREDIENTS COLD COURGETTE SOUP

• 4 garlic cloves
• 50ml Extra virgin olive oil
• 2 medium zucchini   1 medium ripe avocado
• 1/2 cup cashew nuts, raw, unsalted or fried
• 30 ml sherry vinegar
• 2 cups of water
• 1/2 cup of fresh basil
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Extra virgin olive oil

Put the garlic cloves in a small saucepan with water and simmer for approximately 10 minutes. This will stop you from having garlic breath all afternoon.

Cut the ends off the courgettes and remove only half of the skin, cut into small cubes and add to the food processor. 

Soak the cashews in advance, for at least two or three hours, drain and add to the food processor.

Start by blending the courgette with the cashews at high speed for one minute. Stop and then add the avocado pulp, the cooked and peeled garlic, the basil, the vinegar and a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, salt and black pepper, and the cold water. Keep blending for another minute until it is smooth. To obtain a really smooth emulsion, keep adding the remaining olive oil little by little, blending it for 30 more seconds or so.

Taste and adjust for salt, add a dash of lemon juice to give it a twist, if you want, or an extra dash of vinegar. Add more water if you prefer a finer consistency.

We can accompany this cold cream with croutons or and some crispy serrano ham cooked in the microwave. 

Serve the soup at room temperature, or slightly chilled. You could add a chopped egg or sprinkled feta cheese with chilli flakes, or whatever you can think of!

Enjoy!

PEDESTRIANS out and about in Palma de Mallorca's historic quarter are still pinching themselves after seeing the Royal family out for a stroll in their midst.

No sunglasses, hats or other disguises, no entourage or bodyguards – just a couple of teenage girls in cotton frocks and espadrilles, and their parents in shirts and shorts, pottering along the C/ Jaume II and the Plaza Mayor in a relaxed, unhurried manner.

In fact, judging from footage captured by passers-by, any holidaymakers who are not familiar with Spain's Royals would not have been able to tell King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, and their two daughters from any other family in town.

The monarchs, Princess Leonor, 16 and the Infanta Sofía, 15 were then seen ambling along the C/ Sindicat, a key shopping street in the Balearic capital.

Only eagle-eyed fashion experts would have been able to spot any difference between the average family of tourists and the Royals – the fact Queen Letizia's white shirt and flat white espadrilles were Hugo Boss.

But HRH Letizia does not wear top-end designer clothing simply because she is married to the head of State and mother to the immediate heir to the throne – the Queen makes no secret of her appreciation for high-street chains, often being seen even at prestigious, international and official events in the line of duty wearing pieces from Zara and Mango.

She was seen in a pink cotton print Zara mini-dress on Sunday during a three-generations girls' night out in Palma with Leonor and Sofía and the teens' paternal grandmother, Queen Sofía.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

DEFECTIVE goods caused by factory errors are not always a negative thing – sometimes, they can actually be worth significantly more as a result of their faults.

At least, that's the case with some €2 coins in circulation, according to Onda Cero radio in a recent report.

Collectors will, in fact, pay literally thousands to get their hands on the faulty coins, purely because they are so unique.

Back in 2009, the European Central Bank (BCE) minted a limited-edition series of €2 coins to commemorate a milestone anniversary of the common currency, with different designs for each of the countries in the Eurozone.

These, alone, are collectibles and likely to be worth far more than their face value, given that only around three million of them in total were released.

Onda Cero says they can typically fetch up to about €30 in the collectors' market – which, whilst not enough to be able to retire on the sale proceeds, is still 15 times what the coin is worth if you spend it yourself.

But a batch of them came out with a design error due to a problem with the minting machine.

Covering coins for several member States, the defective coins had uneven stars on them, the Onda Cero article revealed.

These stars, reflecting the yellow ones in a ring on a blue background on the EU flag, were not all uniform – some were larger than others.

This has now made them highly sought-after, with prices paid for them being in the hundreds or even thousands of euros.

Coin collectors have recently published a list on the site Coleccionistas de Monedas showing which €2 pieces are the most valuable on the specialist market.

Some of them are worth over €2,500.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

SEEING the world through the proverbial rose-tinted spectacles is fairly typical when you're on holiday, and for newly-settled expats once they get the practical hurdles of a move abroad out of the way. Of course, it never lasts forever, but here in Spain, once the pink glasses come off, the full spectrum of colours awaits you at every turn.

Literally, as well as metaphorically: Multiple shades of green, a different one dominating depending upon where you are in the country or, even, in the same province; desert-yellow through to off-white in drier zones and on beaches; flame-red in some mountainous areas or red-gold in the central plains; pale purple in the province of Guadalajara during lavender season; a full set of traffic lights covering every micrometre of the pH scale in autumn.

Rivers and seas, too, that range from fluorescent turquoise on bright days, navy-blue where clear waters coincide with very white sand on the bed, gunmetal grey when storms gather (and the odd one of these in high summer is always welcome, refreshing the humid, sizzling atmosphere).

Obviously, water on its own doesn't have a colour. It reflects the sky, what's around it, the colour of its base, or what's in it. Which is why the iron-oxide content of the famous Río Tinto in the province of Huelva makes the river turn a permanent shade of fiery orangey-red.

That's without even mentioning the rainbow of pastel colours and primary colours the buildings, including private homes, are habitually painted in. Why be grey when you can be psychedelic blue?

And back to those rosy specs, you may well have seen or heard of the bright chewing-gum-pink lakes found in far-flung tropical countries – La Laguna Colorada in Bolivia's breathtaking Uyuni salt flats, the Las Coloradas nature reserve in México's Yucatán peninsula, Lake Hillier on Australia's Middle Island and Hutt Lagoon in Western Australia, and Lake Retba near the coast of Sénégal, about 35 kilometres from the capital, Dakar.

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FREE rail passes for outer suburban and medium-distance lines can now be obtained online, and will become valid for use from September 1, confirms transport minister Raquel Sánchez.

Lasting four months, the move – financed by €200 million in public funds – is expected to save residents nationwide the cost of 75 million train journeys before New Year's Eve.

The Cercanías lines – often referred to as the Rodalies in the Comunidad Valenciana and Catalunya – typically cover up to six zones radiating out from a provincial capital city, spanning about 70 kilometres or roughly an hour's journey.

Prices per journey normally range from approximately €2 to €6 one way, depending upon zone.

Medium-distance rail links, or Media Distancia, are inter-provincial, but generally fall short of the long-distance or Larga Distancia connections which operate across several regions at once.

Both the latter are much slower than the high-speed AVE train – which is not covered by the free season ticket deal – although they are much cheaper, being around half the price.

Frequent-passenger tickets – passes for a set number of journeys, or unlimited trips over a specific time period – are the ones which will be at zero cost for the coming months.

From Monday, August 8, would-be travellers or regular commuters can apply online for their free passes via Renfe.com in a pre-registration process, and the passes will become available from August 24, coming into effect eight days later.

For the Cercanías and Rodalies networks, those applying need to pay a deposit of €10, which will be refunded after December 31 if they make a minimum of four journeys a month on these rail links within the specific nucleus they register for.

This means that the four monthly journeys have to be on the network for the same city to qualify – they could not, for example, take two trips a month on the Cercanías in Valencia and two on the Cercanías in Bilbao and still recover their deposit.

On the other hand, if they pay two deposits of €10, they could then recover both if they made four trips a month on the Valencia network and four on the Bilbao network.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

A MAN declared dead at his home in the province of Tarragona was on his way to the funeral parlour when he turned out to be alive, according to police sources.

The patient, 64, was found collapsed in his flat in Riudecanyes, and firefighters had to break in so paramedics could get to him.

A doctor from the Medical Emergency Service (SEM) examined him and certified him as biologically dead.

This means no brain activity, which is irreversible – unlike 'clinically dead', which means no heartbeat or breathing, and is effectively cardiac arrest.

A clinically-dead person may be 'brought back to life' if CPR is successful, but a biologically-dead person will not respond to this or any other treatment or action and, at most, can only be kept 'alive' by artificial breathing and circulatory apparatus.

As the man, who reportedly had a history of alcohol addiction, was declared biologically dead, no CPR was carried out.

Shortly after, a coroner was called in and funeral directors summoned.

The coroner arrived first and, on closer inspection, found the 'deceased' was still breathing – but only just, and with great difficulty.

A mobile intensive care unit was brought in, and medics managed to stabilise the patient before rushing him to hospital.

No update has been given on his situation, so he is believed to still be alive and in the ICU.

Local Police always attend the scene whenever an ambulance is called out, not just when foul play is suspected – the reason being that they are normally on the doorstep and able to get there within a matter of minutes, enabling them to start first aid if the ambulance is delayed.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

You need to cut some tiles, you have a baby, you break a leg. Hopefully not all at once, of course, but it does mean you'll need an angle-grinder or tile-cutter, a pram and cot and baby-carrier – and to employ someone to do your sleeping for you, as you won't be doing much of your own – crutches, maybe a wheelchair depending upon how bad the fracture is.

In short, stuff you need to buy, ranging from inconvenient expenses through to crippling costs involving a second mortgage.

Then, when Baby is on his or her feet and keeping you in a permanent game of 'chase', 'catch', and 'don't touch that because owww', your leg heals enough for you to take part in said chasing, and those tiles are now attractively fixed to the wall, those crucial bits of equipment that depleted or emptied your savings are gathering dust in a spare room.

At some point, you might get around to selling them on eBay, recouping a fraction of your outlay and having the hassle of arranging courier firms and getting quotes so you can accurately price delivery costs for your eventual buyer.

Or if it's something that isn't likely to sell and you can't find someone else who might need it, you'll probably, at some point, call the council to arrange an 'eco-park pick-up', or just dump it in a bin yourself.

All that money, for something you'll use once or, at best, for a few months, only to end up in a landfill, polluting the atmosphere and contributing to climate change.

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JAZZING up your summer, Spain's east coast is aflame with music this August: Two much-loved festivals barely 10 kilometres apart mean the final full month of summer is always an excellent time to plan a trip to the beautiful, cosmopolitan enclave known as the Marina Alta.

Home to well over 100 nationalities, but still very 'typically Spanish', tastefully built up on its coastline and with pine-covered, mountainous green wilderness just minutes inland hiding a multitude of villages that feel as though the passage of time took a detour and circumnavigated them – think working donkeys, whole families living off their cherry orchards and vineyards, and life revolving around the local bar where everyone knows your name – the northernmost shire in the province of Alicante sees several worlds collide.

Beach towns such as Dénia – the Marina Alta's capital – Jávea, Calpe, Benissa, Benitatxell and Teulada-Moraira are lively in summer, quiet and pleasant in every other season, multi-national and multi-cultural (although we're not talking about a 'little Britain' of chip shops or pubs with Union Jacks flying; a mix of European and wider-world influences maintain a discreet and harmonious presence with the ever-evolving 'real Spain'), oozing with history, attractive, bright and colourful; smaller coastal villages such as El Verger and Els Poblets, close to the Valencia-province border, retain their close-knit community feel.

SPAIN'S minimum wage is set to go up again by next year as part of a longer-term plan to bring it to 60% of the national mean average salary, in accordance with European Union guidelines.

Since the turn of the century and up to socialist president Pedro Sánchez's winning the elections in 2019, the minimum pay for a full-time, 40-hour-a-week job had been between just under €600 and €700, reaching €735 a month by the time Sánchez took up office.

This is based upon 14 monthly pay packets per year, in line with a largely-diminishing tradition of giving workers a double salary in August and at Christmas – nowadays only really observed in the public sector and for State pensions.

By the end of 2021, the minimum wage under Pedro Sánchez had risen to €965 a month over 14 months, or €13,510 per year.

This, for employees who get 12 monthly wage packets per year, would equate to a take-home of approximately €1,054.30.

In February 2022, the coalition government – run by the PSOE or socialists and its left-wing independent partners Unidas Podemos – agreed for the minimum wage to rise to €1,000 a month in 14 payments, giving a total gross annual salary of €14,000.

This would result in 12 monthly take-home salaries of approximately €1,092.60.

Sánchez says the minimum salary will be reviewed 'this autumn' and is likely to rise by 2023, the final year of his current tenure.

European Social Charter: Minimum wage not lower than 60% of average salary

Whilst not mandatory at present, the European Commission strongly advises member States to set their minimum wages at a figure not less than 60% of the national average individual income – even though this does not always reflect what the 'standard' earnings of a country are, since very high earners will always skew the figures.

This recommendation falls within the European Social Charter, drawn up in the aftermath of the continent-wide recession that led to widespread unemployment and poverty a decade or so ago.

IN A NON-COVID year, you can take your pick from about 800 music festivals in Spain – in some of which, the music is only part of a packed programme of completely unrelated activities that might even include yoga classes and wine-tasting – at least one in almost every province, featuring local or national bands which may or may not have made the mainstream music charts, and often with a handful of inter-galactic superstar singers or groups swinging by the western Mediterranean on a world tour.

Back in the halcyon days when vaccines were what you had before an exotic holiday and masks were what you wore at fancy-dress parties or slathered on your face with a couple of cucumber slices over your eyes, Spain frequently hosted macro-festivals where revellers outnumbered the population of a European capital city.

And now they're back for the first time since the 2010s, some of the most famous have been boasting ticket sales running into six figures: Mad Cool saw Madrid's headcount swell by 5% in the space of a weekend, with 300,000-plus descending on the nation's largest metropolis; the globally-acclaimed Costa Azahar-based Benicàssim International Festival (FIB) welcomed 180,000, and the Basque-based BBK Live shifted 115,000 entry passes.

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TURNING 18 is always either an exciting or absolutely terrifying time, depending upon the life you lead in general, but it's rarely 'just another birthday' or devoid of emotions – and, if you live in Spain and it's your 18th this year, the ministry of culture wants to help you celebrate it with €400 to spend on entertainment and arts, as we reported earlier this week.

Brand-new adults will be stocking up with free books, CDs and DVDs, going to music festivals, museums, plays and the cinema without paying a cent – except on popcorn – provided they register by October 10.

The minister behind the move – aimed at boosting a wider industry sorely battered by Covid lockdowns and restrictions and, now, consumer-price inflation – is Miquel Iceta, who has made it very clear where his own Bono Cultural would be channelled if he was 18 again.

“I'd have spent it on the entire works of Elton John,” Iceta, 61, reveals.

He could use up to €100 on physical CDs or, if he prefers 'retro' supports, cassettes and vinyl, and up to another €100 on downloads of Elton's music.

“Also, I'd have spent it on more books.”

Half the voucher, or €200, has to be used to fund events and experiences rather than physical or digital products, meaning the British veteran singer-songwriter would have to go on tour in Spain for an 18-year-old Iceta's complete Bono Cultural to become an 'Elton voucher'.

In the absence of a live show by the Candle in the Wind legend, Iceta would blow this allowance on 'going to the theatre even more often'.

At least now Santa Claus knows what to pop into the culture minister's stocking this Christmas.

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