Hi Stronge,

The weather has been mixed but it is sunny and about 25C today and the forecast is good over the weekend.

With regard to easyjet they don't say when they will revert to online check-in but as the change is to allow them to fill unocupied seats with disrupted passengers I expect they will return to normal when the backlog is cleared.

The Easyjet website announced today that on-line check in is now available. For flights for the rest of this week you have to use a link on their website which is a slightly different way of doing it.

There is a note in the latest Fuengirola Foreign Residents newsletter that you have to renew your registration on the Padron every 2 years. This gets you 30% discount on local taxes. If you registered in 2008 you need to renew your registration this year to continue to get your discount in 2011 & 2012. You need your passport and NIE. It only takes a few minutes but does require a visit to the Town Hall. You do not need to be a full time resident to be on the Padron.

Hi everyone

Can you help? 

We are trying to contact Graham and Elaine but we are unable to find their e-mail address.  If anyone can let us have the info or pm them direct and ask them to email us, it would be very much appreciated.

Hope the weather is still good

Thanks

Jim and Joan

I'll send you a pm

New laws for smokers in Spain.

The new anti-smoking legislation which is expected to be introduced in Spain over the summer will allow smoking in hotels under a proposed reform from the Ministry for Health.

The proposal has now been sent by the Government to the other parliamentary groups, explaining the plans to ban smoking in all closed public areas where, under the 2005 legislation, smoking remains currently allowed.

30% of hotel rooms can be reserved for smokers, and smoking will also be allowed in prisons and in psychiatric clinics. Small bars will be allowed to sell tobacco, even though smoking will be prohibited in them. Smoking will be banned in casinos and bingos, despite representations from the gaming sector.

The Ministry for Health says it wants to try and obtain a wide a consensus as possible on the new legislation.

Copy and paste the link below for details on the new golf course. It also shows a map of the new road to the West of us.

www.carvajal-spain.com/Golf%20Course%20Carvajal.pdf

Westport

NEW DRIVING LAWS IN SPAIN

The new traffic law comes into effect in Spain today, Tuesday, and is designed to speed up the payment of fines by offering drivers a 50% discount if paid in the first 20 days.

However if any appeal against the fine is launched by the driver any chance of a discount is lost.

The new law intends to stop the current 25% of drivers who use different methods to escape payment.

Some offences are treated more generously under the new law, others more harshly.

LICENCE REMOVAL

The rule for licence withdrawal for between one to three months for serious or very serious infractions disappears. For example in the case of an infraction for alcohol in which there was 0.35mg/l in breath, there will now be a fine of 500 € and the loss of four points.

EARLY PAYMENT

Discount on fines between 30% and 50% for early payment made within 20 days via the website www.dgt.es or in the post office or offices of the Banco Santander. There is no discount on very serious infractions or when radar inhibitors have been found.

SIZE OF FINES

Fixed fines across the country of upto 100 € for small infractions, 200 € for serious ones and 500 € for very serious ones. Upto now there were regional variations of up to 600 €.

The use of a radar inhibitor has fixed punishment of 6,000 € apart from the fines for speeding imposed separately.

INFRACTIONS

The number of offences which see points removed from the driving licence is reduced from 27 to 20. Taken out of loosing points are , for example, parking in a bus lane or on the kerb, driving without lights, using a prohibited vehicle on the motorway, negligent driving or poor overtaking. Some speeding fines are also taken out of losing points, or now see fewer points removed – see table.

PAYMENT TIMES

Before you had 15 working days to present any challenge, now the time is using calendar days. The time from which points can be recovered will date from when the fine was paid, eliminating additional two month delays currently. However drivers stopped without a licence will now have to wait two years to obtain one.

EXPIRY OF VERY SERIOUS OFFENCES

Very serious offences will be dropped if the driver is not notified about them in six months, half the time under the current law.

RECOVERY OF POINTS

Now drivers who have lost points will be able to recover six points from attending a recovery course in an authorised centre. It used to be four points.

REMOVAL OF VEHICLE

From now any Town Hall which removes a car and takes it to the local pound has to notify the owner within 24 hours. If that notification is not made, the driver can only be charged for one day.

EXPIRY OF SMALL OFFENCES

This will now only happen after four years, instead of the current one year for small offences.

APPEALS

Quick payment implies that no appeal can be made. However quick payment will obtain a 50% discount. If there is no appeal or quick payment made, money will be taken by the executive route within 30 days of the notification of the offence

DESTRUCTION OF VEHICLE

Car workshops can scrap those vehicles which are abandoned with them, if the owner has not paid the corresponding bill in a period of a month. Also the vehicle can be taken to an authorised centre ahead of its destruction when two months have passed after the vehicle was fined if the owner has made no appeal

OWNERSHIP

The owner of a vehicle who allows it to be driven by someone without a licence will face a new serious charge, but keep his or her points. He or she will become the subsidiary person responsible for the payment of fines imposed on the driver in the case of non payment.

BAD DEBT

The owner of a vehicle will not be able to sell it or transfer it if he or she has four serious or very serious fines unpaid.

NEW OFFENCES

Programming a GPS navigation system while driving is a new serious offence and loses three points.

Parking in a disabled space is a new serious offence but will see no points being lost.

An unreadable number plate is a new serious offence, but will see no points being lost.

Manipulating the number plate sees a 6,000 € fine and the loss of six points – it used to be 150 € fine and two points.

Hello all,  its the hottest spell of the year out here so far,  the temperatures are sitting nicely up in the thirties.  For anyone who uses taxis regularly when out here,  and is sick of paying 50 Euros from the airport or 15 Euros from town, I have been using a English company and his prices are almost half price.  He charges 25 from the airport and charged me just 8 Euros from  'Town' last night at 3 in the morning.   Check out his web-site    www.homejames.es      All us locals are using them so you will need to  phone up in advance and make a booking.  

 Martin

ps  You have to get down to the pool early now for one of the four loungers.

used that service last november calv.great value and simon the driver a gentleman

Told ya so. Shame more routes were not opened from London though. Should be good for the local economy though.

Ryanair to open new hub in Málaga

Ryanair is now expected to open its new Málaga hub on June 22, creating the fifth such facility in Spain.

It means 19 new routes and as many as 360 new flights a week to and from the Costa del Sol with the Irish low cost airline.

Málaga will be connected to the four Spanish cities of Santander, Santiago de Compostela, Valladolid and Zaragoza, and to 15 more European destinations.

These are Aarhus, Berlin, Bratislava, Eindhoven, Gothenburg, Krakow, Maastricht, Memmingen, Oslo, Paris, Pisa, Stockholm, Tampere, Venice-Treviso, and Wroclaw.

It takes the number of destinations from Málaga with Ryanair to 39.

The new hub will see four planes based in Málaga and create 200 direct jobs as part of a 250 million € investment. In the summer season five planes will be based in Málaga. The company forecast that it will carry more than two million passengers through Málaga every year.

The Manager of the Costa del Sol Tourist Board, Ana Gómez, welcomed the news, saying that 39 direct flights to the Costa del Sol will bring greater penetration in the tourist market for the coast.

In addition the airline intends to up the frequency on 16 of its Málaga routes over the summer season.

Hi,  Does anyone have a map / site layout that they can email to me for phase 1 and 2 which comfirms the block numbers?

aotter@clara.co.uk

Thanks Andy 

Hi All,

The glass in my kitchen door has been broken, does anyone know a glazer and where the glass can be purchased.

Jo

Hi all, after a bit of a wobble in the middle of the month but only 1 day of rain summer has definitely arrived. However the tourists  have not as yet. As a result traders are suffering. Some are keeping prices high others have reduced them to attract business. This applies to everything from sunbeds on the beach (prices from 3€ to 4.50€) to food and drink. It pays to shop around!

calv refered to the 4 sunbeds by the pool. There are actually 4 at the block 8/10 pool and 2 at the block 6/7 one. These were donated by neighbours who no longer needed them. They have certainly been popular and it will be interesting to see if they are still in 1 peice at the end of the summer. 

We also plan to provide a few parasols at each pool soon.

I know the information I require is somewhere on this site but I have been unable to find it so I will ask the question again.

Does anyone know where we can get a shelf for the oven. 

Thank you.

 We´re out of stock again as we used to buy them in batches. The oven racks seemaad to be less of an issue now. The current hot problem is broken door handles of the fridge/freezer. I know of at least five which have to replaced so we will visit them again a bunch. If more people have this problem just give us a shout.

The oven is anyway not a very good appliance. Multiple people consider replacing it as it´s extremely slow in heating up and tends to produce a lot of smoke even when you clean it with special oven cleaners.

Also most of the DVD players especially of the cheap Supratech brand seem to have outlived their warranty period, but not by much. There are at least five apartments where we find them to be no longer functioning.

And a practical advise: keep your sat receiver on standby when you´re over and you´re not watching TV. It needs updates and all to often never gets a chance to download these as people just shut them off completely when not in use. 

Last but not least l advise you to look after your water outlet at the balcony. All to often it gets blocked during the winter and people without maintenance contracts find their apartments with a lot of damage after the winter. The real reason is that the foil underneath the tiles is not laid correctly so the water gets through and the hollow stones absorb it. They transport the water through all the walls which leads to huge problems internally with plaster coming completely loose all through the apartment. 

The only real solution if you are on of the unlucky ones is to replace the foil which means new tiling for the balcony at huge costs. Meanwhile however you can take some preventive measures by being sure that your balcony outlet is not blocked and checking that it indeed levels to that outlet. Often this not the case!

Max