ARCHIVED - Murcia and Spanish news round-up, week ending 15th July 2016

The Murcia tourist sector is in full swing as the first heatwave of the summer approaches

As we reach the midway point of July and the number of people on the beaches of the Costa Cálida continues to rise the unusually mild temperatures look set to come to an end over the weekend, with maximums likely to push up into the 40s by Sunday in parts of the Region of Murcia.

All of which, of course, is good news for tourism in the Costa Cálida. The Region of Murcia was named this week as one of the areas of Spain which are benefitting most from increased international tourism as holidaymakers avoid other destinations, such as Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia, as a result of the political instability in the eastern and southern Mediterranean. (For further details see below).

In order to ensure that the summer passes off smoothly in San Pedro del Pinatar the Policía Local has launched a new Beach Unit, consisting of eight officers in natty summer uniform whose main mission will be to keep watch over the beaches and seafronts in the municipality, thus reinforcing security for both residents and visitors during July and August. In Cartagena, meanwhile, the Town Hall reports that the efforts to make the municipality’s main beaches accessible to those of limited mobility are meeting with great success so far this summer, one example being the visit of dozens of disabled tourists from Catalunya to the Playa del Cavanna in La Manga del Mar Menor on Wednesday.

Another sign of the start of the summer is that the weekly markets in coastal towns on the Costa Cálida have now burst into life, and in Cabo de Palos on Sunday there was an increased contingent of Policía Local officers from Cartagena ensuring that the lively trade being done was not accompanied by pickpockets and illegal street vendors without licences.

Also in Cabo de Palos, bathers at the Playa de Levante on Tuesday were treated to a demonstration of the skills and proficiency of the lifeguards who watch over them as they take to the water, witnessing a full-scale rescue simulation which was staged at the beach.

Further inland, the Salto de Usero beauty spot just outside the town of Bullas, where locals and visitors enjoy a refreshing swim in the icy water which cascades out of the hillside into the clear pools below, remains as popular as ever. This was proved once again on Sunday, when the Town Hall found itself obliged to implement its new safety and security regulations, turning visitors away as the maximum figure of 150 people was reached.

Looking to the future, as confidence continues to grow in the future of the tourism sector in south-west Murcia it has been announced that ten million euros are to be invested in re-launching the Hotel Dos Playas in Puerto de Mazarrón, an establishment which in the 1970s became one of the most glamorous in the Costa Cálida. The hotel will become the only 4-star establishment in the municipality of Mazarrón, providing a boost to year-round tourism.

Hopefully, by the time the hotel re-opens next year traffic will have been eased by the construction of the long-awaited roundabout on the RM-332 road between Mazarrón and Puerto de Mazarrón: the contract for the work has been put out to tender this week, with the construction period being specified as five months.

One of the few downsides to the influx of summer visitors is the situation regarding young people’s informal open-air parties in Cabo de Palos, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, and this continues to be a controversial issue. The decision to move the revelers out of town to the car park next to the Trips discotheque has met with disapproval in some quarters, with complaints that the litter which is inevitably left after hours of “botelleo” (drinking and playing loud music) is dangerously close to the border of the regional park of Calblanque. As a result Trips staff will begin daily clean-ups at 7.00.

It is clear that legislation to prevent teenagers and young adults from enjoying themselves by indulging in “botelleo” sessions is highly unlikely to succeed, but at the same time it also appears that the Town Hall of Cartagena is little by little finding its way towards a solution which may eventually prove satisfactory to all of those concerned.

Economic news

The increase in tourist activity is also mirrored in more encouraging data for the economy as a whole: during the first six months of this year only 41 businesses entered bankruptcy proceedings in the Region of Murcia, and the year-on-year comparison showed a decrease of 44%, the most significant in the seventeen regions of Spain.

These latest data seem to suggest that a corner has been turned in the regional economy, following the full-year totals of 108 last year, 229 in 2012 and 231 in 2013, and the same is true in the whole of Spain, where the figures have now been dropping for eleven consecutive quarters. 

Agricultural and environmental news

For many people the Mar Menor is a water sports playground and an ideal place for safe year-round bathing, but for the fishermen of the town of San Pedro del Pinatar it is also the source of their livelihoods.

One of the main reasons for this is the esteem in which prawns from the Mar Menor are held, the highly salty water giving them a distinctively rich flavour, and according to the local fishermen’s guild in San Pedro del Pinatar the spring catch this year was over 20 tons, a new record for the period from January to June. As a result prices are down to around 15 euros per kilo: great news for lovers of seafood, some of whom can remember prices of up to 150 euros per kilo in previous years!

On land, farmers tend to have a rough time of it in Murcia, constantly threatened by lack of rainfall and the highest mainland temperatures in Spain, but many will benefit from the announcement by the regional government that three million euros are to be spent this year on repairs and improvements to 50 rural roads. However, less encouraging news this week is that tomato exports from the Region are reported to have dropped by almost 20% over the course of the last twelve months alone. One of the main reasons is that tomatoes can now be bought more cheaply from Morocco, and at the same time there has been a sharp increase in greenhouse production in the Netherlands.

Back to the Mar Menor, and the regional government has responded to the calls for flood protection in the coastal towns of the Mar Menor by outlining a series of proposals which were discussed on Tuesday with representatives of local residents associations, particularly those of Los Nietos and Mar de Cristal. The general gist of the government’s proposals is to provide protection for residential areas at low cost and without detrimental implications for the environment, by creating a series of run-off channels and floodwater ponds which would prevent the flooding of built-up areas as a result of changes to the lie of the land made by agricultural concerns in the Campo de Cartagena. 

Still on environmental issues, the regional government of Murcia has approved measures to declare the white-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala) an endangered species in the Region and implement plans to aid an increase in population numbers. The white-headed duck was first observed to be breeding in the Region of Murcia in 2006, and since then the development of the population has been closely monitored in the wetland areas it inhabits in Santomera, Cabezo Beaza, Campotéjar (in the municipality of Molina de Segura), Las Moreras (Mazarrón), Alguazas and Las Salinas (Alhama de Murcia).

Crime in the news

The Policía Nacional have busted what is described by central government delegate Antonio Sánchez Solis as the largest fake banknote operation yet discovered in Spain, confiscating fake notes with a face value of over 1.5 million euros and arresting seven people during five raids and searches in various localities in the Region of Murcia. 

The ringleader of the operation has been identified as 60-year-old Juan Pedro G.S., who has a long previous criminal record and for whom an arrest warrant had already been issued by the national courts of Spain. He was arrested on 7th July at his home in San Pedro del Pinatar, where the fake banknotes and the machinery used to produce them were also found. 

Another crime story which made the national news was a spectacular high-speed chase off the coast of Cabo de Palos last week, ending in the arrests of six people who were on board a launch which was transporting 1,120 kilos of hashish from the north African enclave of Melilla to the Balearic Islands. During the chase a daring pilot gave chase at so low an altitude that those on board had to duck to avoid being hit by the undercarriage of his helicopter.

Rather less dramatically, a man who stole a JCB digger from a plot of land in the north-west Murcia municipality of Mula has been arrested over six months later by the Guardia Civil in Hellín, in the province of Albacete, where he had driven the vehicle, covering a distance of around 80 kilometres.

Pioneering treatment at Murcia hospital

Specialists at the Hospital Virgen de la Arrixaca in El Palmar, approximately 5 kilometres south of the centre of Murcia, have become the first in the world to perform pioneering bone marrow stem cell therapy on a 57-year-old female patient suffering from osteoporosis.

New graduates at the San Javier air force academy

Tuesday was graduation day at the Academia del Aire in San Javier, where 91 successful candidates were officially named as junior commissioned officers in the Spanish air force after completing five years of training on the shore of the Mar Menor.

The 85 men and 6 women whose training officially came to an end on Tuesday showed their endurance by standing in full uniform in the hot sun while the Minister for Defence and others gave their speeches, until General Francisco Javier García Arnaiz finally gave the order to break ranks. At this point 91 blue caps were thrown into the air simultaneously as the new officers celebrated their achievement with joy and relief.

What’s on in Murcia

A separate What’s On across the Murcia Region bulletin is sent weekly to those who would like to receive it, detailing the many events on offer across Murcia in the near future.

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Murcia property news

It has been a quiet week for property news in the Region of Murcia, with estate agents on the coast no doubt busy dealing with enquiries from those who are spending the summer here and looking to own their own holiday homes in the future.

In general terms there was encouraging news this week regarding rises in the market value of residential property in Spain (see below), but the data published have not been specific to each of the regions of the country and it can only be assumed that the Costa Cálida is continuing to mirror the recovery of the market across the country as a whole.

Spanish national news

Interview with the British Ambassador to Spain

One of the topics most preoccupying all those who either live in Spain, work in Spain, own property in Spain, are Spanish and work in the UK, export products between Spain and the UK in either direction or work for a Spanish company in the UK is the topic of Brexit. More specifically, how will the UK exit from Europe affect all of us. We interviewed the British Ambassador to Spain and asked for some basic clarification about what happens now: click for Brext interview with British Ambassador Simon Manley.

The heat is on for the political leaders of Spain

As Spain prepares for the first major heatwave of summer 2016, which will see thermometers registering 40 degrees in much of the Iberian Peninsula, hundreds of thousands of people will be travelling to the Costas over the weekend to begin their annual holidays, but in Madrid there is no rest for the country’s political leaders.

While government committees decide whether or not to raise the country’s terrorist threat alert status to its maximum level following the events in Nice on Thursday night, the situation regarding the possible formation of a new government in Spain remains uncertain. Negotiations among the leaders of Spain’s political parties following the general election which was held on 26th June entered a critical phase this week, with acting President Mariano Rajoy of the PP meeting Albert Rivera of Ciudadanos and Pablo Iglesias of Unidos Podemos on Tuesday and Pedro Sánchez of PSOE on Wednesday.

One of the most likely sources of tacit support for a PP government was thought to be Ciudadanos, and this proved to be the case on Tuesday when Albert Rivera announced following the meeting between the two men that his party’s 32 MPs would be prepared to abstain in a second investiture vote.

"We have to find some way of unblocking this situation and we think a technical abstention is better than ... having a third election," Sr Rivera told reporters, adding "I hope other parties can do what we have done today”.

However, this hope which was scuppered by Pedro Sánchez (see image) on Wednesday, at least for the time being. The faint hopes that a quick solution to political deadlock might be reached were dashed when Sr Sánchez informed Mariano Rajoy that he and his 84 colleagues in the new national parliament intend to vote against him at the presidential investiture debate.

The key phrase during Sr Sánchez’s press conference after his 90-minute meeting with Sr Rajoy was "we will vote against Sr Rajoy as a prime ministerial candidate", apparently condemning the acting President’s bid for a second term in office to failure, as it can be assumed that the 71 Unidos Podemos MPs will not be persuaded to allow the PP to govern. At the same time, though, Pedro Sánchez expressed his full commitment to doing anything in his power to avoid forcing Spain into a third election.

Despite all the setbacks, though, Mariano Rajoy maintains that he may still call an investiture debate on 2nd August. The new parliament will be formally convened on 19th June, after which it will fall to King Felipe VI to begin another round of contacts with the party leaders, and it is at this point that Mariano Rajoy will weigh up whether or not it is worth calling an investiture debate, his hope no doubt being that the King can prevail upon Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE to adopt a stance similar to that of Albert Rivera and Ciudadanos. 

If the investiture debate does indeed begin on 2nd August, the first vote will be the following day and the second (in which a simple majority rather than an absolute majority is required) would be 48 hours after that. 

Should no government be formed, the third general election which no-one admits to wanting is likely to be held on 27th November. 

Obama greeted by protesters

The Spanish wing of Greenpeace orchestrated another eye-catching protest on Sunday to coincide with the truncated visit of Barack Obama to Madrid, unfurling a large banner on the Metrópolis building in the capital bearing the slogan “Yes we can stop TTIP”. (Greenpeace is currently campaigning against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which is being negotiated between the EU and the USA).

The protest was carried out by six people who scaled the Metrópolis building in order to make their banner visible to the US President.

Mr Obama’s visit was a lightning one in the end as he hurried home following the events in Dallas, but not as brief as that of the spectacular fireball which briefly illuminated the night sky of much of southern Spain for a few seconds on Friday night, coinciding almost exactly with the US President’s arrival in Sevilla!

Catalunya and separatism

At the same time, it has been an eventful week in Catalunya. The political rule book appears to have been thrown out of the window as the separatist government pursues its goal of creating an independent State and the main political parties are constantly re-defining their own identities and policies.

The latest example of this occurred in Barcelona last weekend, when the Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) party, which had been in existence under that name since 1974 and which has spent much of the intervening period in power in the regional government, decided that from now on it will be “re-founded” under the name of “Partit Demòcrata Català”.

The CDC was initially led by Jordi Pujol, who headed the regional government for 23 years until 2003. Sr Pujol then handed the reins to his protégé and successor Artur Mas, who was president of the regional government from 2010 to 2016 before his resignation in January of 2016, when he resigned in order to facilitate the coalition government which is now headed by another member of the party, Carles Puigdemont.

Just days after the re-foundation of the party, though, it emerged that the new name which was decided upon after much debate will not be allowed by Spain’s Ministry of the Interior.

The reason is that the new name of “Partit Demòcrata Català” is too similar to that of another political formation, Demòcrates de Catalunya, which was officially registered as such in July 2015, and the Ministry believes that the similarity of the two names causes a risk of confusion among voters.

Monty Python fans will no doubt be reminded of the People’s Front of Judea and their numerous rival groups…

On Wednesday attention shifted to Town Hall of Barcelona, where an uncharacteristically moderate approach was shown by the Barcelona en Comú party when a proposal to declare King Felipe VI “persona non grata” in the city was rejected by the council.

Gibraltar

The annual tension which seems to surround the issue of sovereignty in Gibraltar every summer was made manifest on Tuesday when José Manuel García-Margallo, the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the caretaker government of Spain, chaired the first governmental meeting on the subject since the result of the Brexit vote on 23rd June became known, and this coincided with the fallout of the latest “incident” in the water off the Rock last week.

The day before Sr García-Margallo’s meeting, the British Ambassador to Spain, Simon Manley, was called to an emergency meeting with the Spanish Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who communicated the Spanish government’s dissatisfaction with the events of last Friday. It is claimed that a patrol vessel belonging to the Royal Gibraltar Police set a collision course towards a Guardia Civil launch which was heading for the beaches of La Línea de la Concepción.

One of the outcomes of the meeting in Madrid on Tuesday was a clear difference of attitudes towards the issue of sovereigntyin Gibraltar between the Minister and representatives of the regional government of Andalucía. On the one hand, Sr García-Margallo has been quoted in the Spanish press as saying that the Brexit vote on 23^rd June has presented Spain with its best opportunity to achieve re-possess Gibraltar since the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. On the other hand, though, Miguel Ángel Vázquez, who represented the regional government of Andalucía, expressed disappointment that the issue of sovereignty was “practically the only item on the agenda”, adding that this is far from being the most important issue.

Meanwhile, Fabian Picardo, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, is reported by the government of the Rock to have taken full advantage of his visit to London in the company of Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph García in order to put across their views on a whole range of issues.

Tourism news

The Spanish tourism authorities are confidently predicting that in 2016 new records will be set for the number of people visiting this country from abroad, forecasting that the “tidal wave” of tourists who have abandoned plans to spend their holidays in other destinations such as Turkey will send figures soaring to previously unknown heights. 

Between them, Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt “lost” 4.6 million visitors in the first five months of this year, and at the same time Spain has gained 2.2 million.

As for the effect of Brexit on the Spanish tourist industry, at present Exceltur report that it is minimal and that a negative effect of only 0.1% on the sector’s GDP is expected this year, although as yet there are too many unknowns to quantify the longer-term consequences.

Back to the present, and this week the number of Blue Flags awarded to the beaches of Galicia in the north-west of Spain in 2016 has been reduced from 141 to 137, following the decision by the Adeac organization to withdraw the honour from three locations in the municipality of Miño (province of A Coruña) and one in Barreiros (Lugo). The reason for this change of heart is that although it is almost the middle of July there are insufficient lifeguards on duty at the four beaches concerned.

Christmas is coming… !

The not particularly cool and blustery date of 12th July might seem an inappropriate one on which to start talking about the 2016 “El Gordo” Christmas lottery in Spain, but in fact it was on Tuesday that tickets for the draw on 22nd December officially went on sale throughout the country. 

The early start is because there is a tradition in Spain for holidaymakers on the Costas and elsewhere to take back lottery tickets when they return to their homes to work at the end of the summer, and this year the summer promotional campaign for El Gordo focuses on the Almería coastal locality of Roquetas de Mar, where the winning tickets were sold last year

Crime and emergencies

Among the distinctions held by the River Guadarranque, which runs through the Campo de Gibraltar and enters the Mediterranean in the Bay of Algeciras (province of Cádiz), is that it is the main entry point for illegal drugs into southern Spain.

The latest scheme by which it is hoped that small boats can be prevented from making their way inland up the Guadarranque was finally scheduled to get under way on Monday, when the civil engineering company Tragsa was due to begin work on the construction of an “anti-narcos” barrier across the mouth of the river.

Other criminal activities to hit the news this week include the raids on three clandestine cigarette factories in the provinces of Málaga, Toledo and Salamanca, resulting in the confiscation of 39 tons of chopped tobacco following an investigation which was carried out in collaboration with the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior. 

Apart from featuring in our Gibraltar and crime sections, the municipality of La Línea de la Concepción was back in the news on Tuesday when a wild fire caused the evacuation of 420 residents and tourists from their homes and hotel accommodation. At the same time, the authorities in Tenerife were dealing with an incident in which approximately 150 people were trapped in the mountains of the north of the island when part of the TF-445 road collapsed, forcing its closure to all traffic in both directions. 

Bulls, bullfighters and parakeets

The last bull run of the nine-day 2016 San Fermin festival in the city of Pamplona on Thursday resulted in eight people being taken to hospital with minor injuries, though no one was gored. In total this year's festival left a total of eleven runners gored, with the worst day being July 8th when six people were caught on the horns of the half-ton animals, though there were no fatalities.

One who did meet an untimely end, though, was bullfighter Víctor Barrio, who was gored in the chest by a bull in the ring of Teruel last Saturday. This caused a storm of reaction on social network sites, with personal attacks on Víctor Barrio causing unnecessary offence to his friends and family, including his 31-year-old widow.

One of those who have suffered the consequences of their over-zealous reaction to the death of the Segovia bullfighter is a “youtuber” known as JPelirrojo. This 30-year-old animal rights activist commented that of course he does not place the same value on the lives of a bull and a bullfighter, explaining that the bull has no intention of harming anyone and is therefore worth more.

This caused discomfort not only to the family of Víctor Barrio, but also to confectionary company Nestlé, who have subsequently announced that they will no longer be using the image of the popular campaigner to promote their Maxibon ice-creams.

Another animal in the news this week was the rose-ringed parakeet, a native of tropical regions of Africa and the Indian sub-continent which in recent years has become a common sight in the wild in various parts of Spain. The SEO Birdlife ornithology organization has just released the results of its first nationwide census, concluding that there are rose-ringed parakeets living in the wild in as many as 150 municipalities all over Spain, and that the total population has now risen to approximately 3,000. 

There is no disputing the fact that these exotic birds are visually attractive, but in some places they are also becoming something of a nuisance on account of the noise they make and the mess they leave on the pavements. The result could well be a campaign to reduce the numbers of these immigrants or even to eliminate them completely, as has been the case with the Barbary sheep population in the Region of Murcia and the red swamp crayfish in the province of Sevilla.

Spanish property news

The latest monthly report published by leading Spanish property valuation firm Tinsa concludes that the average price of housing in this country rose by 1.5% between June 2015 and June 2016 and by 2.2% in the first half of this year, maintaining the gradual recovery which has become more and more apparent over the last 18 months.

The year-on-year increase in June was most pronounced in the category of regional capitals and other large cities, where the price of residential property is reported to be 3.6% higher than a year ago, and in the Balearic and Canary Islands, where a sharp rise of 8.7% in the first half of 2016 has led to a 1.8% yearly increase.

Similarly, data published by the EU statistics unit Eurostat this week report that the average price of housing in the Eurozone rose by 3% during the 12 months ending in the first quarter of 2016, and that in Spain the increase was 6.3%. The figures for Spain are the most positive since the third quarter of 2007, when the property bubble began to burst in this country, and this is the eighth consecutive quarterly increase after six years of falling value.

Meanwhile, the Spanish banking sector breathed a collective sigh of relief on Wednesday when lawyers at the Court of Justice of the European Union pronounced themselves to be opposed to the proposal that all of the excess interest payments paid by customers on mortgage loans due to the controversial “interest rate floor” clauses should be paid back to borrowers. 

This could save Spanish banks between 3,000 and 5,000 million euros, avoiding potentially devastating effects on balance sheets and profit and loss accounts within the banking sector. 

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