ARCHIVED - Murcia and Spanish news round-up week ending 1st September 2017

Corvera airport adjudication continues, best foreign tourism figures ever for Murcia and positive news for Brexit expat pensioners

As September begins the traffic authorities in Murcia are warning that over the weekend as many as 900,000 long-distance road journeys are expected to be undertaken on the roads of the Region, spelling the end of the busy tourists season as many visitors from Madrid and the rest of Spain head back home for the start of a new school year and the long wait until the December holidays.

A sad time for hotels and other tourism-driven businesses, then, but also relief for those of us who live on or near the coast: after two months it will now once again be possible to park at supermarkets, drive at acceptable speeds and enjoy full internet band width!

However, many visitors to Murcia may have been tempted to curtail their holidays early this week as the weather took a turn for the worse. In the city of Murcia on Tuesday the local fire brigade were kept busy as numerous drivers were caught out by the heavy thunderstorms and found themselves trapped in their cars, and similar incidents were reported in most parts of the Region as the amount of rainfall between Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening rose to over 50 millimetres in Lorca and Puerto Lumbreras and over 40mm in Murcia and Jumilla. At the same time, it was reported that there were over 500 lightning strikes in 24 hours in the Region of Murcia.

As the storm clouds gradually began to disperse in the Region of Murcia on Wednesday afternoon attention turned to the damage done at the beaches of the Costa Cálida, where Juan Pedro Torralba, the councilor who heads the department of Decentralization in Cartagena, reported “minor defects” at a number of locations. These defects included wooden walkways having been washed away in several locations and deep channels created in the sand by run-off water.

Meanwhile, the CHS warned members of the public to stay away from Ramblas (floodwater channels) until the skies cleared, just a day after it was reported that the conditions this year are right for the destructive “gota fría” autumn storms to brew up over the coming months, especially in terms of sea temperatures. Average water temperatures in the Mar Menor and the Mediterranean the figures are a good 2.5 degrees higher than is customary for the time of year, and this increases the chances of the major autumn storms making an appearance in 2017.

The CHS has confirmed this week that work has been completed on the clearance of river beds and “ramblas” (or floodwater runoff channels) in order to minimize any possible storm damage, and a total of 12.5 million euros has been invested by the government in improving floodwater management systems in Murcia, some of that amount having been assigned to the modernization of the computerized hydrological information system which allows officials to monitor the situation in rivers and ramblas in real time.

It is important to point out that this talk of violent storms and flash flooding is not a case of idle scare-mongering in the Region of Murcia (or the other Mediterranean coastal areas which suffer from Gota Fría), rather it is part and parcel of living on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The “gota fría” does not arrive every autumn, but when it does the cloudbursts are frightening, spectacular and, on occasion, lethal, and in technical terms the events of this week did constitute a DANA (the preferred term for the gota fría among meteorologists).

Airport and tourism news

Corvera airport will be managed by Aena or Edeis: after a long period without news, it was announced by the regional government of Murcia on Wednesday morning that of the three candidates competing for the new management contract at the as yet unopened international airport in Corvera only two have successfully passed the first phase of the selection process, with Corporación América having fallen by the wayside.

This is because the company was unable to rectify shortcomings identified in the original bid, and as a result the new contract will eventually be awarded either to Aena, the partially State-owned concern which currently runs all but one of Spain’s operational passenger airports including San Javier, or Edeis, the French company which recently took over the management of the airport of Castellón.

World War I wrecks could be used to promote Costa Cálida dive tourism: four wrecks, all container ships, were torpedoed by one German U-boat (the U-35) on the night of 13^th and 14^th October 1917, and now lie off the coast of La Manga del Mar Menor and Cabo de Palos, while a fifth is that of the Spanish cargo vessel Francoli, which met its fate the following year at the hands of the U-49 submarine. The dives, if approved by the Ministry of the Environment, will be very tricky from a technical point of view, and it is thought they are likely to attract visitors from northern Europe, particularly Norway.

Águilas installs new information panels in the park of Cabo de Cope: the wild coastline of Águilas north of Cabo de Cope features fossil dunes and is a reminder of what the coast looked like before the advent of tourism!

Relief among Spanish hoteliers as UK holiday sickness insurance firm loses its licence: investigations revealed that Preston-based Allsure Ltd had encouraged holidaymakers to “fabricate or embellish symptoms of gastric illness” in order to be paid compensation, and that the firm had even used deceptive sales publicity in which anticipated compensation payments were overstated in an attempt to attract consumers.

The UK accounted for 22 per cent of all international tourism in Spain in July: the British were the leading market in the Costa Blanca, the Costa del Sol and the Canaries, and almost leapfrogged the Germans in the Balearics, as overall foreign visitor numbers showed another increase and the ongoing boom in the Spanish tourist industry continued.

Here in Murcai the figures are also very positive, as Murcia recorded the best July international tourism figures ever!

The British continue to be the most important market, accounting for 43% of the total, and the number of Irish choosing Murcia during July was more than double the 2016 level.

Mazarrón and Camposol in the spotlight

Mazarrón-Puerto de Mazarrón dual carriageway works contract to be awarded next month: for almost as long as anyone can remember there have been calls for the RM-332 road between Mazarrón and Puerto de Mazarrón to be converted into a dual carriageway, and now at last the 21-million-euro contract will be awarded for the work to widen the road will be awarded during September.

Work under way at Camposol waste water treatment plant: at long last the calls for urgent action to be taken to make good the deficiencies in sewage and waste water treatment infrastructures on the Mazarrón residential development of Camposol are meeting with an appropriate response, the latest news being that the contract to repair and upgrade the EDAR waste water treatment plant has been adjudicated.

Promises for Camposol as regional government resumes activity in Mazarrón: the first meeting of the regional government cabinet after the summer recess was held in Mazarrón on Wednesday, and both the Town Hall and the government were keen to emphasize various important projects on which work has either started or is about to begin. Apart from the dual carriageway between Mazarrón and Puerto de Mazarrón and the investments being made in infrastructures on Camposol, these included plans to improve the condition of the seafront in El Alamillo and the efforts being made to create more jobs in the municipality.

Four injured in car crash near Camposol: their vehicle overturned after leaving the RM-3 motorway near El Saladillo.

Back to school...

New school year about to start throughout Murcia: parents turn their attentions from the beach to schoolbooks as the first children return to class next Tuesday in Beniel and Murcia.

Murcia schools could adopt flexi-time in the case of September heatwaves: as children all over the Region of Murcia prepare for the start of the new school year over the next couple of weeks the regional government is anxious to avoid any more incidents regarding children suffering heat strokes while in class, and is taking steps to allow schools to alter class timetables at their discretion if temperatures climb too high.

As thermometers soared in June many parents sent their offspring to class wearing swimming costumes as a protest, and the regional government announced that 13.5 million euros were to be spent during the summer on improving primary schools in order to avoid extreme heat in classrooms, but it appears that that project has not yet been completed.

Other items in the Murcia news this week

Blood dripping from balcony leads to discovery of corpse in Espinardo: a young Lithuanian is helping police with their enquiries in Murcia although foul play may not have been involved.

Roman inscription stone recovered a decade after being stolen from San Ginés de la Jara monastery: the inscription on the limestone block refers to a member of one of the leading families who resided in the Roman city of Cartago Nova (now Cartagena), and it is believed that it dates from the last decades before the birth of Jesus Christ.

Electronic failure closes El Estacio bridge in La Manga: the iconic bridge of El Estacio in La Manga del Mar Menor, which opens and closes to allow road traffic to reach the north of the strip while permitting boats to cross between the Mediterranean and the Mar Menor, suffered an electronic failure on Monday and it will therefore not be possible for boats over 7 metres high to use the Estacio channel until further notice.

Pepsico invests 31 million euros in Alcantarilla plant: after months of negotiations with authorities in the Region of Murcia, Andalucía and the Comunidad Valenciana, the multi-national corporation Pepsico has confirmed that it is to invest in a new production facility in Alcantarilla, where the “Alvalle” brand of gazpacho will be produced.

Machete confiscated from violent individual in Cartagena: the man was causing a breach of the peace on Sunday night in the district of Los Dolores.

Desperate African migrants continue to reach the coast of Murcia: most of those attempting to make the crossing head for Andalucía, but some make their way towards the coasts of Murcia and Alicante, and over the weekend over 30 of the 150 or so who were intercepted were close to the beaches of the Costa Cálida at the time of their detention.

Free blue parking period concludes. As the summer ends, so does the free parking in blue areas!

Brexit

British pensioners will continue to have access to healthcare in Spain after Brexit: provisional agreement: Since UK voters decided to take the UK out of the European Union the biggest fear for UK nationals living in not only Spain, but the other member states of the EU, has been their status in the future, and for those who have retired, whether they will continue to receive free healthcare in Spain as they have done in the past.

This concern is principally economic, as many of the British retirees who live in Spain have fixed-level incomes, and those who survive on a state pension have every right to be concerned that should they be forced to pay for private healthcare policies that living in Spain would no longer be possible on a small fixed income.

This week the “Brexit secretary” David Davis presented the topics discussed in this week’s negotiations, stating that provisional agreement had been reached to ensure that those pensioners living here now would be guaranteed continuance of the exisiting arrangement for access to the Spanish state system as they have now, as well as the use of an international healthcare card giving them emergency cover when travelling within the EU and UK, as they have now.

Although plans for future residents have yet to be negotiated, and agreements must be ratified by EU nations at the conclusion of the Brexit negotiations, this should offer peace of mind to pensioners living in Spain now who have been concerned that they would lose their right to reciprocal healthcare and be forced to return to the UK.
 

Spanish and Murcian property news

Spanish used property sales return to pre-crash levels: Spain’s property registrars have this week published some relevant data which may provide a clue as to whether the market has returned to what might be viewed as a “normal” level of activity after the boom-and-bust cycle of the last fifteen years or so.

During the second quarter of this year, they report, a total of 119,408 homes changed hands, of which 99,343 (or over 83 per cent) were second-hand properties. This is the highest figure for a decade in relation to used housing, indicating that in this respect the market is now as active as it was in the months leading up to the bursting of the property bubble in late 2007 and early 2008.

But this almost certainly does not mean that another crash is on the way. On the other side of the coin is the figure for new property sales, which between April and June was only 20,065, and this represents under 20 per cent of the totals which were recorded in early 2007, indicating that speculative construction and buying is not as significant a feature of the Spanish property market as it was a decade ago.

At the same time the registrars also report that during the second quarter the proportion of purchases made by non-Spanish nationals remained steady at 13.1 per cent, giving rise to approximately 15,600 sales, and that among these transactions 14.9 per cent concerned British buyers – an increase in comparison to the previous quarter, reversing the downward trend since the Brexit referendum. Could it be that confidence in Spanish property is beginning to return to UK purchasers?

Mortgage activity in Spain reaches six-year high: the figure of 29,516 new mortgages registered during June is the highest monthly total since September 2011, and at the same time, the total loan capital involved was 4.4% higher than in the same month last year, leading to an average per mortgage of 116,629 euros, the highest figure since February 2011.

In the Region of Murcia, meanwhile, the news is also good, although perhaps not as spectacularly so as on a national scale. During June the 725 mortgages registered represented an increase of 21.6 per cent over the same month last year – the fifth most significant increase in Spain’s 17 regions – and during the first half of 2017 there were 3.3 per cent more new mortgages than in the same period last year.

Spanish national news

Separatism rears its head to cause discomfort for the King of Spain at Barcelona anti-terrorism demonstration

Murcia was not the only part of Spain where the weather turned autumnal this week – a whirlwind storm caused chaos in the centre of Segovia, for example – but the main headlines continued to centre on Catalunya, focusing both on the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils a fortnight ago and on the fast-approaching date of 1^st October, when the regional government intends to hold a referendum on the issue of independence from Spain.

This week the Catalan president officially inaugurated its "Nordic delegation office" in Copenhagen, designed to strengthen bilateral relations with Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Estonia and Iceland, although the Danish government failed to acknowledge the occasion with an official representation, an absence viewed as a snub by the Spanish media.

While regional president Carles Puigdemont and his cabinet continue to delay officially calling the referendum, the national government could be said to be playing a cat-and-mouse game, waiting to spring into action as soon as any law regarding the referendum or the “transition” to independence is passed. At that point objections will be raised and the matter will be taken to the Constitutional Court, where it must be assumed the legislation will be ruled null and void, as have other controversial laws in Catalunya in the regional past.

Some reports suggest that if no independence or referendum law has yet been voted on in the Catalan parliament it is simply because as soon as this happens the process will be ruled illegal: by delaying the inevitable course of events, the theory runs, the separatists are “keeping the impossible dream alive”.

The events of the next month will tell.

As for the terror attacks two weeks ago, the increased vigilance in Spain was plain to see this week at the annual Tomatina festival in Buñol, where 22,000 registered participants took part in the annual “battle” in which 165,000 kilos of ripe tomatoes were thrown as weapons while 700 security staff were on duty in the streets, some in plain clothes.

This followed an unprecedented event last weekend, when Felipe VI became the first Spanish monarch to take part in a public demonstration as he joined half a million others condemning the recent Jihadist attacks in Barcelona. Unfortunately, the demonstration was used by separatists as an opportunity to wave their Catalan “estelada” flags and to boo the arrival of the King, providing a neat connection between the themes of terrorism and separatism but rather undermining the whole point of the event.

Elsewhere there was a surprise for bathers on a beach in Asturias when a 5-metre giant squid washed ashore, the threat of a strike at Spain’s airports this autumn appears to have receded, and the situation on the Spain-Morocco border in Ceuta was again in the spotlight as two women who made their living carrying bundles of food and clothes across the frontier were trampled to death in a human stampede.

For more Spanish news items over the last week scroll down below…

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