ARCHIVED - Murcia and Spanish news round-up week ending 24th June 2017

The heat is on as the Costa Calida prepares for a long hot summer

The heat is on

Although the heat has been the main talking point of the week, the heat is also on worldwide to deal with the increasing threat of cybercrime and hacking.

Apologies to anyone who has experienced any inconvenience this week as our sites changed over to https and the php programming upgrade was finally implemented. Most of the work has been done offline over the last few months in preparation for this security upgrade, but there are always unavoidable glitches when new programming is finally applied to the live site. Fortunately, most of the switchover went smoothly and most of the inconvenience was minor, with just a  few sections of the site lagging behind the rest as the new pages fed through the different time zones. We are aware the classified log-in is still causing programmes and is being re-programmed over the weekend, so hopefully that will be fully operational again by Monday, if not before!

Unfortunately it's becoming increasingly important to keep investing into improved security and adapting programming as technology moves forward at a mindboggling speed and hackers find new ways to destroy the livelihoods of small businesses by accessing their sites and holding them to ransom. All of our databases are isolated to protect users and a lot of money invested into maintaining and improving our service continuously, so thank you for your support; if you like what we do, please share it and recommend it.

So, onto the weekly round-up.

The British are often mocked for talking almost obsessively about the weather, but as the summer officially began the heat has provided plenty of conversation points over the last week in the Region of Murcia.

Murcia is braced for even longer and hotter summer than usual, accordiing  to the meteorologists, and the June heatwaves are likely to be a sign of things to come during the rest of the summer in the Costa Cálida after a month in which temperatures have regularly been around seven degrees higher than the norm. This weekend, as if to prove the point, heat alerts return to the Costa Cálida with forecast maximums of 39 degrees on Saturday, putting areas of the region on orange alert.

As the experts conclude that summers in the Costa Cálida are gradually eating into spring and autumn, there were swimming costumes in class on Wednesday, adding to the pressure on the Murcia government to install air conditioning in schools: the parents of pupils at the Virgen de Guadalupe infant and primary school just outside the city of Murcia organized for youngsters to go to class wearing swimming costumes, flip-flops and caps after classroom temperatures reached 36 degrees.

It may have surprised the protesters, but later the same day the regional government announced that 13.5 million euros of European regional development funds will be spent on installing air conditioning and other measures at State education centres all over the Region of Murcia!

Many schools are breaking up this weekend, and the remainder will be closed by next weekend, with schoolchildren ready to enjoy three months of summer holidays.

Murcia school year dates announced for 2017-18: the first pupils return to class in Beniel and Murcia on 5^th September, while for secondary school students in Yecla the summer ends on 19^th September.

Meanwhile, if the summer heat is getting on top of you why not take the advice of the Town Hall of Lorca and simply eat water melon? The Region of Murcia is responsible for a quarter of all Spain’s water melon exports, and as well as containing water and sugar the fruit also offers plenty of other health benefits!

Elsewhere in Murcia, the weather and climate change also contributed to a wealth of stories concerning agriculture and the environment, with the three-year drought making more emergency measures necessary and heated debate continuing over the regeneration of the marine environment in the Mar Menor.

Mar Menor and environmental news

Expert recommends more salt to clear the water of the Mar Menor: a report compiled by a biologist for the Ciudadanos political party concludes that the optimum solution to the environmental problems being suffered in the Mar Menor consists not only of eliminating the run-off of nitrates into the lagoon from the agricultural land of the Campo de Cartagena, but also of increasing the salinity of the water.

Mar Menor transparency at its best level in the last year: the average of the measurements taken at the 14 permanent water quality monitoring stations points to a depth transparency of over 4 metres, reaching 5.5 metres at two of them, and this, according to the fishermen of San Pedro del Pinatar, has a beneficial effect in terms of the quality of fish caught in the Mar Menor.

Murcia farmers criticize “extreme” Mar Menor protection measures: agriculturalists agree that the urgent measures to protect the Mar Menor are “necessary”, but also see some of those measures as “extreme” and “very harmful”.

Government backs technology to make agriculture compatible with the protection of the Mar Menor: de-nitrification techniques have been found to be technically and economically viable.

National sea turtle recovery campaign to begin in San Pedro del Pinatar: many of us were unaware of the fact, but last Friday was in fact World Sea Turtle Day, and to coincide with the occasion the national government of Spain presented a new set of guidelines for the treatment of animals belonging to these species which run aground on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines of this country.

Other environmental news:

​Jumilla continues the fight against the red palm weevil: the destruction being caused by the red palm weevil in the date palm trees of the Region of Murcia and the rest of Spain has moved out of the limelight in recent months, partly due to the ecological importance of the condition of the Mar Menor stealing the limelight, but in Jumilla it is far from forgotten…

Hunters lament failure of bid to save the Barbary sheep in the Sierra Espuña: a last-ditch attempt by the governing PP party in Spain to save invasive wildlife species which are perceived to pose a threat to native flora and fauna has failed, meaning that there will be no reprieve for the Barbary sheep population of the mountains of Sierra Espuña.

Calasparra aquifers called into service as Murcia fights the drought: there are numerous large reservoirs in the Segura basin, and great efforts are made to treat and re-use waste water, but in a region where agriculture is so important the issue of water is one which is of constant concern. While it has been promised that there is enough water to ensure that there are no restrictions in the water supply to households in Murcia, at least until October, the situation for farmers in Murcia is rather more serious.

Three wild fires in two days in the Region of Murcia: the wild fire season is clearly under way, and a series of minor incidents have been dealt with by firefighters over the last couple of days in Villanueva del Río Segura, Alhama de Murcia and Puerto Lumbreras.

Monumental ficus tree suffers drastic cut back after near-disaster in Murcia: The enormous ficus tree which dropped 60 tons of branches into Plaza Santo Domingo in Murcia last Friday has remained in the news all week, as investigations continued into why it had so dramatically reacted to the heat continued, with municipal workers making sure that other large trees in public areas were examined and cut back  to prevent further incidents.

By Monday the tree had been cut back to a barely recognizable size in order to eliminate the risk of any further incidents in the foreseeable future, after miraculously only one person was reported to have suffered minor injuries in the potentially disastrous collapse last Friday.

The Santo Domingo ficus in Murcia is now 60 tons lighter and in “intensive care” after suffering the equivalent of a heat stroke, while in Cartagena a precautionary cut has been administered to the tree in the Plaza de España as other Town Halls take urgent steps to ensure that similar potential disasters are avoided.

Tourism

Regional minister confident of Corvera airport opening in 2018: two appeals against the process to award the new management contract at Corvera have been rejected, but the Murcia government plays safe and waits for a ruling on a third appeal.

Other items in the Murcia news this week

Ten drug arrests in Cartagena follow shooting at Sangonera cockfight: rarely are so many criminal offences mentioned in the same headline!

Musical chairs for Murcia Mayors as power-sharing pacts kick in: it is now just over two years since the last local elections were held in the 45 municipalities of the Region of Murcia as well as in the rest of Spain, and in many parts of the Region the emergence of new parties resulted in alliances having to be agreed in order for local governments to be formed and for Mayors to be sworn into office. Various of these power-sharing agreements have led to the office of Mayor being shared during the four-year legislature, and as a result this week has seen changeovers in Moratalla, Totana, Pliego and Cartagena.

Corpses of five immigrants brought ashore in Cartagena: the bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition after drifting on a small boat in the Mediterranean for approximately a month. There has been a noticeable increase in the number of boats attempting to reach Spain during the last few days.

Retrieved Bullas Roman statues could be returned to private ownership: the family from whom the statues were seized remains adamant that the figures came into their possession legally after the excavations at the Los Cantos site over 100 years ago.

Murcia bucks the Spanish national trend as births outnumber deaths by 4,700: the birth rate in Spain has fallen by 21 per cent in the 8 years since the onset of the economic crisis, but in Murcia the natural population growth last year was significant.

Tinsa reports positive signs of property market recovery all along the Costa Calida: the situation as described by the leading property valuation firm varies significantly among the eight coastal municipalities of Murcia, but in general terms the conclusion is that there are clear signs of recovery visible, with prices still shaky but demand rising steadily and continuing indications that residential construction is on the up again in terms of holiday homes designed both for Spaniards and for foreign buyers.

A 5% increase in average prices is reported in Águilas, a trend boosted by the areas of Calarreona, Calabardina and Isla del Fraile, while in San Pedro del Pinatar average prices are reported to have fallen by 0.9%, sales are up by 7.6% and the stand-out statistic is that the total of 171 licences granted for the construction of new coastal properties places the municipality among the top 15 nationwide (excepting provincial capitals).

In the other municipalities the situation is mixed, but the analysts of Tinsa believe that the key indicators are moving in the right direction, and that there are good reasons to be optimistic regarding the future.

In more general terms, the report concludes that the recovery is becoming much stronger all along the Mediterranean coastline of Spain, especially in the Costa Blanca, while on the Atlantic coast there are areas where prices could still fall further.

An interesting story in Barcelona highlighted the ever-present problems of renting property, when a woman was forced to rent her own apartment in order to evict her tenant who was illegally re-renting it out to tourists!

Spanish national news: Jihadists and Catalan separatists share the headlines with Cristian Ronaldo

A mixed bag in the Spanish news this week, with the opening skirmishes in the battle over the Catalan independence referendum competing for headline space with the arrests of four Jihadists and, almost inevitably, Cristiano Ronaldo.

In Catalunya two government officials are facing probable charges of misusing public funds after they designated 200,000 euros for the purchase of ballot boxes, and also this week the Constitutional Court of Spain has banned the regional government from having a department of Foreign Affairs on the grounds that this infringes the domain of the national government. The minister at the head of the to-be-renamed Department celebrated by visting exhumations at a Civil War mass grave in the province of Lleida, where the Town Hall of the provincial capital is refusing to play ball with the separatist regional government, preferring to do so instead with the Spanish national football team!

Still on a footballing theme, Cristiano Ronaldo is threatening to leave Real Madrid after being upset at reaction to his problems with the taxman, but arguably more important than this threat was the one posed by an "extremely dangerous" potential Jihadist suicide bomber in the national capital on Wednesday.

For more recent Spanish news stories scroll down below...

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