ARCHIVED - Murcia and Spanish news round-up week ending 3rd May 2019

More spring fiestas in the Costa Cálida in a week dominated by the dramatic general election results

In a week where the news has been dominated by the outcome of last Sunday’s general election in Spain, the Region of Murcia has joined the rest of the country in a stop-start resumption of the normal routine following the celebrations of Easter Week and the Fiestas de Primavera in the regional capital.

Another holiday followed on Wednesday 1^st May, and already it’s fiesta time again in many parts of the Costa Cálida as traditional spring celebrations hit their stride. The Cruces de Mayo, or Crosses of May, are a tradition which is celebrated in different ways in different parts of the Region of Murcia, although in most cases crosses are erected in the streets and dressed with flowers and ornaments. In Águilas there is a romería to the windmill of El Saltaor, in Alhama de Murcia the satirical Mayos tableaux are created in the streets and townspeople dressed in colourful jester outfits, in Abanilla a piece of the true Lignum Crucis is carried in a Romería to a sanctuary outside the town, and in Caravaca de la Cruz, where the fiestas of the Santísima y Vera Cruz de Caravaca (Cross of Caravaca) take place, the spectacular running of the wine horses took place on Thursday.

At least the weather is set fair for the weekend, with no repeat forecast of the heavy storms which forced the cancellation of most of the major processions of the second half of Semana Santa!

But there is no getting away from the election results, which provided a dramatic illustration of how quickly the political scene in Murcia and Spain is changing. More on the national scene below, but in Murcia the big news was that the newly emerged radical right-wing party Vox made a dramatic impact.

Murcia is traditionally a PP (or conservative) stronghold, but at the forthcoming regional and local elections on 26^th May that could very easily change if the preferences of voters on Sunday are repeated. At the previous general election in 2016 the PP won the support of 332,000 voters in the Region, but on Sunday almost half of that support evaporated as the party polled only just under 180,000 votes, largely due to the huge increase in support for Vox: from just 2,590 votes in 2016 the party led by Santiago Abascal raised its total to over 143,000, a figure which would equate to 9 of the 45 seats in the regional parliament if repeated on the 26^th of this month.

As a result, the PP was overtaken for the first time in an election in Murcia since 1991 by the PSOE, whose 190,000 votes represented an increase of 45,000.

But it is the startling rise of Vox which is a source of concern for many people, with their stated policies including the dismantling of regional governments in order to centralize authority, far greater restrictions on immigration, the banning of abortion and a return to many of the ideals of General Franco, who ruled Spain as a dictator until his death in 1975. With 18.6 per cent of the votes, in none of the other 16 regions is more of the electorate persuaded by the party’s extremist rhetoric, and in Torre Pacheco the party won more votes than any other. At the same time, in Fuente Álamo, Lorquí, Mazarrón, San Javier and San Pedro del Pinatar the newcomers were the second most voted-for, and evidently this could have very important implications for the local and regional elections on 26^th May: click here for a summary of the situation in Mazarrón.

Tourism news

Extra beach cleaning staff in Los Urrutias following the heavy rain over Easter: the Town Hall increases the manual cleaning brigade to 18 working in double shifts following complaints from local residents and homeowners.

Turnover of 1.6 million euros at Corvera airport in the first quarter of 2019: Aena reports increased revenue and profit at the airports of Spain.

Anger among bar owners in Cartagena as the Town Hall takes over Cruces de Mayo celebrations: a hastily rearranged festivity in which bars are banned from organizing live music and restrictions are placed on setting up street bars in the city centre.

Agriculture and the environment

Increased imperial eagle and peregrine falcon populations in Sierra de la Pila: mating pairs and eagle chicks observed in the mountains in the south of Jumilla.

Wood chips and cuttings used to remove nitrates at Los Alcázares water treatment plant: an example of the circular economy as efforts continue to protect the Mar Menor. However in the same week social media users shared footage as water continued to run into the lagoon from surrounding agricultural lands 10 days after the heaviest April rains in 50 years.

Native flora re-planted again at Lorca beaches as the war against vandals continues: naturalists do battle with local vandals to protect the environment at the beaches of Calnegre as the baffling destruction of fauna continues.

Ocean sunfish washed up on La Azohía beach: adults of the species can weigh up to a ton, although the specimen in La Azohía was substantially smaller!

Regional economic news

The Cartagena-Vera ghost motorway made a profit of 8 million euros last year: these results were achieved before the drastic cut in toll tariffs of January 2019.

Murcia government debt rises to 85 million euros in the first quarter: increases in public sector salaries reverse the first-quarter surplus of 2018.

New car sales increase in Murcia and Spain for the first time in 8 months: Murcia showed the sharpest rise in the country but private buyers are still cagey, with the April increase largely attributable to a rise in purchases by car hire firms.

The economy in Murcia grew by less last year than in any other Spanish region: growth of just 1.5 per cent after Murcia topped the table with 3.3 per cent in 2017.

Other stories in the Murcia news this week

15 migrants intercepted off the coast of Cartagena: 6 minors were among those whose boat was spotted 16 miles south of Calblanque.

2.6 mbLg earthquake felt in Alhama and Librilla: the tremor occurred at 3.45 on Wednesday afternoon.

33,000-euro subsidy for Mazarrón music school and town band: money for the local music society while Camposol residents await street lighting improvements!

Lorry overturns in Alhama while transporting 214 pigs to the meat factory: a brief taste of freedom for some of the porcine passengers before completing their final journey.

Aljibe water deposits being restored in Sierra del Carche: the infrastructures were used to guarantee water supplies in the mountains of Jumilla.

Traffic disruption in Cartagena until July due to major road repairs: the Alameda de San Antón is being re-surfaced between Plaza de España and El Corte Inglés.

Multilingual 112 emergency app to the rescue of British walkers in the mountains of Murcia: the app enables emergencies to be reported immediately with no language barrier, and was put to use when a man suffered severe chest pains in the mountains just outside the regional capital.

Murcia and Spanish property news

Perhaps the most interesting statistic to be produced in relation to the real estate sector in Spain this week concerned the number of new homes for which construction licences were awarded in February, showing a continuation of the recent upturn as increased sales at last lead to a demand for more housing.

February total was 10.4 per cent higher than last year and the figure is 23 per cent up on 2018 after two months of the year, but in the longer term this is a statistic which illustrates perhaps better than any other the extreme nature of the boom and bust cycle which occupied the first 15 years of this millennium. In 2006 the number of licences granted rose to a staggering 865,000, but by 2013 and 2014 the total was down to only 34,000 before the recovery began: last year the number had risen to just over 100,000 and the early signs are that 2019 will see further growth, with a rise of 23 per cent in the combined figures for January and February.

A similar picture is painted by the data for the Region of Murcia. In 2006 licences were awarded for the construction of over 51,000 residential properties, but by 2014 the figure was down to only just over 1,000. There then followed a period of stagnation until last year the total doubled to over 2,200, and in the first two months of 2019 there has been further year-on-year growth of 9.4 per cent to 444.

Earlier in the week, more figures related to February showed that while the number of property mortgages registered rose by 9.2 per cent across the country there were 3 per cent fewer loans in Murcia, despite sales figures for the month being 15 per cent higher. Clearly cash is king in the Murcia property market at present, perhaps in part because many of the sales are being made to non-Spaniards with capital available to invest in their Costa Cálida homes.

At the same time, the data published by the government show that with interest rates currently very low – an average of only 2.37 per cent on variable rate loans and 3.05 per cent on fixed rate repayment terms - as many as 41.8 per cent of buyers opted for fixed rate loans to lock into the advantageous conditions. What’s more, with the Euribor rate on which mortgage repayment calculations in Spain are based defying analysis and falling for the second month in a row, it seems that these low rates are set to continue for a good while yet!

Spanish news summary: – the socialist government and the radical right are the winners in the general election, disaster for the PP as 45 per cent of their voters desert

Among those who are to be congratulated following the general election in Spain on Sunday are the national sociological research centre CIS, whose most recent opinion poll proved to be very accurate indeed as the PSOE emerged victorious despite failing by some distance to reach an overall parliamentary majority.

The socialists of the PSOE increased their number of seats in Congress from 85 to 123 (out of 350), with the biggest losses sustained by their traditional conservative rival, the PP. For the PP the results were not far short of disastrous, and with their parliamentary representation having been more than halved from 137 to 66 the position of Pablo Casado as party leader must surely be under threat.

Many PP voters would appear to have switched their allegiances either to the newly emergent radical right-wing Vox party, which will be sending 24 MPs to Congress – their first ever – or to the slightly more moderate right-wing group Ciudadanos, whose parliamentary representation has increased from 32 to 57.

The PSOE swept the board in almost all of Spain’s 17 regions, the only exceptions being in Catalunya and the Basque Country, where regional or national groups topped the lists. But to govern in Congress, Pedro Sánchez (who will presumably continue as Prime Minister) will need to agree on pacts or even a coalition with other parties, the most likely collaborators being Unidas Podemos, who lost 25 seats but retained 42, and some of the regional parties represented in the Basque Country, Catalunya, the Canaries, Navarra and Galicia, although the issue of agreement with Catalan separatists is a thorny one following the secession attempt by the regional government in 2017.

Any pact with Ciudadanos appears to have been ruled out by Albert Rivera, the party leader, during an election campaign in which he consistently veered towards the right wing in an effort to discredit the PP and Vox.

The next few weeks, then will be crucial as Pedro Sánchez attempts to form a stable enough government to last the full term of 4 years, but at the same time there is no rest for the campaign teams as in just 3 weeks’ time there is the small matter of regional, local and European elections to concentrate on!

In respect of the European election, an interesting development this week has been the decision by Spain’s Electoral Committee to bar Carles Puidemont, the former Catalan president, from standing as a candidate. Sr Puigdemont has been in self-imposed exile to avoid trial since the tumultuous events of October 2017, and had been named as a candidate by the Junts per Catalunya (JxCAT) party (running under the name of “Lliures per Europa”), but the national Committee has ruled that he and others who are being investigated on charges of sedition, misuse of public funds and rebellion are banned from standing.

The others directly affected are two former ministers in Sr Puigdemont’s regional government, Toni Comín y Clara Ponsatí, who joined their former leader in meeting the current regional president, Quim Torra, in Waterloo on Thursday. In highlighting what they predictably see as an injustice, they once again attempted to drum up support for their cause on the international stage, urging the EU to sanction Spain for violating the fundamental values of the Union.

Elsewhere, the traditional 1^st May marches on Labour Day were somewhat less conflictive than they have been in other years, with trades unions calling for a change in labour laws and hoping for the formation of a “progressive” government, while many of their members were distracted by the warm sunshine and preferred a relaxing day out to the prospect of angrily waving banners and placards, and thankfully no injuries were reported among the 900 mostly British passengers and crew on the Pont-Aven, a ferry travelling between Plymouth and Santander, when a fire broke out on board.

For more on these and other stories in the Spanish news, scroll down below...

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