ARCHIVED - Murcia and Spanish news round-up week ending 4th January 2019

The King of Spain will open Corvera airport, local elections loom in the year of Brexit, and as the Three Kings head for the Costa Cálida Murcia Today celebrates its 10^th anniversary!

It will have escaped the attention of no-one that Tuesday of this week was New Year’s Day – and a gorgeous day it was too, with beach weather all along the Costa Cálida - and as 2019 begins it promises to be an eventful year for the Region of Murcia and a significant one for Murcia Today.

There are now under 2 weeks to go before the scheduled opening of the Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera on 15^th January, and although the event is bound to be tinged with sadness at the closure to civilian flights of Murcia-San Javier it is with a sense of relief and optimism that the new facility is finally being opened after the stops and starts of the last ten years. The final air safety certification is still pending at Corvera, but so confident are airport management company Aena and the regional government that it has been confirmed that the opening ceremony will be presided over by King Felipe VI.

Meanwhile, the first passengers to pass through the new terminal building will be those on board the Ryanair flight arriving from East Midlands at 10.25, to be followed during the day by travellers on 15 other flights, all of them linking the Costa Cálida with the UK and the Republic of Ireland. In the summer, of course, the flight roster will be far more extensive, and although full details have yet to be confirmed it is expected that as any initial teething troubles which might arise at Corvera are resolved more and more airlines will include the new destination on their route maps.

Looking further ahead, Spaniards will be voting in local and European elections on 26^th May, and there is also a possibility of a general election during the year as the PSOE party struggles to make its minority government effective and functional. These elections will be of special interest due to the continuing trend away from the 2-party system which dominated the country between 1982 and 2005: last year’s regional election in Andalucía showed that apart from the PSOE, the PP, the new left-wing Podemos party and the central Ciudadanos group, the far-right “Vox” movement is becoming a force to be reckoned with, and it is likely that the number of Town Halls in which alliances and power-sharing agreements are reached after May will be even higher than at present.

Another interesting aspect of the May local elections is that it is still not certain whether British expats resident in Spain will be allowed to vote. This is one of the many issues hanging in the balance due to the on-going uncertainty over whether and in what conditions Brexit goes ahead, but as things stand at present there is a very real possibility that UK nationals who have been in Spain for 15 years or more will not be able to vote either in the Spanish elections, or in the United Kingdom.

The whole topic of Brexit continues to create passionate debate, and even though the Spanish Prime Minister said last week that his government would respect the rights of UK citizens living in Spain, "Their rights will be preserved whatever the scenario,” he told journalists present at the prime minister’s traditional end-of-year news conference, he also added that this was conditional on Spaniards being given the same treatment in the UK. He also said that his government would present legislation outlining the rights of expats now resident in Spain and would lay out measures which aim to protect bilateral commercial relations between the two countries in February.

Depending of course, on the outcome of the parliamentary vote in the UK and whatever follows that!

As for the significance of 2019 for Murcia Today, the start of the New Year means that we are now 10 years old (although those who know us personally will confirm that we look a good deal older!). After another year of sharp growth our readership in 2018 rose by 40 per cent to an astonishing 1.65 million – that’s not the number of articles read, it’s the number of individual people using the site according to Google Analytics – and we would like to take the opportunity to thank all of those reading this bulletin for contributing to that total.

To celebrate the anniversary we have made a few modifications to the appearance of the page as part of the never-ending work to improve the content and delivery of the product, taking into account the astonishing growth of the internet as a form of mobile communication. In 2009 we measured our growing readership in theoretical coachloads, and visualised each day's traffic as a convoy of coaches full of non-Spanish speakers driving up the M1, and it now seems inconceivable that we would be reaching an audience of over 1.6 million people and thousands every day, all of whom are actively seeking information about the Region of Murcia and have logged onto Murcia Today.

The internet revolution continues as more and more people become habitual internet users and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the advertisers whose financial support has allowed us to supply this volume of information to non-Spanish speakers and made Murcia Today the most widely visited source of information in English about the Region of Murcia and all of the readers who have chosen to read our articles. Thank you!

Other items in the Region of Murcia during a week curtailed by the New Year include the following:

Five minor earthquakes in the west of the Region of Murcia on Thursday: the tremors were recorded in the municipalities of Aledo and Bullas, although no damage was reported.

The band of the Grenadier Guards were in the centre of Murcia on Friday afternoon! Over 320 years of British history was on display marching down the Gran Vía Salzillo.

Murcia escapes the worst of the winter flu epidemic … so far … There is still time to receive the anti-flu jab, bear in mind that by this time last year almost 4,000 cases a week were being reported.

Almond growers face fines of up to 120,000 euros if they fail to burn wasp-infested trees: the destructive almond wasp has been detected in two groves in Jumilla and Yecla, and the regional government warns that as much as 80 per cent of almond production in Murcia could be at risk, basing their estimate on the decimation of almond groves in parts of Castilla-La Mancha and the Comunidad Valenciana.

Cartagena Roman Theatre museum prolongs shirt promotion deal with FC Cartagena: the most popular museum in the Region of Murcia welcomed 230,000 visitors last year.

Mortar bomb found at Lorca rubbish treatment plant: this is the third such incident at the premises in the last 2 years, and it is beginning to appear that working at the plant carries with it rather more risks than might be assumed!

The December fall in unemployment in Murcia was the second sharpest in Spain: the Murcia total dropped by 5.77 per cent during 2018 to just over 100,000.

Drama at Canteras restaurant as robbers threaten customers at gunpoint: the stick-up took place at the popular Restaurante Sacromonte on New Year’s Eve morning.

Los Alcázares requests seaplane for a roundabout: Spain’s first military seaplane base was inaugurated in Los Alcázares in 1915, and despite controversy over other similar roundabout adornments elsewhere in the Region it seems that the Los Alcázares project enjoys the support of all parties involved!

Goats lifted to safety from 20-metre well in Cartagena: the fire brigade rescued four careless billy goats in the countryside near Perín.

New dog-friendly park in store for San Pedro del Pinatar: 46,000 euros for a canine agility circuit near the salt flats of San Pedro.

133,000 euros spent on improvements at the fishing port of Puerto de Mazarrón: the project aims to improve safety and the distribution of catches from the jetty in Mazarrón.

Castillitos military barracks near La Azohía to become eco-tourism centre: the Loma Larga gun battery in Campillo de Adentro covered the “blind spots” of the guns of Castillitos in the 1930s.

Murcia and Spanish property news

This may have been a truncated week in terms of news days, but leading Spanish property valuation firm Tinsa were up bright and early on New Year’s Day to publish a report in which they summarize market trends for the final quarter of 2018, reporting the sharpest rise in average values across the country since late 2007 as the figure rose by 5.8 per cent to 1,337 euros per square metre.

Since the market bottomed out in early 2015 Tinsa have observed an increase in the value of Spanish housing of 11.7 per cent, although the figure is still 34.7 per cent lower than the peak which was reached in late 2007, and perhaps the most important aspect of the latest data is that values are reported to have risen during 2018 in all 17 of the country’s regions. There is still great disparity among the rates of increase, however, ranging from 10.8 per cent in Madrid to just 0.4 per cent in Extremadura, while the Region of Murcia saw a rise of 5 per cent, close to the national average (as was the case in other Mediterranean coastal regions).

There is a suspicion among certain property market analysts that valuation firms may be succumbing to the temptation to over-value residential property in Spain, as was the case in the years of speculative buying during the boom prior to 2008. This is the kind of practice that enabled the market bubble to grow so large just over a decade ago with disastrous consequences, but on the other hand there are indications, again according to Tinsa, that there is unlikely to be a repeat of that phenomenon.

Spanish news summary: mroe Ryanair cancellations, the exhumation of Franco and the migrant problem in the headlines as 2019 begins

The New Year has begun in Spain with the news dominated by topics which have become familiar over the last few months – all too familiar in some cases – including the proposed exhumation of the mortal remains of General Franco, more Ryanair flight cancellations due to strike action and the surge in the number of unauthorized African migrants reaching this country by crossing the Mediterranean.

With more Spanish-based Ryanair cabin crew strikes imminent on 8^th, 10^th and 13^th January there have been calls for compensation over and above ticket price refunds to be paid to passengers whose flights are cancelled, on the grounds that they are being advised of the disruption to their travel plans under 14 days before they are scheduled to fly. At least the dates of the latest industrial action do not coincide with the opening of the new airport in Corvera!

Meanwhile, the government’s plans to transfer the remains of Franco to a site where they cannot be glorified have run into yet another obstacle this week, with the flat refusal on the part of Prior Santiago Cantera of the abbey of Los Caídos to allow procedures to be initiated. Help is now to be sought from the Vatican as the Pope is one of only two people with authority over the Prior, but the whole project, which was presented before the summer in the expectation that it would have been completed by the end of the year, is in danger of being delayed beyond the current legislature: other objections have been raised by Franco’s grandchildren, the Archbishop of Madrid and the Supreme Court, and what was initially seen as a “new broom” policy is in danger of becoming mired in disputes and difficulties.

Another major headache for the government is how to tackle the flood of migrants, the scale of the problem being underlined by figures which show that in 2018 the number of Africans reaching Spain without authorization was more than the combined total of the previous 8 years, at over 56,000. At the same time, at least 769 more lost their lives while attempting to make the crossing, and the tough stance adopted by the Italian and Maltese governments looks likely to make the western Mediterranean the preferred route for the migrants and the people traffickers who facilitate their voyages in 2019.

Other stories in the headlines this week include another month of growth in the international tourism sector in November, with the UK once again contributing over 20 per cent of all visitors from abroad, the 20^th birthday of the euro – plenty of nostalgia for the peseta among the Spaniards! – and a reduction of the speed limit on main trunk roads in Spain. As of March the limit of roads other than motorways belonging to the national network (usually those numbered with the prefix “N”) will come down from 100 to 90 km/h, and the traffic authorities are already starting to change the signs on highways throughout the country.

For more details on these and other stories in the Spanish news scroll down below…

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