Date Published: 25/04/2014

ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April

Running of the Wine Horses, Los Mayos and The Burial of the Sardine

ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April It’s a breathless time of year in the Region of Murcia, as the intensity of Semana Santa gives way to celebration and the season for fiestas begins.

As Easter was late this year it means the fiestas are all piled one on top of the other, with plenty of options for those who like to explore. This week Murcia has been enjoying its Fiestas de la Primavera, which now give way to the “Entierro de la Sardina”. This peculiar festival, which involved burning a sardine rather than burying it is linked into the rituals of using fire to cleanse the past and the bad, heralding rebirth and the onset of a time of regeneration, and is celebrated in Murcia by the maddest parade of the year on Saturday night when “sardineros” with flaming torches hold the crowds back from the grotesque fantastical floats which parade on this night as they throw thousands of toys and sweets into the masses. It really is quite a spectacle. ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April The tapas gardens which accompany these spring fiestas remain open until Sunday, so if you’ve never experienced this particular fiesta, it’s worth giving it a try.

This weekend Torre Pacheco celebrates its annual windmills event and romería, offering a chance to see the windmill of El Pasico working. Bullas is also enjoying fiestas with the fiestas of San Marcos up in the North-west, Blanca concludes its spring Fiestas which also include a Mediaeval market this weekend, and La Molata in Alhama de Murcia also celebrates its local fiestas.

This weekend there are also artisan fairs in Alhama de Murcia ( which has a guided theatrical tour also available over the weekend), another in the sanctuary of Santa Eulalia in the Sierra Espuña, always popular with ex-pats due to the beautiful location, one in Santiago de la Ribera in the San Javier municipality and another in Cehegín in the north of the region, which also has a guided family walk on Saturday.

Next week is May Day, ( don´t forget the Bank Holiday on Thursday) so there are several fiestas revolving around this important day. Cartagena is filled with floral crosses, the Cruces de Mayo, with street bars and music set up in the city centre, and these May crosses can also be found in many towns and villages across the region. However the biggest event related to Crosses is that of Caravaca de la Cruz, which holds its fiestas in honour of the Vera Cruz, or true cross, which includes the Running of the Wine Horses next Friday. ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April This is a unique event and is very popular with expats, as 60 horses, clad with hand embroidered mantels race up the hill to the castle, pushing through the thousands of people who pack the route.The Moors and Christians fiestas in Caravaca combine with this event, providing several days of spectacle and colour.

Another fiesta revolving around the May celebrations is Los Mayos in Alhama de Murcia, which includes the colourful run of the Corremayos, the “planting” of satirical figures around the streets of the town, with a tourist train running visitors from one to the other, folk dancing festivals which begin this weekend ( both free entry) and concerts .

And there are lots more events, all laid out in date order, in the What’s On section of www.murciatoday.com, accessed in the header bar at the top of every page. The events diary is also accessed via the same header bar and allows readers to search for events on a specific date.

Active Murcia
There are also plenty of more active options on offer: this weekend La Unión is busy, with a solidarity walk ( ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April entry is a donation of food for the needy) which leads from La Unión along Route 33, the old miner’s route, through the Sierra Minera to Portmán, with minibus transport provided to bring you back to La Unión, and also a free family cycle ride on Sunday.
Cehegín has a family walk, as does Totana, Mazarrón is also running a guided walk and the Mariposa continues its guided walks up in the Sierra Espuña. Cartagena offers boxing and the Mar Menor Sailing Association are back on the waters of the Mar Menor and always looking for new members.

Murcia news
The weather has been in the news this week as Murcia records its driest spring for more than 70 years, with ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April less than half the average rainfall for this period and above average temperatures. While on the one hand this has been a real joy for those escaping the misery of the UK floods, it’s now causing problems for the agricultural sector, with crops in non-irrigated areas already lost or under threat.
On the other hand, Greenpeace have warned that the Murcia coast, along with much of the rest of Spain, could find itself the victim of rising sea levels next century unless something is done to address the issues of climate change being exacerbated by human activity.

The dry weather also increases the risk of fire this summer and already fires are starting to occur along the southern Spanish coastline, with 2 in the Murcia region this week, although fortunately the regional fire protection vigilance services were able to act quickly enough to bring fires in both Totana and Águilas under control with little loss of forest.

Tourism has featured in several stories this week, the general consensus being that the excellent weather ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April over the Easter period contributed to positive results in the hostelry sector, hotels, bars and restaurants all reporting a busy holiday week and a positive upturn on the figures for last year, sentiments echoed by two of the major tourist municipalities, Águilas and Cartagena, who were both very satisfied with their results and the La Manga Club, who reported a record number of rounds of golf for one week, and a buoyant start to the year due to the miserable UK weather.

The new regional president has continued shaping his cabinet, and confirmed new appointments for culture and tourism, his emphasis firmly on reducing the regional deficit, and creating employment, the Murcia Region confirmed by Eurostat this week as having the tenth highest unemployment rate in Europe.

The Spanish media are naturally interested in what his plans are for the future of the region, and crucially, the former key strategic projects of the previous administration, but these, which include the Paramount park and Marina de Cope development in Águilas, are, he says, secondary considerations, and that the top priorities ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April are improvements to the level of education and creation of employment.

Asked about an opening for Corvera airport he limited his reply to a guarded answer, giving little in the way of any firm commitment to a projected timescale.

With the capital city of Murcia still immersed in fiestas this week, having taken Tuesday off for the Bando de la Huerta and been in little mood to think seriously about work it’s been a light news week, but once the Virgen de la Fuensanta returns to her sanctuary on the outskirts of Murcia next week there only remains the May Bank Holiday to come on Thursday for something resembling normality to resume.

Valencia region news www.valenciatoday.es
Across the border, tourism was also top of the news for most of the week following yet another Bank Holiday ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April on Monday, as the occupation levels and tourism campaigns were analysed, the general feeling being one of satisfaction. The Valencia region has already recorded the biggest increases in tourist visits of the year so far and Easter was also a big success for the Valencia hostelry sector. Other news stories include the tallest residential building in Europe up for sale in Benidorm for a cool 90 million, more Bankia share cases reaching the courts, the one featured this week a case won by an elderly couple who were mis-sold by their own daughter working in the bank, hallucinogenic turrón, a bottle feeding giraffe and Castellón airport is one step closer to opening. click for Valencia Today

Spanish News www.spanishnewstoday.com
Spain is also attempting to return to work after the excitement of Semana Santa, having witnessed thousands of parades and the movement of millions of people, Virgins falling off their thrones in Alicante, ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April tumbling figures of Jesus in Andalucia, capirotes and suncream clashing on the beach, and historic traditions such as flagellation in Rioja, a papal bull permitting just one man in Orihuela to wear his hat inside the cathedral while expressly forbidding the only image of a she-devil in the Spanish Easter parades to enter the same building.

Another tradition highlighted this week was that of Sant Jordi ( Saint George to us) who also happens to be the patron saint of Barcelona, his special day celebrated by an age old tradition of buying books and roses, which only made the news this week due to the massive fall in flower sales blamed on the recent rise in Vat by the flower growers.

Cataluña has also been in the news this week accused of having falsified the painting on an engraving to make it look as though Spanish ships were attacking Barcelona, as part of the ongoing disagreement between the Spanish and Catalan governments over the independence debate. Unfortunately, whoever chose the red and yellow stripes for the re-worked engraving to replace the blue and white which formerly existed chose a Spanish standard which didn´t actually exist until nearly a century after the engraving was first commissioned. Historians are not amused, and the Catalan government rejects the accusations being made in the Spanish press.

Staying with flags, a young British tourist found himself behind bars in a police station after cutting a Spanish flag off a monument and dragging it off down a street in Mallorca. The families and friends of the two Guardia ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April Civíl who were honoured in the monument after being blown up by Eta, failed to see the hilarity of the prank, although the miscreant and his friend were released after being found to be underage.

Brits have also featured in the news this week, continuing to represent the biggest group of foreign tourists in what’s looking like another boom year for Spanish tourism, yet in the same week the British press pounced on a set of stats which show the population of Spain shrinking as foreigners leave the country, nearly 88,000 British disappearing off the municipal Padróns last year, bringing the official population of Brits living in Spain to under 300,000. The British media back in the UK have found many reasons to explain this, missing of course, the one crucial fact that the Padrón system was given a major shake-up and clean through, which meant that many of those who had left the country years before and had failed to notify their local councils were wiped off the system, and that many others had deregistered to avoid being wiped off the UK health system. There has of course been a decline as the economic crisis and downturn in construction has forced many property-related businesses to close and their owners leave Spain, other expats have found the falling exchange rate has made their way of life more expensive in Spain, in other cases those who moved here prior to the boom in construction have aged, lost partners or moved back to the UK for health reasons, the numbers of follow your dream programmes declined, and there has also been a slackening-off of the numbers purchasing new property, but as prices hit rock bottom the circle will once again begin to turn and already Spain is once again being featured as the land of bargains on British TV.

This week there have been a number of positive economic indicators which seem to indicate that Spain is finally starting to turn the corner and the economy show signs of positive recovery.

More extensive property news and fuller Spanish round-up on the dedicated Spanish News weekly bulletin.

Currency round-up

ARCHIVED - Murcia Region Weekly News and Whats on Round Up 25th April Click for this weeks currency round up showing the exchange rate between Sterling and the Euro. If you would like a free quote to see how much can be saved on regular currency transfers such as a pension, or one-off lump sums such as the purchase of a property, call for a no obligation quote.

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