ARCHIVED - Murcia Today Weekly Bulletin w/e 26th January 2013

Intense negotiations about Corvera airport, Paramount Park featured at Fitur, Brit facing homicide charges after drink drive death

Murcia Today

Last year saw a huge step forward for Murcia Today with an identity change, and the addition of the Valencia Today sister product as well as the Spanish News Today sites, a large investment into delivering quality information in English for our readers. During the year 350,000 unique users read over 3.2 million articles, and visited this site nearly a million times, giving a monthly readership more than 6 times that of any English language printed product in the region.

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What’s on Murcia

The 17^th January is the day of San Antón, patron saint of animals, so across the region many communities will be holding a public “blessing of the animals” event in honour of the saint. There are districts of San Antón in many towns and municipalities, as well as churches dedicated to San Antón, and in each of these, local celebrations are also taking place. Examples include La Copa in Bullas, which holds a huge BBQ and traditional dance, Tébar in Águilas, Moratalla, which has a parade, and Mazarrón. Lorca also has a special doggy day to raise funds for local animal charities inside the castle.

Cehegín is celebrating fiestas in honour of San Sebastian, which includes a torchlit procession, and there’s a bikers breakfast in the Cartagena district of San Antón  as part of their fiesta celebrations.

Alhama de Murcia has a guided theatrical tour and artisan market on Sunday, Calasparra an artisan market in the riverside Sanctuary of La Esperanza, Caravaca hosts the monthly Mercadillo del Peregrino, and Cehegín has a second hand and collectables market.

Active Murcia

On 17^th, the England Women’s football squad play Norway in a friendly at the La Manga Club, which the public are welcome to attend free of charge, there’s Rugby at San Javier, Lorca and Murcia, Mazarrón supporter’s club are running a coach to the away game at Beniajan on Sunday and welcome new supporters, and san Pedro del Pinatar continues with its programme of guided walks in the Salinas natural park, aimed at a family audience.

There are quite a few events looming next weekend, all of which need to be booked, so scroll down through the sports section for future events.
 

Murcia News

Flu cases this week have more than tripled nationwide and the number of cases are starting to put pressure on health authorities. One man has already died in Murcia. There’s still time to get vaccinated, so if you haven´t had a flu jab, get one.

A sad case involving a British resident in a hit and run has featured prominently in the Spanish press this week, the 82 year old man killing a cyclist on Monday in Torrevieja being four times over the legal alcohol limit. Hell’s Angels have also been in the news as their case comes to court after killing a bar owner in San Pedro del Pinatar and notary in Torrevieja.

Tourism is prominent in the news this week, Murcia preparing for the major Fitur tourism fair in Madrid next week, with the Paramount Theme Park project in Alhama de Murcia as the “star” attraction on the regional stand ( image shows the Águilas area of the stand). This features the best model made to date and includes a 3-D guided tour, Pedro Cruz saying it is important to start promoting the project prior to construction. More info about the financial status of the project and construction plans in the link to the article above.

Corvera airport is also continuing to generate column inches, as the convoluted behind the scenes negotiations reach a fever pitch this week, due to the fact that the former concessionary, who is now apparently willing to open the airport without San Javier airport closing is due to go into bankruptcy proceedings next week. The regional president is involved in negotiations to try and finance the debt, allowing the airport to open. Full report in the weekly Corvera airport news round-up.

Meanwhile airport stats for San Javier showed that the airport rallied strongly towards the end of the year as the new manager started to achieve good results with extended flight routes, although the traffic is still way short of the boom construction years. To illustrate this, 28.603 passengers came through the airport in December 2013, compared to 105.645 in December of 2006.

In other local news, San Pedro del Pinatar are facing a bit of a local uproar over plans to put parking meters on the seafront, and Murcia’s football club is facing a spot of financial bother as Hacienda seeks a large wad of cash.

Spanish news www.spanishnewstoday.com

A busy week in the news.

The situation relating to ETA dominated the weekend, as the High Court banned a proposed march in support of ETA prisoners. But within hours a new march had been called in support of a peaceful solution to the problem, a march which the courts could not realistically ban, so a second march took place instead, attended by 110,000 people. On Monday the press officer who had informed journalists of the imminent raid on the offices of ETA lawyers resigned.

Over this same weekend there were a series of violent protests in Burgos over proposals to build a multi million euro boulevard in the city, making headline news as the arrests continued for four consecutive nights. The story has rumbled on during the week as the protests continued, demanding the release of those arrested earlier in the week.

Spanish property has featured heavily in the Spanish news this week, Tinsa confirming that house prices have continued to fall right to the end of the year. Two sets of stats were released this week for November property sales ( these figures are always 2 months behind to allow time to gather data) and both show that sales of properties dropped considerably during November, both government stats and the notary stats confirming the same worrying trend. The real point to note is that second hand property sales are higher than newbuilds, meaning that the stock of unsold properties is reducing slower than the analysts had originally predicted, the glut of unsold property being the key factor which is driving prices down, particularly in the Mediterranean areas.

In the same week the both the Sareb and Sabadell released their figures showing property sales last year, and both announced that they would be spending money completing properties in city areas which could be easily marketed, there now being a shortage of newbuild property in residential cities, due to the financial difficulties of the construction sector who are bogged down with their unsold stocks on the coast. All of which applies downward pressure on prices…….

The annual flu outbreak has started to gain ground this week, with the first deaths and the numbers of infected gaining ground in the second week of the year. However, there’s still time to get vaccinated before it reaches peak weeks, so get vaccinated.

Other news stories include the EU decision that the word Sangria can only be used in relation to products made in Spain, and all other products currently helping to reinforce the “Sun, sea and sangria” image which gives Spain so much lovely free publicity must now be marketed as “aromatized wine based drinks”. It doesn´t have the same ring somehow………although has taken highly paid eurocrats two years to push through this legislation.

Lots more news in the Spanish News Today page, which also has its own, more detailed newsletter.

Valencia Today www.valenciatoday.es

IKEA has received 100,000 applications for just 400 jobs, showing that there are still a huge amount of people desperate for work ( Spain has more than double the European average) in spite of Valencia being one of the best performing tourist regions last year.

The 400 million euro Palau de les Arts will be repaired by the architect who designed it and the construction company who built it, with temporary works underway immediately to start repairs  so that the operatic season can continue without losing over 600,000 euros per performance due to the façade falling off the emblematic building.  

Flu cases have tripled in the region during the last week, and the region has reinforced numbers of medical personnel in anticipation, the region also announcing this week that record numbers of transplants were carried out in the region last year.

El Altet also had a good year, closing with just under 10 million passengers, a substantial increase on 2012, and results of the enquiry into the death of a baby who was crushed on the luggage carousel at the airport found that the airport had not been negligent: the accident was down to the mother who had placed the baby on the luggage belt.

Two people were killed in a head-on collision in Torrevieja this week, and an Elche fraudster was caught shopping in Murcia with high quality home made forgeries.

 Lots more local stories in the Valencia Today portal which also has its own newsletter for Valencia only stories.

Click for this weeks Euro/Sterling exchange rate currency update

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