Date Published: 01/05/2014

ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014

More spring fiestas in Caravaca, Cartagena and Alhama, while the weather and the economy dominate the rest of the news

ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 This week sees another round in the seemingly endless series of spring holidays and fiestas in the Region of Murcia, as the 1^st May public holiday is accompanied by important traditional events in Caravaca de la Cruz, Cartagena and Alhama de Murcia.

In Caravaca, where locals have barely got their breath back after the Easter Week festivities, children are back off school as it’s time for the fiestas in honour of the Vera Cruz, or true cross, which includes the Running of the Wine Horses on 2^nd May. This is a unique event and is very popular with expats, as 60 horses, adorned 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 are combined with this event, providing several days of spectacle and colour in the narrow streets of the old city centre until the fiestas officially end on Monday.

Down on the coast, meanwhile, Cartagena will this weekend be full of floral crosses, the Cruces de Mayo, and ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 street bars and music are being set up all over the city centre. These May crosses can also be found in many towns and villages across the region as the population continues to celebrate the arrival of spring.

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, and a tourist train running visitors from one to the other. There are also folk dancing festivals and concerts included in the program of events, which lasts until 11^th May.

Alongside these ancient traditional festivals is the Sevillanas fair in Santiago de la Ribera, bringing a little touch of Andalucía to the Mar Menor and including dance, music, folklore, costume and of course, tapas. The fair ends on Sunday, as does the Lo Pagán artisans’ event just up the road in San Pedro del Pinatar, so there ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 are a myriad of opportunities to enjoy open-air celebrations in the Region this weekend!

Also out in the open air is a guided walk in the coves of Bolnuevo on Sunday, while those preferring more extreme outdoor activities will be tempted to take a trip to the Puente de la Estacio in La Manga on Saturday morning: San Javier Town Hall is organizing the first “Estacio Extreme” event, including a rope bridge, bungee-jumping and a zip-line across the canal which connects the Mar Menor with the Mediterranean.

Finally, football fans in Mazarrón may want to go back to the Mar Menor on Sunday for Mazarrón FC’s away match against Santiago de la Ribera.

And just a reminder, in case it gets forgotten amid all the fiestas: Sunday is Mother’s Day in Spain!

ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 More local bar and charity events can be found in the dedicated Whats on section, which is updated as events come in. It is common for events to be sent in the day before they take place, or with just a couple of days notice, so its advisable to check the section regularly if planning a day out as new information is constantly translated and added to the site. The events diary shows whats on day by day and is a useful tool if searching for events on a specific day.

There is also a huge bank of static information offering suggestions for places to visit and things to do in the region, always useful if family are coming to stay and need entertaining. Click Where to go in the Murcia Region.

Murcia news

Away from all the fiestas and sports activities, there hardly seems to have been time for any news to happen ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 in Murcia recently, let alone for journalists to report it!

Fears that this year could be a disastrous one for forest fires are growing as the drought continues, and a blaze in the area of Zarzadilla de Totana served to illustrate the point earlier this week as the tinder-dry undergrowth combusted rapidly, alarming locals. The same dry conditions have contributed to the ban on using BBQ equipment or lighting any sort of fires in the regional parks being brought forward to the beginning of May and agriculturalists must also stop burning prunings: no risks are worth taking after the record dry winter and warm dry spring.

A different kind of fire risk was emptied from the streets of the city of Murcia on Sunday when municipal rubbish collectors dutifully removed 21 tons of litter from the capital following Saturday’s Entierro de la Sardina.

The topic of the new Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera continues to occupy column inches in the Region’s newspapers, even though there is little new to report. While the new president, Alberto Garre, cautiously hopes that the airport could be open by next summer, Manuel Campos, the new minister for Development and Public Works, still optimistically maintains that a date towards the end of 2014 is “very possible”. Its also been announced this week that Antonio Sevilla, formerly in charge of the airport project is now to take the reins of the Cartagena Port Authority and deal with the tricky issues of the proposed El Gorguel macro-container port which is the subject of fervent campaigning by ecologists opposed to the project, oversee the remodelling of the waterside and cruise ship terminals in Cartagena and undertake the long-term project of making Cartagena a home port for cruise ship tourism.

At the existing airport in San Javier, meanwhile, the over-dependence on the British market (thirteen of the ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 current nineteen routes are to and from the UK) has been identified as a source of concern: regional business leaders say it is akin to putting all the airport’s eggs in one basket, but Aena are unwilling to compete with their own larger facility in Alicante by attracting too much traffic to a sister airport just 70 kilometres away.

While the Corvera airport saga stumbles slowly on, the issues of the AVE high-speed rail service in Murcia also continues to stutter unconvincingly forwards. Or backwards, it sometimes appears: this week it has been announced that one of the tunnels through which the line from Murcia to Andalucía was to pass is being bricked up after costing 435 million euros to build. In conjunction with the dispute over whether the line in the city of Murcia should run underground or overground, this gives the impression that the arrival of the first AVE train is still “at least two years away”, as it seems to have been since around 2001.

Regarding the economy, there has been good news and bad news this week. The jobless total in the Region definitely seems to be falling, although the results of the Active Population Survey for the first quarter of 2014 are ambiguous in many respects. The population is also falling, due largely to non-Spaniards returning to their country of origin, and it may be that the decrease in the number of unemployed is down to the fact that many South Americans, North Africans and Eastern Europeans have simply given up and gone home. (This would hardly be surprising in the case of the fourteen Moroccans who were working long days in the fields illegally, for 20€ per day less travel expenses: they are now likely to be expelled from Spain anyway!)

Meanwhile, Murcia continues to rack up the highest level of regional government debt in the whole country – it had already used up almost half of its yearly deficit allocation by March – and although the fall in property prices is slowing down, houses and apartments in the Region have still lost an average of 8.2% of their value over the last twelve months, according to a Tinsa report published this week.

The only definite positive in the economic panorama is the increased tourist sector figures so far this year: ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 spending by foreign visitors was up by almost a quarter during the first three months of 2014, and that’s not including the effect of the Easter holidays which fell later this year!

On a more local level, in San Pedro del Pinatar there are hopes that projects can be got off the ground to restore the Molino de Quintín and the Floridablanca bathing station, although this depends on the regional government making funding available. In Mazarrón, meanwhile, the protected status of the old mines of San Cristóbal has been upheld by the regional courts, and in the western part of the municipality of Cartagena, around Isla Plana and La Azohía, the “Catch the Tiger” program is under way to limit the population of tiger mosquitos. This campaign will run in parallel with the annual seagull cull in Cartagena itself.

Finally, in Torre Pacheco the multi-cultural nature of the Region’s society in the 21^st century has been consolidated by the opening of Murcia’s first official mosque. Those running the Moslem temple aim to promote integration into Spanish society and increase the locals’ understanding of their religion and practices.

Spanish News Today www.spanishnewstoday.com

Is Spain’s long-awaited economic recovery gaining momentum?

The answer, according to statistics published this week, appears to be yes and no. The Active Population ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 Survey revealed that at the end of the first quarter there were fewer people working and fewer people unemployed, a conundrum which is solved by explaining that there were simply fewer people. The survey also showed, worryingly, that there are now almost 2 million households with no regular income.

At the same time, public administration debt continues to rise, and now equates to well over 20,000 euros per person across the country.

On the other hand, the decline in property prices appears to be slowing down, inflation is back up to 0.4% and the tourist sector, one of the pillars of the national economy, looks set for a record-breaking year.

Elsewhere, in response to the mass assaults in the border fences in the north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla over the last few months the frontier defences are finally to be reinforced, and in parliament the mud-slinging has started in the run-up to the imminent European elections, with strong language flying in Congress as two Sorayas exchanged accusations and counter-accusations.

Despite the public outcry at the release of drug-smugglers arrested in international waters, the government has announced that it will not climb down over the new legislation which makes this possible, while far more widely accepted is new legislation prohibiting convicted child abusers from working anywhere near children. However, the British press thought the minor clause relating to the relationship children should have with their parents, and that they should contribute to family life by helping with household chores was far more ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 newsworthy and was even reported on the BBC.

Other stories include top opera star Monsterrat Caballé being accused of tax fraud, copper thieves rendering the emergency water supply in Cádiz useless, the Romans using the Canary Islands as a deportation camp and the hunt for the mortal remains of Miguel de Cervantes, the man who created Don Quixote.

And in the sports news, many of the leading footballers in Spain appear to have gone bananas…

The dedicated Spanish news product has its own weekly bulletin, which also includes a full property news round-up.

www.valenciatoday.es covering the Region of Valencia

Across the border in the Valencia region temperatures are soaring, as the region registers its hottest April ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 since 1912, and hottest April in just the Alicante province since 1878!

As in Murcia this increases the fire risk and in spite of the regional government imposing a ban, one town hall threatened the safety of the town and put itself in line for a large fine when the hillside surrounding the town was set on fire during the municipal firework display at the end of the local fiestas.Valencia has enjoyed two Bank Holidays this week, but there is still plenty of news and whats on in the dedicated Valencia Today news round-up.

Currency round-up

ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 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.

If you enjoyed this free weekly round-up, then please support its growth by forwarding it on to your ARCHIVED - Murcia Today, Weekly News and Whats On round-up 2nd May 2014 friends. If you have received this from a friend and would like to have it sent directly, then click Register for weekly bulletin to sign up.

We GUARANTEE your details will not be passed on, sold, or used for any other purpose, and are maintained in an isolated off-site facility from which you can unsubscribe at any time.

Images: Copyrighted Murcia Today and Efe. Full or partial reproduction prohibited.

Murcia Classifieds

Why not give Murcia Classifieds a try?
It,s FREE up to €500 for non commercial ads.

Click on an item or Read More to view full dtails

Recently Added

2 Single Beds with Mattresses

Single bed bases and mattresses in very good condition. Little used and very comfortable. Medium firmness. 50 euros each or nearest offer.

Area:	Murcia Region, Roldan and Lo Ferro
Listed:	May 2nd, 2014 10:25am

Area:	South West Murcia, Mazarrón
Listed:	May 2nd, 2014 09:28am

Area:	South West Murcia, Camposol
Listed:	May 1st, 2014 14:27pm

Area:	Murcia Region, Fuente Alamo
Listed:	May 1st, 2014 14:01pm

Area:	Mar Menor & Cartagena Edition, Los Nietos
Listed:	May 1st, 2014 10:51am

Area:	Murcia Region, Mazarrón
Listed:	April 29th, 2014 14:07pm

Area:	Murcia Region, Los Belones
Listed:	April 29th, 2014 12:47pm

Area:	Murcia Region, Corvera/Fuente Alamo
Listed:	April 28th, 2014 17:11pm

Area:	North & North West Murcia, Blanca
Listed:	April 28th, 2014 14:20pm

Area:	Murcia Region, Puerto de Mazarròn
Listed:	April 28th, 2014 07:29am

Area:	Mar Menor, Torre Pacheco
Listed:	April 27th, 2014 09:31am