ARCHIVED - Murcian and Spanish weekly news round-up

Saharan sand, more dog friendly beaches planned and save yourself a few grand!

Lead image: Los Alcázares tourism board, showing the beautiful Mar Menor as the sun rose on Wednesday morning

If youd like your images featured on any of our reports or the bulletin, please contact the Ed on contact@murciatoday.com

Region of Murcia news round-up

This week the predicted cold snap generated scenes of snowballing in other areas of Spain, but left the Murcia Region virtually untouched, the strong winds, followed by cold nights which only dipped below zero in the far north were quickly forgotten as by Thursday morning the wind direction had changed, bringing a rise of 10 degrees overnight and a fine coating of red Saharan desert sand to boot.

On Friday a pleasant 18 degree sunny day heralded what promises to be a warm weekend with temperatures back up to around 20 degrees, falling slightly for the early part of next week, but an ideal time to head for the hills and enjoy the region.

The cold nights, however, are always a problem for the homeless and those on low incomes and this week councils and voluntary organisations were out and about making sure the homeless came through the colder nights unscathed, Cartagena municipality announcing the creation of a new working group to co-ordinate the efforts of police, social services and volunteers.

As we’re approaching the season of goodwill a raft of initiatives at local level across the region are being presented to help those in need: Los Alcázares begins its annual toy collection initiative for the needy next week, which lasts until the 23rd December, this weekend the Mercadona supermarkets are offering their facilities for a foodbank collection weekend to gather food for the national foodbanks programme, and in Caravaca de la Cruz on Saturday evening hundreds of paper lanterns are being  launched to raise funds to buy Christmas toys for needy children in the municipality. On Sunday Alhama de Murcia hosts a volunteers’ fair for anyone interested in joining in with local activities and getting stuck in to the local community and several other schemes are scheduled for presentation next week. Details to follow.

This week has been very much about social issues: international gender violence day was the catalyst for a host of activities right across the region, with most councils undertaking some form of institutional acts or educational activities in schools to make youngsters more aware of the need to avoid gender discrimination and violence.

An anti-obesity campaign has also been underway in the region’s schools, as with an estimated 34% of Spanish schoolchildren overweight, educating youngsters to eat better is high on the agenda, although in the same week it was also revealed that the famous Murcian meat pie, or pastel de carne is very much viewed as being the most representative dish of the Murcia region.

Try one next time you’re in the capital, they’re certainly more…ish!

The regional government has also unveiled plans for its vaccinations programme next year, including whooping cough for pregnant women and chicken pox for one year old children. Other health-related news is the push being undertaken by the new council in Cartagena who are attempting to reverse decisions taken by the previous council and re-open parts of the Rosell hospital.

And meanwhile the regional government is working to improve air quality in the region ( which is pretty good in most areas other than the three major cities anyway) and is setting up a new air quality monitoring system in every municipality across the region.

Infrastructure remains an ongoing topic as always, and although much of the infrastructural announcements this week have related to minor projects such as improvements to the road linking Los Belones to the La Manga Club or the adjudication of the contract to sort out the breakwaters problem in Los Urrutias which has affected beach cleanliness in this corner of the Mar Menor during the summer, it’s all part of a gradual process of improving the tourism offering of the region. Cartagena has been busy continuing work to open up the Roman Forum district to improve its tourism offering, and Águilas is preparing to allocate beaches for naturist use and to create dog friendly beaches to cater for an area of tourism which is starting to grow in popularity.

Lorca has also announced that it has uncovered a major series of 16th century wall paintings in the excolegiata de San Patricio during renovation work.

Today the regional government announced a major promotional push in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium and Austria starting at the end of the year, the aim being to boost the number of foreign tourists coming to the region.(article to follow over weekend)

There’s been no new news again about the Corvera airport situation.

However, before the New Year we have Christmas to come and tonight the first lights are going on in Murcia City, with the major switch-on taking place on the 5th December in the capital with a night of free live music as the lights go on. By this point the annual artisan market which is always at the end of Plaza Santo Domingo will be open and the nativity scenes ready for the Xmas run-up.

Next week we’ll be resuming a separate what’s on bulletin in a slightly different format, starting to build up information about the festive season for those planning to spend time in Murcia for the remainder of the year and over the festive season. This will be sent separately to the weekly news round-up.

Other odd bits of news include the arrest of four people who carried out a large number of burglaries in the Mar Menor area, the apprehension of  a major Graffiti pest in Murcia City who has been damaging historical buildings for some considerable time, a man driving at 215k/h and yet another batch of old explosives appearing, this time in Cehegín.

Region of Murcia news, whats on and community information is updated daily on www.murciatoday.com

Alicante Province news can be found on www.alicantetoday.com

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Murcia property news round-up
Property news nationally has been fairly active with some  important sets of stats released which show yet more evidence of the early signs of the property market recovery across Spain.

Murcia is slightly different to other areas as a lot of the second properties built specifically for the second homes market were on residential urbanisations, such as the Polaris World resorts, rather than in residential areas where the local domestic Spanish population would naturally take over from foreign buyers when the construction implosion took hold in the first quarter of 2008.

The majority of these assets are now in the hands of the banks and the Sareb (the so-called bad bank) and the region still has one of the highest percentages of unsold properties dating back to this period, most of them concentrated in areas traditionally favoured by second home buyers. The same picture is true of other Mediterranean coastal areas which are also amongst those where there was concentrated building during the pre-2008 construction boom.

In Murcia, much of this property stock is on urbanisations slightly in from the coast, rather than sprawling along the coast, meaning Murcia has escaped the non-stop white concrete fate which has befallen other coastal areas of the country.

However, the mass building has also meant that Murcia now has one of the highest stocks of unsold second homes in the country which were completed during and after 2008, which Tinsa this week highlighted in a special report, commenting that this meant prices could still be pushed down further in the area because there are good stocks of second home apartments still available on some urbanisations. As in other areas, the unsold stock is still falling in value, while the prices of prime properties are starting to rise, but as an estimated third of the properties built in Murcia during this period have never been sold, this is dragging down the average price calculations.

Of course, the result of this is that there are good bargains to be had for those seeking holiday apartment accommodation and as the Sareb gradually sorts its sales routes, completing on these is becoming an easier process.

Surprise, surprise, today the Ministry of Development published their third quarter valuations report, which showed that although prices nationwide are starting to move upwards again, Murcia is still falling slightly, although very slowly, and prices are now 0.5% lower than a year ago, so in other words, virtually stable, exactly in line with the Tinsa comments.

However, the market here, as has been shown in various reports during the last couple of weeks, is getting a lot busier, and is at its busiest in four years, a fact which was supported by another set of figures this week relating to mortgage activity, showing that the numbers of mortgages being granted here in Murcia continues to rise: so far this year 23% more mortgages have been agreed here in the region than during the first nine months of 2014.

To see a wide range of properties from agents and private vendors across Murcia go to www.murciapropertypage.com
 

Spanish property news round-up

Prices on the up as unsold housing stock is eaten into

The attention of the Spanish property market this week has been focused chiefly on both the latest data regarding the recent past and the predictions for the medium-term future, in terms of the possibility of an upturn in new construction activity.

The latest statistics regarding key market indicators continue to provide cause for optimism, and this week arguably the most significant set of figures was provided by the Ministry of Development. A collation of the official valuations performed by surveyors during the third quarter of 2015 showed that the average perceived value of residential property in Spain has risen by 1.4% over the last year, and while the upward trend was not quite reflected in all of the country’s 17 regions it was apparent in most of them, most significantly in Madrid (3.5%) and the Balearics (3.2%). Equally encouraging is the fact that valuations rose not only in terms of properties which are over five years old, a category which currently accounts for over 80% of all sales, but also in newer ones, where a 1.6% increase kept the average approximately 20% higher than in older homes.

The national average figure of 1,476 euros per square metre is 30% lower than when the peak of the boom was reached in the first quarter of 2008, but that differential is now gradually decreasing as prices begin to make a timid comeback.

As sales activity recovers, so too does mortgage lending, and the central statistics unit this week reported that during September the number of loans which were registered on residential property was higher than the year before for the sixteenth consecutive month. Again a couple of regions buck this positive trend, which in September showed an increase of 20%, but the overall picture is one of continuing growth in both bank lending and the investment in property which it serves.

So much for results from the recent past, but one of the most interesting reports to come out this week concerns the present and the future. Leading valuation firm Tinsa reports that of the 1.56 million homes where construction has been completed in Spain since 2008, only a quarter (389,000) now remain unsold, and if the rate at which this stock is being eaten into were constant and consistent throughout the country it would completely disappear within just two and a half years (a view shared by property developers’ associations). This appears to indicate that unless a start is made on building more new homes very soon, then the current excess of supply over demand could very quickly be reversed, causing a shortage of available property.

However, as has been remarked on countless occasions, the Spanish property scene is not just one market, but a whole host of regional, provincial and local markets, each of them with different conditions. One of the key findings of the Tinsa survey is that in Mediterranean coastal areas the amount of remaining stock is far higher than the national average, reaching almost 39% of properties built since 2008 in Almería and well over 40% in many coastal municipalities between Girona in the north-east and Cádiz in the south-west. While in parts of many large cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, the high demand is already making new construction both desirable and profitable, in these Mediterranean coastal areas the stock of unsold properties will take a long time to shift, and in some cases, according to the experts, may never be sold at all due to demand having almost completely evaporated since the homes were built.

The folly of the over-building in the boom years prior to 2008 is also illustrated by the fact that according to a professor affiliated to the Carlos III University in Madrid, enough land is currently owned by developers and equipped with basic infrastructures such as roads and street lighting to build another 1.5 million homes, duplicating all of the new construction since 2008. However, and this is a very potent sting in the tail, most of this land is in precisely the same areas where demand has dried up, in the hinterland behind the Mediterranean coast.

One place where the property market remains undeniably buoyant, especially in terms of commercial premises, is the street of Portal de l’Ángel in Barcelona, where the average yearly rental cost of 3,240 euros per square metre makes it the most expensive shopping street in Spain and the 14^th dearest in the world. Topping the list with an average price of almost ten times as much is Fifth Avenue in New York.

Finally, confirmation (if it were needed) of how different the housing market is in Spain from other countries, particularly the UK. A report published this week by Eurostat confirms that almost two thirds of all Spaniards live in flats and apartments, the highest proportion in any EU state, while the UK lies at the other end of the scale with just 14.4%. For those of us whose interest lies exclusively in detached properties with a garden, it’s important to remember that we move in a relatively minor sector of the Spanish property market!

To see a wide range of properties for sale across Spain go to the Spanish property pages: www.spanishpropertypage.com

For the Region of Murcia go to: www.murciapropertypage.com

For the Alicante Province go to: www.alicantepropertypage.com

Good Exchange rate from Sterling to Euros makes Spanish property even cheaper

Anyone moving £100,000 from the UK to Spain would get an extra €17,130 this week compared to the same week last year and €1,140 more than a fortnight ago at todays 1.42 rate.

Anyone exchanging their pension from Pound Sterling to Euros or buying a property will be aware of just how much difference the rate can make to the amount they will have to spend and for major purchases, such as a property, transferring cash at the right moment can make a difference of several thousand Euros.

Apart from the spectacular victories achieved this week by FC Barcelona over Real Madrid (4-0) and AS Roma (6-1) and the fines levied on the club by Uefa for Catalan flags being waved at Champions League matches ( which fans have been appealing this week), most of the news in Catalunya this week has consisted of political speculation. The upshot of this is that there now seems to be a very real possibility that fellow separatist group CUP will abandon its determination to block Sr Mas’ appointment in order to avoid another regional election being called next year. A new election would become inevitable should Sr Mas fail to gain the support he needs in the Catalan parliament before 10th January, and the general opinion is that the events of the coming few days will be crucial in determining the outcome of the negotiations between CUP and JxS.

One of the dangers for the separatists is that these developments could damage their electability if a new election is called. Between them the CUP and JxS formation received only 47.8% of the votes on 27th September, and they can ill afford to lose any support if another poll is required.

Other separatist news
The topic of Basque separatist group ETA is another which is hard to keep out of the Spanish news, despite the fact that the ceasefire has now held for over 5 years and the “definitive cessation of armed activity” for just a year less. Earlier this week an apparent softening of the Spanish courts’ attitude towards ETA saw five of the seven people charged with belonging to the ETA Youth group “Segi” acquitted by the Supreme Court: this ruling was made on the grounds that it is not an offence merely to be subscribed to a “satellite organization” of a terrorist group, and at the same time the sentences passed on the remaining two accused were reduced from six to two years.

 
Jihadist attacks
Meanwhile, some of the effects of the Jihadist attacks in Paris on 13th November continue to be felt in Spain. It’s important to point out that there has been no change to the alert status 4 which was decreed on 26th June, but the proximity of the events two weeks ago has caused considerable jitteriness in the press and on social networks. Increased spot checks on the streets of major cities such as Valencia are making it clear that extra security measures have been introduced, and during this week a 42-year-old man of Moroccan origin was arrested in his Segovia prison cell on charges of recruiting and indoctrinating people to fight for the IS and of issuing bomb threats in Madrid and Barcelona.

In Pamplona, meanwhile, Catholics were outraged by an art exhibition for which permission had been given by the Town Hall. The offending item consisted of 242 communion wafers, which artist Abel Azcona had acquired by pretending to take communion in various churches, arranged on the floor to spell the words “pederastia” (pederasty, or paedophilia) as a reference to the sex scandals which have caused so much damage within the church. The Mayor of Pamplona, denying that he had known the content of the exhibition prior to its inauguration, had to step in and ask for the item to be removed, but by this time the wafers had conveniently “disappeared”.

160 million euros worth of fake Picasso’s apprehended
Another arty story related to the recovery of five fake artworks which their vendors claimed to be authentic pieces by Pablo Picasso, offered from hotel rooms and even car boots for a total of 160 million euros

Which is sad when others who have work simply can´t be bothered to do it: a postman who burnt 3600 letters in Marbella found himself in court facing a prison sentence this week after hiding letters he couldn´t be bothered to deliver.

Messi will face trial for tax fraud in Barcelona
However, for some, the desire to save a penny or two is always irresistible, and this week it has been confirmed that football legend Lionel Messi and his father will stand trial in Barcelona for alleged tax fraud.

Immigration
As usual there has been a fair smattering of items related to immigration during the week, including that of a would-be immigrant who is now in an induced coma while hospital staff in Melilla treat him for injuries he sustained during a mass assault on the border fence. While he and his companions sat on top of the fence, some of them for as long as ten hours, a part of the structure collapsed under their weight, and the victim not only fell six metres but also had his injuries compounded by three other men falling on top of him. Two individuals succeeded in crossing into EU territory during the assault.

Meanwhile the minister most likely to be named as the next leader of Northern Ireland played down reports issued the week before which claimed that Brexit could have dire results for the Irish economy and said that a Brexit would not wreck Northern Ireland’s economy.

Natural Spain
In a week in which the first cold snap of the winter grabbed many of the headlines, with heavy snow falling in the mountains of the north and temperatures reaching well below zero in inland areas all over the mainland, other stories related to nature include the recovery by the Guardia Civil of 4 tons of illegally picked mushrooms in the countryside of Guadalajara. 42 Moroccans, Bulgarians and Rumanians were arrested in connection to this haul.
In Asturias, meanwhile, trawler fishermen were amazed to find that they had captured a ten-foot long giant squid weighing in at 150 kilos in their nets, and at the other end of the country another catch made by fishermen in Málaga ended up in the hands of the Guardia Civil. This time the haul consisted of five ancient amphorae, which rather than being handed over to the authorities, as Spanish law requires, had been offered for sale on the internet.


Tourism has many forms
The Spanish tourist sector has also enjoyed a record year, and is now looking to attract more lucrative high-spending visitors from Asia, but tourism has so many façets and Spain so many interesting draws for those looking to visit.

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MURCIA CLASSIFIED
 

KIDS TABLE AND CHAIR FOR SALE 10

Kids table and chair as new unused for sale 10€ in the Port of Mazarron, just in time for Xmas. PM for details please

Area:	South West Murcia, Mazarron
Listed:	November 27th, 2015 21:29pm

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€10.00

 

 

SAMSUNG GT S5570

Unwanted gift BRAND NEW without box. With Samsung headphones UNLOCKED. On Ebay sell upwards of £88. Access to Gmail, GTalk, Google Maps..

Area:	Mar Menor & Cartagena, LOS NIETOS NR LA MANGA
Listed:	November 27th, 2015 15:20pm

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€90

 

 

Detached Villa 3 bedroom 3 bathroom on Camposol.

This fantastic extended 3 bedroom 3 bathroom detached Rosa style villa is on the first phase of the Camposol Golf complex, Mazarron, Murcia..

Area:	Murcia Region, Mazarron
Listed:	November 27th, 2015 11:15am

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€174.950

 

 

Dingy with engine

Seago 240 3 person dingy with Suzuki D F2.5 engine Hardly used. Oars, foot pump and seating board. Engine requires a service. €150.00..

Area:	Murcia Region, San Pedro del Pinatar
Listed:	November 26th, 2015 08:54am

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€150

 

 

Caser Residencial long- and short-term residential care for the elderly and infirm

Caser Residencial Alameda in Lorca, long- and short-term residential care for the elderly and infirm Postoperative care, recovery supervision..

Area:	Murcia Region
Listed:	November 24th, 2015 14:36pm

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Golf equipment for sale at our online store

Golf equipment for sale at our online store, and where possible at the most competitive prices in Europe. With prompt FREE delivery service..

Area:	Cartagena & La Union, La Manga Club
Listed:	November 23rd, 2015 09:19am

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Combination Unit Mamas Resales

Combination unit in beech. Quality item in virtually new condition, brought out from UK but wont fit in lounge Now reduced to 195

Area:	Murcia Region, Puerto de Mazarron
Listed:	November 22nd, 2015 11:36am

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€195.00

 

 

Sideboard Mamas Resales

Modern low style sideboard in beech with tinted glass top. Comes with matching wall unit to be mounted above it. Both units are virtually as..

Area:	Murcia Region, Puerto de Mazarron
Listed:	November 22nd, 2015 11:25am

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€195.00

 

 

Sofa Clearance Mamas Resales

Very comfortable two seater sofa, reduced to clear

Area:	Murcia Region, Puerto de Mazarron
Listed:	November 22nd, 2015 11:16am

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€95.00

 

 

Dining table and Chairs Mamas Resales

Extending dining table on two pedestal legs complete with six matching chairs. In good condition but has slight blemish on table surface so..

Area:	Murcia Region, Puerto de Mazarron
Listed:	November 22nd, 2015 11:14am

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€120.00

 

 

gypsy caravan&l