Spanish News Today Editors Roundup Weekly Bulletin Apr 19

FEATURED ARTICLES: "Brutal murder of foreign tourist in Alicante—Body dumped in Murcia" and "Spain's measures to combat increase in Airbnbs and vacation rental properties"

Hello Spain lovers! We’ve got lots of Spanish culture for you this week, with wine tasting tours, jazz festivals and flamenco-infused ferias galore.

All great tourist offerings and this week we’ve got a deep dive on the controversy surrounding one aspect of tourism in Spain – the unchecked rise of vacation rental homes. What can be done to balance Spain’s large and growing tourism industry with the needs of people who live here?

But before that, the gruesome story of a Singaporean tourist whose body was found in Murcia this last week with dozens of stab wounds, and the other Singaporean tourist who has been arrested in Alicante for the crime.

Brutal murder of foreign tourist in Alicante—Body dumped in Murcia

A mystery murder that pulled in several different towns and spanned two Spanish regions has come a step closer to being solved this week. On Wednesday April 10, the body of a young woman was discovered in a field in the Murcia municipality of Abanilla by a passing driver from Hondón de los Frailes.

It was immediately clear that the victim had been stabbed multiple times. She was also badly bruised and naked from the waist down.

Since there was no ID on the body, at first the authorities thought the victim may have been a sex worker, but the truth was even more startling.

The woman has been identified as 39-year-old Audrey Fang, a tourist from Singapore who had arrived in Alicante a few days earlier on a sightseeing holiday. She checked herself in to a luxury hotel with a spa in Jávea, where she had a reservation from April 4 to 10.

After failing to return home and missing her connecting flight in Barcelona, her worried family contacted local police. Sadly, Ms Fang’s lifeless body, stabbed more than 30 times and severely beaten, was located just a day after her final contact with relatives.

Then, a week after the body was discovered, police identified a suspect from CCTV footage: a man, 43, also from Singapore, who is currently residing in Alicante.

Now, law enforcement officials aim to gather information regarding the incident and determine whether the crime took place in Alicante province before the body was transported to the Region of Murcia.

The suspect remains in police custody and appears before a judge this Friday April 19 to answer the charges against him.

Airbn-be gone!

Some people are fond of saying, “The Spanish need us and our tourism” and “We’re the only thing keeping their economy alive”. It’s not quite true – Spain has a very healthy industrial sector and exports a lot of agricultural produce to the rest of Europe. The IMF, the International Monetary Fund, has just released a report predicting that Spain’s economy will be the second fastest growing economy of the world’s major countries both this year and next year. Yes, tourism brings in a lot of money – an estimated 200 billion euros in 2024, an 8.6% increase on last year and first time it will break the 200-billion barrier – but that’s not all from British tourists. Other international tourists visit Spain, and Spanish people themselves spend far more on staycations than citizens of other countries do.

But, as important as tourism is to the Spanish economy, there are drawbacks to an unbridled industry. You’ll have seen backlash from some local people in popular vacation spots like the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands against the influx of tourists, with graffiti telling foreigners to ‘go home’, protests against massive new hotel construction projects and other actions seemingly designed to put people off visiting what is, in effect, their home, but which in reality are mainly aimed at government mismanagement and a lack of oversight of burgeoning tourist facilities over the years.

One aspect of this tourism push-and-pull that the government is increasingly desperate to find a way to limit is tourist rental apartments. Think Airbnb vibes. These short-term tourist lets are popping up everywhere, especially in large cities like Madrid and Barcelona, and in the most popular holiday resorts.

Airbnb and similar tourist apartment booking sites have revolutionised the way we vacation. For years now, it has given us a cheaper form of accommodation instead of hotels, and we’ve become accustomed to the convenience and cost of renting out an apartment for the holidays.

However, the astronomic rise of apartments destined for short-term rentals is having a knock-on effect on the housing market. The more Airbnbs there are, the fewer homes there are available to rent to long-term tenants who intend to live there permanently. And the lower the supply, the higher the monthly cost of renting.

It’s a situation that is leading to a lack of qualified professionals such as doctors and nurses in some areas, such as Gran Canaria or Tenerife, as they simply can’t afford to live there.

As a property owner, it’s an understandable decision. You can make much more renting out to tourists on a nightly or weekly basis rather than monthly. Some homeowners do a sort of mix of the two – renting out to students or teachers from September to June and then using the more lucrative, busier summer months to rent to tourists for up to four times as much.

It’s also a legal grey area to do that. In Spain, if you have an apartment you want to rent out to tourists on a nightly or weekly basis, you have to register it as a ‘Vivienda de Uso Turístico’. Otherwise, it’s illegal. So for property owners to have their cake during the school term and eat it too during the summer is not strictly within the rules. Having a registry of such properties is one way the authorities use to keep tabs on how many tourist rental apartments there are and who is following the rules, and helps them to decide how many licences they grant.

As well as contributing to a lack of rental supply and rising rental prices, the practice of offering 9-, 10- or 11-month rental contracts also serves to deprive tenants of protections that ensure their right to housing that were brought in by the 2023 Housing Law in Spain and which, for the most part, only take hold after 12 months of renting.

Then there’s the fact that a lot of times Airbnbs are rented out to stag dos, hen dos and groups of friends on boozy weekend breaks. In short, to people who will make a lot of noise, stumble around drunk, make a mess of the apartment and the building’s common areas and just generally not respect the fact that there are people living there.

Beyond requiring ‘Properties for Tourist Use’ to be officially registered, the Spanish government is currently in talks with representatives of tourist organisations around the country to try to place more regulation on Airbnbs and the like. Some of the measures that have been proposed include limiting their status as Viviendas de Uso Turístico to just 6 months or 1 year, forcing homeowners to justify the temporary nature of the lease and introducing mandatory rental contracts for short-term lets like the ones that exist for long-term rentals.

Until such time, some ‘comunidades de propietarios’ – the residents’ associations which oversee the affairs of any apartment block or residential community – are taking matters into their own hands.

To do this, they are holding votes on whether or not to reform the statutes of their communities to expressly prohibit any of the properties within them from being used for tourist lets. All that’s needed is a three-fifths majority at a meeting of the community to pass such legislation, and to register any ensuing modification of the community bylaws in the Land Registry.

It's a measure some urbanisations and apartments blocks are taking in the most hard-pressed areas in terms of housing, but not everyone is convinced. Some communities fairly live off the tourist rentals, and limiting them would be a money loser for them. In the Region of Murcia, where the number of registered short-term rental apartments has skyrocketed in recent years but where it is still nowhere near as saturated as, say, Palma de Mallorca or Málaga, the regional government has no plans to place legal restrictions on Airbnbs any time soon.

In the words of the Regional Ministry of Tourism, “The segment of tourist accommodation is essential to strengthen and expand the supply of hotel facilities in the region, especially during periods of high occupancy.”

So, there you have it. Turns out, maybe they do need our tourism after all.

Murcia

Transport links between Murcia and the rest of Spain – or at least to Madrid, from where you can get to anywhere – are due to get just that little bit better this summer thanks to the announcement by newcomer on the train scene, Ouigo, that they will offer a faster high-speed rail service to rival Renfe’s. French company Ouigo is, like Iryo, quickly gaining ground that was once held exclusively by state-owned rail company Renfe. They are, for example, selling train tickets on the Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid line for just 1 euro. And they’ve got a new prospect for Murcia too.

They still don’t know when their Madrid-Murcia high-speed trains will start running, or how long they’ll run for. They’ve got permission to do it from now until December, but they’ll probably just focus on the more lucrative summer months for the time being. They had planned to start operating the route in June, but ongoing works at Madrid’s Chamartín station have delayed these plans somewhat. What’s certain is that, by May 22, they’ll definitely have decided when the new train service is going to be running because that’s when the tickets will go on sale.

Once it’s up and running, Ouigo plans to provide two daily roundtrips on its state-of-the-art double-decker trains. Fares will start from just 9 euros, but the majority will range between an incredibly affordable 19 euros and 25 euros. On this private train service, it will take just 2 hours and 45 minutes to get from the Spanish capital to Murcia city, and vice versa, a feat Ouigo have managed thanks to the fact that these trains will only stop in Elche (Alicante) and Albacete (Castilla-La Mancha), and not in Alicante city.

Also starting in around a month’s time are boat tours to go out to the tiny island of Escombreras, about 4 nautical miles off the coast of Cartagena, to visit the new underwater ‘bodega’, the largest in Europe. Just inaugurated by company Undersea, this wine cellar has space for 5 million bottles of red and white, which right now are maturing under the waters off Cartagena port.

You can already book your place on one of the guided tours coming up soon – available in both Spanish and English! – to discover these wines with a seafaring, wine-tasting trip that allows you to compare wines aged on land with the ones aged at sea. Tapas of jamón and other nibbles included, but you’ll have to provide the seasickness pills yourself!

Away from the Mediterranean and towards the Mar Menor now, where a new three-year study has just begun to investigate the use of natural zeolites to replace nitrogen-based fertilisers for farms around the lagoon, with the hoped-for aim of reducing chemical run-off into the environmentally protected waters to zero.

Zeolites are porous volcanic rocks, and when the particles dissolve in water they are harmless, unlike the nitrogen that has served to remove oxygen from the Mar Menor in previous years and suffocate the fish. On land, they can act as to promote the growth of beneficial microorganisms, and the farms in the Campo de Cartagena who take part in the study will be provided this innovative fertiliser free of charge.

There’s also good news in the long-term for the farmers as it’s thought that treating crops with zeolites should actually be cheaper than traditional, chemical-based methods. Murcia farming organisation ASAJA reckon that it could cut fertiliser costs by between a third and a quarter for the farmers. Win-win!

To the resorts now, and on the Camposol urbanisation the Central Park in Sector A was finally renamed to “Councillor Silvana Elisabetta Buxton Park” in honour of the beloved Councillor Silvana Buxton, who was Mazarrón Councillor for Camposol and International Relations since June 2019 until her death last year.

The decision to rename the park after Silvana was agreed by a unanimous, corss-party decision at a Plenary meeting of Mazarrón Town Council on October 31 last year, but it wasn’t until just a few days ago that the renaming ceremony took place. A plaque which was placed in the park to commemorate Silvana calls her “a fighter, an assertive, dignified woman deserving of a public space”.

Over on Condado de Alhama resort, other changes are afoot at the Al Kasar Commercial Centre, where the new owners are busy making improvements to the shopping mall. Or, they were, but now the work to build a truly impressive water feature, a large artificial lake in the middle of the commercial centre has been pushed back until “the last quarter of 2024”.

It’s not necessarily bad news, though, as, in the words of Denise Devlin, Director and Marketing Manager of Condado Invest, the longest established on-site property specialists for Condado de Alhama Golf Resort, “there is some relief that the work is not going to be during the busiest time of the year as even with the best intentions there will be unavoidable dust during construction which may impact on some businesses, like the restaurants and bars”. As such, she notes, “it would be better to face that situation during the quieter months.”

Of course there’s plenty going on this weekend and in the coming week – just have a look at the events diary below if you don’t believe me. But in the longer term, there’s excitement as the full programme of the 2024 San Javier Jazz Festival, the 26th annual edition of this festival, has now been confirmed for June and July. Diana Krall and Gregory Porter top the bill but there are many great acts in the other 12 concerts too, some of them free!

Check out our EVENTS DIARY for more events and activities coming up in the Region of Murcia:

Spain

Although this past winter and spring in Spain haven’t been too bad at all weather-wise, most of us are still looking forward to the summer. Long, languid days relaxing by the pool, enjoying the electric chirping of cicadas and the anticipation of an evening barbeque.

But sadly, the bad comes with the good and we dust off the cobwebs of winter, so do the creepy crawlies. You’re made of stern stuff indeed if you don’t cringe at the sight of a cockroach, impossibly fast scuttlers that are just now starting to poke their antennae-twitching heads out from under our kitchen appliances.

There’s hardly a home or restaurant kitchen safe from these critters during the summer months, and the bad news is they’re getting harder and harder to kill.

And so enters the age of the so-called mutant cockroach – a highly-adapted pest that has become all but invincible to your garden-variety insecticides, thanks to climate change.

The continuous rise in temperatures is leading to genetic mutations in the blonde or Germanic cockroach, according to the experts. The heat accelerates their metabolic cycle, resulting in insects becoming resistant to poisons and sprays.

Due to these genetic alterations, blonde cockroach infestations have risen sharply in residential settings and businesses such as bars and restaurants in recent years. Data reveals an alarming 32% increase in infestations during 2023 relative to 2022 figures, and experts predict a staggering 33% acceleration in 2024.

Climate impacts extend beyond mere frequency though, allowing insect species to evolve rapidly. Warmer temperatures enable pests like the blonde cockroach and tiger mosquito to awaken earlier and buzz about for longer, ultimately lengthening mating seasons and resulting in population booms.

As controlling the cockroach becomes more difficult, the old adage ‘prevention is better than cure’ comes into play. The experts all agree that the best way to deter these pests is to ensure high hygiene standards, such as frequently sweeping floors and wiping down kitchen surfaces.

Here in Spain we’re treated to no end of celestial displays and our vantage point means that month after month, we can witness spectacular meteor showers and other heavenly wonders. But the month of April is bringing us something very special indeed: a Pink Moon.

This phenomenon will take place at the end of the month, during the early hours of Wednesday April 24, when the first full moon of spring rises in the night sky. The terrestrial satellite will rise at 8.48pm on the 23rd. Then, keep watch until 1.49am, when the moon will reach its zenith.

Unlike the Blood Moon, which takes on a reddish hue, the Pink Moon doesn’t actually adopt a rosy tint, but it will be incredibly bright and luminous, easily visible to the naked eye.

As an added bonus, stargazers in Spain will also have a chance to witness the stunning Lyrid meteor shower, which should grace the skies between April 16 and 25. The lyrids have an average activity rate of 20 meteors per hour, and a speed of 49 kilometres per second for several days.

This year, the best time to catch a glimpse of shooting stars will be at around 9am on April 22.

‘Ibiza: Secrets of the party island’ is a new BBC documentary in which its presenter, former Love Island contestant and influencer Zara McDermott, seeks to uncover the darker side of the island.

The project was filmed during the summer of 2023 and will premier this Sunday, April 21 as part of a four-episode docuseries that promises to expose Ibiza’s gritty underbelly.

Zara will delve into the lavish nightlife, private parties and beach clubs of the rich and famous, uncovering the extreme and often unsavoury lengths ordinary tourists and expats go to in order to keep up with this fantasy lifestyle.

But it’s not all glitz and glamour, and Zara took the opportunity to spend an evening patrolling the streets with the organised crime unit of the Ibiza National Police.

According to one officer, drug trafficking is a huge problem on the island because “there are parties 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

“When 35% of the island’s GDP comes from clubs, it is difficult to see this hedonistic culture ending soon,” he added.

Tune in to BBC Three on Sunday night to catch the first episode.

Alicante

Orihuela Costa residents would be forgiven for believing it was never going to happen given the countless delays and disappointments, but the beach bars and water sports facilities finally look set to open. Work has already started on the 11 shorelines and everything indicates that the chiringuitos on La Glea in Campoamor and La Caleta in Cabo Roig will be the first to welcome back customers this weekend.

Many of the delays came about as a result of the decision to break up the beach bars and water sports facilities into separate lots, necessitating several different tender processes. Ironically, Chiringuitos del Sol, the company that managed all of the bars before this debacle began, will once again take over La Caleta and Cala Bosque in La Zenia.

Incidentally, both of these chiringuitos and the toilet facilities will be allowed to open all year round. There is one fly in the ointment though and that involves the lot which includes the beaches at Punta Prima, Cala Estaca and Cala Mosca.

For years now, Cala Mosca has had problems with sewage and unsightly, smelly pools of dirty water on the shorefront, and it seems that these issues will have to be resolved before the contract for the beach bars can be awarded.

The good news is that workers have been busy on this beach all week so hopefully these three won’t be too far behind the others.

The weather forecast isn’t really that great in Alicante over the next week or so but even as temperatures plummet, there’s little sign of rain on the horizon. In fact, the province is in the midst of its worst drought in more than three decades, and the authorities have decided to take drastic action.

The Ministry for the Ecological Transition is about to declare a water emergency in the Marina Alta, Marina Baja, Elche and Alicante, which will force all impacted towns and cities to implement strategies to save water.

In Alicante City, a Drought Emergency Plan has already been implemented and the pressure in taps has been reduced at certain times of the day. But this is just the first step and if the province doesn’t see some serious rain before the summer, there could be an outright ban on filling private and public swimming pools.

All in all, this summer, the increase in Alicante’s population due to the influx of numerous tourists, visitors and second homeowners is expected to pose a significant challenge given the current drought conditions.

Another frequent side-effect of dry weather is forest fires, and a blaze did indeed rip through a municipality in Alicante this week, but incredibly the authorities now believe it was set deliberately. The wildfire took hold in the town of Tárbena on Sunday April 14 and burned strong for three days before it was finally brought under control.

Around 200 local residents had to be evacuated from their homes as the fire crept dangerously close to residential areas. The majority of these are foreigners, more than 100 of whom had to flee properties scattered around the municipality of Tárbena. A further 80 are from Parcent and 2 are from Xalò.

It’s still too early to tell how much material damage has been caused to these houses, but more than 700 hectares of land were devoured by the flames.

As a precautionary measure, all types of bonfires, including the burning of agricultural waste, are strictly prohibited across the Valencian Community owing to heightened risks during this period of hot weather.

Andalucía

There has been no end of controversy at this year’s Feria de Abril in Seville. Fires broke out in two of the fair’s casetas before it even began, but thankfully no one was harmed. A horse collapsed and died in the hot midday sun. An enormous fight broke out one night between rowdy youths. It’s been so packed that there have been scenes reminiscent of the recent Coachella festival in California of people paying beyond-peak-hours fares for very short Uber rides. And that’s not even to go into the political side of things.

Lucky, then, that pretty much every town, city, village and hamlet across Andalucía is having its own feria at some point between now and October. For many, it’s the highlight of the summer when the fair rolls into town, bringing its ferris wheels, bumper cars and rollercoasters, not to mention the food, drink, flamenco and dancing. And we’ve got a list for you of the dates of all the main Andalucía ferias for summer 2024, among which worthy of note are the Jerez de la Frontera Horse Fair at the beginning of May, the various fiestas celebrating the Virgen del Carmen in July, the Feria de Agosto in Málaga capital city in – you guessed it – August, and loads more!

It was nothing like all fun and games for one Swedish tourist in Málaga recently after he was kidnapped upon arrival at the Costa del Sol airport and subjected to 23 days of being held hostage by a pair of men demanding 500,000 euros in cryptocurrencies for his ransom.

He was nabbed when someone unknown to him, who had apparently been sent to collect him from the airport when he landed for a sightseeing holiday, shackled him and placed a tracking device in his shoe, moving him to different safehouses along the Costa to avoid detection. The kidnappers got in touch with a relative of the man living in Turkey, who went straight to the police.

Working together with Málaga police, the terrified relative negotiated with the criminals and, following five tense days of talks, arranged a rendezvous with the captors at a Málaga restaurant. In something worthy of a Hollywood thriller, undercover police were watching as a suspect near the restaurant scouted the area to make sure the coast was clear before bringing out the hostage to the meeting point. Once they had both suspects and the victim in their sight, police swooped in and promptly arrested the pair, one a Syrian national and the other Lebanese. It seems they were part of a sophisticated international criminal gang, more members of which continue to be located in what seems to be a wide-ranging and frankly very disturbing plot.

To finish on a gentler note, we bring you the news that a right whale, a type of whale that is not native to Andalusian waters and has never been spotted in the Mediterranean Sea before, was seen swimming off the coast of Almería this week.

Rorqual whales and humpback whales are fairly common occurrences in this part of Spain, but this is the first time ever a right whale has been seen around here. Normally when unusual animal sightings happen at sea, close to shore, it’s because the sharks/dolphins/seals/whales are sick, dying or disoriented and their corpses sadly end up washing ashore a short while later.

But the right whale seen swimming up and down the Cabo de Gata this week actually seems to be in perfect health. It was feeding happily, which we know due to the presence of numerous seagulls where it was swimming.

It’s not yet known whether it’s a southern right whale (native to South America), a glacial right whale or Basque whale (common in the Bay of Biscay until 18th-century whaling moved them up to the Northwest Atlantic) or a North Pacific right whale (almost extinct), but it is most definitely some sort of right whale. They are instantly recognisable thanks to their convex, outward facing lower jaw.

Quite why the animal is here, so far from its natural habitat, wherever that may be, is also currently unknown, but hopefully it is nothing bad and it will just continue on its merry way.

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