Spanish News Today Editors Roundup Weekly Bulletin Apr 2

CLICK HERE FOR THE FEATURE ARTICLES "Spain pushes through plan to reduce fuel and electricity costs" and "5 most frequent driving fines handed out by the DGT in Spain"

In the space of just a week, the Spanish government has rushed through an emergency plan to lower the cost of living for consumers. Everything from petrol and diesel to electricity and consumer goods in supermarkets are subject to a new law that aims to reduce prices and curtail panic buying.

It comes at a time when many will be forced to pay out for the damages caused by the pouring rains in the last two weeks, which have wreaked untold havoc in many parts of the country and are still continuing in some places.

However, there’s something to look forward to once the rain passes, with the arrival of Easter mid-April. At the moment, all signs are pointing to a dry, sunny Semana Santa, but if there’s anything that the last couple of weeks have taught us it’s that you never know!

A sigh of relief

April 1 is certainly a red-letter day in Spain as petrol and diesel prices have experienced a considerable drop after months of increases. Unfortunately, the savings have nothing to do with any sort of resolution in Ukraine. Rather, the Spanish government has launched a Response Plan to the war which is aimed at significantly lowering the financial burden on consumers.

From Friday, fuel prices have been reduced by a minimum of 20 cents per litre all across the country and the discount will remain in place until June 30. That means that if you go to fill up your tank any time between now and the end of June 30, you will see the current price per litre of fuel at the station throughout the entire process, which will remain unchanged from before.

However, when you come to pay at the till, a discount of at least 20 cents per litre will automatically be applied and the receipt should show both prices. If the discount is not shown on the receipt, it should be announced somewhere visible at the petrol station.

>>> Here you can find a list of the cheapest petrol stations right now in the Murcia Region <<<

While the lower prices are expected to create queues at the pumps, small- and medium-sized filling stations are despairing of the move, claiming that they simply don’t have the cash reserves in place to offer such savings. In fact, the average service station will lose around 1,000 euros a day, which representatives fear will “suffocate” smaller operations who are already offering petrol at cut-price costs, in some cases forcing them to close down.

Meanwhile, larger companies such as BP, Repsol and Cepsa are actually offering discounts of more than 20 cents, even up to 30 cents, but these are only available for members who have a clubcard with them.

Another part of the government’s plan affects rental properties in Spain. Until June 30, the majority of landlords won’t be permitted to increase their rents past 2%, although smaller home owners who own fewer than ten properties will be able to get around this rule.

In addition, the government is also putting a “cap” on the price of gas for the production of electricity given the “exceptional” circumstances, which should “significantly lower electricity prices immediately”. For end users who sign a new contract with their energy company or renew an old contract, the price may not exceed 67 euros per Megawatt hour, but this saving will not be available for existing energy contracts.

So while the Response Plan is good news for consumers, the fears of supply shortages continue to grow as another week comes to an end with no resolution to the national transport strike. Thankfully the majority of self-employed truckers have now returned to the roads, but it remains to be seen if the lower fuel prices will create a demand that once more exceeds supply. To mitigate the matter somewhat, the Spanish government has reversed a specific law that prohibits supermarkets from limiting the number of items one customer can buy. We saw it with toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic, and over the last few weeks in Spain there has once again been evidence of panic buying, with products such as sunflower oil, milk and pasta flying off shelves as soon as they’re delivered.

From now on, however, if stores are running low on an item, they will be allowed to implement their own rules, for example limiting each customer to purchasing just one of said product.

Waterworks

Finally, the rain has started to abate in the Region of Murcia, but not before leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. There was more red dust from the Sahara floating in the air still this week, but far less than the extreme episode we saw a couple of weeks ago.

Now the worst of it has passed, it’s safe to clean up now, and many will be wondering how to get the dust out of their swimming pools. The Saharan dust is so dense it’s almost like clay, and it clogs up pool filters, while some of it actually just passes straight through the filter and comes straight back again without being cleaned. There’s actually a process to cleaning something like this, outlined in this handy 10-step plan to cleaning a pool of red dust.

In Murcia, there were road closures in Mula, Águilas and Alhama, as well as on the Camino de Tiñosa road up to the Reguerón bridge, near the village of Beniaján, after a sinkhole suddenly appeared on one side of the street, big enough for a car to fit into.

In Puerto de Mazarrón, around the area of Alamillo beach, a huge boulder broke away and rolled down onto the road, causing damage to the asphalt, while in Cartagena a 2.4-kilometre stretch of road in the northern access road to the city has erupted with a rash of potholes.

The Costa Blanca, meanwhile, bids farewell to the wettest March since 1950, and the Valencia region is left counting the cost of flash flooding and landslides caused by relentless, torrential rain. The Marina Alta and Marina Baixa areas of Alicante province experienced widespread chaos last weekend as intense downpours led to burst riverbanks, swamping roads and cutting off more than 100 roads.

In the coastal town of Calpe, stunned residents living on a beachfront urbanisation woke to carnage after a night of heavy rain caused a large retainer wall separating their homes from Calpe promenade to collapse on top of several parked cars. Extensive damage was caused to the beach itself as water gushed through the town’s steep streets towards the sea, opening up huge gullies in the sand.

Similarly, much of the nearby town of Javea was cut off after the Gorgo River burst its banks and rising water levels invaded the main Pou de Moro road. Many roads remained closed and streets unpassable on Monday morning, while in the Andalusian town of Setenil de la Bodegas, local residents captured scenes on video of a veritable river gushing through the town, washing cars down the street and taking huge chunks out of houses.

Riada repentina en #SetenildelasBodegas. Su alcalde, Rafael Vargas, está solicitando ayuda urgente. Varias personas han tenido que ser rescatadas.

Vídeo: Autor desconocido pic.twitter.com/QGBgEvWRYu
— Storm Málaga (@Storm_Malaga) March 29, 2022

In Alicante’s Guadalest, the reservoir reached maximum capacity and the floodgates had to be opened to release water, whilst in Altea the Algar River rose to such an extent the Sogai and Matadero bridges were closed to vehicles and pedestrians. The rainfall was also good for Murcia’s reservoirs, replenishing their supplies with enough water to last for the rest of the year, which is incredible when you think that just two short weeks ago we were in danger of facing a drought.

But the Mar Menor has fared much worse from the recent spell of stormy weather. In the last two weeks, more than 21 cubic hectometres of fresh water have entered the Mar Menor, causing an imbalance in the pH levels and threatening the ecosystem further. This was reported by the Regional government themselves, who for once seemed to take some responsibility for the problem, stating that it’s not just the rain that is the problem, but an endemic situation of continual runoff from the mismanagement of ramblas and waterways.

Will that mean they’ll begin to implement real, effective changes? Don’t hold your breath. In fact, much more than the politicians, the only ones who seem the least bit bothered about making any headway to protect the Mar Menor are, surprisingly enough, supermarkets. Retail giants like Tesco, Lidl, Aldi and Sainsbury’s have threatened to boycott fresh produce grown in the Region of Murcia if authorities there are too lenient on illegal irrigation practices in the Mar Menor, claiming that their customers will refuse to buy fruit and vegetables from areas where intensive agriculture is so obviously damaging the ecosystem. They’ve said the same about the Doñana National Park in Andalucía too, which is another natural area suffering the consequences of human intervention.

And we might not even be done with the rain yet! While it’s a sunny weekend in the south of Spain, in the north there are still orange alerts for rain and windy weather. Worse still, the rain could come back to the south to wreak more havoc early next week, but it’s not yet known how intense it will be or how long it will last.

Semana Santa

Easter is just over a week away, and towns all over Spain are stepping up their preparations for Semana Santa, or Holy Week as it is also known. The religious brotherhoods are practicing their parade routes, the priests are polishing their virgins and the famed nazarenos are making sure their hats are nice and pointy.

In fact, despite rising prices, professionals in the tourism sector in Spain are optimistic about the Easter holiday season, with hotel and accommodation bookings for the week expected to increase by between 40% and 50% compared to last year. Obviously, 2021 was a quiet year everywhere, what with the Covid restrictions, but these have now mostly been removed (aside from the need to wear facemasks indoors still) and the stats are promising.

True, the number of bookings this Easter will be around 70% less than before Covid, back in 2019, and it will probably be another two years until things get back to normal. But it’s still a promising sign that Benidorm is expecting to have more tourists this Easter than in the last three years, and another indicator of how big Easter is going to be this year is that the holiday will provide twice as many jobs as it did last year.

In 2022, Easter week runs from Friday April 8, which is the Friday of Sorrows, until Sunday April 17, Easter Sunday. Each town in Spain has its own traditions, special costumes and religious icons that they carry in the slow, solemn processions. It’s common to see old ladies wailing loudly before an image of Christ on the cross, the official participants in the processions walking the streets without any shoes on, and outfits that are creepily reminiscent of a certain racist organization from the United States. While the religiosity, fervour, passion and Passion (with a capital ‘P’) may all seem alien to expat visitors witnessing the events that take place at Semana Santa, it’s an iconic celebration in Spain and has to be seen to be believed, at least once in your life.

In Murcia, places like Cabo de Palos, Águilas and Alhama de Murcia are all gearing up and have released the inventories of their parade routes already, while Jumilla has doubled its investment in marketing the event, up to a total of 100,000 euros now. In Alhama, they have even warned that there will be places you are not allowed to park during the whole week, and temporary changes to bus timetables and bus stops, while in Cartagena and the surrounding area there are certain streets that will be closed and reduced opening times for some bars and cafés.

Due to the bank holidays during Easter week, we will be taking a break from the Editor’s Roundup Weekly Bulletin. There will be another edition on April 9, and then the one after that will be on April 23, but don’t worry – everyone will get the full number of bulletins they paid for.

Check out our dedicated Semana Santa Murcia page for more detailed information about the history of the traditional Easter celebrations in Spain, and what’s going on in each town and city in the Region.

Coronavirus

Unfortunately, coronavirus data across Spain has experienced another rebound this week and the cumulative incidence rate is creeping back towards the 500-case mark every day. Despite this, the government has decided to push ahead with the country’s transition plan, which will take Spain out of the ‘acute phase’ of the pandemic and towards a more relaxed stage whereby only serious cases of coronavirus, and those affecting vulnerable groups, will be closely monitored. In addition, from March 28, anyone with mild symptoms, as well as asymptomatic Covid patients, will no longer have to self-isolate.

As such, the mass testing point in Águilas, Murcia has closed its doors and from now on rapid lateral flow antigen tests and PCR tests will be carried out at health centres in the town. It’s a similar story in Cartagena, where the mass vaccination point at La Rambla Shopping Centre administered its last jab on Thursday March 31 before closing its doors ahead of a major facelift inside and out to bring back the shops.

The centre played a major part in fully vaccinating 83% of the city’s population, and 100% of the “elderly and most vulnerable”, but will now make way for local health clinics which will take over the job of giving out vaccines. La Rambla opened its doors in May to “triple the vaccination capacity in the municipality”, and up to 10,000 vaccines were administered per day. Now the shopping centre is being given a new lease of life, after years of no commercial activity, and is to undergo an extensive makeover to allow DIY, food and fashion stores to set up shop there, as well as a gym and cinema.

After several weeks of seesawing data, the Region of Murcia appears to have overcome its plateau in Covid cases, with the regional health authorities confirming this week that the number of daily cases was 51% lower than last week, while the cumulative incidence rate has dropped significantly from 479.1 cases per 100,000 inhabitants to 433.1 cases, which is well below the national average of 466.51.

In Valencia, though, there has been a threefold rise in cases in the last seven days. The Valencia government, which has scrapped all regional anti-Covid measures with the exception of smoking on terraces, had already warned that the traditional Fallas celebrations earlier this month would lead to a rebound in infections, and they were right. While there were 9,321 cases on March 29 in comparison with 3,655 on March 22, there has been no significant increase in hospital admissions, and there are fewer critically ill patients in ICU.

The number of infections in Andalucía is beginning to drop once again, as is the incidence rate, after both Covid indicators started creeping back up again over the last week or two. However, it’s now the turn of the number of patients admitted to the ICU to climb up again, a figure which had up until now been falling steadily.

For all the latest coronavirus news and updates in Spain, use the following link: CORONAVIRUS LATEST NEWS

Murcia

As a countermeasure to the rising cost of living, Spain’s Organisation of Consumers and Users (OCU) has released its annual report on the cheapest and most expensive places to do the food shopping, and the new study has revealed where shoppers can find the cheapest supermarket in the Region of Murcia.

They found that the cheapest supermarket in Murcia for the average shop – bread, milk, toiletries, etc. – is the Alcampo hypermarket, closely followed by Consum and Mercadona. After that come supermarkets such as Dani, Cash Fresh, Supeco, Tifer, Family Cash and +Ahorro. At the other end of the scale, the most expensive supermarket was found to be Carrefour.

Depending on where you choose to shop, says the OCU, you can make “very significant savings” – up to 1,073 euros on average per year, and in some places more than 3,500 euros! So now you know: if you want to save a bit of cash and be kind to your bank balance, choose carefully where you do the shopping. In any case, shoppers in Murcia have it easier than most in the rest of Spain, as the OCU has pointed out that it is the cheapest region in the country to do the food shopping, along with the Valencian Community. The most expensive supermarkets in Spain are in the Balearic Islands, followed by the Canary Islands, the Basque Country and Catalonia.

After coronavirus brought flights to a halt, Murcia’s Corvera airport is finally starting to bounce back with the return of business travel and tourist flights. The number of passengers who passed through the airport in the first two months of 2022 is already 13 times higher than in the same period in 2021.

A total of 33,977 passengers used the airport between January and February of this year, a year-on-year growth of 1281.2%. True, it’s still a long way the figures from 2019, with barely more than half of the passengers than it had before the pandemic. But it does make Corvera officially the 27th busiest airport in Spain.

There’s a very special event for horse lovers taking place this weekend in Torre Pacheco. The 26th annual edition of EQUIMUR – the International Purebred Horses Show in the Region of Murcia – is being held at the IFEPA exhibition centre until Sunday April 3.

EQUIMUR is one of the most important horse-related events in Spain and a must for the thousands of professional riders and horse enthusiasts who visit every year. You can see all types of horse shows, from dressage to jumping to carriage driving. One not to be missed if you’re in Murcia this weekend and love horses!

For news on more events like this coming up soon in the Murcia and Alicante regions, be sure to check out our EVENTS DIARY!

Spain

Good news in Spain for environmentally-conscious travellers, as Brittany Ferries has unveiled its new luxury liner the ‘Salamanca’, the company’s first ship to be powered exclusively by liquefied natural gas. Capable of carrying more than 1,000 passengers as well as freight vehicles, the Salamanca will begin making twice-weekly trips between Portsmouth and Bilbao, a journey that will take 28 hours.

There are a couple of things to be aware of, however, if you are planning a trip to Spain. Earlier this week, the government voted to extend the temporary restriction of non-essential travel from third countries, including the UK, to the European Union and associated Schengen countries.

What this means in practice is that tourists travelling from Britain to Spain must be double jabbed or be able to show proof of having recovered from Covid. Teenagers from the UK aged between 12 and 18 who are not double jabbed will need to present a negative coronavirus test to enter Spain on holiday.

The second consideration is another post-Brexit gift, as the British government has revealed its plans to reduce the amount of compensation for travellers who are unable to fly. Current EU rules stipulate that passengers must be recompensed if a flight is delayed for more than three hours, or if they are denied boarding, but Brexit means that the UK government can change these rules, which would potentially save airlines thousands of pounds each year.

The new regulations would involve removing the flat compensation fee and instead reimbursing passengers based on the ticket price and journey length, potentially reducing the payment from £225 (267 euros) to just £57 (67 euros).

While fuel costs have been the most talked-about motoring news this week, the DGT has also issued a reminder to drivers about the most common ways to get nabbed for a fine in Spain. It will come as no surprise that speeding is the number one cause for road traffic fines in Spain, and the latest data show that up to 7 out of 10 fines each year are handed out to speed fiends.

Amazingly, next in line is driving without a valid ITV or insurance, followed by driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, not wearing a seatbelt and using a mobile phone behind the wheel.

It might not be up there with the most frequent infractions, but in pet-friendly Spain our pooches can also get us into a whole lot of trouble: driving with an unrestrained pet in the car in such a way that it could cause an accident can result in fines anywhere between 80 and 5,000 euros.

As part of the reformed Traffic Law, a new regulation has come into play to reduce drink driving: the ‘Alcolock’. Mandatory in all professional road passenger transport vehicles from July this year, the breathalyser device is connected to the vehicle’s ignition and can analyse concentrations of alcohol in expressed air. In the event that the system detects that the permitted alcohol limits have been exceeded, the car will not start. Likewise, there will be no way to start the vehicle if the Alcolock is not activated. From July 6 2024, Alcolock will be compulsory in all newly-manufactured cars.

Alicante

The appalling weather conditions put paid to festivities in the Vega Baja region of Alicante province, forcing organisers to cancel the incredibly popular annual Saint Patrick’s Day parade in Cabo Roig, Orihuela Costa on March 17. After a two-year hiatus due to Covid, a group of businesses behind the colourful parade that attracts tens of thousands had huge hopes for this year’s event, but there was no getting away from the fact the rain was not going to relent and let the event go ahead, and with yet more downpours forecast, the parade was called off.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and organisers have instead been given the go-ahead by Orihuela Town Hall to run an International Parade in Cabo Roig on Saturday May 7, four days before International Day is celebrated across Spain. The parade committee is now inviting all expat groups (Ukrainians, Polish, Germans, Scandinavians, Scottish etc.) to join them.

Staying with that international theme, police in Benidorm finally caught up with a Russian fugitive on the run from authorities in her home country over a 1.4-million-euro insurance scam. The 57-year-old sold a whopping 42,243 contracts on behalf of a Russian insurance company over a three-year-period, and instead of handing over the cash, she allegedly pocketed it. And rather than face the courts and up to 10 years in prison for misappropriation, she hopped on a flight to Alicante in 2020. The game was up when the National Police in Benidorm found her holed up in a hotel room with a Spanish man, unrelated to the case, and she was arrested ahead of extradition.

Deception of a different kind led to the arrest of two alleged con artists who are under investigation in connection with a series of ‘express evictions’ in Alicante, Valencia and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. One of the suspects, a 36-year-old Spaniard arrested in Barcelona, is the owner of an anti-squatting firm specialising in the removal of squatters, and together with a 30-year-old woman, also Spanish, is accused of simulating false occupations of homes by squatters so that homeowners would employ the firm’s services to ‘evict’ the unwanted guest. Basically, the woman allegedly ‘squatted’ in the properties, and rather than go through a lengthy eviction process, the owners hired said company to mediate. The woman would eventually leave voluntarily, after a private contract was signed.

Proving that human kindness is alive and well, Orihuela Town Hall is staging a 12-hour fundraising festival to donate money to the Ukrainian Association of Orihuela which is helping refugees forced to flee their war-torn country. Ukraine Fest will be held at Glorieta Gabriel Miró from 11am to 11pm on Saturday April 2.

Whilst communities all over the region are rallying to raise funds and collect much-needed medical aid and basic essentials, more than a dozen charities and organisations have ensured Ukrainian children with cancer get the treatment they need. Fourteen very poorly youngsters who, together with their families fled the war on board a Spanish plane to Madrid last weekend, were flown to the Valencia region to continue life-saving treatment.

Andalucía

A series of gruesome and deplorable crimes have rocked Andalucía in the past week, firstly when a decapitated horse was found tied up to a tree in a field behind a school. It was discovered after an unpleasant smell began wafting to the back of the Getares Secondary School in Cádiz, and when a local coordinator from the animal rights party went to check it out, she found the corpse tied to a tree, with the head nowhere in sight.

The animal was well-known in the area, and allegedly belonged to a family that was already familiar to police for their “inadequate possession of animals”. A preliminary police investigation indicated that the animal, which was very thin and emaciated, first died and had its head cut off afterwards, possibly with “the aim of making the microchip disappear, which is usually placed at the level of the neck”.

Subsequent to that, a 67-year-old Spanish man was arrested in Granada and faces 40 years in prison and a fine of 3.3 million euros for running brothels with the help of three Russian women. The four of them are accused of duping their victims – young women of mostly Russian nationality – into prostitution with the false promise of working in PR or as event hostesses.

The victims were allegedly “pressured into prostitution” by the brothel owner, then intimidated and shouted at by the three Russian women who threatened to “throw them out of the club” if they didn’t earn enough money. The exploited women had entered Spain as tourists with a 90-day visa that prevented them, as non-legal residents, from working officially. In addition, “they did not speak Spanish”, were “alone” and had “dependents in their countries of origin”. The three Russian co-defendants, aged 38, 41 and 42, all face between nine and 29 years in prison if found guilty.

On a somewhat more comical note, police in Malaga arrested a 52-year-old man for the second time in a week after he was caught stealing Spanish hams from a market in the city centre. Apparently, as soon as he got out of court the first time he was arrested, he went straight back to the scene of the crime and tried again. Police identified him easily because he was wearing the same clothes and tried to climb into the market in exactly the same way as before. What’s more, he was already known to law enforcement for his part in six robberies in the same market, having caused a total of 10,000 euros in economic damage to the storeowners.

You may have missed…

1. Spanish Income Tax returns start on April 6, 2022: declare your earnings in Spain.

The window for filing your income tax returns for any earnings in Spain last year starts next week, on April 6, and the final deadline is June 30, 2022.

2. UK expats living abroad for over 15 years will be able to vote in elections.

A ‘Votes for life’ bill that would scrap the 15-year limit on voting rights for British citizens living abroad has passed a critical committee stage in the House of Lords, which will allow Brits in Spain to vote in the 2024 General Election in the UK.

3. 900 Murcia schoolchildren evacuated after magnitude 3.2 earthquake.

An earthquake measuring 3.2 on the Richter scale rocked Alhama de Murcia on Thursday, startling locals and forcing the evacuation of 900 schoolchildren.

4. Pepco, the ‘Polish Primark’, continues its expansion in Spain with a second store in Alicante.

Major low-cost home and fashion chain Pepco, coined the ‘Polish Primark’, is opening its second store in Alicante city, just a year after opening its first.

5. Dutch roundabouts arrive in Spain.

Dutch roundabouts are currently being trialled in several Spanish cities, with external bike lanes that give priority to cyclists and electric scooters.

That’s all from us for another week. If you’ve enjoyed reading your weekly bulletin and want to spread the love, we’d be grateful if you could send the following link to a friend who might like to read it too: https://murciatoday.com/weekly_bulletin.html.

Thanks a lot! See you next week for your last bulletin before the Easter holidays!

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