Spanish News Today Editors Roundup Weekly Bulletin Jan 26

FEATURED ARTICLES: "New Ryanair base could be opening at Murcia Corvera airport" and "Spanish traffic police crack down on improper use of indicators"

This weekend, we are right in the middle of FITUR. What is FITUR? It’s the International Tourism Fair which is held in Madrid every year around this time. Why is that important? Well, professionals from every imaginable corner of the tourism industry go there, from town halls from just about every city, town and village in Spain to travel agents and airline executives. It’s a massive deal as all these people meet up, see what different places have to offer tourists, and decide where they’re going to throw their money for the next 12 months. Deals are made at FITUR to bring more flights to certain airports, to promote certain areas over others, and to invest in huge projects of interest to tourists.

Some of those revelations have already come out, of which more below. But we can probably expect a few more welcome announcements by the end of the Fair on Sunday. Watch this space!

In the meantime, in this week’s edition, we’ve got a mix of stories for you, from coffee to climate and car fines. Away we go!

Sun is shining, weather is sweet here

Wow, what a gorgeous week! The sun was shining with all its might on this last full week in January and temperatures reached up to an astonishing 28ºC in the south of Spain, even while the UK, Germany and much of northern Europe were lashed by storms Isha and Jocelyn and labouring under freezing temperatures.

But as nice as it is to have sunny days that let us walk around outside without coats on, even go down to the beach while we’re supposed to be in the ‘bleak midwinter’, the truth is that this lack of consistent rainfall will come back and bite us in the boardshorts before too long.

This Thursday, for instance, temperatures were a full 10 degrees higher than they normally are for this time of year in the Region of Murcia. Scenes like these are having a knock-on effect on harvests, with fruit trees flowering earlier than they should, plants not getting enough water (thereby requiring farmers to use up precious water resources to water them), and pests and insects being more prevalent.

Knowing what the seasons are like here, we might get some snap frosts in February, sending temperatures plummeting and making the situation even worse for the plants, their fruits and vegetables, and the farmers who grow them. That’s exactly what happened this time last year.

It also wouldn’t be a surprise if we got torrential rain around March/April that causes flooding again, but it won’t be enough to stop the coming drought and water restrictions which parts of the Costa del Sol are already getting a taste of. There, water pressure has been reduced at night-time to try and save enough precious reserves for the coming summer, which authorities are fully expecting to be a hard one.

At the same time, several municipalities in Castilla y León were on alert for flooding of rivers this week, even as the drought is worsening in Andalucía and Catalonia. In short, the recent rain and snowfall has been insufficient and has not fallen where it is most needed. Short-term measures are not enough; an agreement at a national level is urgently needed to deal ambitiously with these situations of extreme scarcity.

Flights of fancy

Say goodbye to rummaging through your carry-on bag for your boarding pass or identification a hundred times between the airport doors and the boarding gate. With Spanish airline Vueling, your face will now be your ticket to a stress-free flight.

Vueling has become the first carrier in Spain – and a pioneer in Europe – in the use of facial recognition technology to streamline the boarding process for passengers which means that at select airports, passengers can now board their flights without the need for a passport or ticket.

The system has already been implemented at Barcelona, Madrid, Palma de Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza with plans underway to roll it out in Tenerife and Gran Canaria in the next few weeks.

Here’s how it works: Passengers simply need to register once for the biometric system, either online through the airline’s app or at the airport desk. Once checked in, they can activate facial recognition and proceed directly to their gate without showing their boarding pass or ID again.

And the best part is that once customers sign up, for future flights they can quickly activate facial recognition after checking in a seamless and hassle-free travel experience.

Blinking hell

The use of indicators is a bit of a touchy subject in Spain. Every year, the traffic authorities pepper social media with reminders about the correct use of indicators (or blinkers, as they’re known in the States), which let’s be honest, can end with us being even more confused since nobody really seems to follow the rules. And at the same time, drivers are zipping in and out of lanes without a care in the world, cutting through traffic at break-neck speed.

And when it comes to roundabouts, well, we won’t even go there.

It should really come as no surprise, then, that failure to signal properly is a significant factor in many road accidents in Spain, prompting the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) to take action.

Up until now, failing to indicate or using these lights at the wrong time were considered minor infractions. But the DGT now plans to hit motorists where it hurts: their pockets.

From now on, drivers who fail to indicate properly may face a fine of up to 200 euros. This applies not only to instances where drivers fail to signal altogether, but also to situations where they use their indicators incorrectly, potentially causing confusion for other road users.

Furthermore, motorists who are slower than they should be in activating their turn signals before changing direction can receive a minimum fine of 80 euros.

According to the DGT, and without exception, drivers must indicate when they are leaving a roundabout or pulling into a parking space, when they are changing lanes, as well as any time they turn, change direction, join a new road or overtake another car.

And if you don’t know, now you know. (And you should also already know about our Driving in Spain Facebook group by now too – go ahead and give us a follow!)

¡Café olé!

You’re going to want to stay awake for this one: our rundown of the main types of coffee in Spain. Spanish coffee is a whole world, to be sure, and there’s something so incredibly appealing about being able to sit in a café at any time of day or night and choose the right cup of Joe to suit you.

But for the casual observer, it can be a bit daunting to be confronted with such a bewildering array of coffees to choose from. So how do you know which kind of coffee to order and what is in each one?

Well, the first thing you need to know is that espresso is basically the starting point for all Spanish coffee. From there, (almost) all other Spanish coffees are just a variation on this theme.

For black coffees alone, there’s a ‘café solo’, which is just a small espresso; a ‘doble’, which is a double espresso; an ‘americano’, which has more water and is not so strong.

Then there comes the milk – it can be hot, cold, room temperature or a mix of hot and cold, depending on your preference, and each of these has a different name in Spanish.

There is also a different name for each coffee based on how much milk is in it. From least to most: ‘café cortado’, ‘café manchado’ and the classic ‘café con leche’.

And that’s not even to mention all the different types of spirits that can be added to a Spanish coffee, or the way they drink hot coffee poured over cold ice in summer, or the sweet ones made with condensed milk, or all the various types of cups and glasses you can get your coffee served in. The list goes on and on!

Check out our full list here so that the next time you’re in a Spanish café you’re not afraid to order ‘un cortado con leche templada en vaso con hielo’ in your best Spanish accent!

Murcia

Barely a week goes by when we don’t have some new story about Corvera Airport – whether it’s getting our hopes up or knocking them firmly back down. This week’s rumours are, thankfully, of the former kind, though there are some hard data to bring our feet firmly back to the ground.

Right before FITUR kicked off on Wednesday, one of Ryanair’s CEOs, Eddie Wilson, hinted that one of the airline’s five new planned bases in Spain could be in Murcia’s Corvera Airport.

If you remember from last week, the other Ryanair CEO, Michael O’Leary, said in a meeting with President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, that the ‘low fares airline’ would invest 5 billion euros in Spain by 2030, including a plan to open five new bases in the country by the end of the decade.

Well, just days later, Eddie Wilson said that medium-sized airports “such as Murcia, Valladolid, Vigo, Santander or Cádiz, among others, are places that need tourism all year round and only Ryanair can offer that volume in the next five years.”

That’s – count ‘em – five airports he mentioned there. So will they be the five new bases they are planning to open? It’s just speculation at this point, but it would be fantastic news for Murcia if it’s true as it would mean loads more Ryanair flights in and out of Corvera.

One thing holding Ryanair back, however, is the government’s plan to raise airport tax rates. The rates were reduced during the pandemic and then proposed 4% would not even bring them back up to the level they were at pre-2019, even though flight traffic in Spain has fully recovered to above pre-pandemic levels (if not in Corvera specifically). Ryanair are having none of it, though, and say that if the rates are increased too much then they’ll go and invest their money elsewhere, “in other countries such as Italy, Greece or Morocco”.

As if that weren’t enough to squash your hopes, let’s have a look at some of the numbers for Corvera in 2023. Air passenger rights organisation AirHelp crunched the numbers for how many flights took off late from each airport in Spain last year, and guess which one had the most flights taking off after their scheduled departure time?

That’s right, flights at Corvera are the least punctual of all Spanish airports, with more than a third of flights (35.5%) taking off late and only the remaining 64.5% leaving the runway on time last year.

If it’s any consolation, the much larger airports of Málaga-Costa del Sol came in second to last place, with only 70.9% of its 65,000 flights departing on time, and in third place was Alicante Airport, with a 71.5% punctuality rating.

The airports with the most punctual flight take-off times, if you wanted to know, were Asturias’s Aeropuerto de Oviedo (85.2% of flights on time), La Palma (84.8%) and Granada (83.4%),

Away from the airport and down to the coast now, where a massive 200kg shark washed up dead on a beach in Puerto de Mazarrón. The animal, which was discovered on the Playa del Rihuete beach late on Monday evening, was estimated to be over 2 metres long.

At first the town hall reported it to be a blue shark, like the one that was spotted in Orihuela Costa last summer and which caused mass panic on the beaches, but given the sheer size and weight of the thing, it’s more likely that it was a mako shark.

This shark had actually been spotted alive a few days before, swimming around the area of La Azohía. There had even been efforts to try and urge it to swim back out to deeper waters where it should have been, or else to help solve whatever problem it had that was making it swim so close to the shore, but these efforts were in vain.

Before the shark’s corpse was taken away from the beach to be disposed of in the early hours of Tuesday morning, a vet took samples from it to try and work out the exact cause of death, and why it might have been swimming around so close to land.

Over on the Mar Menor, there was news this Friday that the body of the teen who fell into the lagoon and went missing three weeks ago has been discovered submerged under the water around a kilometre from Los Alcázares, where he lived.

Bulgarian Ivo Petrov fell off a canoe that he had apparently stolen in the wee hours of the morning with a couple of friends. The two other boys were rescued but Ivo was not so lucky. After 21 days of searching, the Guardia Civil, aided by a specialist diving unit, managed to find poor Ivo’s body.

There will now be an autopsy and a full investigation, and the police are still sticking to their original hypothesis that this was an accidental death. However, Ivo’s mother recently claimed that what happened on the night of the incident was not an accident, with sources close to her saying, “It seems that something else may have happened.”

Lastly, it was announced this week that Take That would be adding an extra date to the Spanish leg of their ‘This Life’ tour and would be coming to perform at the Murcia Bullring on July 20 as part of the Murcia On music festival. Tickets for the concert are already on sale, with prices ranging from 55 euros for the grandstand to 90 euros for the front row. On the same day, Simple Minds will be performing live at the Alicante Bullring, while Sir Tom Jones will be performing in Murcia on July 25.

Check out our EVENTS DIARY for more ideas of what to do in the Region of Murcia:

Spain

German discount giant Aldi is determined to lead the retail market in Spain and take the top spot from enduring favourite Mercadona. The chain has announced the opening of 50 brand-new stores across the country this year.

In a strategic move, Aldi aims to fortify its presence during 2024 in the Canary Islands, northern Spain and already profitable areas like Andalucía, Madrid, the Valencian Community and Catalonia. Going forward, new footholds will be established in Extremadura, the Region of Murcia and the Balearic Islands.

To support its expansion, the company will unveil a cutting-edge distribution centre in Miranda del Ebro (Burgos province) during the first half of the year, covering over 40,000 square metres. This facility will act as a central hub for supplying stores across northern Spain, while the new Sagunt distribution centre becomes fully operational by early February.

Last year, Aldi accelerated its growth pace, launching 46 new supermarkets, with 10 debuting in December alone. This remarkable rate of store openings has allowed Aldi to maintain its leadership in the food and distribution sector, boasting the most new store openings since 2019.

Consequently, Aldi concluded 2023 with an extensive network of 435 supermarkets across Spain, spanning a total sales area of 480,000 square metres – an 11% increase from the previous year.

The trial began this week of British youngster Aditya Verma, a UK holidaymaker who sparked an Air Force intervention in Spain in 2022 when he joked on social media about bombing a flight to Menorca.

When he was just 18, Mr Verma was about to jet off on a holiday with friends when he sent a Snapchat message to his friends reading: “On my way to blow up the plane (I’m a member of the Taliban).”

Gatwick security services intercepted Mr Verma’s ill-advised post and rapidly informed their Spanish counterparts, who sent two Spanish F-18 fighter jets to escort the easyJet plane, with one fighter accompanying it until it landed securely in Menorca.

The 18-year-old was apprehended immediately upon the flight’s arrival and was detained for two days before being released on bail. Upon his return to the UK, he faced additional scrutiny from Britain’s intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6.

The economics student told the courts this week that the bomb threat was simply “a joke in a private group setting” sent to his travelling companions. When questioned further about the purpose of the message, he said: “Since school, it’s been a joke because of my features... It was just to make people laugh.”

However, in a world where terrorism still poses a real threat, Mr Verma’s seemingly harmless comments almost saw him fined 22,500 euros, but not a prison term. The Spanish Ministry of Defence also demanded expenses of 95,000 euros for scrambling the two Air Force jets.

In the end, the judge cleared Mr Verma of the crime of public disorder and he won’t have to pay the more than 100,000-euro fine. The judge ruled that “no explosive... was found that would lead one to believe it was a real threat”.

The mystery for most about this case is how the private message could have been accessed by security forces, given that Snapchat is an encrypted app. In his ruling, the judge put it down to “unknown reasons” and noted that the UK security forces were “not the subject of evidence in this trial”.

Snapchat refused to comment on the case, but their terms and conditions do state that they actively cooperate with requests from law enforcement to pass on information.

There was more mid-air rage this week when a violent altercation broke out among several British passengers on a Ryanair flight from the UK to Spain, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing in order to remove the disruptive travellers from the aircraft as quickly as possible.

According to eyewitnesses, at least seven people were involved in the in-flight brawl, which began shortly after the plane took off from London Luton Airport at 8am on January 19.

One of the passengers reportedly ran back onto the plane after landing and the police had to board the aircraft and forcibly remove the brawler and arrest him.

Alicante

An earthquake measuring over 2 degrees of magnitude on the Richter scale has recorded off the coast of Alicante this Thursday, the stronger of two quakes that shook the Mediterranean in the space of less than 12 hours.

The first one came in the middle of the night, in the seas off the Costa Blanca, about 60km due east from Guardamar del Segura, and measured 2.7 on the Richter scale. Not even 12 hours later, inland Almería had its own earthquake measuring 2.1, between the towns of Albox and Tabernas.

Still, these were both relatively minor tremors, and no one even reported feeling them, let alone experiencing damage to life, limb or property.

One group of people making shockwaves of their own was the Costa Blanca Rawhiders motorcycle club, who kept up their good charitable work this Christmas by handing out toys and other presents to the children at their clubhouse in Callosa de Segura.

The Rawhiders sponsor many good causes in Alicante province, and this festive season they teamed up with the charity association Caritas to help local little ‘uns. There was a party with food and drinks, plus face painting, live musical entertainment and children’s entertainers. The Three Kings even turned up on their motorbikes to bring special presents for the delighted youngsters.

It is always nice to see local associations, especially majority expat and foreigner ones like the Costa Blanca Rawhiders (although they do have Spanish members, too), joining in with the local community and making a difference. All it takes is the will to integrate and do good works for the community for the foreign contingent to be accepted and to feel a part of the place where we live.

For their part, there are plenty of Spaniards who move away from Spain to other countries. For instance, did you know that a third of all non-Scandinavian nurses working in Norway originally hail from Alicante?

This was revealed by the Ministry of Health recently. It seems that job stability, higher wages and a better work-life balance are some of the considerations pushing young medical professionals out of Spain and into Norway.

Such is the Norwegian demand for healthcare professionals that there are specific fast-track training programmes to help Spaniards to study Norwegian and get jobs in Norway’s medical sector, where the unemployment rate is just 0.5%. One of Norway’s biggest draws is the low patient to nurse ratio compared to Spain – each nurse is only responsible for around 10 patients a day – which means that healthcare professionals feel they can provide a higher level of more individualised care. This, naturally, creates greater job satisfaction and contributes to the sense of doing a job well.

Andalucía

At FITUR this week, representatives from the City Hall in Seville announced they had struck deals with Ryanair and other airlines for more international flights at the airport this summer and with Booking.com to try to put a stop to illegal tourist rental apartments in the city.

The Booking deal rotates around the fact that there is an excess of illegal, unregistered tourist let properties in Seville that are being advertised on Booking but which do not have the requisite licences from the Ayuntamiento. The holiday letting platform has promised to delete any such illegal Seville properties from its website and to increase the quality standards of their accommodation.

In terms of new flights at Seville airport for summer 2024, they have agreed that there will be routes available this year between Seville and Trieste (Italy), Birmingham (UK) and Budapest (Hungary) with Ryanair, as well as Scandinavian Airlines System flights to Stockholm (Sweden) and Air Nostrum flights to Madeira (Portugal).

At Granada airport, meanwhile, it is now possible to book flights to and from London Gatwick Airport with Spanish airline Vueling. Those flights will also be starting up for the summer season, starting on Wednesday April 3, and seats are already on sale on the Vueling website.

There will be two flights per week going in each direction, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, leaving from Granada at 9am and returning from Gatwick at 4pm. These flights should run for the whole of the summer high season, and it seems that there will be no more of them after Saturday October 26, 2024 because beyond that date there are no more flights available on the Vueling website.

In Málaga city, there was bad news for 81-year-old Mayor Francisco de la Torre, who was hit by an electric scooter while he was walking to work at the city hall. Poor old Paco was just metres from his workplace at the ayuntamiento building, walking across a pedestrian crossing that includes a recently installed cycle and scooter path when he was unceremoniously struck by the scooter rider.

Whether the lights are red or green, scooters, bicycles, skateboards and the like are supposed to stop at pedestrian crossings and give way to any pedestrians who may be coming. That obviously didn’t happen in this case.

At least the rider had the decency to hop off his vehicle and ask the octogenarian whether he was okay, whereupon the mayor, unphased, turned around and told the rider that he was fine and “not to worry”.

Th incident has, however, prompted some council employees to suggest that this and other crossing points be better signposted to remind people on wheels that foot traffic has right of way.

We finish this week with a video of an even higher-profile celebrity dancing (or attempting to dance) the Macarena at a private party for socialites that was held in Seville last weekend. This was former First Lady and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who performed part of the world-famous with its original inventors, Spanish artists Los del Río, who released ‘La Macarena’ back in 1993.

Hillary and her husband Bill were both at the party, which was hosted by María Eugenia Martínez de Irujo y Fitz-James Stuart, the 12th Duchess of Montoro, at Seville’s Palacio de Dueñas palace.

Clinton danced alongside US Ambassador to Spain, Julissa Reynoso, prompting the President of Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, to comment of the former First Lady, “She is a charismatic and approachable woman.”

Coincidentally, the Macarena became something of a symbol of Bill Clinton’s rise to power during his presidential campaign in the 1990s. But Bill wasn’t dancing this time.

Anyway, here’s Hillary dancing. Try not to cringe while you watch.

Bill Clinton bailó la Macarena en el 96 y @HillaryClinton la baila ahora en el palacio de Dueñas pic.twitter.com/ffbYhbAH9w
— Martín Bianchi Tasso (@martinbianchi) January 21, 2024

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So there we are then. Thanks for reading the Editor’s Roundup Weekly Bulletin this week. Stay tuned for more news from us throughout the week, and your next edition of the bulletin coming out next weekend.

Have a good weekend!