Vehicle veered into a ravine on island of La Gomera while transporting a tour group for a boat excursion
A man has died and 27 people are in hospital after a bus carrying British passengers crashed in the Canary Islands, local officials have said.
The incident happened at 1.15pm local time on Friday when the vehicle veered into a ravine on the GM-2 highway near the town of San Sebastián de La Gomera.
Continue reading...With former ministers and party heavyweights being dragged into court, the country is once again confronting the unresolved legacy of political graft and shady backroom deals
• Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here
Easter will not have been a particularly celebratory time for Spain’s two biggest political parties. In a quirk of judicial fate, both the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) and the conservative People’s party (PP) are bracing themselves after two high-profile trials involving former senior figures from each party began in Madrid this week.
Though vastly different, both cases have the potential to seriously dent each party’s claims of having zero-tolerance for corruption as voters in Andalucía, Spain’s most populous autonomous community, prepare for next month’s regional election. That will be followed by a general election next year.
Continue reading...Announcement of deal met with relief and calls for strait of Hormuz to be reopened and permanent end to hostilities
European leaders have welcomed the US-Iran ceasefire deal while calling for the reopening of the strait of Hormuz and a permanent end to hostilities, including in Lebanon.
The US and Iran agreed a two-week conditional ceasefire on Tuesday, including a temporary reopening of the strait of Hormuz, after last-minute diplomacy from Pakistan. The Israeli military said on Wednesday it was continuing “fighting and ground operations” in its war against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, despite a statement from Pakistan that Lebanon was included in the ceasefire.
Continue reading...Madrid and Basque government leaders call each other ‘provincial’ in dispute over the artwork
A row has broken out between the Madrid and Basque regional governments in Spain over the latter’s request for Guernica, probably Picasso’s most celebrated work, to be housed temporarily in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to mark the 90th anniversary of the bombing of the Basque town.
The work has hung in the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid since 1992 and repeated requests for it to be moved to the Basque Country have been refused.
Continue reading...Cultural figures sign open letter asking government for clarity on how long landmark collection will remain abroad
One of the world’s most important collections of 20th-century Mexican art, including works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is set to be exported to Spain under an agreement with Banco Santander, sparking outrage among Mexico’s cultural community.
Nearly 400 cultural professionals have signed an open letter calling on the Mexican government to offer greater clarity on what the deal means for the masterpieces, particularly the works by Kahlo, which the Mexican state has declared an “artistic monument”.
Continue reading...Spain’s defence minister confirms move and describes US-Israel war on Iran as ‘profoundly illegal and unjust’
Spain has ramped up its opposition to the US-Israel war on Iran by closing its airspace to US aircraft involved in attacks, underlining its position as Europe’s leading critic of the conflict.
The move, first reported by El País newspaper and confirmed by the defence minister on Monday, comes after Madrid said the US could not use jointly operated military bases in the country for operations related to the war.
Continue reading...Piece by late South African artist Dumile Feni is part of new series History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme
On the second floor of the Reina Sofía, in the very spot where Picasso’s Guernica was first exhibited when it arrived in the Madrid museum 34 years ago, there now hangs a smaller, near-namesake of the Spanish artist’s most famous work.
While African Guernica, which was drawn by the late South African artist Dumile Feni in 1967, may lack the scale of Picasso’s masterpiece, its depth, anger and unnerving juxtaposition of man and beast, light and dark, and innocence and cruelty, are every bit as disturbing.
Continue reading...Noelia Castillo, 25, a paraplegic, had suffered from psychiatric illness and lived in constant pain
A Spanish woman who spent months fighting her father for the right to euthanasia after being sexually assaulted and becoming paraplegic has finally ended her life on her own terms by means of an assisted death.
Noelia Castillo, 25, had struggled with psychiatric illness since she was a teenager and tried to kill herself in October 2022 after being sexually assaulted. The attempt left her in constant pain and using a wheelchair. Eighteen months later, she used Spain’s euthanasia law, which was introduced in 2021, to secure permission to end her life.
In Spain, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 900 525 100. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie
Continue reading...Autopsy reveals James ‘Jimmy’ Gracey’s injuries consistent with repeatedly hitting breakwater’s rocks, Spanish media report
A University of Alabama student who was found dead in Barcelona after going missing while vacationing evidently fell into the sea by accident in view of surveillance cameras – and an autopsy revealed injuries on his body that were consistent with having repeatedly struck a breakwater’s rocks.
Such details about James “Jimmy” Gracey surfaced in the Spanish media as a spokesperson for police in Barcelona told the Associated Press that “all signs point” to the 20-year-old’s death as having been inadvertent.
Continue reading...Supporter mistakenly travelled to St James Park ground instead of Newcastle namesake (save for an apostrophe)
The two stadiums are 366 miles apart. One holds more than 50,000 people, the other less than 10,000. The buzz as you walk up to the two grounds is a little different.
But nevertheless, one Barcelona fan appeared not to have realised that he was at the wrong ground and tried to get through the turnstiles at Exeter City’s modest stadium (St James Park), rather than Newcastle United’s hulking one (St James’ Park).
Continue reading...After latest concert cancellation, singer also describes Valencia hotel as ‘indescribable hell’ that will require ‘one year to recover’ from
British singer Morrissey has cancelled a concert in Valencia after being left sleep-deprived during the city’s notoriously noisy Las Fallas festival.
A statement on his website said: “Having travelled for two days by road, Morrissey reached the hotel in Valencia late on Wednesday. Any form of sleep or rest throughout the night was impossible due to festival noise/loud techno singing/megaphone announcements.”
Continue reading...Payment for Inditex founder, the world’s 15 richest person, tops last year’s dividend of €3.1bn
The billionaire founder of Zara is to receive a company record €3.23bn (£2.8bn) dividend this year from the world’s biggest fashion retailer.
Amancio Ortega, who still controls 59% of Spain’s Inditex and whose daughter Marta Ortega Pérez is now chair, will receive half his dividend in May and half in November – as will other shareholders.
Continue reading...Thousands of girls were locked up by Board for the Protection of Women for ‘rehabilitation’
Spain is to formally pardon a group of 53 women who are among thousands who were incarcerated by the Franco regime on the grounds that they were supposedly “fallen or in danger of falling”.
The women were locked up as adolescents by the Board for the Protection of Women, a collection of institutions run by religious orders. The board, which had echoes of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene laundries, was overseen by Carmen Polo, the wife of the dictator Gen Francisco Franco.
Continue reading...Atmospheric machine-gun has fired storm after deadly storm at the region this year, leaving a trail of widespread destruction
For Andrés Sánchez Barea, in Spain, it was the fear that arose when water started to spurt from plug sockets. For Nelson Duarte, in Portugal, it was the helplessness that hit as violent winds smacked down trees and tore tiles from roofs. For Amal Essuide, in Morocco, it was the reality that dawned when a corpse was pulled onboard a boat in the flooded medina.
Each moment of horror is a fragment of the destruction wrought by an atmospheric machine-gun that in recent weeks has fired storm after storm at the western Mediterranean. Scientists do not know if climate breakdown helped pull the trigger, but research suggests it loaded the chamber with bigger bullets.
Continue reading...Antonio Tejero, who has died aged 93, was part of rightwing network whose efforts were thwarted by King Juan Carlos
The Spanish officer who led his armed followers into the Spanish congress in a failed military coup in 1981 has died on the same day that the socialist-led government declassified documents relating to the murky attempt to overthrow the country’s post-Franco democracy.
Antonio Tejero, who died aged 93, was part of a network of rightwing police and military officers whose efforts to seize power were thwarted after King Juan Carlos refused to support the coup and ordered the generals to obey the democratic constitutional order.
Continue reading...Sammy Azdoufal alerted New York-based outlet the Verge after he took control of DJI Romo devices around the world
A Spanish software engineer reportedly contacted a New York-based tech outlet recently to reveal he had remotely taken control of about 7,000 vacuums worldwide, in the process shedding light on a broad vulnerability with smart products, according to a cybersecurity expert.
The Verge reported that the situation came to light when Sammy Azdoufal was trying to reverse-engineer his new DJI Romo vacuum so that he could control it with his Playstation 5 gamepad.
Continue reading...Completion of glass cross brings Antoni Gaudí’s church to maximum final height of 172.5m, 144 years after work began
The final piece of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been laid in place, bringing the church to its maximum final height 144 years after work began.
After several days when it has been too windy to work, the upper section of the 17 metre-high four-sided steel and glass cross was winched into position at 11am on Friday, completing the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ. At 172.5 metres, the Sagrada Familia, to which the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí devoted the later part of his life, is Barcelona’s tallest building and the world’s tallest church.
Continue reading...Xalet del Catllaràs contains elements of architect’s naturalistic style, expressed in works such as Park Güell and Sagrada Família
An elegant modernist building in the mountains north of Barcelona, originally constructed to house engineers establishing a nearby mine, has been confirmed as a work of Antoni Gaudí, Catalonia’s most celebrated and distinctive architect.
The Xalet del Catllaràs, about 80 miles from Barcelona in the county of Berguedà, was built in 1905 and commissioned by Eusebi Güell, Gaudí’s lifelong patron. Güell was the owner of a cement company with mines in the region and he needed somewhere to house the engineers, many of them British, who would help extract the coal for his factories.
Continue reading...Reina Sofía’s three-year rehang of works by artists from Spain and beyond is billed as a ‘critical reinterpretation’
The Reina Sofía’s new rehang opens, quite pointedly, with a painting of a detained man sitting, head bowed and wrists shackled, as he waits for the arbitrary hand of institutional bureaucracy to decide his fate.
The picture, Document No …, was painted by Juan Genovés in 1975, the year Francisco Franco died and Spain began its transition to democracy after four decades of dictatorship. Genovés’s faceless, everyman victim of the Franco regime’s control and repression is the natural starting point for the Madrid museum’s exploration of the past 50 years of contemporary art in Spain.
Continue reading...Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher
As a child, Miquel López García was fascinated by the conch shell, kept in the bathroom, that his father’s family in the southern Spanish region of Almería had blown to warn their fellow villagers of rising rivers and approaching flood waters.
The hours he spent getting that “characteristically potent sound out of it” paid off last year when the archaeologist, musicologist and professional trumpet player pressed his lips to eight conch-shell trumpets. Their tones, he says, could carry insights into the lives of the people who lived in north-east Spain 6,000 years ago.
Continue reading...