Category Archives: Spain

Imaginary Friends: Barcelona art show aims to connect with our inner child

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Exhibition evoking childhood experiences brings together installations by nine artists

Nine leading contemporary artists have come together to create an interactive exhibition in Barcelona for kids – and anyone in touch with their inner child.

“Before the pandemic we had the idea of mounting an exhibition of contemporary art for people of all ages, something that children could relate to but also so that older people could relive the experience of being a child and participate as if they were children,” said Martina Millà, who jointly curated the show at the Fundació Joan Miró with Patrick Ronse, the artistic director of the Be-Part contemporary art platform in Belgium.

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Spanish monastery admits girls to choir for first time in 700-year history

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Mixed group to take over duties of Escolania choir at Montserrat monastery one weekend a month

Women and girls are to be admitted to a choir at the Montserrat monastery near Barcelona, home to the famous Escolania all-boys choir, for the first time in its 700-year history.

The new chamber choir, made up of a mix of about 25 boys and women and girls aged 17 to 24, will be separate from the Escolania, which comprises 45 boys aged nine to 14.

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Spain approves draft law for gender quotas in business and politics

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Legislation aims to increase number of women in decision-making roles such as in company boardrooms

Spain’s government has approved a draft law that aims to bolster the presence of women in decision-making spheres by setting out quotas for women in politics, business and professional associations.

“This is useful policy that changes people’s lives,” the country’s finance minister, Nadia Calviño, said on Tuesday. “It’s clear that we’ve come a long way … but there is still a lot to do.”

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Pair jailed after €1.6m wine heist at high-end restaurant in Spain

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Priscila Guevara and Constantín Dumitru also ordered to pay €750,000 to insurers over the theft of 45 bottles

A court in Spain has sentenced two people to four and half years in prison after the theft of €1.6m (£1.4m) worth of expensive wine from a high-end restaurant in a heist that made headlines around the world.

In October 2021 one of the owners of Atrio hotel and restaurant in the city of Cáceres sounded the alarm after discovering 45 bottles of wine – including a 217-year-old bottle of Château d’Yquem worth €350,000 – were missing from the cellar.

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‘A new page’: European newspapers hail Northern Ireland deal

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Rishi Sunak lauded for making ‘adult relationship’ possible between UK and EU after post-Brexit dispute

Continental media have welcomed the deal settling the EU’s bitter post-Brexit dispute with the UK over Northern Ireland, hoping it may herald a new “adult relationship” that had been unthinkable while the “untrustworthy” Boris Johnson was in Downing Street.

In France, where the president, Emmanuel Macron, hailed “an important decision” that would “preserve the Good Friday agreement and protect our European internal market”, Le Monde called the Windsor framework a significant breakthrough.

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Spanish activists end attempt to revive abandoned village after 10 years

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Project to revive 1,000-year-old village of Fraguas ended as activists face fines of up to €110,000

An abandoned village in Spain has been condemned to its third and final death after the rural activists who occupied it 10 years ago gave up the struggle to bring it back to life.

Fraguas’s first death came in the late 1960s, when it was expropriated by the Franco regime to make way for a huge reforestation programme; its second when it was used as an army training ground.

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Remains of anti-Franco activist who died in 1973 recovered in Catalonia

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Forensics identify remains of Cipriano Martos, an antifascist forced to drink sulphuric acid during a police interrogation

Forensic experts in Catalonia have recovered and identified the remains of a young anti-Franco activist, communist and trade unionist who died in 1973 after being forced to drink sulphuric acid during a police interrogation.

Cipriano Martos, who was born to a family of farmworkers in Granada in 1942, was a member of both the Spanish communist party and the Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front (Frap), a far-left group committed to overthrowing the Franco regime that went on to murder six Spanish policemen in the mid-1970s.

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Spanish transport secretary resigns after new trains too big for tunnels

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Head of state rail company, Renfe, also quits as anger rises over fact trains built in £227.5m contract are too wide

Spain’s secretary of state for transport and the head of the state rail company have resigned amid continuing public and political anger after it emerged that dozens of new trains ordered for two northern Spanish regions were too big to fit through some tunnels.

Three years ago, the state rail operator, Renfe, announced plans to modernise the rolling stock on narrow-gauge commuter trains and medium-distance trains in Asturias and Cantabria.

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Thousands to protest in Madrid over ‘barbaric’ plan to fell over 1,000 trees

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Coalition of neighbourhood groups and NGO seek to halt park works that are part of extension of Spanish capital’s metro system

Thousands of people are due to gather in Madrid on Saturday to protest against “barbaric” plans to cut down more than 1,000 trees in two popular parks to make way for an extension of the city’s metro system.

Although the regional government of Madrid had originally planned to build two new stations on line 11 of the metro in streets south-west of the city centre, it has now decided that the stations will be located in the old Arganzuela section of the Madrid Río park and in the nearby Comillas park.

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EU tipped to avoid recession after gas crisis eases

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Economic growth forecast to be 0.8% in 2023 but households still face cost of living pressures

The EU is predicted to narrowly avoid recession as a result of a milder-than-expected energy shock, although households face difficult times ahead as cost of living pressures ease only gradually, the European Commission has said.

Economic growth for the 27 countries of the EU is forecast to be 0.8% in 2023, compared with a 0.3% projection last autumn, when fears of winter power outages and the rising cost of living ran high. In the 20-country eurozone, the economy will expand by 0.9% in 2023, boosted by a better-than-expected performance in Germany and Italy, as well as relatively stronger growth in Spain.

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Spanish film-maker Carlos Saura, director of ¡Ay Carmela!, dies aged 91

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One of Spain’s most prolific auteurs continued to work until the end – his last film, Walls Can Talk, was released last week

Veteran Spanish film-maker Carlos Saura, director of award-winning films such as Peppermint Frappé, ¡Ay Carmela! and Tango, has died aged 91, the day before he was due to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Goyas, Spain’s version of the Oscars.

Spain’s Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the body that hands out the Goya awards, confirmed his death on social media, saying: “Saura, one of the essential film-makers in the history of Spanish cinema, has died at home today at the age of 91, surrounded by his loved ones. His final film, Walls Can Talk, came out last week and demonstrated his tireless activity and his love for his work until the very last moment.”

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Barcelona shopkeeper fined €7,501 over job ad seeking ‘woman over 40’

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Labour inspectors say Javier Marcos’s shop assistant job ad discriminated on grounds of both sex and age

A Barcelona shopkeeper has been fined €7,501 (£6,600) for placing an advertisement for a shop assistant stating that the applicant should be “a woman over 40”.

Javier Marcos, who runs a small curtain-making business in the Fort Pienc area of the city, said he wanted to replace his only female employee, who is retiring, with someone with a similar profile.

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Spanish court rules against plan to omit bullfights from youth voucher scheme

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Supreme court said bullfighting was part of Spain’s ‘cultural heritage’ but opponents see ruling as backwards step

The debate over bullfighting’s place in Spanish culture and society has been reignited after the country’s supreme court ruled that the Socialist-led government had been wrong to exclude bullfights from a list of events available to young people through a free culture voucher scheme.

Introduced last year, the bono cultural joven (youth culture voucher) entitles Spaniards turning 18 to a €400 (£355) allowance – half of which can be spent on attending cultural events such as festivals, concerts, plays, exhibitions and films.

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Former Andalucían bar confirmed as lost medieval synagogue

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City of Utrera’s mayor heralds ‘extraordinary’ proof that building is part of legacy of Spain’s exiled Jews

Archaeologists in the Andalucían city of Utrera have rediscovered a staggeringly rare Spanish medieval synagogue, which was later used over the course of seven centuries as everything from a hospital and a home for abandoned children to a restaurant and disco-pub.

The find, announced on Tuesday, makes the 14th-century building one of a precious handful of medieval synagogues to have survived the aftermath of the expulsion of Spain’s Jews in 1492.

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Spaniards urged not to undercook omelettes after salmonella outbreak

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More than 100 people fall ill after eating tortilla de patatas dish at well-known Madrid restaurant

Spaniards with a taste for oozing, fleetingly cooked tortilla de patatas have been urged to take care after more than 100 people fell ill with suspected salmonella poisoning from eating the famous egg and potato omelettes at a well-known restaurant in Madrid.

So far, 101 people have become ill – 13 of whom have required hospital treatment – after eating at Casa Dani, a longstanding gastronomic institution in the Spanish capital.

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Artificial intelligence uncovers lost work by titan of Spain’s ‘Golden Age’

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Discovery of Lope de Vega play could lead to other important finds, researchers say

Lost or misattributed works by some of the finest writers of Spain’s Golden Age could be discovered thanks to pioneering AI technology that has been used to identify a previously unknown play by the wildly prolific dramatist, poet, sailor and priest Lope de Vega.

This week Spain’s National Library announced that researchers trawling its massive archive had stumbled upon and verified a play that Lope is believed to have written a few years before his death in 1635.

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Bear-clawed cavern discovered in Spain ‘opens new door on prehistory’

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Researchers hail ‘world-class discovery’ that suggests cave bears may have lived farther south than thought

Researchers exploring a cave system in south-east Spain have discovered a huge cavern, sealed off for millennia, hung with huge stalactites and gouged by the claws of long-extinct cave bears, which, they claim, “opens a new door on prehistory”.

The find was made at the Cueva del Arco, a collection of caves in the Almadenes gorge near the Murcian town of Cieza. Although the site had already yielded evidence of settlements stretching back 50,000 years – making it one of the few places in the eastern Iberian peninsula where the transition from Neanderthals to modern humans can be documented – experts digging there suspected it harboured further discoveries.

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Spanish fashion designer Paco Rabanne dies aged 88

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Eccentric designer became known for his space-age metal dresses and signature range of fragrances

The Spanish fashion designer Paco Rabanne, best known for his space-age metal dresses, bestselling fragrances and eccentric pronouncements, has died at the age of 88.

His death was announced on Friday in a statement by the Puig group, which owns the Paco Rabanne brand. “I am profoundly saddened by the death of Paco Rabanne,” the group’s chief executive, Marc Puig, said in a statement. “Through his great personality, he transmitted a unique aesthetic and a daring, revolutionary and provocative vision of the world of fashion.”

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Spanish man accused of sending letter bombs denied bail over risk of fleeing to Russia

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Alleged actions of man, 74, were an attempt to force Spanish authorities ‘to abstain from supporting Ukraine’

A 74-year-old Spanish man accused of sending six letter bombs and explosive devices to targets including the Ukrainian and US embassies and the office of the Spanish prime minister last year has been denied bail because of the risk that he could flee to Russia.

Police in northern Spain arrested the man on Wednesday in connection with the devices, the remainder of which were sent to the defence minister, an airbase near Madrid, and a weapons company that manufactures the C90 rocket launchers that have been donated to Ukraine.

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Rightwing Spanish leaders under fire over anti-Islam comments after attack on churches

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Politicians accused of stigmatising Muslims and migrants after man with machete entered two churches in Algeciras

Conservative and far-right Spanish political leaders have been accused of seeking to smear and stigmatise Muslims and migrants after a suspected Islamist terrorist attack on two churches in the southern city of Algeciras in which one man was killed and four other people were injured.

On Wednesday evening, a man with a machete entered the Andalucían city’s San Isidro church and seriously wounded a priest there before going to the nearby Nuestra Señora de La Palma church and killing its sacristan, Diego Valencia. Three other people were injured in the violence.

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