Arrests made in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Dubai, including one ‘extremely big fish’
A “super-cartel” that controlled one-third of the cocaine trade in Europe has been taken down in six countries, police have said.
The EU police agency, Europol, announced that 49 suspects were arrested during the investigation, after raids in Europe and the United Arab Emirates targeting the cartel’s “command and control centre” and logistics network.
Continue reading...European parliament is investigating powerful surveillance tool used by governments around the world
Victims of spyware and a group of security experts have privately warned that a European parliament investigatory committee risks being thrown off course by an alleged “disinformation campaign”.
The warning, contained in a letter to MEPs signed by the victims, academics and some of the world’s most renowned surveillance experts, followed news last week that two individuals accused of trying to discredit widely accepted evidence in spyware cases in Spain had been invited to appear before the committee investigating abuse of hacking software.
Continue reading...Voucher aims to rekindle interest in live arts and boost industry after pandemic
Young Germans are to join other Europeans in being offered a voucher to spend on their choice of cultural offerings under a scheme launched by the government.
The €200 Kulturpass, which will be made available to all 18-year-olds, has twin aims: to encourage young adults to experience live culture and drop stay-at-home pandemic habits; and give a financial boost to the arts scene, which has yet to recover from repeated lockdowns.
Continue reading...Populist leader of regional authority accuses opposition of ‘dirty tricks’ after at least 200,000 take to streets
Madrid’s rightwing regional government has sought to dismiss a huge protest against its healthcare policies that brought at least 200,000 people on to the streets of the Spanish capital as a “failure”, and accused opposition parties of using “dirty tricks” to exploit fears over the public health system.
Sunday’s protest, coordinated by neighbourhood groups, medical unions and leftwing political parties, was held to defend public healthcare against creeping privatisation and to express concern over the regional government’s restructuring of the primary care system.
Continue reading...Course thought to be world first agreed after university bowed to pressure from seven-day End Fossil protest
All students at the University of Barcelona will have to take a mandatory course on the climate crisis after the establishment agreed to meet the demands of activists conducting a sit-in occupation.
In a move thought to be a world first, all 14,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students will have to take the course from the 2024 academic year. It will also devise a training programme on climate issues for its 6,000 academic staff.
Continue reading...Socialist-led coalition to rename offence ‘aggravated public disorder’ and reduce maximum sentence to five years
Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government has announced plans to overhaul the archaic sedition law that was used to prosecute the Catalan leaders who tried to secede from the rest of the country after the illegal and unilateral referendum held five years ago.
Under the Spanish penal code, the offence of sedition – which dates back to 1822 – is defined as “rising up publicly and tumultuously to prevent, through force or beyond legal means, the application of the law”. It carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.
Continue reading...Aura, born when just 94 Iberian lynxes remained, dies in Spain at record age and leaves a ‘phenomenal legacy’
A grumpy, strong-willed Iberian lynx called Aura that helped snatch her species from the jaws of extinction, and whose genes live on in more than 900 of the spotted and tufty-eared felines, has died in southern Spain at the record age of 20.
When Aura was born in Andalucía’s Doñana national park in 2002, there were a mere 94 Iberian lynxes on the peninsula. Decades of eradication efforts, together with a massive drop in rabbit numbers because of myxomatosis and rabbit hemorrhagic disease – not to mention human encroachment – had left the animals on the brink of disappearing.
Continue reading...European Commission wears ‘velvet gloves’ when dealing with spyware used on citizens, says chief of inquiry on hacking software, including Pegasus
The senior MEP leading an inquiry into spyware has accused the EU commission of ignoring the “grave threat to democracy” posed by the use of the technology, and national governments of failing to co-operate with her investigation.
The Dutch liberal MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld said there was illegal use of spyware in Poland, Hungary, Greece and Spain and suspicions about Cyprus, while other EU member states made it easy for the “shady” industry to operate.
Continue reading...Guardia Civil first to be convicted after alleging video showed a Moroccan migrant raping a woman
A police officer who deliberately posted a misleading video clip of a sexual assault to try to stir up hatred against migrant children has become the first person in Spain to be handed a jail sentence for using social media to publish and spread fake news.
A court in Barcelona on Tuesday convicted the Guardia Civil officer of an offence against fundamental rights and public freedoms and sentenced him to 15 months in prison and a fine of €1,620 (£1,410).
Continue reading...Doubt cast on official version of events after deadly crush at border fence in which at least 23 died
The Spanish government is facing growing calls to explain how at least 23 people died during a mass storming of the border fence between Morocco and Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla almost five months ago.
MPs who visited the border on a fact-finding trip have appeared to corroborate reports – first aired in a BBC Africa Eye investigation broadcast last week – that dead bodies were dragged out of a Spanish-controlled area by Moroccan police.
Continue reading...32 tonnes of packaged drug found in raids on farms and production plants across country
Marijuana with a street value of at least €64m (£56m) has been seized in Spain – the largest amount ever found – police said.
Spanish police said they had seized 32 tonnes of packaged marijuana.
Continue reading...Huge chunk of Long March 5B rocket launched four days previously re-enters atmosphere
A hefty chunk of the massive rocket used to deliver the third module of China’s Tiangong space station has fallen back to Earth uncontrolled, triggering the closure of some of Spain’s airspace and leading to hundreds of flight delays.
Four days after blasting off from southern China, a large part of the Long March 5B (CZ-5B) rocket broke up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the south-central Pacific ocean at 10.01 UTC, according to European and US space authorities.
Continue reading...Teresa Ribera says she was ‘hugely surprised’ and saddened by PM’s initial refusal to go to Cop27 summit
The Spanish government has urged Rishi Sunak to demonstrate a clear commitment to fighting the climate emergency, describing the British government’s flip-flopping over the prime minister’s attendance of the forthcoming Cop27 summit as “sad” and “surprising”, given the UK’s global reputation and its current presidency of the conference.
Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, also said the “absurd”, heel-dragging political debate over climate change in the UK was “surprising and disappointing”.
Continue reading...Consulates inundated with inquiries, with 700,000 descendants thought to be entitled to fast-track nationality
Once Spaniards looked across el charco (the pond) for refuge. Now traffic is expected to go the other way after Spain passed a law granting citizenship to the grandchildren of people exiled under the Franco dictatorship.
Lawyers and consulates in central and South America say they have been inundated with inquiries after the passing of the democratic memory law, which seeks “to settle Spanish democracy’s debt to its past”. It is estimated that as many as 700,000 people could be eligible for citizenship under the law, which passed the upper house of parliament on 5 October and came into effect on 21 October.
Continue reading...Show portrays adventures of agent who wakes from cryogenic sleep to find himself in modern Spain
Three years after the remains of Francisco Franco were finally removed from the granite chambers of the Valley of the Fallen, another relic of the dictatorial regime is stirring from a long slumber deep inside the monument’s damp and bone-stacked caverns.
Fortunately, the relic in question is not a long-dead falangista but rather a fictional Francoist secret agent whose adventures in contemporary Spain have moved from the pages of three graphic novels to the small screen.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Privilege Style causes problem for Home Office as it bows to pressure from campaigners
A charter airline hired to remove people seeking refuge in the UK to Rwanda has pulled out of the scheme after pressure from campaigners.
A plane operated by Privilege Style first attempted to fly asylum seekers to the east African country in June but was grounded by an 11th hour ruling by the European court of human rights.
Continue reading...Authorities partly blamed after months of deadly flooding in African nation; jet stream causes temperature divide in US
Nigeria has found itself at the centre of devastating floods over the past week, with poor preparation from authorities partly blamed for the damage caused. At least 600 people have died across the west African nation, with two-thirds of states affected by the disaster.
An estimated 1.3 million people have been displaced, with up to a quarter of a million homes reportedly destroyed. The floods are a culmination of months of above average rainfall, with the first floods having occurred in summer.
Continue reading...Governments across the continent have announced a range of measures to tackle any energy shortages this winter
Paris is switching off the Eiffel Tower lights an hour early, Milan has turned off public fountains, and Hanover is offering gym users cold rather than hot showers in an effort to combat potential energy shortages this winter.
At the same time, the public are being encouraged to do their bit by avoiding using household appliances between 4pm and 7pm, stock up on blankets and slow down their driving.
Continue reading...Memorial to Nazi airman shot down in Spanish civil war had been looked after by Spanish ace who killed him
A group that celebrates the republican pilots who fought fascism in the skies over Spain has condemned the vandalism of a memorial stone to a German airman that was looked after by an unlikely visitor – the Spanish ace who killed him.
Friedrich Windemuth, a member of the notorious Condor Legion sent by Hitler to aid Franco during the Spanish civil war, died after being shot down over northern Catalonia by the Spanish pilot José Falcó in February 1939.
Continue reading...Family of José Antonio Primo de Rivera act before new legislation designed to honour civil war and dictatorship victims takes effect
The family of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Spain’s fascist Falange party, will exhume his remains from the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid before they are removed under new legislation designed to honour the victims of the civil war and the Franco dictatorship.
Primo de Rivera, who was executed in prison in November 1936, was eventually laid to rest in the valley’s basilica in 1959. The remains of the basilica’s most infamous occupant, Gen Francisco Franco, were removed almost three years ago to end what Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called “the moral insult that the public glorification of a dictator constitutes”.
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