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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Growers fear a perfect storm for a tradition that has long bound rural communities together
A sharp wind shunts clouds across the low and endless skies of La Mancha as Carlos Fernández stoops to pluck the last mauve flowers of the season from the cold earth. Their petals, which stain his index finger and thumb blue, enclose an almost weightless prize whose crimson threads are treasured in Spain and across the world.
But despite the prices his crop fetches, and the weighty comparisons those prices inevitably invite, the life of a saffron grower is not without its trials, travails and frustrations.
Continue reading...Video with DJ Bizarrap ridiculing footballer’s new relationship racks up 63m views in 24 hours
A savage new song by Shakira in which the Colombian star, philanthropist and committed believer in the veracity of hips ridicules her former partner Gerard Piqué has logged more than 63m YouTube views in 24 hours, making it the most watched new Latin song in the platform’s history.
Shakira and Piqué, who played football for Barcelona, Manchester United and the Spanish national team, separated last year after more than a decade and have two children. The former centre-back, 35, has since begun a relationship with a 23-year-old woman, Clara Chía.
Continue reading...Michel Montaner visits a different constituent at their home most nights to gain a better feel for people’s concerns
It began with a tweet in October. “I would like to have dinner at your home. I’ll bring dessert.” What followed was an avalanche of invitations, sending Michel Montaner knocking on the door of complete strangers most nights of the week.
“I ring their doorbell and say: ‘Hi, I’m the mayor,’” Montaner told the Guardian. “I turn up alone, no police, no advisers.”
Continue reading...Residents watched in amazement as tents, caravans and seven stages set up near village centre
The music blared for days, thumping through dozens of speakers hastily erected in the dusty fields. Against the backdrop of Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountains, thousands of revellers danced while others perused stands selling homemade soap, piercings and slices of pizza from a makeshift mud oven.
The illegal rave began on Friday, choking off traffic and leaving pulsating beats wafting over the nearby village of La Peza. “It was 24 hours a day of chin chin boom,” said Fernando Álvarez, the mayor of the municipality.
Continue reading...Ruling is part of a package of measures designed to reduce waste and increase recycling
Tobacco companies are to be forced to foot the bill for cleaning up the millions of cigarette ends that smokers discard every year under new environmental regulations in Spain.
The ruling, which comes into force this Friday, is part of a package of measures designed to reduce waste and increase recycling. It includes a ban on single-use plastic cutlery and plates, cotton buds, expanded polystyrene cups and plastic straws, as well as cutting back on plastic food packaging.
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