Category Archives: Spain

Ayahuasca and toad poison seized as police raid spiritual retreats in Spain

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Three arrested and San Pedro cactus plants also found at rural properties that hosted lucrative ‘astral journeys’

Police in eastern Spain have arrested three people and seized 11 litres of ayahuasca, 117 San Pedro cactus plants and several bottles of toad poison after raiding two rural properties that were used to host lucrative spiritual retreats promising “astral journeys”.

Officers from the Guardia Civil force began investigating the business in the Pedreguer municipality of Alicante province five months ago after receiving a complaint from a former customer. They discovered that the retreat, which advertised online and billed itself as an award-winning and internationally renowned spiritual centre, offered “traditional curative medicine” breaks that were especially popular among European visitors.

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Southern Europe swelters under deadly heatwave as temperatures pass 40C

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Four-year-old boy dies of heatstroke in Italy as scientists warn of ‘molotov cocktail’ of climatic conditions

Deadly heat of up to 44C is searing southern Europe, as scientists warn of a “molotov cocktail” of climatic conditions that is fuelling vast wildfires across the Mediterranean.

In Italy, where temperatures of 40C are expected in Florence later this week, a four-year-old boy died of heatstroke, and a red alert warning was issued for seven major cities, including Bologna and Florence.

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Madrid cultural diversity festival ban is ideological, its organisers claim

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Kúpula se Mueve, which celebrates African and Latin culture, has been held without problems since 2013

Madrid city council has banned a festival celebrating cultural diversity, claiming that it may lead to public disorder and complaints about noise from residents.

The Kúpula se Mueve (Kúpula Moves) festival has been held without incident since 2013. Josias Ndanga, president of the association, insists the claims are an excuse, saying: “We’re convinced we’re being discriminated against on ideological grounds.”

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Outrage as Spanish town bans Muslim religious festivals from public spaces

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Conservative People’s party in Jumilla votes to stop civic centres and gyms being used for activities ‘alien to our identity’

A local authority in south-east Spain has banned Muslims from using public facilities such as civic centres and gyms to celebrate the religious festivals Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha.

The ban in Jumilla, in Murcia, is a first in Spain. It was introduced by the conservative People’s party (PP) and passed with the abstention of the far-right Vox party and the opposition of local leftwing parties.

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British siblings, 13 and 11, who drowned off beach in Spain named

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Family say Ameiya Del Brocco and younger brother Ricardo Junior were ‘beautiful, bright, and deeply loved children’

A British brother and sister who drowned off a beach on the north-eastern coast of Spain have been named as Ameiya Del Brocco, 13, and 11-year-old Ricardo Junior.

Their father, Ricardo Senior, who had also entered the water, was rescued by local emergency services after the incident during a family holiday in the Catalan town of Salou on Tuesday.

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Spanish teenager investigated on suspicion of creating AI-generated nude videos

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Modified images of minors appear on social media account allegedly owned by 17-year-old

Police in eastern Spain are investigating a 17-year-old boy on suspicion of using artificial intelligence to create and share fake nude images of his female schoolmates that he intended to sell online.

Guardia Civil officers in the Ribera Alta area of Valencia began investigating in December last year after a female student reported the creation of a social media account in her name that featured an AI-generated video.

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Spanish discovery suggests Roman era ‘church’ may have been a synagogue

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Oil lamp fragments point to presence of previously unknown Jewish population in Ibero-Roman town of Cástulo

Seventeen centuries after they last burned, a handful of broken oil lamps could shed light on a small and long-vanished Jewish community that lived in southern Spain in the late Roman era as the old gods were being snuffed out by Christianity.

Archaeologists excavating the Ibero-Roman town of Cástulo, whose ruins lie near the present-day Andalucían town of Linares, have uncovered evidence of an apparent Jewish presence there in the late fourth or early fifth century AD.

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Thousands of tons of invasive seaweed ‘overwhelming’ Spanish beaches

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Alga from south-east Asia is major threat to biodiversity, say experts as they warn of environmental catastrophe

Thousands of tonnes of an aggressive invasive seaweed from south-east Asia are piling up on the beaches of the strait of Gibraltar and Spain’s southern coast in what local environmentalists say is a major threat to the region’s biodiversity.

Since May, the local authority in Cádiz has removed 1,200 tonnes of the alga Rugulopteryx okamurae from La Caleta, the city’s most popular beach, including 78 tonnes in a single day.

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Man rescued trying to reach Spain from Morocco in rubber ring and flippers

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Family in yacht pulled young man from the sea off Costa del Sol

A man who was apparently trying to reach Spain from Morocco using a rubber ring and flippers has been rescued after he was spotted by a family sailing to the Balearic islands.

The family were on their yacht 13 nautical miles south of the Andalucían town of Benalmádena on the Costa del Sol, on 16 July when they manoeuvred around the stern of an oil tanker and saw something moving on the waves.

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Ibiza venue cancels music events after deaths of two British men in two weeks

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Ice hockey player Gary Kelly died at Ibiza Rocks Hotel as did fellow Scot Evan Thomson, who fell to his death on 7 July

An Ibiza hotel and music venue has cancelled a number of music events after the deaths of two British men on its premises in the space of two weeks.

Gary Kelly, 19, who was a professional ice hockey player for the Dundee Stars, died at the Ibiza Rocks hotel on Monday. His club paid tribute to the “hugely talented and charismatic individual” who “had a great future ahead of him”.

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Spain’s People’s party hit by alleged multimillion cash-for-favours scandal

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Claims involve former finance minister Cristóbal Montoro and dealings with gas and other energy companies

Just when Spain’s opposition People’s party thought it had the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez on the ropes over a series of corruption scandals, it has been hit by a controversy of its own over alleged trafficking of influences by Cristóbal Montoro, the former finance minister.

It is alleged that Montoro established the “economic team”, a lawyer’s office linked to the finance ministry, which took kickbacks from gas and other energy companies in return for favourable government policy. It is claimed that between 2008 and 2015 Montoro and 27 other accused, among them senior treasury officials, were paid at least €11m (£9.5m) by big energy companies.

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Several people injured in second night of anti-migrant unrest in Spanish town

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Authorities say at least one person arrested after disorder broke out in Torre Pacheco over attack on pensioner

Several people were hurt in a second night of anti-migrant unrest in the town of Torre Pacheco in south-east Spain after a pensioner was beaten up, authorities said.

Despite a major police presence, groups armed with batons roamed the streets looking for people with foreign origins, the regional newspaper La Opinión de Murcia reported.

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Marseille airport cancels all flights as wildfire encroaches on city

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Authorities urge residents to stay indoors and say more than 700 firefighters battling blaze

A fast-moving wildfire fanned by gale-force winds has been raging on the outskirts of France’s second-largest city, Marseille, officials said, as firefighters around the Mediterranean battle blazes sparked by an intense heatwave.

“The fire is on the fringes of Marseille,” the regional prefect, Georges-François Leclerc, told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the blaze was not yet stable or contained, but the situation appeared to be “under control”.

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Ibiza’s ambulance service risks collapse due to callouts to clubs, says union

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A third of emergency responses are to clubs, largely to attend to people having bad experiences with drugs

The ambulance service on the Spanish island of Ibiza says it is at risk of collapse because of frequent callouts to attend to clubbers having bad experiences with recreational drugs.

The local ambulance union says up to a third of emergency calls are to clubs, the largest of which has a capacity of as many as 10,000 partygoers, and are largely drug-related. It is calling on club owners to contract private ambulance services.

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Fresh scandal hits Spain’s ruling party as official quits over sexual harassment claims

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Pressure grows on Pedro Sánchez to call snap election as latest resignation adds to corruption allegations

Pedro Sánchez’s efforts to reset Spain’s ruling socialist party after damaging corruption allegations that threatened to topple his coalition government have suffered a severe setback after a party official resigned over accusations of sexual harassment.

The prime minister had hoped this weekend’s meeting of the federal committee of his Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) would help the party move past weeks of scandals that have undermined the ethical and anti-corruption pledges on which it came to power seven years ago.

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Spain rejects Nato plan for member states to spend 5% of GDP on defence

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PM Pedro Sánchez says he wants a ‘more flexible formula’ that would make target optional or allow Madrid to opt out

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has rejected Nato’s proposal for member states to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP, saying the idea would “not only be unreasonable but also counterproductive”.

Sánchez said that he was not seeking to complicate next week’s Nato summit in The Hague, but he wanted there to be a “more flexible formula” that would either make the target optional or allow Spain to opt out.

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Spanish PM rejects Nato’s ‘unreasonable’ 5% GDP target for defence spending – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, you can read more of our European news coverage here

Earlier today, I cheekily suggested that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is probably wondering how to persuade US president Donald Trump to stay at the Nato summit in The Hague next week long enough to get to discussions on Ukraine and Russia – and not leave early, as he did at the G7 summit.

Well, looks like this issue may have actually influenced the planning.

“Budapest city hall will organise the Budapest Pride march on 28 June as a city event. Period.”

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Spanish minister rules out cyber-attack as cause of April blackout, after expert report

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System failure caused by network’s inability to control grid voltage said to be behind outage in Spain and Portugal

The unprecedented blackout that brought the Iberian peninsula to a standstill at the end of April was caused by surging voltages triggering “a chain reaction of disconnections” that shut down the power network, an expert report commissioned by the Spanish government has found.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, the country’s environment minister, Sara Aagesen, ruled out a cyber-attack as the cause of the outage on 28 April, saying it had been down to a “multifactorial” system failure caused by the network’s inability to control grid voltage.

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Campaigners mount coordinated protests across Europe against ‘touristification’

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Protesters take to streets in a dozen cities to march against an industry they say is wrecking communities

Campaigners in at least a dozen tourist hotspots across southern Europe have taken to the streets to protest against “touristification”.

It is the most widespread joint action to date against what they see as the steady reshaping of their cities to meet the needs of tourists rather than people who live and work there.

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Weather tracker: Europe and China in midst of record-breaking heat

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Temperatures over 40C recorded in Portugal and Spain, while China endures heatwave conditions in high 40s

Temperature records for early June are being broken across large parts of Europe, with the mercury reaching 40.5C (104.9F) in Mértola, Portugal, on Sunday. On the same day, several weather stations in Spain recorded temperatures in excess of 42C, with dozens of sites at record levels for early summer. Across the Balkans, temperatures reached 37C. On Monday, 37.6C was recorded in Tirana, Albania, while in Greece night-time minimum temperatures have stayed mostly over 30C for much of this week.

Hot conditions are to intensify across central and western Europe over the next few days, with temperatures across large parts of France, Benelux, Italy and west Germany expected to reach the low to mid 30s celsius. Highs of up to 35C are expected in Paris on Friday, with up to 38C forecast in Rome. Conditions will ease somewhat, but a heatwave will soon develop across Iberia, with Madrid expected to reach the high-30s celsius each day next week.

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