Category Archives: Spain

Salud! Spain’s female winemakers use their intuition to rise to the top

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The industry has a growing number of women earning plaudits at its renowned bodegas. But are they really better than men?

“I think of my wines as barefoot children that need love and care,” says winemaker Marta Casas, holding her glass up to the light. Below her, the vineyards of Penedès roll away almost to the sea, but she could be virtually anywhere in Spain.

Just as they fought their way into the male domain of haute cuisine, a growing number of Spanish women are seeking a career in winemaking, with three times as many taking courses in oenology compared with 10 years ago. This was given an added boost in 2018 when Almudena Alberca was made Spain’s first female master of wine, one of only 149 in the world.

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Raffaella Carrà, Italian cultural institution and LGBT icon, laid to rest in Rome

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Thousands in streets to mourn television star, actor and singer as funeral is broadcast live on TV

In Italy’s week of mourning for Raffaella Carrà, one image summed up her universal appeal: a rainbow flag – the symbol of the LGBT movement – next to her coffin in a Catholic church.

Carrà, who died on Monday aged 78, was a cultural institution in her home country, regarded as its “best-loved woman”. The queen of light entertainment TV, she also acted and topped the music charts of Europe and South America with pioneering, sex-positive pop music.

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Delta variant fears send shares down sharply in London and Europe

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Investors worry resurgence of Covid-19 cases will slow economic growth and stall global recovery

Fears that the fast-spreading Delta variant of Covid-19 will hurt the global recovery sent stocks sliding on Thursday, as investors worried that economic growth could be slowing.

Shares fell sharply in London and across other European exchanges, after losses in Asia-Pacific markets, on concerns that the economic rebound from the shock of the pandemic may have peaked, and on signs of a slowdown in China.

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Italy v Spain: Euro 2020 semi-final – live!

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8 min: Spain aren’t dealing particularly well with Italy’s high press at the moment. Busquets, Garcia and Azpilicueta take turns to hesitate over clearances, nearly allowing the livewire Verratti in on a couple of occasions. Verratti is snapping away at their heels like billy-o. It’s very impressive, though you already get the sense he’s one mistimed lunge away from trouble.

6 min: Spain get a foot on the ball for the first time in the match, and stroke it around the back awhile. Italy’s fans give them the bird. All good pantomime stuff.

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Three arrested after gay man beaten to death in Galicia

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Protests across Spain after 24-year-old nursing assistant Samuel Luiz dies following attack outside nightclub

Spanish police have arrested three people in connection with the killing of a young gay man whose death in a possible homophobic attack over the weekend shocked the country and sparked nationwide protests.

Samuel Luiz, a 24-year-old nursing assistant, was out with friends in the Galician city of A Coruña in the early hours of Saturday when an argument started outside a nightclub.

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Spain’s far-right Vox party under fire for veiled Twitter threat against editor

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Party doxxes satirical editor, suggesting followers demand he ‘takes responsibility when he leaves his office’

Reporters without Borders (RSF) has criticised the far-right Spanish party Vox for suggesting that the head of an editorial group that publishes a satirical magazine that frequently lampoons the party be held to account for its content on the street outside his office.

On Tuesday, Vox’s official Twitter account published the person’s name and photograph, and accused the magazine, El Jueves, of “spreading hate against millions of Spaniards on a daily basis”.

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Madrid court rules far-right anti-migrant poster is legitimate

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Political rivals and human rights campaigners criticise use of inflammatory campaign material by Vox party

Human rights groups and politicians in Spain have spoken out after a court ruled that a controversial and false election poster for the far-right Vox party should not be withdrawn because it is legitimate political expression, and because the unaccompanied foreign minors it depicts in a relentlessly negative light are “an obvious social and political problem”.

The poster, which Vox used as part of its campaign in May’s bitterly contested Madrid regional election, was put up in a busy rail station in the capital and shows a hooded and masked dark-skinned youth alongside a white Spanish grandmother. It incorrectly suggests that refugee and migrant children in state care receive 10 times more in benefits each month than the average Spanish grandmother does in pension payments.

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Spain records surge in Covid cases among unvaccinated young people

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Regions speed up plans to vaccinate under-30s as more than 1,000 cases traced to Mallorca school trip

Authorities and health experts in Spain have called for prudence and responsibility amid a surge in cases among young people who are still waiting to be vaccinated after more than 1,000 Covid cases across the country were traced back to an end-of-year school trip to Mallorca.

Although more than a third of Spain’s 47 million people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, case numbers have been rising over recent days – most notably among younger people still waiting to get their shots.

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Covid tourism freeze could cost global economy $4tn by year end

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Turkey, Ecuador and South Africa will be among hardest hit as pandemic-related losses reach $2.4tn, says UN report

The cost to the global economy of the tourism freeze caused by Covid-19 could reach $4tn (£2.9tn) by the end of this year, a UN body has said, with the varying pace of vaccine rollouts expected to cost developing nations and tourist centres particularly dear.

Nations including Turkey and Ecuador will be among the hardest hit by the severe disruption to international tourism, with holiday favourites such as Spain, Greece and Portugal also badly affected. Pandemic-related losses have reached up to $2.4tn this year, according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). The potential lost tourism-related income in 2021 is equivalent to the effect of switching off 85% of the UK economy, while projected losses over 2020 and 2021 could equate to removing Germany from the global economy for two years.

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‘Iconic gay image’: history of sailors and sex explored in Barcelona exhibition

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Catalan city is hosting new show looking at relationships between men who spend their lives at sea

A new exhibition at the Maritime Museum of Barcelona seeks to tell the story of the romantic and sexual reality of men who spend their lives at sea.

El desig és tan fluid com la mar (Desire Flows Like the Sea) aims to evoke the lives of men living in isolation but at close quarters and whose intimate lives were once clandestine out of necessity because homosexuality was and, and in many places still is, considered both a sin and a capital offence.

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Spain backs bill allowing teenagers to change official gender without medical checks

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Equality minister says draft law marks ‘giant step forward for LGBTI rights, particularly trans people’

Spain’s government has approved a draft law that would allow anyone aged 14 and over to change their gender on official documents without the need for hormone treatment or a medical report, and which would also ban conversion practices and strengthen the rights of LGBTI people.

The proposed measures – which follow months of wrangling between the Spanish Socialist Worker’s party (PSOE) and its junior coalition partners in the far-left, anti-austerity Podemos party – would abolish existing legislation that requires people wishing to change their gender to obtain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and undergo hormone treatment.

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‘You can’t cancel Pride’: the fight for LGBTQ+ rights amid the pandemic

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Lockdown hit LGBTQ+ communities hard but even as Pride events are called off there is hope and a promise that the parades will return

This month, for the second year in a row, there was no Pride parade in San Francisco, arguably the city most laden with history and symbolism for the LGBTQ+ community.

It is a decision Fred Lopez, who took over as executive director of San Francisco Pride at the beginning of last year describes as “heartbreaking”.

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Catalonia: threat to impose massive fines on ex-minister prompts outcry

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Dozens of Nobel laureates sign open letter condemning treatment of economist Andreu Mas-Colell

Threats of massive fines against the economist and former Catalan finance minister Andreu Mas-Colell for his alleged role in Catalonia’s failed independence bid in 2017 have prompted international condemnation.

Mas-Colell, 76, who served as finance minister from 2010-16, is among 40 officials, including the former Catalan presidents Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont, accused by a tribunal of illegally using €4.8m of public money between 2011 and 2017 to further the cause of independence.

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Global report: rise in Delta variant cases forces tougher restrictions

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Moscow has reported the highest death toll of any Russian city, while the Delta variant is forcing tighter restrictions in the Asia-Pacific region

Moscow has recorded the highest Covid-19 daily death toll of any Russian city so far, as the highly contagious Delta variant forced tougher restrictions on countries across the Asia-Pacific region and fuelled mounting concern over holiday travel in Europe.

Vaccinations have brought infection numbers down in many wealthy countries, and curbs on daily life continue to ease in much of the EU and US, but experts warn the fast-spreading strain means the pandemic – while slowing globally – is far from over.

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Senegalese immigrant saves stranger from drowning in Spanish river – video

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When a 72-year-old man fell unconscious into the Nervión River in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, Senegalese migrant Mouhammad Diouf did not hesitate. Diouf jumped into the river and for 15 minutes kept the man afloat. The 27-year-old arrived in Spain four years ago after a 20-month journey. After the video of the rescue went viral, a request was opened on Change.org to reward his courageous act with legal permission to stay in Spain.

• This video was republished on 27 June 2021. Due to mislabelled agency content, an earlier version misattributed a video interview to Mouhammad Diouf when the speaker was Serigne Sene.

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Balearic officials urge Madrid to tighten Covid controls on UK tourists

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Regional government welcomes green list status but calls for Spain to set ‘strict and safe’ entry rules

Authorities in the Balearic Islands – the only Spanish region to be added to the UK’s green list for quarantine-free travel – are calling on the central government to tighten controls for holidaymakers arriving from the UK.

Last month Spain began allowing in British travellers without the need to provide a negative Covid test. The move, aimed at wooing back some of the more than 18 million British tourists who visited in the years prior to the pandemic, contrasts with the growing push for tighter restrictions on UK tourists in the EU in light of the rapid spread of the Delta variant.

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Antivirus entrepreneur John McAfee found dead in Spanish prison – video

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Antivirus software entrepreneur John McAfee has been found dead in his cell inside a Spanish prison hours after the country’s highest court approved his extradition to the United States where he was wanted on tax charges. The 75-year-old shot to prominence after creating the antivirus software that bears his name. However McAfee's personal life and erratic behaviour also claimed as much interest as his professional achievements.

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John McAfee: antivirus entrepreneur found dead in Spanish prison

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McAfee’s extradition to the US on tax charges had been approved hours earlier

The antivirus software entrepreneur John McAfee has been found dead in his cell in Spain, hours after the country’s highest court approved his extradition to the United States, where he was wanted on tax-related criminal charges that carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years.

Catalan’s regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, confirmed a report in El País that McAfee, 75, had been found dead in the Brians 2 prison near Barcelona, late on Wednesday.

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Freed Catalan leader calls on Spain to ‘think about future generations’

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Jordi Cuixart and eight others have left prison after being pardoned for their roles in the failed independence bid in 2017

The head of one of Catalonia’s biggest pro-independence groups has urged the Spanish government to think about “future generations and not just parliamentary stability” as he and eight other separatist leaders were released from prison after being pardoned for their roles in the failed bid to secede almost four years ago.

Jordi Cuixart, the president of the influential grassroots association Òmnium Cultural, said he was pleased to be free after serving more than three and a half years of a nine-year sentence for sedition.

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App maps shady spots to guide Barcelona walkers along cooler routes

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Cool Walks aims to help pedestrians avoid dangerous heat and find public drinking fountains

A new app promises to help Barcelona residents find the shadiest route between two places to avoid extreme heat.

Cool Walks, a routing tool for pedestrians first developed at a data visualisation contest, aims to show users a variety of walking routes to take for their intended destinations.

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