Category Archives: Spain

‘They had a date to kill the cow. So I stole her’: how vegan activists are saving Spain’s farm animals

Posted on by

Spain may be famous for its love of meat – but sanctuaries across the country are coming to the rescue of its doomed cows, bulls, pigs, sheep and geese

In the north-east Spanish region of Catalonia, an enormous bull called Pedro is poking his head over a barn door to look at some sheep. He’ll stay there for two hours if the sanctuary volunteers let him; he’ll have to be tempted away with treats so that the sheep can be let out to graze. Pedro knows the routine; he’s been here since he was a calf, when he was bottle-fed by volunteers. He lives a charmed life – he is fed, he roams, he watches sheep, he sleeps; and when he dies, it will be of natural causes.

“He’s enormous!” I say to Olivia Gómez de Zamora, a veterinary assistant from Madrid who spends a lot of time coaxing Pedro from the barn.

Continue reading...

Esther Dingley family call for clarity after claim human remains found in Pyrenees

Posted on by

Family of missing British hiker have been informed of report and are seeking ‘urgent clarification’, says charity representing them

The charity representing the family of British hiker Esther Dingley says it is seeking urgent clarification after reports emerged that possible human remains had been found close to where the woman went missing in the Pyrenees.

LBT Global said in a statement posted to Facebook it was “aware of the discovery of what MAY be human remains close to the last known location of Esther DINGLEY. We are urgently seeking clarification. The family have been informed of the discovery and we are supporting them now.”

Continue reading...

Europe’s unluckiest train station gets new lease of life as hotel

Posted on by

Once-grand Canfranc was known as the Titanic of the mountains, but fell into disrepair thanks to fire, derailment and war

It earned the nickname “Titanic of the mountains”, but now the monumental and ill-fated train station at Canfranc is to get a new life as a five-star hotel, 51 years after the international rail link across the Pyrenees closed.

The story of Canfranc, a village more than 1,000 metres (3,280ft) above sea level on the Franco-Spanish frontier, is one of vainglorious ambition and abject failure, of incompetence and corruption, of intrigue, smuggling and a century-long run of bad luck.

Continue reading...

Global art takes root in the Balearics – with a whiff of Somerset

Posted on by

Hauser & Wirth is known for its galleries in Zurich, Monaco, Hong Kong, New York, LA and Bruton.

For all the lizards, the loquats and the lantana, Menorca’s newest art gallery, which lies amid the blue waters and lolling yachts of Mahón harbour, carries the faintest whiff of a corner of Somerset.

Illa del Rei, a 40,000-sq-metre island a short boat ride from the Menorcan capital, Mahón, has a long and unique history. As well as being the site of a sixth-century Christian basilica and a staging post for Alfonso III’s conquest of Menorca 700 years later, the island is home to a decommissioned naval hospital founded by the Royal Navy in 1711 when Menorca was in British hands.

Continue reading...

Pro-onion faction triumphs in Spain’s great omelette debate

Posted on by

Nation settles one of its most vexed questions as survey finds large majority of Spaniards prefer tortilla de patatas with onion

In a rare moment of national unity unseen since a certain British chef recklessly floated the idea of adding chorizo to paella, Spain has come together at last to settle one of its most ancient, vexed and divisive questions.

No longer will tempers flare at bar counters nor arguments rive friends, families and neighbours gathered together at table. Chefs, critics and home-cooks can put aside their opinions – and their spatulas – safe in the knowledge that yes, an overwhelming majority of Spaniards really do prefer their tortilla de patatas with onion.

Continue reading...

At least 140 Cubans reportedly detained or disappeared after historic protests

Posted on by

Activists, protesters and journalists, including a reporter for one of Spain’s leading newspapers, reportedly in custody

Scores of Cuban activists, protesters and journalists, including a reporter for one of Spain’s leading newspapers, have reportedly been detained as Communist party security forces seek to smother Sunday’s historic flare-up of dissent.

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Americas director, said at least 140 Cubans were believed to have been detained or had disappeared in the aftermath of Cuba’s largest demonstrations in decades.

Continue reading...

Basque country hails ‘forgotten’ retelling of Picasso’s Guernica

Posted on by

Agustín Ibarrola’s 1977 version was painted as part of campaign to get the original returned from New York

The grief-snapped mother is still there, cradling her dead child 84 years on, as is the fallen soldier with his stigmata and the horse with its silent screams.

However, the Guernica now on its way to a museum in the Basque country is not Pablo Picasso’s monochrome howl of anti-fascist fury but a retelling of the work intended to help bring the original to the market town whose agonies beneath waves of German and Italian bombers inspired its creation – and to denounce the subsequent horrors of the Franco dictatorship.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Delta variant fears send shares down sharply in London and Europe

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Three arrested after gay man beaten to death in Galicia

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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”.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Spain records surge in Covid cases among unvaccinated young people

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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”.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...