Category Archives: Spain

‘A once-in-a-generation event’: lessons from a year of lockdown in Europe

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Measures first imposed in Italy a year ago seemed shocking at first but soon became the new normal across the continent

They seemed, this time last year, almost unimaginable: the most severe restrictions imposed on a western nation since the second world war. “The whole of Italy is closed now,” was the shocked headline in Corriere della Sera the next day.

On 9 March 2020, a population of more than 60 million was ordered to stay at home, permitted to venture out only under specific circumstances – solitary exercise close to home, grocery shopping, going to the doctor – on pain of a €400-€3,000 fine.

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Spanish farmers deeply split as ban on hunting wolves is extended

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The predators, protected in the south, are widely blamed for attacks on livestock but some think coexistence is possible

“There have always been wolves. We humans have hunted and killed all the animals around us because we want everything for ourselves,” says Laura Serrano Isla, who tends her flock of 650 sheep near Burgos in north-west Spain.

“We think we rule the world but if we kill all the rest of the animals, the wolf will come for our livestock.”

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Hong Kong activists and plight of the Uighurs: human rights this week in photos

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to the Sahara

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Galician noir: how a rainy corner of Spain spawned a new TV genre

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Spanish dramas such as Money Heist have been taking the world by storm in recent years. But why are film-makers now flooding to the country’s north-west to make their shows?

Rosa Vargas’s arrival in a small town in north-western Spain to investigate the disappearance of a young girl marked an unlikely milestone. Vargas is the fictional police detective in O sabor das margaridas (Bitter Daisies), which, in 2019 became the first series in Galician, a language spoken by fewer than 2.5 million people, to be broadcast by Netflix. The series became one of the top 10 most-watched non-English language shows in the UK and Ireland just a month after its international release.

A decade after Nordic noir captured the attention of international TV audiences, a TV genre some are calling “Galician noir” is emerging from the rainy corner of Spain. HBO made its debut in the Galician language last year with a Spanish-Portuguese miniseries Auga seca (Dry Water), a murder mystery set in the port city of Vigo, and was soon followed by the Galician-produced police thriller La unidad (The Unit) on the Spanish subscription platform Movistar+. More recently, El desorden que dejas (The Mess You Leave Behind), based on a novel by the screenwriter Carlos Montero, premiered on Netflix in December.

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Family of trailblazing female Spanish mayor hail DNA match to remains

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Discovery after cemetery exhumation throws spotlight on legacy of María Domínguez Remón

More than eight decades after she was murdered, the remains of Spain’s first female mayor of the second republic have been identified, wrapping up a months-long investigation that has helped to cast a spotlight on María Domínguez Remón’s trailblazing legacy.

An exhumation, carried out earlier this year in the small town of Fuendejalón, Aragón, ignited hopes that the remains of Domínguez had been found. A handful of clues hinted that the remains were those of the feminist and rights activist; the location dovetailed with reports of where she was believed to be, the skull bore a hole where it had been punctured by a bullet and lying with the remains was a small brown comb like that worn by Domínguez.

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Like Pablo Hasél, I faced jail for my rap lyrics – but the worst censorship is self-censorship | Valtònyc

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The rapper’s arrest shows Spain has a problem with freedom of ideology. But people shouldn’t be scared to write songs that stand up to power

The arrest of Pablo Hasél this month, a Spanish rapper – like me – who is accused of glorifying terrorism and insulting the monarchy in his lyrics, didn’t surprise me. When I was 18, I wrote a song about the Spanish king, the police arrested me and I was sentenced to three and a half years in jail. The day they came to take me to prison, I fled to Belgium and have been here ever since, despite the best efforts of Spain to have me extradited. It seemed like a joke – almost four years in jail for a song. But it wasn’t: there are 18 rappers in Spain facing jail for similar charges.

Related: Angry words: rapper's jailing exposes Spain's free speech faultlines

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Will the ‘Sistine Chapel’ of pelota bounce back as a centre of Spanish culture?

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Campaigners call for historic sports venue in Madrid to become a world heritage site after its €38m restoration

Beneath a pale-blue late-winter sky, and behind an elegant but unassuming facade, one of Madrid’s great unsung survivors sits waiting, once more, for news of the latest in a long and improbable series of metamorphoses.

Since its inauguration 127 years ago, the Frontón Beti-Jai, built at the height of the Spanish capital’s love affair with the Basque game of pelota, has echoed with the crack of leather-stitched balls, with cheers, screams, the thrill of invention, the gunning of thirsty American engines and, most recently, the chirping of the birds who nested in its almost terminal decay.

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Cattle stranded on ship in Spain must be destroyed, say vets

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Spanish officials recommend 864 cows that have been at sea for two months are no longer fit for transport

More than 850 cows that have spent months aboard a ship wandering across the Mediterranean are no longer fit for transport any more and should be killed, according to a confidential report by Spanish government veterinarians.

The cows have been kept in what an animal rights activist called “hellish” conditions on the Karim Allah, which docked in the south-eastern Spanish port of Cartagena on Thursday after struggling for two months to find a buyer for the cattle.

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Hundreds of calves stranded at sea due to suspected disease – video

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Hundreds of calves crammed onboard a ship were checked by Spanish government veterinarians after months at sea, suspected of contracting the bovine disease bluetongue.

The Karim Allah docked at the south-eastern Spanish port of Cartagena on Thursday after struggling to find a buyer for its almost 900 cattle

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Elephant kills Spanish zookeeper with one hit from trunk

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Man was cleaning stables when he was hit by female, knocking his head against bars of enclosure

A zoo worker in Spain has died after he was struck by an elephant’s trunk, knocking his head against the bars of an enclosure, the zoo and local officials said.

The female elephant weighing around 4,000kg (8,800lb) hit the 44-year-old with her trunk on Wednesday morning at the Cabarceno Natural Park near the northern city of Santander, the zoo said. The man was rushed to hospital where he died from his injuries some three hours later.

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Could a former bar be one of Spain’s lost medieval synagogues?

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Work is under way to see whether an abandoned 14th-century building is part of the legacy of the country’s exiled Jews

The rambling, 14th-century building that sits off a narrow alley in the historic heart of Utrera, its patio walls furred with moss and its inner ones painted pugnacious shades of purple and orange, has led a long and varied existence.

Over the centuries, it has served the Andalucían city as a hospital, a home for abandoned children, a restaurant and, in its final incarnation, a bar.

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Last public statue of Spanish dictator Franco is removed

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Monument in north Africa commemorates the fascist leader’s earlier role in the Rif war of the 1920s

The last public statue in Spain of the former dictator Francisco Franco has been removed from the city gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous city on the north-west African coast.

Without much fanfare, a group of workmen took down the statue on Tuesday, using a mechanical digger and heavy drills to chip away at the brick platform on which the statue stood, before lifting it off by a chain around its neck and carting it away in bubblewrap on a pickup truck.

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Spanish police rescue migrants hidden in waste containers – video

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Spanish authorities have rescued several people who had been hiding in recycling containers in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the tip of Morocco, where each year thousands of migrants attempt to reach the Spanish mainland from northern Africa. Footage released by Spain’s Guardia Civil shows individuals partially buried in a container of glass bottles and another inside a bag of toxic ash

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Spain protests: violence and looting on fifth night of unrest over rapper’s jail sentence – video

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Police and demonstrators in Barcelona clashed for a fifth night on Saturday, with thousands taking to the streets across Spain to protest against the jailing of a controversial rapper for glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty in his music and on Twitter.

Angry demonstrations first erupted on Tuesday after police detained Pablo Hasél, 32, and took him to jail to start serving a nine-month sentence in a highly contentious free speech case

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Spain braces for fifth nigth of protest over arrest of Pablo Hasél

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Police and demonstrators clashed again in Barcelona during demonstrations over the jailing of Pablo Hasél

Police and demonstrators in Barcelona clashed for a fifth night on Saturday, with thousands taking to the streets across Spain to protest against the jailing of a controversial rapper for glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty in his music and on Twitter.

Angry demonstrations first erupted on Tuesday after police detained Pablo Hasél, 32, and took him to jail to start serving a nine-month sentence in a highly contentious free speech case.

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Violence over jailing of rapper rocks Spain for third night

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Protesters burn barricades in centre of Barcelona as case of Pablo Hasél risks dividing ruling leftwing coalition

Spanish police and protesters have clashed for a third night as the backlash against the jailing of a rapper for controversial tweets continued.

Dozens of people have been arrested since Tuesday night when angry demonstrations erupted after police detained Pablo Hasél, 32, who had been holed up in a university in Catalonia to avoid going to jail in a highly contentious free speech case.

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‘An eyesore’: thousands protest against Spanish cathedral’s new doors

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Planned update to Burgos Cathedral prompts online petition signed by more than 31,000 people

Plans to mark the 800th anniversary of Burgos’s magnificent gothic cathedral with three enormous new bronze doors have ushered in an unholy row, with Unesco advising against the project and critics attacking the €1.2m portals as an “artistic outrage”.

Cathedral authorities in the northern Spanish city say the new doors, designed by the renowned, award-winning artist Antonio López, are a work of contemporary art that will complement “a monument already rendered in five artistic styles that are the fruit of each stage of its eight centuries”. They also point out that the current wooden doors are old and in a poor state of repair.

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Spanish riot police clash with protesters after rapper arrested

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Rubber bullets fired at crowds in Madrid day after Pablo Hasél was detained on charges of glorifying terrorism

Police fired teargas, rubber bullets, and sound bombs at thousands of protesters in Madrid, the day after a rapper was arrested on charges of glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty in his songs.

Protests in the capital’s central Plaza de Sol square were initially peaceful, with people clapping their hands in unison and chanting “No more police violence” and “Freedom for Pablo Hasél”, the rapper detained in the Catalan city of Lleida on Tuesday.

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Free speech protests erupt in Spain after rapper’s arrest – video

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Protesters clashed with police in several Spanish cities on Tuesday night after Pablo Rivadulla, known as Pablo Hasél, was arrested to serve a prison sentence for glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty and the police in his lyrics and on social media. Hasél had barricaded himself in Lleida University to highlight 'a hugely serious attack' on freedom, and his arrest has fuelled debate about freedom of speech in Spain and the country’s so-called 'gag law'

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