Category Archives: Spain

Animal testing suspended at Spanish lab after ‘gratuitous cruelty’ footage

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Madrid regional government says it has suspended all activity at Vivotecnia after inspection found ‘signs of animal mistreatment’

Regional officials in Spain have temporarily halted all activity at an animal testing facility after the publication of undercover footage that appears to show animals being taunted, smacked, tossed around and cut into with no or inadequate anaesthesia.

Since 2000, Madrid-based contract research organisation Vivotecnia has carried out experiments on animals ranging from monkeys to mini pigs and rabbits for the biopharmaceutical, chemical, cosmetic, tobacco and food industries. The facility has in the past secured funding from the EU and Spanish authorities for its projects.

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Rare European vultures being poisoned by livestock drug

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Diclofenac was approved in Spain and Italy despite being banned in Asia after it had wiped out millions of birds

A recently approved veterinary drug has been confirmed as the cause of death of a vulture in Spain. Conservationists say the incident could be the tip of an iceberg, and warn that the drug could wipe out many of Europe’s vultures as well as harming related species, including golden eagles.

The anti-inflammatory agent diclofenac has already been banned in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh after it was found to kill vultures that ate the carcasses of cattle treated with the drug. Tens of millions of vultures are believed to have died in this way with some species declining by a staggering 99.9% in parts of south Asia.

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‘Kill the bill’ and trans visibility: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China

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The rice of the sea: how a tiny grain could change the way humanity eats

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Ángel León made his name serving innovative seafood. But then he discovered something in the seagrass that could transform our understanding of the sea itself – as a vast garden

Growing up in southern Spain, Ángel León paid little attention to the meadows of seagrass that fringed the turquoise waters near his home, their slender blades grazing him as he swam in the Bay of Cádiz.

It was only decades later – as he was fast becoming known as one of the country’s most innovative chefs – that he noticed something he had missed in previous encounters with Zostera marina: a clutch of tiny green grains clinging to the base of the eelgrass.

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Painting that was nearly sold for €1,500 could be Caravaggio worth €50m

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Spanish government imposes export ban on oil painting as experts study it to determine authorship

Before it was pulled from sale, lot 229, a small but luminous oil painting of the scourged Christ attributed to the circle of the 17th-century Spanish artist José de Ribera, had been due to go under the hammer in Madrid on Thursday with a guide price of €1,500 (£1,300).

Closer inspection, however, has raised suspicions that the Crowning with Thorns may be the rather more valuable work of the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, leading the Spanish government to impose an export ban on the painting.

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The Guardian view on Podemos: desperately seeking lost momentum | Editorial

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Ten years after the indignados took to the streets, the fortunes of their political heirs are flagging

Spain’s regional elections in May 2011 were a lively affair, to say the least. As post-crash austerity led to soaring unemployment and abject poverty for millions, the indignados movement was born, filling Madrid and other cities with protesters night after night. It was out of this ferment of discontent and anti-capitalist idealism that the Podemos party was born, quickly rivalling and briefly threatening to surpass the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party as the country’s main leftwing force.

Ten years on, political drama is on the cards again, as Madrid goes to the polls on 4 May. The conservative regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has called a snap election to consolidate her majority, after threatening manoeuvres from a junior coalition partner. Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, has stepped down from his role as a deputy prime minister in Spain’s socialist-led government to take her on. The Madrid region has been run by the right since 1995, so Mr Iglesias has his work cut out. He has suggested his candidacy is motivated by a need to head off a possible extreme-right administration in the capital, which could include the far-right Vox party. But there are almost certainly other considerations at work as well.

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Back in black: Spanish region summons Goya home to stem decline

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Area around Fuendetodos will recreate artists’ Black Paintings venue as it marks his 275th birthday

Two hundred years after he covered the walls of his house near Madrid with febrile visions of Saturn devouring his son, a witches’ sabbath and a slowly drowning dog, Francisco de Goya has been summoned home to help reverse the fortunes of the poor, remote and underpopulated Spanish region where he was born in 1746.

The painter, printmaker and fascinated, appalled chronicler of war, cruelty and reason’s frequent slumbers, studied in Italy and painted for the court in Madrid before dying in Bordeaux in 1828. But he was born on the other side of the Pyrenees in Fuendetodos, a small town 27 miles (44km) south of Zaragoza in the north-eastern Spanish region of Aragon.

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Shard free-climber George King scales Barcelona skyscraper – video

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George King has free-climbed the Melia Barcelona Sky hotel in the Catalonian capital. His first such climb was in 2019, when he scaled the Shard in central London without safety ropes or suction pads at the age of 19. The skyscraper's managers later took him to court, where he was given a 24-week prison sentence

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Curfews and quarantines: Europe faces another Easter of Covid restrictions

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From France to Spain, Germany to Greece, tight rules are in place to contain the spread of coronavirus

Europe may not be subject to the drastic lockdown measures introduced to combat the first wave of coronavirus a year ago, but many countries still face another Easter of greatly reduced meeting and movement.

In France, new restrictions come into effect across the country from 7pm on Saturday that limit travel to within 10km (six miles) of home, absent one of the allowed “imperative” reasons. Sworn declarations known as “attestations” will be necessary for anyone travelling outside these rules.

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Outdoor mask decree met with dismay by Spain’s tourism industry

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Ruling that face masks must be worn on beaches comes amid fears of fourth Covid wave

The Spanish tourist industry has reacted with dismay to the government’s decree that face masks must be worn in all outdoor spaces, including beaches and swimming pools, even when it is possible to maintain social distancing.

“We’re going through hell with thousands of jobs and businesses threatened and now they want to turn the beaches into open-air field hospitals,” José Luis Zoreda, vice-president of Exceltur, the umbrella organisation that represents Spain’s tourism industry, told El País newspaper.

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Tourists in Greece and Spain but most of Covid-hit Europe plans Easter at home

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Several thousand Germans head to Crete and Balearic islands as pandemic third wave spreads across EU

The first foreign tourists may have landed in locked-down Spain and Greece, but as a third wave of the pandemic accelerates across the EU, few Europeans will be enjoying an Easter break abroad – or even away from home.

German holidaymakers began arriving on Crete on Monday, with six half-empty flights landing at Heraklion airport after the tourist minister, Haris Theoharis, said some visitors could be permitted before the country’s planned reopening on 14 May.

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Brexit: Spain denies reports it will round up and deport Britons without visas

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EU rules post-Brexit limit UK nationals to maximum 90-day stay per 180 days

Spain has warned British tourists and second-home owners that they are not entitled to spend more than 90 days in the country at a time post-Brexit, but dismissed reports that offenders would be rounded up and deported if they overstay.

Rules applying across the EU – which now apply to Britons – limit visa-free visits to those from outside the bloc to six months with an additional restriction of a maximum 90-day stay per 180-day period.

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Fancy a deep red? The rise of underwater wineries

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After bottles were recovered in top shape from a first world war shipwreck, winemakers have started to exploit the sea’s cool, dark environment

Slipping into the chilly waters of the Baltic sea, the divers descended more than 60 metres to where the masts of the Jönköping lay strewn across the seabed. They glided past the wounds left when the Swedish schooner was sunk by a German U-boat in 1916 to home in on the rare treasure they had come for: thousands of bottles of 1907 Heidsieck champagne.

Related: Champagne found at sea turns out to be world's oldest vintage

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5,000 attend rock concert in Barcelona after Covid screening

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Performance at Palau Sant Jordi concert hall in Barcelona on Saturday night recalls pre-pandemic times

If one overlooked the white face masks dotting the tightly packed crowd of music lovers, it was almost like pre-pandemic times in Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi concert hall Saturday night.

Five thousand rock fans enjoyed a real-as-can-be concert after passing a same-day coronavirus screening to test its effectiveness in preventing outbreaks of the virus at large cultural events.

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‘It’s impossible’: Spain’s flamenco bars face an existential threat

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Plummeting audience numbers fuel calls for government assistance as famed tablaos struggle to survive

A little after 7.30pm on Wednesday night, a small crowd gathered in a dark, brick-lined bar in central Madrid to sit at candlelit, socially-distanced tables and lose themselves for an hour in the sweat, shouts and blurred hands, hems and heels of a flamenco show.

The 16 people in the audience at the Cardamomo tablao, or flamenco venue, were in luck – but then so were the eight performers on stage. Neither flamenco’s iconic place in Spanish culture nor its global status as part of Unesco’s list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity has spared it the pains and penalties of the Covid pandemic.

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At least 20 livestock ships caught in Suez canal logjam

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Concerns for animals’ welfare if Ever Given blockage crisis is protracted


At least 20 of the boats delayed due to a stricken container ship in the Suez canal are carrying livestock, according to marine tracking data, raising concerns about the welfare of the animals if the logjam becomes protracted.

The 220,000-ton Ever Given is causing the longest closure of the Suez canal in decades with more than 200 ships estimated to be unable to pass, and incoming vessels diverting around southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

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Covid curfew and clock change threaten to call time on Spain’s drive-in cinemas

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Country’s oldest autocine is calling for exemption from 10pm rule so it can survive summer’s later sunsets

At 7.30 on Friday evening, Godzilla and King Kong are scheduled to converge on a large lot in eastern Spain to trade blows and bellows, rip fistfuls of fur and scales off each other and generally wreak CGI havoc for an appreciative, car-bound audience.

Their titanic sparring, however, could be short-lived. This weekend, the wading reptilian metaphor for atomic warfare and the conflicted, skyscraper-bothering ape could find themselves cowed by the setting sun, the changing of the clocks and the local coronavirus curfew.

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Chariots of steel: Barcelona’s hidden army of scrap recyclers

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Thousands of migrants play a key role in collecting Catalonia’s waste but must live on the margins

They are everywhere and yet they are almost invisible, living below the social radar as they crisscross the city pushing supermarket trolleys piled with metal tubing, old microwaves and empty beer cans.

The chatarreros are Barcelona’s itinerant scrap-metal collectors, and there are thousands of them. Most are undocumented migrants and so there is no official census, but Federico Demaria, a social scientist at the University of Barcelona who is conducting a study of the informal recyclers in Catalonia, believes there are between 50,000 and 100,000 in the region. About half are from sub-Saharan Africa; the rest are from eastern Europe, elsewhere in Africa and Spain.

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Girl, two, dies after being rescued from migrant boat in Canaries

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Toddler from Mali has died in hospital after being resuscitated on a dock last week

A two-year-old girl from Mali who was rescued from a migrant boat and resuscitated on a dock in the Canary Islands last week has died in hospital, becoming the latest victim of the perilous Atlantic route from Africa to Europe.

The girl was one of 52 people travelling on a boat that had left the city of Dakhla in Western Sahara bound for the Spanish archipelago.

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EU’s southern states step up calls for ‘solidarity’ in managing mass migration

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Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Malta say burden has to be shared more justly with other EU partners

Europe’s southern states have stepped up calls for solidarity in managing mass migration to the bloc saying the burden has to be shared more justly with other EU partners.

Highlighting the deep divisions over the issue, politicians from countries along Europe’s Mediterranean rim said a proposed migration pact fell far short of resolving the crisis equitably.

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