Jay Slater family fear online ‘noise’ may impede Tenerife search mission

Attempt to find British teenager now in its second week as groundless theories circulate about his disappearance

As the search for Jay Slater, the British teenager who went missing while on holiday in Tenerife, enters its second week Spanish rescuers continue to comb the rugged mountain terrain where he was last seen for clues.

Staff and volunteers from the local police, fire brigade and civil defence force have been using dogs, drones and helicopters to hunt for the 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire.

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Jay Slater search: Tenerife police focus on outbuildings near last phone signal

Officers search around two structures at bottom of ravine in rugged Rural de Teno park

Outbuildings close to where the missing teenager Jay Slater’s phone last picked up signal are the current focus of a police search in Tenerife.

As the hunt for the 19-year-old continued for a seventh day on the Canary island, his mother thanked those who had together donated more than £30,000 to a GoFundMe page, exceeding its target.

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Mother of teenager missing in Tenerife says police have ‘stepped up’ search

Debbie Duncan, mother of Jay Slater, says it is right that search should be intensified for 19-year-old

The mother of Jay Slater, the 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer who is missing from Tenerife, has said she believes that Spanish police have intensified their search for him, as the hunt enters its sixth day.

Debbie Duncan told the Guardian she spent eight hours in a police station on Friday, as police outlined their detailed plans to search for the missing teenager from Lancashire. “I think it’s been stepped up,” she said, which she described as “too right”.

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Barcelona to ban apartment rentals to tourists in bid to cut housing costs

Spanish city is one of Europe’s top destinations but its popularity has made housing increasingly unaffordable for residents

Barcelona, a top Spanish holiday destination, has announced it will bar apartment rentals to tourists by 2028, an unexpectedly drastic move as it seeks to rein in soaring housing costs and make the city livable for residents.

The city’s leftist mayor, Jaume Collboni, said on Friday that by November 2028, Barcelona would scrap the licences of the 10,101 apartments currently approved as short-term rentals.

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Guardia Civil reject offer of help from Lancashire police in search for Jay Slater

Spanish police say they have the resources it needs for hunt for 19-year-old who was last heard from on Monday

Spanish police have rejected an offer of support from Lancashire constabulary as the hunt for the missing British teenager Jay Slater in Tenerife continues.

Lancashire police said it had made “an offer of support to the Guardia Civil to see if they need any additional resources” in their efforts. The 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle was last heard from between 8am and 9am on Monday morning when he contacted a friend.

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Friends of teenager missing in Tenerife urge UK and Spanish police to aid search

Jay Slater, 19, reported missing on Monday morning after phoning friend while walking in vast nature reserve

Friends of a British teenager who disappeared in Tenerife have urged British and Spanish police to send reinforcements to aid the search as they have resorted to hunting for evidence and interviewing potential witnesses themselves.

Police on the island have been looking for Jay Slater, a 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire, since Monday morning with the help of drones and a helicopter.

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Spanish government takes legal action to shut down Franco foundation

Governing socialists say FNFF fails to comply with legislation that forbids any attempt to glorify regime

Spain’s socialist-led government has begun legal action to shut down a group that exists to promote and preserve the legacy of Gen Francisco Franco, the dictator who ruled the country for almost 40 years.

In a statement on Thursday morning, Spain’s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, said he had initiated judicial proceedings to have the National Francisco Franco Foundation (FNFF) dissolved because of its failure to comply with legislation that forbids any attempt to glorify the Franco regime.

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Mother of British teenager missing in Tenerife has ‘not slept at all’

Jay Slater, 19, from Lancashire, last made contact on Monday morning from a mountainous area

The mother of a British teenager who has gone missing during a holiday in Tenerife has said she has “not slept at all” as the search continues.

Jay Slater, 19, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was last heard from on Monday morning when he told a friend he planned to walk back to his accommodation after missing a bus, a journey that would take about 11 hours on foot.

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Moroccan authorities pushed asylum seekers into ‘death trap’, NGO claims

Border Forensics say dozens of deaths in 2022 at EU’s Melilla border was result of antagonistic security policy

Moroccan authorities took a series of fateful decisions that led to the deaths of dozens of asylum seekers attempting to scale the border fence into the Spanish north African territory of Melilla two years ago, survivors and an investigation by an NGO have claimed.

At least 27 migrants and asylum seekers died when up to 2,000 people tried to climb over the fence on 24 June 2022 – the deadliest day in recent memory along the EU land border with Africa – while 70 others are still missing and unaccounted for.

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Weather tracker: State of emergency in Florida as heavy rain causes flooding

Emergency services conduct at least 40 rescues and schools, courts and railways closed in some counties

Significant amounts of rain in the past two days have led the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, to declare a state of emergency for the counties of Broward, Collier, Lee, Miami-Dade and Sarasota, while the mayors of Miami-Dade, Miami and Fort Lauderdale also declared a state of emergency.

This has resulted in a number of closures for public schools, courts and Dania Beach’s city hall, where there were at least 40 rescues by emergency services. Rail routes across Miami and the surrounding area were also suspended. The flooding occurred after more than 380mm (15in) of rain fell on several southern Florida cities in just two days.

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Europol smashes Balkan cartel shipping drugs from South America

Eight tonnes of cocaine seized and 40 people arrested after four-year investigation led by Spain’s Guardia Civil

• How big is Europe’s cocaine problem – and what is the human cost?

Forty people have been arrested and eight tonnes of cocaine have been seized as a result of a four-year international police operation targeting a criminal network that trafficked large quantities of the drug from South America to Europe via west Africa and the Canary Islands.

The long-running investigation – which was led by Spain’s Guardia Civil force and coordinated by Europol’s operational taskforce – discovered that a Balkan cartel was using logistical hubs in west Africa and the Canaries to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador into EU countries.

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Spain publishes list of art seized during civil war

Culture ministry hopes to help people reclaim family property plundered by Franco regime

Spain’s culture ministry has published a list of more than 5,000 items plundered by the Franco regime – including paintings, sculptures, jewellery, furniture and religious ornaments – to help people reclaim their family property almost a century after it was taken for safekeeping following the outbreak of the civil war.

The inventory, which is part of the government’s efforts to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of the conflict and the subsequent dictatorship, was posted online on Wednesday.

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‘Conservative values will impact EU policymaking like never before,’ says rightwing group

European Conservatives and Reformists party includes members such as Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Poland’s Law and Justice

Reaction to Emmanuel Macron’s shock election announcement continues to roll in.

Celine Bracq, director general of the Odoxa polling agency, told the AFP news agency it was a “poker move” at a time when there is a “strong desire on the part of the French to punish the president”.

It’s something extremely risky. In all likelihood, the National Rally, in the wake of the European elections, could have a majority in the National Assembly and why not an absolute majority?”

The most likely outcome is more fragmentation, more deadlock and chaos. A complete paralysis.”

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EU elections 2024 live: Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap election; Meloni’s party leading in Italy, poll says

Emmanuel Macron makes shock decision as far-right make huge gains in France and across continent

Ursula von der Leyen, who is seeking a second five-year term as head of the European Commission, has cast her vote and is urging others to do the same.

Much is at stake for the German centre-right politician, as the European parliament, which sits in Brussels and Strasbourg, will also have the final say on whether she gets a coveted second-term as European Commission president, one of the most powerful positions in European politics.

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A year on, Spain’s ‘historic’ menstrual leave law has hardly been used. Why?

Women in Spain have the right to time off work with period pain, but limits in the legislation and lack of awareness mean few have taken it

It was hailed as a historic advance – one capable of tackling longstanding workplace taboos around period pain. A year after Spain became the first country in Europe to introduce paid menstrual leave, however, figures suggest that relatively few employees have made use of the policy.

In the 11 months since the law was introduced, menstrual leave was taken 1,559 times, according to data from Spain’s ministry of inclusion, social security and migration.

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Spain fines budget airlines €150m over ‘abusive’ cabin bag and seat charges

Carriers including easyJet and Ryanair face being banned from charging for carry-on luggage

Budget airlines including easyJet and Ryanair have been hit with fines totalling €150m (£128m) by the Spanish government for policies that include charging passengers extra for cabin luggage.

In the biggest sanction issued by the Spanish government’s ministry of social rights and consumer affairs, the carriers easyJet, Ryanair, Vueling and Volotea have been penalised after an investigation launched last summer.

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Spanish MPs give final approval to amnesty law for Catalonia’s separatists

Ex-regional president Carles Puigdemont among high-profile beneficiaries after MPs approve law by 177 votes to 172

Spanish MPs have given their final approval to the deeply divisive amnesty law that the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, offered Catalan separatists in return for helping him back to power after last year’s inconclusive general election.

The new law, approved by 177 votes to 172 in Spain’s 350-seat congress of deputies, will apply to about 400 people involved in the symbolic independence referendum of November 2014 and the illegal unilateral poll that followed three years later, which triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in four decades.

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New research raises hopes of exhuming foreign Spanish civil war dead

Catalan authorities ask relatives to provide DNA to help identify 522 members of International Brigades from US, Canada, Britain and Ireland

Researchers in Catalonia have identified 522 members of the International Brigades, including 286 American and 86 British volunteers, who died or disappeared in the region during the Spanish civil war, raising hopes their remains could be found and buried with dignity nine decades after they perished.

About 35,000 people from 50 countries travelled to Spain between 1936 and 1938 to join the brigades to help defend Spain’s democratically elected government against Gen Francisco Franco’s military coup.

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Spain to give Ukraine €1bn in military aid in decade-long defence deal

Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, says the funding will improve Kyiv’s air defences, just days after Russia killed 18 people in Kharkiv

Spain will provide Ukraine with €1bn in military aid this year after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met in Madrid to sign an “enormously important”, decade-long defence and security deal.

Although the precise details of the agreement have not been made public, the Spanish government said its assistance would “allow Ukraine to prioritise its capacities, including its air defences”.

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Lost Caravaggio that was nearly sold for €1,500 goes on display at Prado in Madrid

Museum’s experts realised painter’s Ecce Homo had been misattributed in auction catalogue

Four centuries after it was painted, three and a half centuries after it arrived in Spain and three years after it came perilously close to going under the hammer for just €1,500, a lost, luminous and lovingly restored Caravaggio has gone on display at the Prado in Madrid.

The Ecce Homo, painted in the Italian master’s dark and desperate last years, made headlines around the world after experts at the museum spotted it in an auction catalogue and rang Spain’s culture ministry to share their suspicions that the painting had been misattributed.

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