costa blanca community

A father was shot by his daughter in Cáceres, and a man was stabbed at a party in Madrid.

A 28 year old woman soldier has been arrested in Cáceres in connection with the death of her 54 year old father who was shot with a hunting rifle.
Reports indicated that there was a row at home on Christmas Eve. The victim was well known in the area because of his work as a forestry agent.
An autopsy and the funeral were carried out yesterday and the case is being instructed by the courts in Plasencia.

Meanwhile in a separate incident, a Peruvian man has died after being stabbed in the chest after a Christmas Eve party in a flat in the Retiro area of Madrid. Police sources say they obtained the call at 8am on Christmas Day saying that there was an injured man in a 7th floor flat, and when they arrived an ambulance crew was already at the scene but the man, sitting in a chair, was already dead from a stab wound to the chest.

Bernard Madoff agents in Spain to be investigated.

The anti-Corruption prosecutor is to investigate who sold funds organised by the disgraced New York broker, Bernard Madoff, in Spain. The prosecutor wants to establish if the agents acting here took an active part in the fraud which has been carried out, and it means that the Optimal and Banif funds from Santander will be under inspection along with all those who distributed the funds.

The Government is to approve, in the regular Friday cabinet meeting today, the increases in the minimum wage and pensions. Both will increase next year by the inflation rate last November, that’s to say 2.4%. That takes the minimum wage to 621 € a month.
The Prime Minister is expected to use the occasion of the last meeting of the year, to review the past 12 months.

Sales in small businesses in Spain fell by 9.6% in November compared to last year at the same time. The numbers come from the National Statistic Institute, INE, and show the slowdown affected all areas of the economy including foodstuffs. The slowdown has seen more unemployment in the small shopkeepers sector.

The new General Secretary of the Comisiones Obreros union has said that a general strike will not be called for now given the current rate of unemployment. Ignacio Fernández Toxo said that social dialogue was better from a position of dialogue and not from one of confrontation.
He told Punto Radio however that the CCOO union would be ‘very present’ and support the people who find themselves in difficulty in the current economic crisis.
However he said that strike action would be considered if more redundancies are threatened.

The Ministry of Employment has meanwhile accepted the application from Ford españa to temporarily lay off workers. They have granted permission for 4,577 workers to be affected, some 600 fewer than requested by Ford.
Workers will get 80% of their wages for the time they are laid off.

Nozar and the Reyal Urbis companies have informed the National Commission for Market Values that they have reached the principles of an agreement for the sale of Colonial shares which was first agreed more than a year ago.
The real estate company chaired by Rafael Santmaría, Nozar says it will receive more than 70.4 million € from Reyal Urbis for the deal before the end of March.

Record numbers at the Granada Ski Station are expected given the best skiing conditions for some years.

The Sierra Nevada Ski Station is enjoying one of the best seasons for many years thanks to the snow falls since November which has allowed some 90 kms. of pistes to be open.

However the large numbers attracted by the conditions is showing who the ski station designed in the 60’s cannot now cope with visitor numbers, especially on public holidays.

In the middle of December more than 100 people got trapped in the snow, and now the company which runs the station, Cetursa, has now taken on the responsibility of clearing the snow from the local council. Business there claim there is a lack of coordination and are demanding more parking space saying the Guardia Civil have on occasions had to stop private vehicles even approaching the resort.

Mayor of Monachil, José Luis Samos, has reminding the public that it is normal that there are problems in getting to a site which is nearly 2,500m high in the mountains, but he still apologised for those who had not been able to visit.

The discussions on what to do continue, and it can be wondered why the Junta de Andalucía has thrown out the project to build a cable car from Granada, which would surely help in such situations, even if they claimed environmental concerns.

The Eastern half of the country will be the wetter between now and New Year.

A cold front will pass over the country before now and the end of the year, bringing far cooler temperatures across the country from today, and taking the snowline down to just 400m in some areas.

According to the Spanish Meteorological Agency, AEMET, today and tomorrow will see weak to moderate showers along the Mediterranean, with storms in the Balearics, and heavier in the eastern half of the country.
The west will be generally clear.

The 28th, 29th and 30th will see the rain continue in the Mediterranean and extend across the eastern half of the country and becoming more intense, reaching Andalucia and Extremadura on Sunday and continuing heavy in Cataluña and Valencia on the 29th and 30th.

Temperatures are forecast to recover from New Year’s Eve. Winds will be Easterly with strong intervals in the area of the Strait.
The Canaries is expected to remain dry and sunny.

Meanwhile despite the cold, some 400 people took part in the Christmas Day swim across Barcelona port. They faced water at 13 degrees C for the 200m crossing.

It comes as a young couple died in Málaga, because of the poor ventilation of a stove.

Several house fires took place across Spain on Christmas day.
In Madrid a 13 year old was admitted to hospital in a serious condition with burns to 40% of her body after a fire in the Chamberí district at about 4pm. The cause of the fire, which also saw the child’s grandfather and father suffering injury, is still being investigated.

Two people are in a serious condition after being rescued from a fire in San Sebastián de los Reyes after a fire in a single story home in the town. The 45 year old man has third degree burns to his chest, arms and face, while a 78 year old woman is suffering from smoke inhalation and has third degree burns to her back.

In Zamora a 33 year old woman was injured in a fire in her home, caused it’s thought by a cigarette. The fire started at 7am Christmas morning.

In Villajoyosa in Alicante, some 80 people had to be evacuated when a 27 floor block of flats caught fire. The fire was in the top flat of the fourth tower of the Edificio Atrium. Only the top floor of the building was damaged by the fire which the fire service had put out by midday.

There were also three smaller fires in Guipúzcoa and 15 had to be evacuated from a building in Matalascañas in Huelva.

Meanwhile, the poor ventilation of a stove led to the death of a young married couple in Málaga on Christmas Day.
The bodies of 23 year old F.M.M.M. and his 19 year old wife, A.O.C. were found just after midday in a two story home in Calle Ruiz y Mayques in Campanillas. Sources say the poor ventilation had meant that the stove had used up all the oxygen.

There have been 35 fatalities on Spanish roads in 30 fatal accidents across the country since 3pm on December 19, considered to be the start of the Christmas break. In addition there were 20 serious and 19 lesser injuries over the period. The official DGT traffic campaign for Christmas continues until January 7.

Organisers said 15,000 people took part in the protest yesterday.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Orihuela yesterday to protest at the planned route for the AVE high speed train line. The 12,000 or so protestors were joined by politicians from both the P.P. and PSOE from the Vega Baja area.

The protestors want the line to be placed underground in the town, while the plan is for a bridge to take the trains some 14 metres above the Tajo-Segura water transfer pipes.

The nationality of the victims who died from smoke inhalation has not been released.

Two pensioners have died in a fire in their flat in Edificio Club del Mar in Playa de San Juan, Alicante. Reports indicate that the couple, aged 80 and 82, were foreigners, but the nationality has not been released.

They died around midnight from smoke inhalation after the fire broke out at 1115pm for reasons which are still being investigated.

Firemen found the bodies of the couple when they gained entry to the flat, in separate rooms. The flat was completely gutted and smoke from the blaze went up another seven floors.

The couple died from smoke inhalation.

Police investigating the fire in a flat in Playa de San Juan in Alicante on Sunday night say they think it was caused by a defective stove. Two foreign pensioners died from smoke inhalation and a further six had to be treated following the blaze at the Club de Mar urbanisation.

We now know that the 82 year old man and his 80 year old wife who were the victims of the tragedy were from Holland and had been living in the urbanisation for more than 20 years. Neighbours said that when the fire started they had tried to gain access to the flat but the door was locked and they could not knock it down, despite hearing a woman coughing the other side.

The family in the Carrús area of the town had failed to keep up with their mortgage payments.

The duty judge in Elche yesterday attended to the request of the Prosecutors’ Office and ordered a woman to prison. She is accused of threatening to set her four year old son on fire as a way of stopping an eviction process from a property in the Carrús area of the town last Wednesday.

The family faced eviction because of a lack of payment on the property. The mother told the judge that it was never her intention to carry out her threat, which she made out of desperation seeing that her family was about to be put onto the street.

Now another court will decide the longer term judicial situation of the woman.

Her husband told Información newspaper that they had not been able to keep up the mortgage payments on the property since he had not been paid by his employer. He said it was an injustice to be made homeless in such a way.

Trus, a two year old Beagle ran off when being transferred between flights at the airport.

A man has started a sit-in at Barajas Aiport in Madrid after Iberia lost his dog. Manuel García Coego has been in the airport for three days and two nights already, and says he will not go until his two year old macho beagle is found. ‘I would be a traitor to abandon him’, argues the owner of the dog whose name is Trus and who is not microchipped.

It’s thought that the cage being used to transport the dog broke during the flight on December 12 when being taken from the Canary Islands to Santiago de Compostela, via Madrid. It’s thought the dog ran free at Barajas.
On the day the airline finally found a second dog of the two which were travelling together five hours later.

Manuel is now staying at the airport, lead in hand, and putting up posters in case anyone has seen his missing Trus.

Iberia says they have arranged for Manuel to be taken to the runways and nearby on three occasions in the search for his dog.