Spanish town rushes to wed gays before election

 

Spanish town is offering gay couples fast-track marriages before a likely November election win by the conservative Popular Party, which opposes same-sex marriage. The mayor of the small southwestern town of Jun, Jose Antonio Rodriguez, said he offered the service across Spain after hearing from gay couples fearing a change in the law after the November 20 vote. “People are very afraid, they are starting to realise that there could be a real change and they will lose a hard-fought right,” the Socialist mayor told AFP. “I felt it was important to reassure people and find a way so that people who want to get married could do so,” he said. Rodriguez said the town had received 52 requests from same-sex couples wanting to be married in the past week after he announced on Twitter he would offer speedy gay marriages before the general election. The town of just over 4,000 residents carried out just 11 same-sex marriages during all of 2010. The wedding applications are handled entirely online in about five days, complete with marriage certificate delivered by e-mail. The mayor said he had made the town’s park available for wedding ceremonies but the vast majority of couples opt for the electronic marriage and would not need to set foot in Jun. Under Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain has been on the vanguard of Europe in terms of gay rights. In 2005 — a year after Zapatero was first elected — Spain passed a law to allow same-sex marriages, making it only the third member of the European Union after Belgium and the Netherlands to do so. The law, part of the ruling Socialists’ aggressive agenda for social reform, also lets gay couples adopt children and inherit each other’s property. Since then more than 20,000 gay couples have tied the knot. The conservative Popular Party, which is riding high in the polls, has appealed the gay marriage law to Spain’s Constitutional Court. Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy has pledged to reform the same-sex marriage law if elected but as the general election has neared he has stressed that any legislative action will come only after the court issues its ruling. Polls show two-thirds of Spaniards back same-sex marriage, one of the highest levels of support in Europe.

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Choose your petrol station carefully in Malaga Province

 

UP to €4.50 can be saved be choosing the cheapest petrol station to fill up. The average price per litre for unleaded petrol in Malaga Province is now up to €1.34, 13 per cent more than the same time last year, according to the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce and the highest in the whole of Spain. Diesel is €1.29 on average, 16 per cent more than October 2010. The cheapest place to fill up with 95 octane is Distreax-22, Velez-Malaga, at €1.29 per litre. The most expensive place to fill up with 95 octane is E.S. El Torcal, Villanueva de la Concepcion (Malaga), at €1.38 per litre. The cheapest place to fill up with diesel is Galp, Antequera, at €1.24 per litre. The most expensive place to fill up with diesel is Cepsa, Manilva at €1.31 per litre.

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¡Ole! Spain drives legality into mobile services with Sybase 365

 

Spain was one of the first countries to start to lay down laws relating to old non-registered pay-as-you-go SIM cards for anti-terrorism reasons i.e. you MUST tell the authorities your name and address and get a new SIM if you had one of the old anonymous ones. Following on from this "mobile legality" theme, news this week bubbles of Sybase subsidiary company Sybase 365 working with Spanish mobile operator Yoigo. The two firms have joined forces to offer registered SMS, a new service allowing companies to send customers confirmation text messages with the same legal standing as registered mail. According to Sybase, "Officially certified by the Spanish Real Casa de la Moneda (The Royal Mint of Spain) the Sybase 365 and Yoigo service recognises an SMS confirmation as legal proof of delivery of important documents and information. These certificates can then be used as evidence in judicial proceedings in Spain for enterprises wishing to demonstrate correspondence with their customers. This will enable companies and their customers to resolve disputes in a timely manner, avoiding the cost of court proceedings." With registered SMS, financial institutions, utility companies and enterprises will be able to use SMS where previously they would have used registered mail. Developers working to build in legally approved services into mobile (or desktop for that matter) applications should perhaps take note of Sybase 365's suggestion that an SMS provides a number of advantages over registered mail including five times better response rate over traditional mail and is read 288 times faster than email. "No other communication medium has the ability to reach more people than SMS, said Howard Stevens, senior vice president, global telco and international operations, Sybase 365. "Consumer acceptance and enterprise adoption of the mobile channel is fuelling the growth in volume, availability and sophistication of mobile services and the registered SMS services we're launching confirms this trend."

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Catholic Church Child Trafficking Network

 

Spain is reeling from an avalanche of allegations of baby theft and baby trafficking. The trade began at the end of the Spanish civil war and continued for 50 years – hundreds of thousands of babies are thought to have been traded by nuns, priests and doctors up to the 1990s. This World reveals the impact of Spain’s stolen baby scandal through the eyes of the children and parents who were separated at birth, and who are now desperate to find their relatives. Exhumations of the supposed graves of babies and positive DNA tests are proof that baby theft has happened. Across Spain, people are queuing up to take a DNA test and thousands of Spaniards are asking ‘Who am I?’ Katya Adler has been meeting the heartbroken mothers who are searching for the children whom they were told died at birth, as well as the stolen and trafficked babies who are now grown up and searching for their biological relatives and their true identities.

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Spain’s property bust is only getting worse.

AFP

Cranes erecting the Pelly tower under construction in Seville.

Spain’s property bust is only getting worse. The wonder is that the country’s economy and banks are still this resilient.

The Spanish government said Tuesday that housing prices remained in free-fall in the third quarter, dropping 5.5% from a year earlier, the biggest decline since 2009.

This makes Spain, in many senses, the worst case of a property bust in the developed world—the country is already deep in its third consecutive year of falling prices, with no rebounds.

Last year, the pace of decline slowed significantly, signalling some light at the end of the tunnel, but another metaphor is called for instead: that last year’s respite was nothing more than a dead cat’s bounce.

The good news should be the overall amount of the decline, since Spain’s government says prices are only down 18%, in nominal terms, since their peak in early 2008.

But that doesn’t include the effect of Spain’s persistent inflation, one of the highest in the euro zone, which makes the real drop closer to 30%—Spain’s government didn’t provide real price data in today’s release.

After earlier predictions of a short-term correction have been smashed, some analysts now say prices may keep falling for the next two years, eroding Spain’s household wealth and banking balance sheets.

Meanwhile, banks are struggling to keep up with the loss in value of the collateral against €400 billion worth of loans to construction and real estate firms, an amount that remains unchanged since 2008.

For Luis Garicano, a professor of economics and strategy at the London School of Economics, this number is perhaps the most dangerous of those related to the bust, since it indicates the banking sector exposure to such loans hasn’t diminished.

He estimates that a possible explanation is that banks have exchanged some non-performing loans for property that they now own, but not enough to offset the rising interest on the loans.

Many, if not most of these loans, are being rolled over to keep zombie developers in business, in the hope that the market will recover.

All the same, banks have also turned into property developers now.

Walk into any Spanish bank branch, looking for a mortgage, and you will see that is much easier to get it if you’ll just take one of the many, many houses the bank acquired from a bankrupt developer. But many will say why worry? The same house will be even cheaper next month.

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Man arrested in connection with body found on Marbella roadside

 

A man has been arrested in connection with the death of the 15 year old Moroccan whose body was found by the roadside between Marbella and Ronda. The arrested man lives on a nearby finca to where the body was found, and has claimed that the 15 year old was continuously stealing from him. Government Sub Delegate for Málaga, Hilario López Luna, said that the National Police arrested the Spaniard on Tuesday. The 15 year old Moroccan is known to have had a police record. The arrested man said that he surprised the Moroccan on his land and shot him in the face with a shotgun. He then moved the body to the roadside. He is expected to appear in court shortly.

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National police officers suspended the search for the two children who went missing on Saturday in Cordoba, Spain.

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  Photo: EFE. 

 

The children, Ruth and José Bretón Ruiz aged six and two respectively, went missing at around 18:40 on Saturday while playing in a park just in the outskirts of Cordoba. They were with their father when they vanished. He claimed that they vanished when he lost sight of them for an instant.

The children, who usually live with their mother in Huelva, travelled to Cordoba with their father on Friday. The parents are currently in the midst of separation proceedings.

The search was concentrated on an area around the rio Guadalquivir but no trace of the children was found.

Forensic experts from Madrid and Sevilla are also analysing samples taken at the home of children’s paternal grandfather, where the father has been living since the start of separation procedures.

On Sunday, the mother of the children filed a complaint of psychological abuse against the father. The complaint apparently only related to marital issues as the children were not named in the complaint.

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I was set up, former chief of the National Police in Ronda claims

 

former chief of the National Police in Ronda claims that he was accused in the police corruption case because people wanted to “bring him down”. Nine people are accused in the case which is currently being tried in Malaga. They include three other National Police officers and a Guardia Civil. The hearing was initially planned in March last year but was suspended after the defence for one of the accused asked to know the identity of some of the protected witnesses to carry out tests. This was agreed, but the trial was postponed on two other occasions. There are 60 witnesses, many whose identities are protected. Malaga Public Prosecutor is asking for a total of 39 years for the five officers who allegedly failed to investigate prostitution and drugs sales at brothels in the area from which they are accused of demanding money and sex in exchange for not going ahead with deportation orders for the illegal immigrants working there between 2003 and 2007. Three club managers were charged with prostitution, and another man who allegedly accompanied the officer with influence peddling. He is said to have boasted about his relationship with the police and an affair with the local judge. The Internal Affairs investigation led to the arrests of the officers and the other people between February and May 2007. The former National Police chief visited the brothels and, like the others, allegedly had drinks and sexual favours which he never paid for, and was also accused of helping an illegal immigrant who worked in a care home in exchange for sex. The prosecution believes that another one of the National Police rented a house to one of the brothel owners for the girls to stay in and tipped them off about possible raids. The former police chief claims in court that the whole case is a set-up organized by people he had arrested or had problems with in the past, including other officers, and says he never failed in his duty, nor abused his position to obtain sex or anything else. He does admit to having had a consenting relationship with a protected witness who he claims demanded money from him and went to his wife after they split up. He says he regrets this, but that it was the only thing he has done wrong.

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Spain health service chokes as austerity tightens

 

Medical suppliers haven't been paid for as much as two years, emergency rooms have been shut down and doctors in Catalonia have been told to accept a pay cut or 1,500 medical residents will lose their jobs. Spain's treasured public health care system has become the latest victim of the euro zone debt crisis. "We haven't been paid, but there's nothing we can do about it. We need the contracts, so we're just going to have to wait it out," said a representative for a cleaning company who did not want his or the firm's name used for fear of a backlash. The company, which says it is owed hundreds of millions of euros by the government of the Castilla-La Mancha region south of Madrid, is one of dozens of providers of everything from surgical swabs to disinfectants struggling to pay workers as Spain's regions delay payments to meet tight deficit targets. The debt-burdened autonomous regions' spending cuts are a tangible sign of the present and future pain as Spain works to meet ambitious deficit reduction goals pledged to the European Union in the midst of an economic downturn. Spain's political parties have kept their positions on the issue vague ahead of November 20 general elections, but even the most passionate defenders of the current system agree there is scope for cost savings and more efficiency. Spain's conservative opposition, the People's Party (PP), which is expected to win in November, will likely cut into social welfare programs the incumbent Socialists have left untouched. But even the Socialists now say they can find ways to reduce health spending without harming services. Examples include forcing car insurance firms to pay for the treatment of accident victims and sending foreign governments the bill when their citizens use Spanish hospitals. 900-DAY WAITS Multinational pharmaceutical firm Roche says the Castilla y Leon region north of Madrid is more than 900 days behind on its bills, which has raised fears here that the company could start withholding drugs for some hospitals as it did in Greece, which is fighting off bankruptcy. Spain's central government makes yearly transfers of income tax revenue to the country's 17 autonomous regions, which are in charge of administering health care and schools. But the regions are being forced to make drastic budget cuts after piling up debt during Spain's property boom, the collapse of which in 2008 sent the country into recession and unemployment soaring to more than 20 percent. As the regions squeeze spending wherever they can, what they owe to companies that provide health care services and products has risen 42 percent in a year to more than 4 billion euros, according to the Spanish Federation of Healthcare Technology, known as Fenin. AT Kearney consultancy calculates the system's long-term deficit is 15 billion euros, a heavy burden for a government whose borrowing costs have soared in the euro zone debt crisis. Margarita Alfonsel, secretary general of Fenin, says small companies in her federation "are suffering to an alarming extent due to the liquidity squeeze." She said some will have to lay off staff or go into bankruptcy. The average number of days providers must wait for payment has risen in the past year to 415 days, from 285 days, she said. "It was unacceptable before. Now it's totally incomprehensible," said Joaquin del Rincon, Spanish representative of Boston Scientific, which provides medical and surgical instruments to Spanish hospitals. "We have to explain to our central offices that this is an ongoing problem in Spain made worse by the crisis," he said.

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Possible Drug Connection Moroccan teenager found dead on a roadside in Marbella

 

The National Police have identified a body which was found on the hard shoulder of the road between the Nueva Andalucía area of Marbella and Ronda on Monday as that of a 15 year old Moroccan boy who has been named by his initials, T.A. Despite the identification from finger prints there is no report of a missing person. It’s thought that his body could have been thrown from a moving vehicle as it passed the access road to the La Quinta urbanisation. The body, which was dressed in sports gear, was removed from the scene for autopsy as the investigation continues to determine the exact cause of his death. However reports indicate that he had suffered shotgun wounds to the face.

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