Worldcrunch
BARCELONA – Making headway through the streets of Barcelona, closed to traffic for the occasion, seemed almost impossible. A crowd of children, students, retired people, business owners, and the unemployed coming from every part of Catalonia had joined together to wave yellow-and-red flags and voice their support for the creation of an independent state for […]
MADRID – Since September 1, undocumented immigrants in Spain are now excluded from public health care. Only pregnant women and minors can still enjoy free public coverage, which had long been available to all undocumented residents. Others can still get care in cases of emergency, but for basic medical treatment, immigrants in Spain illegally will […]
THE TELEGRAPH, THE GUARDIAN (UK), LA TIMES (US) Worldcrunch An 11-year-old Brazilian boy born without feet has been invited to train at FC Barcelona’s youth academy. After impressing the Spanish football club during a TV appearance on Brazil’s TV Globo, the young whiz kid will travel to the Catalonian capital in September. The Telegraph reports […]
LE MONDE, FRANCE TV INFO (France), EL PAIS (Spain) Worldcrunch The 80-year-old Spanish woman responsible for what some are calling history’s worst restoration of a work of art spoke out in the media on Wednesday to defend her actions. “We’ve always fixed everything ourselves in this church. The priest asked me to do it, he […]
EFE (Spain), BBC (UK), AP Worldcrunch A thousand people were evacuated Sunday night in La Gomera, in Spain’s Canary Islands, as forest fires continue. Two boats transported residents from the Valle Gran Rey area to the town of San Sebastian overnight, after the fire blocked off road access, the BBC reported. The Garajonay nature reserve, […]
CLARIN, C5N, MINUTOUNO, JORNADA DE CHUBUT (Argentina) Worldcrunch GIRONA – The son of a prominent Argentinian businessman who lived as a squatter and participated in the Indignados movement in Spain died recently in this city north of Barcelona. His family insists that Juan Pablo Torroija died after Spanish police inflicted a brutal beating, while Spanish […]
A glimmering reminder that Europe still has some spare money (and time) to spend: even as Spain’s economy spirals out of control, vacations are still on -though shorter, cheaper and closer to home.
EL PAIS, EL MUNDO, LA VANGUARDIA (Spain) Worldcrunch MADRID – The unemployment rate in Spain has registered a new record: 5.693.100 people- 24.6% of the Spanish active population are jobless, Spanish daily El Pais reports. This is the highest figure since 1994. El Mundo daily titles: “Summer hasn’t curbed unemployment. One in four Spanish people […]
EL MUNDO, EL PAIS (Spain) Worldcrunch The Spanish stock market started this week at the level registered in April 2003, with a new risk rate record of 643 points, the highest since the creation of the euro, El Mundo reports. According to El Pais, investors have been once again ruthless with the Spanish stock values. […]
The regional governments have decided to save money on firefighting equipment, staff and prevention campaigns. In a drought year, this has dramatic consequences: 17 forest fires have already destroyed thousands of hectares across the country.
EL PAIS, EL MUNDO, EL PERIODICO (Spain) Worldcrunch Two forest fires have been raging in the northern region of Catalonia, in northeast Spain, since Sunday afternoon, El Pais reports. The first fire started around 1 p.m., in the region of La Jonquera, close to the French border — the second, six hours later, in the […]
BLOOMBERG, EL PAIS, EL MUNDO (Spain) Worldcrunch MADRID – Reversing an earlier no-new-taxes pledge, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has announced tax increases and spending cuts totaling 65 billion euros ($80bn) over the next two-and-a-half years to try stave off the accumulating debt crisis, Bloomberg reports. Rajoy’s fourth austerity package in seven months includes a […]
REUTERS, EL PAIS (Spain) Worldcrunch Euro zone ministers struggled to reassure financial markets on Tuesday that an aid package for Spain they outlined overnight will help stabilize the currency bloc, Reuters reports. The Spanish daily El Pais called the decisions taken overnight by the euro zone partners in Brussels “a soft intervention in the economy,” […]
Worldcrunch EL PAÍS, LAINFORMATION.COM (Spain) BILBAO – By last October when the Basque terrorist organization ETA announced an end to its decades-long campaign of violence, five different convicted ETA terrorists had already met with five people whose lives were affected by the groups attacks: the injured, orphaned and widowed. The conversations, which were all one-on-one […]
Worldcrunch EL MUNDO (Spain), LE FIGARO (France) BLOOMBERG (U.S.), MADRID – At the beginning of the week, Spain was supposed to have been saved. So much for that: Moody’s downgraded Spain’s debt rating three steps to Baa3. The main reason for this downgrade “is obviously the need of Spain’s government to ask for external help,” […]
BLOOMBERG (U.S.), EL MUNDO (Spain) MADRID – European markets got a boost following Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s confirmation that Spain received 100 billion euros ($125 billion) from the European Union to rescue a major chunk of its banking sector. The rebound in Monday trading was described as “euphoria” in the Spanish press. According to […]
From Greece to Spain To Italy … and back again. The euro zone domino effect takes another spin.
EL MUNDO (Spain) MADRID – Has the European economic crisis managed to sully the Eurovision Song Contest? The 2012 edition of the competition, which takes place Saturday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, includes competitors from an array of debt-ridden countries. This is a European song contest, after all. But reports say that contestant Pastora […]
EL UNIVERSAL (Ecuador) MADRID – For Ecuadorans hoping to escape poverty, Spain was long seen as a land of opportunity. Nowadays? Not so much. Due to the prolonged economic crisis in Spain, many Ecuadorans who took up residence there are ready to seek greener pastures — or simply return to their homeland (where 21% of […]
EL MUNDO (Spain) SEVILLA – Veteran American rocker Bruce Springsteen kicked off his European tour Sunday night in Sevilla with a special nod to Spain’s indignados, a grassroots movement launched in 2011 to protest austerity measures and high unemployment. Addressing the crowd of some 30,000 in Spanish, the 62-year-old musician dedicated one of his new […]
If you believe recent headlines, Spain is going the way of Greece. But maybe things aren’t really as bad as all that. One Zurich-based economist sees reasons for cautious optimism and thinks a little help from the European Central Bank could go a
Judge Garzón rose to prominence for ordering the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Now, the famed judge is the defendant after a right-wing Spanish attorney accused the crusading magistrate of illegally opening national wounds from the Franco E
Argentine-born Lionel Messi has just been named FIFA’s player of the year for the third year running, further proof that the 24-year-old Barcelona striker is already a living legend. But who was the soccer world’s worst player in 2011?
The Spanish city’s authorities raise the cost of over-doing it for locals and tourists alike. But will it change people’s behavior?
After working in the shadow of José María Aznar and losing twice to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the unassuming former “registrador della propriedad” is now set to lead Spain in a moment of great challenge.
For generations, two families in Mallorca have laid competing claims to the legacy of Frédéric Chopin. Starting in 1838, the Polish composer lived in a room on the island with his mistress, and composed some of his great works. But which room was it? And
There were emotional scenes in Barcelona after Catalonia’s final bullfight took place before a ban comes into force in the autonomous Spanish region.
After the anti-Pope protests in Madrid, politicians and church officials alike have rushed to assure His Holiness that the demonstrators were little more than social parasites and vandals. That could prove a dangerous move, because the anger of Spain’s yo
The Bay of Gibraltar has a serious pollution problem. Efforts to clean up the mess, however, have so far been hindered by historic animosities between British and Spanish authorities, which have conflicting claims over the bay.
The young people on the two shores of the Mediterranean each have demands, but the sense of possibility embodied in North African and Arab quest for freedom is utterly absent in European youth protests.
A controversial Basque nationalist coalition scored big in last month’s local elections. Is the political success of separatists, which follows ETA’s decision last year to call a “permanent ceasefire,” a recipe for lasting reconciliation, or the seeds of
In an ambitious new book called The Spanish Holocaust, British historian Paul Preston shines a light onto the darkest chapters of Spain’s Civil War, uncovering macabre details of cold-blooded cruelties – on both sides.
The Catalan genius of molecular gastronomy is tired of cooking people meals, and is set on closing his restaurant El Bulli. But the final few months, and very last meal, is the maximum of foodie exclusivity.
Set to go public later this year, the upstart Internet calling service is expanding its services and multiplying partnerships across platforms. (adria.richards) By Nicolas Rauline Gone are the days when Skype was just a feisty start-up, out to steal calling minutes from phone operators. The cheap and even free call specialist now represents 20% of […]