Málaga man holds up bank to pay off bar bill in his local

bank robber who held up a branch of Unicaja in Málaga City’s El Palo district on Wednesday morning was arrested just minutes later after telling the cashier to inform police when they arrived that he would be waiting for them in a nearby bar.

He was found sitting waiting for them in his local when officers arrived and put up no resistance to arrest. The gun he had used for the hold-up, which some reports indicate may have been fake, was confiscated by the police.

La Opinión de Málaga reports that the robber admitted that he had carried out the robbery so he could pay off the debt he had run up in the bar. He owed 120 €, which was the exact amount he had demanded from the bank cashier.

 

French farmers have started attacking fruit shipments from Spain

French farmers have started attacking fruit shipments from Spain in the latest sign that a crisis in Europe's agricultural sector is far from over, farming groups said Thursday.

On Tuesday, a truck carrying peaches and nectarines from Spain was attacked by farmers as it tried to cross the border into France. European Union farming lobby Copa-Cogeca said dozens of trucks carrying fruit in recent weeks have been intercepted at a crossing in Boulou en Roussillon, causing problems for companies trying to ship goods into France.

"Copa-Cogeca deplores and condemns the violent actions committed in France," the group's secretary-general, Pekka Pesonen, said in a letter to the EU's executive arm, the European Commission.

Plummeting fruit and vegetable prices have hit Europe's farmers hard this year after an outbreak of virulent E. coli in Germany left at least 26 people dead and thousands more ill. Spain has suffered particularly badly after Germany initially blamed it for causing the outbreak, leading farmers to destroy thousands of tons of produce that later proved to be uncontaminated.

The European Commission has proposed compensation of €226 million ($323 million) to help farmers through the crisis, including €71 million for Spain, but farmers said it isn't enough. Spain's fruit and vegetables exporters association, Fepex, Monday estimated losses at €225 million a week since the crisis began.

A commission spokesman said that there have been no extra checks implemented at borders to screen for E. coli and that the goods are being checked in accordance with a 2010 French law. "We are aware there have been farmers protesting at the borders but not of any new laws impeding the free circulation of goods," he said.

Angelique Delahaye, president of Vegetables of France, a union of vegetable producers, said Spanish peach producers are selling below cost in France, undercutting local prices by as much as 40 cents a kilo. She said Spanish farmers don't adhere to the same strict labor-cost and pesticide rules as the French, which is why their fruit is cheaper.

"There is social and environmental dumping," she said. "We don't oppose the free market so long as rules are the same for everybody, but we oppose unfair competition."

But Juan Corbalan, head of the Brussels office of Spanish agri-food cooperative AgriFruit, said the problems have been caused by early harvests in France and Italy due to serious drought earlier this spring.

"All European farmers are very worried about this problem as prices are more than 50% lower than other years," he said. "We need a European solution to recover the confidence of the consumers."

Buyers of Spanish property 'need to be aware of exchange rates

Investors who are purchasing a property in Spain - or elsewhere in Europe - could stand to save a substantial amount of money by doing some research into exchange rates.

This is the opinion of Tom Highham, director of currencies.co.uk, who told the Telegraph that many people are losing out by failing to look for the best deals.

"Despite the huge savings that can be made on large currency transactions by using a company such as ours, we're astonished that so many people don't shop around and just use their bank," he stated.

According to the newspaper, just ten per cent of foreign currency sales occur via a specialist provider, even though they usually offer more competitive rates than high street banks.

Finding a favourable exchange rate could make a big difference to investors looking for Spanish real estate.

Research published by the Overseas Guide Company in A Place in the Sun earlier this month indicated that more Brits are turning their attention to the country's property market, with the firm seeing requests for its Spain mini guide rise by 24 per cent between January and May, compared to the same period in 2010.

 

Forest fire destroys 150 hectares in Córdoba

forest fire which broke out between Córdoba and Villaviciosa de Córdoba on Wednesday morning destroyed 150 hectares of land before it was brought under control on Thursday morning, after three properties and the local golf club were evacuated as a precaution.

The blaze was stabilised late on Wednesday afternoon and, on Thursday, after the air support was withdrawn, some 20 or so fire fighters remained at the scene to control the perimeter.

Europa Press reports that one team of fire fighters suffered minor injuries while tackling the flames.

There has been no confirmation as yet of the cause of the fire.

 

Spanish film rights society SGAE to perform major overhaul following scandal

Major film and music rights society SGAE will face investigations and a complete overhaul of its structure and policies following allegations of the embezzlement of around €400m in funds intended for film-makers and musicians.

At the start of this month, the Madrid-based office of SGAE, a powerful society of authors and editors, was raided by police and the president of the society Teddy Bautista was arrested, along with eight members of the board of directors, relating to charges of the misappropriation of funds.

The allegations related predominantly to the Spanish Digital Society Of Authors (SDAE), a subsidiary of SGAE that deals with digital rights, and more specifically its head Jose Luis Neri, who is accused of diverting society funds to a consultancy company called Microgenesis, which was previously headed by Neri’s wife Maria Antonia Garcia Pombo.

The raid and arrests came just hours after a new SGAE board of directors had been appointed. The society said at the time that it was collaborating with authorities and fully trusted the innocence of its executives.

Teddy Bautista has since resigned, but in an effort to improve the reputation of the organization, a new governing committee set up at the SGAE, including film-maker Imanol Uribe, has drawn up a list of major changes to be implemented that it will present to the society’s board of directors on July 28.

First and foremost they have called for new and more open general elections to elect a new board of directors, possibly to take place in September. They have also asked for an investigation committee to be set up led by Ramon Lopez Vilas (ex-magistrate of the supreme tribunal) to get to the bottom of the charges and report his findings to the society’s members. 

Furthermore, a new CFO should be appointed to review all budgetary control procedures and to perform an audit of none essential people and processes at the SGAE.

Finally, they have called on the society’s members to participate in transforming the shattered image of the society.
There are concerns in the industry that these latest developments will hamper Spanish government attempts to tackle internet piracy, especially the implementation of the Sustainable Economy bill, which was approved by parliament earlier this year and will allow the courts to close down sites offering illegal downloads.

SGAE is Spain’s leading collection society with over 100,000 members from the film, music and theatre industries to whom the society distributed some €365 million last year.

 

Jose Tomas makes triumphant comeback to bullring in Spain

Spanish bullfighter Jose Tomas made a triumphant comeback to the bullring Saturday, receiving a standing ovation more than a year after a bloody goring in Mexico that almost killed him.
The 35-year-old, wearing a purple and gold outfit, offered his first bull of the night, a 502-kilogramme beast, to the doctors who had helped him recover.
He was less successful with his second bull, a 556-kilo four-and-a-half-year-old, but delighted the sell-out crowd of 11,000, many of whom had traveled from overseas to see the spectacle in the eastern city of Valencia.
Tomas was seriously gored and almost died in a bullfight April 24 last year in Aguasclientes, Mexico.
A 470-kilo (1,000-pound) bull named Navegante, his second bull of the evening, thrust its horn into the muscle of Tomas's left thigh, puncturing the artery and causing the bullfighter to lose about half of his blood.
In September he will be able to fight at Barcelona's Monumental ring in what may be the last La Merced festival before a bullfighting ban in the Catalonia region comes into force next year.

 

Marbella and Estepona mayors demand free toll road use

THE mayors of Marbella and Estepona have joined forces to demand that the Ministry of Public Works do away will the toll on the AP-7 while work is being carried out on the A-7.

Angeles Muñoz and Jose Maria Garcia Urbano reiterated their complaints regarding the unannounced change to the speed limit on 41 kilometres of the A-7 (old N-340) between Mijas and Estepona from 100kph to 80kph.

The Ministry of Public Works has said that this is to prevent accidents on the road which has numerous slip roads from urbanizations. The Partido Popular mayors have responded that if this is the case, improvements should be made, and in the meantime, the AP-7 toll road should be free.

Muñoz suggested that the real motivation behind dropping the speed limit was to divert more traffic to the toll road, which costs almost €11 between Mijas and Estepona during the summer. Meanwhile, Garcia Urbano said that the ministry’s decision would damage the interests of the Costa del Sol.

The Vice-President of the Partido Andalucista in the Costa del Sol region has also joined the complaints saying that if the Ministry is so worried about safety on the A-7, “why don’t they improve drainage and surfacing so that it does not become a ‘death trap’ every year after rains?”

 

Spain Restricts Romanians Job-Market Access to Ease Pressure

The job market has completely changed since 2008, so the government decided to adopt a mechanism that enables it to require that Romanians coming to Spain to work apply for authorization,” Development Minister Jose Blanco told journalists in Madrid today. Approval will only be given to those who have a contract, he said.
Spain’s Socialist minority government is battling with a 21 percent unemployment rate that threatens the country’s fragile recovery and its ability to rein in the euro area’s third- largest deficit. Exports drove growth in the first half as the most drastic austerity measures in the last three decades weighed on demand.
“The measure is a negative sign for the free-labor movement in Europe,” said Raffaella Tenconi, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research in London. “It will reduce competition in a country where the rigidity of the job market is already a structural weakness.”
About 800,000 Romanians work in Spain, representing 14 percent of the country’s foreign workforce, Tenconi said.
Adjustment
The right to restrict immigration from the most recent European Union members was designed to enable other EU countries to adjust during a transition period, not to change the rules depending on internal growth while targeting a specific country, according to Tenconi.
The restriction is temporary and may be suspended, depending on how employment evolves in Spain, Blanco said.
Spain can enforce the rule until 2014, after which Romanians will be able to move as freely as other EU citizens.
Blanco said the new rules won’t affect Romanians who are already working in Spain but didn’t specify what would happen to those whose contracts had ended.

 

Spanish piracy law draws U.S. investments: minister

Major U.S. and Spanish companies are preparing to invest in online music and movie services in Spain once a controversial new law to fight piracy takes effect next month, the country's culture minister said.

Intellectual property watchdogs have targeted Spain as one of the world's largest copyright violators with a piracy rate of nearly 80 percent, and are closely watching the implementation of the new law.

"There are Spanish companies developing large websites and U.S. companies that are seriously studying how to enter the European market," Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde told Reuters in an interview.

"Until now U.S. companies were considering abandoning our country, closing their headquarters and even their delegations because it wasn't worth it," she said.

The 46 year-old Sinde -- who was a screenwriter, director and president of Spain's film academy before taking on the role of culture minister two years ago -- is behind the new anti-piracy law that bears her name.

The "Sinde Law" aims to shut down file-sharing web sites providing copyrighted material. The United States, home to companies that produce vast amounts of music and films, has welcomed it as a step to fight illegal downloads.

DVD sales in Spain dropped 60 percent between 2006 and 2010, while sales of recorded music fell 21 percent in 2010 from the year before, according to trade association data.

U.S. digital entertainment providers Netflix and UltraViolet, French retailer Carrefour and electronic goods chain Media Markt -- a unit of German retailer Metro AG -- want to offer sites for music, books, films and videogames in Spain once the law is enforced.

"All of these stores are getting ready to launch a very potent, quality catalog of offerings," said Jose Manuel Tourne, manager of a Spanish anti-piracy federation that is a member of the U.S. Motion Picture Association.

But first he said they want to be sure the law is effective.

Meanwhile, Sinde tipped unlisted Spanish retailers Corte Ingles and FNAC as future players in the streaming video and music market, and said the new law would enable some widely visited illicit sites to go legal.

This will help create jobs in a country that suffers the highest unemployment in the European Union, she said.

Intellectual property-related businesses and services account for about 4 percent of Spain's gross domestic product, which is facing fragile growth as the country stutters out of a long recession.

CONTROVERSIAL LAW

However, the Sinde Law has been widely criticized by people on both sides of the piracy debate.

Copyright owners, including some of Sinde's own film colleagues, say the law is too weak and does not provide ways of reaping the potential of the Internet, while internet companies claim it is too strict.

Sinde's successor as head of Spain's film academy, director Alex de la Iglesia, resigned this year to protest against the law, saying the Internet is the film industry's "salvation."

Spanish cinemas sell some 100 million movie tickets every year, while some 400 million films are downloaded illegally, according to data by copyright association EGEDA.

The law won the backing of opposition parties after the government introduced safeguards to stem concerns that it would suppress freedom of expression. Two judges will rule on the recommendations by a government committee on intellectual property that a suspicious web site be closed.

Sinde has also pledged to introduce stricter controls and oversight of copyright administrators after a corruption scandal at the copyrights agency made headlines this month.

Police raided the country's main administrator of royalties on copyright material Socieda

 

Spanish Banks’ Capital Quest Snares Customers

Maria Pilar Izquierdo put 5,000 euros ($7,186) into bonds that will convert into shares of Banco Santander SA (SAN) next year, leaving her facing potential losses on an investment that helped Spain’s biggest bank bolster its capital.
“Let’s just say that relations with my bank branch have become very strained,” said Izquierdo, 38, a local government worker from Zaragoza province who invested money she’d set aside for her son’s First Communion ceremony in bonds that Santander sold to 129,000 retail clients in 2007. The 7 billion euros of bonds are set to convert into shares in October 2012 at 14.13 euros a share, above the current price of 7.94 euros.
Santander and CaixaBank SA were among Spanish banks that used funds raised with sales of such bonds through their branch networks to boost their capital. Bankia SA and Banca Civica SA, lenders formed from groups of Spanish savings banks, raised a combined 2.1 billion euros by selling shares in their initial public offerings to consumer-banking clients this week.
“Over-reliance on its own depositors to sell loss absorbing products brings a conflict of interest for the lender because it has the obligation of providing fair advice to its clients and a big interest in placing the securities,” said Juan Fernandez-Armesto, a former chairman of Spain’s financial markets regulator, known as CNMV. “If those securities produce losses for its clients after a period of time, the lender faces rupturing its commercial relations with the clients and a considerable legal risk because of the conflict of interest,” he said, without referring to any particular deal.
Bank of Spain
The results of stress tests published on July 15 showed that Spanish banks, including Santander and Madrid-based Banco Popular Espanol SA (POP), had a combined 12 billion euros of mandatory convertible bonds outstanding.
The Bank of Spain considers the reserves generated through the sales as equivalent to the highest quality capital, and cited them as a reason why Spanish lenders wouldn’t need to raise more funds, even after five of the country’s banks failed the stress tests with a capital shortfall of 1.56 billion euros. The failures were Banco Pastor SA, Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo, Banco Grupo Caja3, CatalunyaCaixa and Unnim.
The Santander securities paid annual interest of 7.3 percent until October 2008, before switching to a rate of 2.75 percentage points above Euribor, a yield that’s currently about 4.3 percent. The bank set out the risks for investors in the bonds’ prospectus, including the final conversion date and the possibility of share price declines.
‘Paper Losses’
At the conversion price, 5,000 euros would buy about 354 shares, which are worth about 2,808 euros at the current market price.
A spokesman for Santander, who asked not to be identified in line with company policy, declined to comment, as did spokesmen for CaixaBank and Popular.
“There are thousands of Santander branch customers that were sold these investments that probably don’t know yet that they’re sitting on huge paper losses,” said Fernando Zunzunegui, a Madrid-based lawyer who is helping set up a group to press Santander to compensate clients for potential losses. “These are very dangerous products to sell through your retail network.”
Not all convertible bonds sold by Spanish banks have been aimed at retail customers. Bankinter SA sold 405 million euros of convertible bonds in April to existing shareholders or holders of preference shares.
Bankia, Civica
CaixaBank sold 1.5 billion euros of mandatory convertible bonds through its branch network in June to help boost its core capital ratio to more than 8 percent under Basel III rules by the end of 2012. The conversion price for the bonds, which have 18-month and 30-month maturities, will be 5.253 euros, compared with CaixaBank’s current share price of 4.217 euros.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA (BBVA), Spain’s second-biggest bank, raised 2 billion euros from the sale of mandatory convertible bonds with a five-year maturity marketed to branch customers in 2009. Bilbao-based BBVA, which had the right to convert the bonds into shares on quarterly coupon dates after the first year, announced on June 22 that it would do so. A spokeswoman for BBVA declined to comment.
Banks seeking to raise funds from share sales to meet capital requirements set by the government are also relying on their consumer-banking clients.
Madrid-based Bankia, led by former International Monetary Fund Director Rodrigo Rato, raised 3 billion euros with an initial share sale this week. It sold half of the stock to its own customers and through branches of other banks after cutting the price by as much as 26 percent. Banca Civica, also based in Madrid, raised about 600 million euros in its IPO, allocating 58 percent of the shares to individual investors.
Investor Appetite
A spokeswoman for Bankia declined to comment in a phone interview. The fact that 60,000 retail investors bought shares was a sign of their confidence in the bank, Enrique Goni, Civica’s co-chairman, said at a Madrid news conference.
Bankia declined 3 cents, or 0.8 percent, to 3.72 euros since it began trading in Madrid on July 20. Civica was unchanged at 2.70 euros in its trading debut yesterday.
Banks may be straining the willingness of their customers to sign up for the largest deals after an index of Spanish financial shares declined 16 percent in the past year and unemployment rose above 21 percent. CaixaBank received orders worth 1.74 billion euros for its 1.5 billion euros of convertible bonds and Bankia said demand for the retail investors’ portion of the IPO was 1.04 times the amount offered.
‘Disgruntled Clients’
Banks such as Santander sell bonds convertible into stock to “dodge the bullet” of immediately diluting existing investors, said Simon Maughan, head of sales and distribution at MF Global Ltd. in London. Asking clients to buy stock-linked investments risks alienating them if they’re burdened with losses, he said.
“The last thing you want is 130,000 disgruntled clients,” Maughan said, referring to the mandatory convertible bonds sold by Santander. “If worse comes to worst they may have to compensate the customers and obviously that’s going to be unpleasant.”
One of those customers is Izquierdo, who bought the bonds after paying a visit to a Santander branch in Carineno, a town of about 3,500 in Zaragoza’s wine-making country. “It has become difficult for me to remain a Santander client,” she said.

 

Taxi drivers smoking dope outside Málaga train station

Diario Sur reports that local police in Málaga came across three taxi drivers found smoking hashish at the doors of the city’s train station.

It happened during the day, at 6,30pm last Monday, and came after the police mounted a discreet watch having received reports that taxi drivers were smoking ‘maria’.

Plain clothed agents from the GEMAC unit took place round the station taxi rank and saw how two drivers got into one vehicle which had its ‘for hire’ light switched on, and prepared the porro. Then they got out and started to smoke it.

A search of the two revealed a lump of the drug and a small dose of cocaine in the pockets of one of them. A third taxi driver also smoking hashish then arrived at the scene.

The local police are drawing up a report which will be sent to the Municipal Taxi Institute, to see whether their action results in disciplinary action.

 

acquitted of the jet ski death of a Benalmadena waitress in the Costa del Sol

A man, 32, has been acquitted of the jet ski death of a Benalmadena waitress in the Costa del Sol. Noelia Perez, 24, was travelling on a jet ski with the man, whose first name is Francisco, when they fell in the sea off the coast of Benalmadena in July 2009.

Her family – from the Basque Country - had brought proceedings against him for reckless use of a jet ski.

Noelia was at the beach with work colleague Monica and some regular customers of the bar at which she worked who had invited them to go out on a trip. The group hired a sail boat and four jet-skis.

Noelia and Francisco separated from the rest of the group a few kilometres from the coast. Both fell in the water in the same spot and were unable to get back on the jet ski. Neither of them was wearing life jackets and the other people on the ship went back to shore not noticing they were gone.

The group became concerned when it got dark and there was still no sign of them, and alerted the port authorities. Francisco claimed that when it got dark, Noelia decided to try to swim to the shore as they could see the lights in the distance.

At around 2am a Malaga-Ceuta ferry alerted the coast guards that they had spotted a man in the sea around seven kilometres from the coast.

The victim was not found until two days later off the coast of Motril, 45 miles from where the accident occurred.

Tests showed that Francisco had not been drinking and an autopsy revealed that Noelia died from hypothermia.

go-ahead to drill off the Costa del Sol

REPSOL has overcome the main hurdle it faced to get the go-ahead to drill off the Costa del Sol since the Environmental Ministry has approved the environmental impact report.

Despite the opposition of local businesses, town halls, politicians, fishermen and environmentalists, the company is a step closer to going ahead with the ‘Siroco’ project to drill for gas off Mijas and Fuengirola.

The report, which has taken more than a year, concludes that the drilling will not affect local flora or fauna, nor the fishing and tourism sectors. The Environmental Ministry has specified that drilling will have to take place between February and April to avoid the months with most tourists, fishing season and migratory and reproductive periods of cetaceans and birds.

However, despite the green light from the Environmental Ministry, the Ministry of Industry now has to give the final authorization and decide on the third time extension which Repsol intends to request, as the research permits granted to Repsol will expire in August.

In any case, the authorization would only allow Repsol to search for gas, but not extract it. If this exploratory phase gave positive results which showed that the quality and quantity of the gas would make it worth the while investing in developing the site, then another administrative process which could take at least two years would begin.

For the time being, Repsol is going to study the resolution from the Ministry as there are many conditions to take into account. The company would also have to provide the central government, Junta de Andalucia and Provincial government with a contingency plan including a protocol in case of leakage, as well as an report to the Environmental Ministry regarding how debris and mud would be dealt with, and how to reduce acoustic contamination.

Montpellier snake shock

Malaga police captured two large venomous Montpellier Snakes in Puerto de la Torre and Cerrado de Calderon. Both will be returned to their natural habitat.

 

MALAGA doctor has warned of a growing number of sexual assault cases in Puerto Marina (Benalmadena) involving date rape drugs

MALAGA doctor has warned of a growing number of sexual assault cases in Puerto Marina (Benalmadena) involving date rape drugs. Police recommend that people keep watch of their glasses when at bars and discos, and not accept anything from strangers.

At a conference at the headquarters of the Andalucia International University, drug addiction specialist Jose Manuel Burgos Moreno warned the drug Scopolamine, which causes submission and amnesia, is being used more and more at bars and clubs in the popular marina. Although traditionally the drug is administered via drinks, it can also be used in cigarettes, sweets, tissues, perfume and even bank notes.

When the effects wear off, the victim can’t remember anything and if she suspects foul play, after 12 to 24 hours it is