Death in the Sun as man was gored to death on Saturday at a bull-running festival in Peñafiel, Valladolid

53 year old man was gored to death on Saturday at a bull-running festival in Peñafiel, Valladolid. It happened after the first bull run of this year’s festivities at the ‘capea’ bullfight, when amateurs try out their skills against the young bulls.The man, from Dueñas, in Palencia, was gored in the abdomen and died as he was being rushed to hospital in Valladolid. His death came a little over a month after 27 year old Daniel Jimeno Romero was fatally gored at this year’s San Fermín bull run festival in Pamplona.Two others were gored in the shoulder and a leg during the morning’s bull run in Peñafiel.Elsewhere in Valladolid, another man was gored on Saturday in the first bull run at a local festival in Tudela de Duero. And on Sunday, a 16 year old boy was seriously hurt in the first bull run of the day in Leganés when he was gored in the left side of his chest. He is a local boy named by El Mundo as A.E.D.The Equanimal organisation chose the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao for another anti-bullfighting protest this Saturday, where 100 demonstrators lay down on the ground outside the building. Clad in only black boxer shorts, they lay face down covered with artificial blood and banderillas on their backs, simulating all the bulls which will die during the city’s Semana Grande festivities. The top bullfighter, José Pedro Prados, El Fundi, is in Intensive Care after being charged by a bull at the city’s bullring on Saturday.

Cocaine Bermudas arrested at Barcelona Airport

Drug smugglers are seeking ever more inventive ways of smuggling cocaine into the country with two recent cases highlighted by the EFE news agency. The first was in Tarragona last week, where a man from Ghana was arrested at the city’s port with 2.6 kilos of cocaine hidden in a women’s girdle strapped to his body. He’d been passed the drugs in a toilet by the Filipino crew member of an Italian ship who’d smuggled the cocaine on board the ship in Costa Rica.And a 65 year old man from Germany was arrested at Barcelona Airport last Saturday from a flight from South America with 6.6 kilos of cocaine in a specially-designed pair of shorts worn beneath his trousers. The rather bulky item of clothing incorporated dozens of small cylinders designed to hold the drugs in an attempt smuggle them through Customs at El Prat.

Addictions International offers a range of services to expats with addiction problems.

Addictions International offers a range of services to expats with addiction problems. Because of the unique delivery of our programme we are able to support people wherever they may be. Our programme is exceptional in that we can reach people with problems even when they cannot access help in the usual ways.
» People living in rural areas with inadequate public transport or with issues surrounding confidentiality within that setting;
» The need to continue in employment for personal or family reasons;
» Individuals who are housebound - or have mobility issues caused by disability or age;
» People engaged in sensitive employment e.g. key public sector employment status, senior executives in the private sector, professionals- including medics and lawyers etc., entrepreneurs, and people in the public-eye;
contact:email,copsandbloggers@gmail.com

Addictions International offers a range of services to expats with addiction problems.

Addictions International offers a range of services to expats with addiction problems. Because of the unique delivery of our programme we are able to support people wherever they may be. Our programme is exceptional in that we can reach people with problems even when they cannot access help in the usual ways.
» People living in rural areas with inadequate public transport or with issues surrounding confidentiality within that setting;
» The need to continue in employment for personal or family reasons;
» Individuals who are housebound - or have mobility issues caused by disability or age;
» People engaged in sensitive employment e.g. key public sector employment status, senior executives in the private sector, professionals- including medics and lawyers etc., entrepreneurs, and people in the public-eye.
contact:copsandbloggers@gmail.com

Addictions International offers a range of services to expats with addiction problems.

Addictions International offers a range of services to expats with addiction problems. Because of the unique delivery of our programme we are able to support people wherever they may be. Our programme is exceptional in that we can reach people with problems even when they cannot access help in the usual ways.
» People living in rural areas with inadequate public transport or with issues surrounding confidentiality within that setting;
» The need to continue in employment for personal or family reasons;
» Individuals who are housebound - or have mobility issues caused by disability or age;
» People engaged in sensitive employment e.g. key public sector employment status, senior executives in the private sector, professionals- including medics and lawyers etc., entrepreneurs, and people in the public-eye.
contact:copsandbloggers@gmail.com

Fuente Álamo Civil Guard arrest man for a double stabbing on a beach in Mazarrón

Spanish man has been arrested for a double stabbing on a beach in Mazarrón this Saturday, where he attacked his estranged wife and her new boyfriend in broad daylight. La Verdad newspaper said the assault was witnessed by the couple’s two teenage children.The two victims were both seriously hurt – the woman, with a stab wound in the stomach, and her boyfriend in the back. He was prevented from causing them any further injury by witnesses who saw what happened on the Playa del Castellar in Puerto de Mazarrón and threw rocks at the assailant.Named by the paper as M.F.H., he was captured by the Fuente Álamo Civil Guard early on Saturday evening after escaping the beach by car.

Andalucía High Court of Justice has ordered the demolition of 80 homes and a 4-star hotel in the Guadalmina area of Marbella

Ruling from the Andalucía High Court of Justice has ordered the demolition of 80 homes and a 4-star hotel in the Guadalmina area of Marbella, which contravene current planning regulations in force in the town – the local urban plan of 1986. The hotel is named as part of the Barceló chain.News of the sentence was published by El Mundo newspaper this week, a ruling which was given this June when, the paper said, the magistrates who took the decision were aware that the town’s new urban was shortly to be approved. In fact, Marbella’s new PGOU general urban plan was approved by the Town Hall last week and it makes these two buildings due for demolition legal.
Speaking to the EFE news agency, the Junta de Andalucía’s territorial planning and housing councillor, Juan Espadas, said the aim is to push through regional government approval of the plan as soon as possible, hoping to pass it in half the time set down by law. Legally, the Junta has a time limit of five months to give its definitive approval.Felix Romero, spokesman for the Partido Popular local government in Marbella, told Europa Press on Wednesday that the Town Hall will ask the court to postpone carrying out the sentence, saying there is ‘no common sense or logic’ in demolishing the buildings.

Throat cut outside Barraca disco in Sueca, Valencia.

24 year old woman has died after having her throat cut in a fight with another woman in her 30’s outside a discotheque in Sueca, Valencia.The owners of the Barraca disco where it happened have given their condolences to the family of the victim, and issued a statement expressing their ‘tremendous consternation’ at what had happened, and underlining that the disco staff are collaborating fully with the police to try and establish exactly what took place.It happened around 7am on Sunday morning and reports say both women were local residents in the La Ribera area. The SAMU health team called to the scene could do no more than confirm the death.

Official limousine stolen in Spain

Ulla Schmidt flew to Alicante at her own expense, but her driver drove the nearly 2410km journey in her $196,000 limousine to Spain from Berlin to ferry her to and from official meetings with German retirees in southeastern Spain.

"Her chauffeur's accommodation was broken into and the car keys were stolen," said a Health Ministry spokesman.

Germany's Social Democrat (SPD) health minister came under pressure to explain why she took her official limousine, complete with chauffeur, to Spain where the vehicle was stolen.Opposition politicians demanded Ulla Schmidt provide more details about the affair.The incident could damage the SPD who trail Merkel's conservatives by more than 10 points in opinion polls in the run-up to a September 27 federal election.

Increased usage of antidepressants and tranquillizers

In Spain, 24 percent of women use antidepressants and 31 percent use tranquillizers -- sometimes used to help people sleep, researchers said. Lead author Sonsoles Perez of the Las Aguilas Health Centre in Madrid and colleagues studied 121 women in Madrid ages 25-65 using family dysfunction surveys and the additive scale used to evaluate social readjustment. The psychopharmaceuticals analyzed were antidepressants and benzodiazepines -- sedatives, anxiety reducing, anti-convulsant or muscle relaxants. Although one might think that family conflicts lead to greater consumption of psychopharmaceuticals among women, we did not find any such relationship Perez said in a statement. Some people with family, work-related or financial problems do not feel able to tackle their problems and fall back on the use of drugs.The study, published in the journal Atencion Primaria, also found in 78.6 percent of cases, these drugs are prescribed in primary health centers. The diagnosis is recorded in the patient's medical records in 64.5 percent of cases, with the primary causes being depression at 11.6 percent, anxiety at 9.9 percent and 3.3 percent of insomnia. The researchers found benzodiazepine use increases with age, but there was no similar finding with antidepressant use.

Diamond robbery was masterminded by a trio of British youths

Diamond robbery was masterminded by a trio of British youths, it can be revealed.The gang – who have been charged with more than 30 robberies – regularly took ‘a civilised’ full English breakfast at 4pm each afternoon, near their Coin home.The dangerous gang – who had weapons in the garage of their rented Sierra Gorda property – were however, always impeccably polite at their regular meeting spot Leslie’s Bar.“They were always very well-mannered,” a waitress told the Olive Press. “I liked them, so I was surprised when they were arrested for these crimes.”
The group – which includes one woman – have been arrested over an incredible 30 or more robberies and burglaries, amassing a booty of luxury items over the last few years.The group – who kept a series of dangerous Staffordshire bull terrier dogs at their home – came from England, Wales and Ireland.According to sources they had lived in the area for up to two years, renting luxury detached villas in the Coin and Alhaurin el Grande area.They lived a ‘low key’ lifestyle, but wore designer clothes, expensive watches and other top accessories. mijas diamond robbery but police became suspicious of their extravagant way of life following a 30,000 euro robbery at the Mijas Diamond and Jewellery Centre.They had previously visited the jewellers and carefully sketched plans of the layout of the shop, before raiding a few weeks later.After police obtained a search warrant for their rented home they found designer furniture and other items, including a 9,000 euro Bang & Olufsen TV, and a stolen Volvo in the garage. They also recovered a selection of weapons.
According to a police spokesman the robberies and burglaries were well planned and executed.He said: “In the Mijas robbery the gang posed as tourists on an excursion. The day of the robbery they dressed up as building workers and erected barriers in the street, before smashing the shop window.”They are also alleged to have raided private homes in the area, while the Volvo was stolen from a Chinese resident in Coin at gunpoint.The downfall of the gang was keeping the best of what they stole and only selling on the rest.Police believe the gang may have had three more accomplices.

e-mail on the Costa del Sol,can seriously damage your wealth

If you can’t wait to surf the Web or check your e-mail on the Costa del Sol, a few words of advice: Think twice about it. Or maybe three or four times.Roaming with your BlackBerry or iPhone abroad to simply make voice calls will cost you an arm and a leg. Using it to surf the Web or send e-mail could cost you your whole body, with bills running into the hundreds of dollars. Early iPhone users learned this the hard way; AT&T forgave some of the most outrageous bills and cautioned users to turn off the automatic e-mail checking that was eating up data usage.But even if you use your smartphone to check e-mail and send photos manually, you could be headed for trouble. And the problem is made worse by the skimpy information provided on the Web sites of the two main GSM wireless providers in the United States: AT&T and T-Mobile. (GSM is the predominant system used in Europe. Sprint and Verizon use CDMA, and most of their phones will not work in Europe.)Both companies’ Web sites state the cost to use data when roaming. But it’s priced in megabytes, a measurement that means nothing to most people. (Can you imagine if your wireless plan told you how many MB of data you could use, rather than how many minutes you had?)How much data you use to send a text or visit a Web site depends on whom you’re asking. T-Mobile’s site says that a text message uses about 3KB, and visiting a Web site will eat up between 250 to 500 KB a page, depending on how many images are on the site.AT&T’s site does not state an equivalency between Web-page access and the amount of data used, although a spokesman said that the company would add that information soon. According to AT&T, visiting a Web site could use 50 to 75 KB a page and checking three e-mail messages could eat up 60 KB

Marbella constructor José Ávila Rojas, arrived at the prison in Albolote

Marbella constructor José Ávila Rojas, arrived at the prison in Albolote on Wednesday morning to complete an eight year sentence for four counts of tax fraud. His appeal against last year’s sentence from the Granada provincial court was turned down by the Supreme Court last month, and it left no other means open to try and avoid entering prison.The fraud relates to the purchase and sale of two properties in Marbella, Málaga province, at the beginning of this decade, calculated as amounting to 3.5 million € in unpaid IVA and income tax. The sentence from the Granada court last summer also ordered the businessman to pay a fine of 10 million €.
EFE reports he was due to spend Wednesday in the prison’s admissions department before being assigned to a cell at some stage on Thursday.

Beach sewers and pumping stations that are still in use on the Western Costa del Sol.

Old concrete structures covered in graffiti they have to take a detour around while strolling along the shore are sewers and pumping stations that are still in use. And they may never learn, unless perhaps just after a spell of rough weather, that beneath their feet is a fragile network of pipes. Some of these structures have been there for 40 years, but it is only now that serious plans have been made to remove them. After all the authorities are not short of reasons. The sewers and pumping stations are not only an inconvenience to bathers but they are also in a kind of legal limbo as they occupy the strip known as the public maritime domain protected by the Coasts Law. They also complicate beach regeneration work and are in places so fragile that breakages and sewage leaks onto the beaches are not uncommon.
The plans for the first phase of the 60 million euro scheme have already been drawn up by Acosol, the water company that belongs to the Mancomunidad de Municipios on the Western Costa del Sol.

No official figures for the number of Britons going home, because nobody is counting.

The change from the peseta to the euro caused inflation that ended the "cheap living" forever.

No official figures for the number of Britons going home, because nobody is counting. But Spain is certainly counting its unemployed, up to 17% with more than four million out of work. And that has a painful effect for the Britons who prospered during Spain's boom times. Jim and Caireen Candlin met in Spain, married in Gibraltar and decided to raise their young children on the Costa Brava.Estate agent Marion Atkins is quitting Spain to run a pub in Britain Aberdeen-born Caireen says: "I think Spain is ideal for bringing up children. That's why I'm staying here while he goes back to the UK." Jim is heading home to retrain as an electrician after building work dried up. He says: "We've both worked for firms that have gone bust in the past year. "When we couldn't pay the rent one month and had to phone our parents for help, we realised economically it wasn't working here. We couldn't carry on like that." So now the couple have decided to leave the area, and possibly the country.Like Jim and Caireen, Barnaby Griffin and his wife Rebecca have been forced to live apart by a search for work. Rebecca returned after two years in Orihuela Costa to do temping in London, while Barnaby stays on as a performer in the local bars. "All my friends our age are struggling," he says. "People talk about living the dream but all it seems to be is sunshine, cheap cigs and wine. This area had low wages anyway and we're fed up living hand to mouth."