Tag Archives | Spain

The Global Austerity Resistance Continues

By on March 16, 2013 in News 25

Picture: Ggia (CC)

Allison Kilkenny writes at the Nation:

Tens of thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Spain and Greece this week in response to ongoing budget cuts and high unemployment. In Spain, unemployment has passed the 5 million mark for the first time since records began—attracting widespread criticism over the conservative government’s austerity plans. Similarly, Greece, which has served as a laboratory for austerity enthusiasts, has suffered mass poverty, unemployment and suicide since severe budget cuts were implemented by the government.

“Poverty, unemployment, suicides. Enough is enough,” was the slogan chanted on Syntagma square by some 1,500 Greek demonstrators non-affiliated with political parties who were mobilized through social media. The demonstration ended when police shot tear gas at protesters—a police tactic also used during the anti-austerity demonstrations in Athens when the debt crisis began in late 2009.

Earlier this month, three people in central Greece killed themselves on the same day, and analysts said there is a correlation between the rising rates and three years of pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions that have pushed many people into poverty.

… Read the rest

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The Medieval Manuscript Heist

By on July 16, 2012 in News 1

It sounds like part of the plot from a Javier Sierra or Dan Brown novel, so get ready to read about something like this in a potboiler coming to the bestseller list soon. Via Reuters:

A former church caretaker, his wife, son and another woman have been arrested in connection with last year’s disappearance of a priceless medieval text from the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in northwest Spain, police said on Wednesday.

The Codex Calixtinus, a 12th century collection of sermons and liturgical passages, vanished from a safe deposit box in the cathedral, the endpoint of the ancient pilgrimage route the Camino de Santiago.

The elaborately illustrated manuscript, considered an important part of Spain’s cultural and religious heritage, has yet to be found, though the police say they are close.

“I think we’re heading in the right direction to crack the case … The main objective is to find the Codex,” Spanish police chief Ignacio Cosido told national radio…

[continues at Reuters]… Read the rest

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Spanish Court: You Do Not Have The Right To Be Forgotten

By on March 19, 2012 in News 7

ssurgericDo you have the right to be forgotten? No — the internet has no escape hatch. Via ISP Liability:

A civil court in Spain handed down last Thursday a ruling dismissing plaintiff’s claims against Google Spain over the so called “right to be forgotten”. The case is Alfacs Vacances SL v. Google Spain SL.

While the right to be forgotten is being the subject of heavy litigation in Spain, this is one of few judicial rulings on the matter. Indeed, most claims have been brought before the Spanish Data Protection Authority. About 130 cases are thus pending.

The plaintiff in this case runs a campsite near Tarragona. In 1978, the campsite was hit by a terrible accident with more than 200 people killed and many others severely burned when a tanker truck loaded with flammable liquid got on fire on the highway just in front of the campsite. While the accident happened more than 30 years ago – and the campsite was acquitted of any liability – it still springs out as the first search result when you search for Alfacs on Google, including horrifying thumbnails of burned corpses.

… Read the rest

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Spanish Author Quits Writing, Claims More Copies Of Her Books Are Stolen Than Sold

By on December 25, 2011 in News 42
Lucía Etxebarría. Photo: Xavier Thomas (http://photo75.online.fr)

Lucía Etxebarría. Photo: Xavier Thomas (http://photo75.online.fr)

Are things really so hopeless for writers? In Spain perhaps. Giles Tremlett reports for the Guardian (thanks to Mike for the tip):

An award-winning Spanish novelist claims that the illegal downloading of ebooks has forced her to give up writing and start looking for a new job.

“Given that I have today discovered that more illegal copies of my book have been downloaded than I have sold, I am announcing officially that I will not publish another book for a long time,” Lucía Etxebarria announced on her Facebook page.

Etxebarria told the Guardian that Spanish authors faced a difficult future as online piracy spreads from music and film to literature.

She pointed to Spain’s position at the top of the world rankings for per capita illegal downloads. “We come after China and Russia in the total number of illegal downloads but, obviously, there are a lot more of them so we win on a per capita measure,” she said.

… Read the rest

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Has Atlantis Finally Been Found?

By on March 14, 2011 in News 13

Atlantis_map_KampanakisBBC reports:

A scientist says he may have found remains of the lost city of Atlantis.

Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia.

Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the “island” of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC.

The research has been reported as an ongoing project in the online edition of the journal Antiquity.

Satellite photos of a salt marsh region known as Marisma de Hinojos near the city of Cadiz show two rectangular structures in the mud and parts of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them.

[Continues at BBC]
… Read the rest

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China Vows To Help European Debt Crisis

By on January 5, 2011 in News 27

2010 had Greece and Ireland receiving financial help from the Internatioanl Monetary Fund and Eurozone nations. 2011 has Spain, Germany and Britain finding help from Chinese investors as Vice Premier Li Keqiang began his European tour. Via The Jakarta Globe:

Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang backed Europe in its sovereign debt battle on Wednesday, starting a three-nation tour by promising to buy more Spanish government bonds.

Li, widely tipped to be the next premier, delivered a significant vote of confidence given China’s world record foreign reserves of 2.648 trillion dollars (2.0 trillion euros), much of it in euros.

On his visit to Spain, Germany and Britain he is supporting Europe’s recovery efforts and seeking to soothe global market fears of a debt quagmire spreading from Greece and Ireland to Portugal and even Spain.

[Continues at The Jakarta Globe]… Read the rest

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WikiLeaks Revelation: The U.S. State Department Obstructed Spanish Torture Investigations

By on December 3, 2010 in News 11

Coat of Arms of SpainMore from Scott Horton at Harper’s:

In Spain, the WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated the news for three days now. The reporting has been led by the level-headed El País, with its nationwide competitor, Público, lagging only a bit behind. Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.

These cables reveal a large-scale, closely coordinated effort by the State Department to obstruct these criminal investigations. High-ranking U.S. visitors such as former Republican Party Chair Mel Martinez, Senator Judd Gregg, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were corralled into this effort, warning Spanish political leaders that the criminal investigations would “be misunderstood” and would harm bilateral relations.

… Read the rest

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Spanish Woman Claims Ownership of the Sun

By on November 28, 2010 in News 47

SunReports the AFP via Google News:

MADRID— After billions of years the Sun finally has an owner — a woman from Spain’s soggy region of Galicia said Friday she had registered the star at a local notary public as being her property.

Angeles Duran, 49, told the online edition of daily El Mundo she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our Solar System.

There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about individuals, she added.

“There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law. I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first.”

The document issued by the notary public declares Duran to be the “owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the centre of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000 kilometres”.

… Read the rest

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Gay “Kiss-In” Protest Greets Pope In Spain

By on November 8, 2010 in News 10

220px-GayFest_Bucharest_2005_2Welcome Pope Benedict XVI! From The New York Daily News:

A crowd of about 200 gay men and women in Barcelona staged a massive make-out session in front of the Pope Sunday as he was driven through town in the bullet-proof Popemobile on his way to celebrate mass at one of the city’s basilicas.

The monster spit-swap was organized by a Facebook group called Queer Kissing Flashmob, which sought to protest Pope Benedict XVI‘s visit to Spain and the Catholic church’s policies about homosexuals.

“We are here for a peaceful protest,” Eduardo Prado, one of the men who participated in the so-called kiss-in, told The Irish Times.  “The church oppresses us and doesn’t respect us…We can’t tolerate this sort of Pope in the 21st century.”

The kissing protesters were a small segment of the estimated 250,000 Spaniards who lined the streets along Benedict’s motorcade route, but they were joined by others who were unhappy with the 83-year-old pontiff’s visit, his second to Spain since 2006.

… Read the rest

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