News for September 15 to 19

Spanish company buys control of Aberdeen and Glasgow airports

MADRID -- According to a report on Yahoo Finance on September 11, the Spanish company Ferrovial,which owns a 25% stake in Heathrow Airport Holdings (known as HAH) and made an offer to buy the rest of the British company in Augus, for €800 million. When final details are ironed out -- no problems expected -- this would give the Spanish company complete control of the airports at Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton. The move is seen as a good deal for Ferrovial, no matter what the outcome of today's Scottish elections, which are not expected to affect the Spanish company's stock value.

Changes in the law to punish Spaniards joining Islamic terrorists

MADRID -- The government is looking into the possibility of accusing as criminals nationals who join Al Qaeda, Islamic Nations, or any of its derivatives, by modifying a law that was originally created to combat ETA, the Basque nationalist terrorist group.

Spain’s marijuana crop quintuples in five years

MALAGA -- An unusually high marijuana pollen count in the vicinity of Malaga airport last year is but one of many signs confirming that Spain’s marijuana plantations have multiplied by five in as many years. In fact, Malaga has the second highest plant confiscation rate of the five Spanish provinces where such measures were taken in 2013. According to El Pais, ‘eurocannabis’ – that is, hashish made in Europe – is rapidly taking over the market long led by Morocco, while Spain’s production is largely exported to The Netherlands and the UK.

Olive harvest reveals a 60% employment fraud

JAEN -- The employment figures estimated by the Junta’s Agriculture Department gave 5.7 million working days of employment during last year’s olive harvest. However, only 2.5 million days were registered with Social Security, a difference of about 60%. This clear indication of illegality is similar to the one detected in 2012, which is till going through the (very slow) legal process.

Have you noticed less lime in the water lately?

JIMENA (Cadiz) – The water supply has changed recently. It now comes from the reservoir at Majarambu, which delivers a long-made promise that the supply would change in order to eliminate a good proportion of the lime it used to contain and made it almost undrinkable (and certainly bad for kettles). I have yet to find figures that confirm this fact but we have noticed less white rings when boiling food. I will try to follow this up with confirmations.

OECD launches anti-tax avoidance schemes

CANBERRA, Australia – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the international organization that, with nations currently applying for membership, plus the G20 countries, represents almost 90% of the world economy, recently presented a proposal for a scheme that would halt, or at least minimize, the tax avoidance schemes presently used by some of the world’s largest companies. The proposal would include the obligation for these businesses to present their financial records to the tax authorities of all the countries in which they operate. The proposal was presented to the G20 nations now meeting in Canberra, Australia.

Up-to-the-minute language curiosity

Escocía in Spanish is translated into English as ‘it stung’ or ‘it irritated’. Notice the accent on the i. The word Scotland translates into Spanish as Escocia – no accent. What a difference a little mark makes!

Spanish airports have the worst wi-fi facilities in Europe

MADRID – Despite the fact that Spain’s airports account for some of the heaviest passenger traffic on the continent, a recent study by Skyscanner reveals that they offer some of the worst Wi-Fi services in Europe. A recent poll of 1500 passengers reveals that it is considered expensive, offering a mere 15 free minutes, with per hour cost of €5.5, with some regional variations. This compares to free Wi-Fi available at the principal airports of Russia and Italy, for example, where the service is free and time-unlimited. 71% of the passengers polled said that Wi-Fi is ‘very important’ or ‘important’ to them. Skycanner has added to its analysis a useful guide to the service offered at Europe’s main airports.

Guardia’s Dirección General de Tráfico’s IT system fails for two days and is due to continue

MADRID – The system that allows online payment of fines and other obligations recently went down intermittently for two days. The explanation given by the Guardia Civil’s traffic section, known better as DGT, was that the downtime was owed to the system being migrated from a provincial one, used by each of the nation’s provinces individually, albeit connected among them, to a new system that unifies the entire country in terms of information. The new system is due to be fully operative by September 22. The DGT denies that it has been, and will be, difficult to make payments via the system that includes being able to make prior appointments (cita previa), something now obligatory if payments or enquiries are made in person. The DGT website is also affected, while comments on the Internet have been generally ill-humoured.

“We lost our home and were officially accused; had we known it, we would never have ‘denounced’ the plot set up at the Air Force”

MADRID – Cristina del Río and Julio Suárez came to Spain in 1999 from their native Bogotá, Colombia, in order to get away from the violence there and to make a better life for themselves and their three children. However, they became involuntarily involved in a ploy that is calculated to have cost the taxpayer between 7 and 10 million euros. As a result, the couple have lost their apartment home, with which they financed the purchase of a lorry with which to start up a transport business, called SRD, which in time acquired a good reputation and was growing thanks to their hard work. The scheme, originally started at the Getafe air base where SRD was attempting to offer its services (some 500 removals a year there were a lucrative target) involved using false bills supposedly issued by SRD, but which Cristina discovered the company had never emitted. As the result of the couple’s denuncia and persistence, some 45 Spanish Air Force officers and non-com personnel are now sitting in the dock. Meanwhile the couple underwent being officially accused of issuing false bills itself, many sleepless nights, and nasty insults on the social media – they were called Colombian drug traffickers, among other niceties. Now all they want is the restitution of their good name, having lost many regular customers because of the false accusations to which they were subjected. Having been in “hell for two years,” says Julio, they now wonder if they did the right thing by denouncing the plot.

Classrooms found empty, no teachers present

(Opinion +) MADRID – Although this item is dated from Madrid and deals with an Erasmus student (the organization that offers post-graduate study opportunities in other European countries), it is likely to be similar to many of the schools of all levels. This Belgian student turned up at his Universidad Autónoma classroom where he and another eight students had been registered for a course in Business Administration (and which they had paid for at registration) due to start on that day. No professor and no news. Having spent some time trying to find what had happened, they got the run-around from the uni’s Secretary as well as from the Business Admin department. As usual, they were referred to the Internet where they found that their course had been taken off the curriculum.

Our Belgian student was astounded. “This would never happen in Belgium,” he asserts, as he would have been advised of any changes well in time to adjust his own plans. Alternatives – not many – included something called Education Coordination, which had a sketchy presence within global Business Administration but which enabled him to coordinate with the other courses he had already contracted. There was no information on the uni’s website, and this made it impossible to know of what the course consisted without seeing the programme. He wondered how many Erasmus students would be willing to through all this. And all because there are some 7,000 Masters degrees being offered in Spain this year (!!)

Enquiries made among friends who are university professors or administrators all coincided with the opinion that this was a way for the universities to obtain money to cover losses in tax euros resulting from current cutbacks. 

TO BE CONTINUED…