Villa Rentals Spain

Alicante train station operations were halted all day last Sunday because thieves had stolen materials from the railway line.

At around 8am an Alicante to barcelona train became caught up in overhead cables near San Vicente de Raspeig station ,damaging about 1000 metres of wire.

This is believed to have been caused by the theft of counterweights which keep the cables at the correct tension.

Because of this around 30 trains between Alicante and Madrid and Barcelona as well as several short distance trains were all cancelled.Over 3000 passengers were affected by the thefts and the chaos they caused to the schedules.

Renfe put on a fleet of buses to take stranded passengers to their destinations and meanwhile engineers put the train line cables back to working order.It took 12 hours to restore services to normal.The metals stolen would fetch good money on the black market and the police have now launched a full investigation.

The MARQ archaeological museum in Alicante , Spain was the fourth most visited museum in Spain last year.Almost 160,000 people visited the museum.

Last year there was a 6 month long exhibition of treasures from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and 82,000 people visited at that time.

The MARQ has permanent exhibitions and also visiting short term exhibitions plus conferences ,courses and educational activities for youngsters.

The parks , sites and monuments managed by the MARQ also attracted almost 50,000 visitors during the year.In 2012 in April there will be an exhibition called “The Treasures of the Barbarians” from the Museum of Palatinate History in Speyer , Germany.The two museums have recently signed an agreement to cooperate to share historical and archaeological information and heritage.

Museums in Austria , Sweden and Holland are also within the scheme.They will share schemes and  exchange exhibitions .Museums from Madrid , Asturias , Cataluña and Almeria also attended the meeting in Alicante.

An ex-mayor of Bigastro near Orihuela , on the Costa Blanca is facing over 5 years in prison for allegedly promoting the building of two large gas deposits on a plot of land classified as “green ” in the Town Plan.

This led to the arrest and resignation of the mayor in 2008.The prosecution alleges that Sr Moya was the promoter of the scheme despite knowing that it infringed town planning laws.

He faces 1 year 10 months for infringing the town planning laws and a further 4 years for the falsification of documents and corruption. There are two other town hall officials on trial too and they are accused of allegedly trying to uphold the activities of the mayor.

The prosecution is also trying to get Sr Moya to pay for the demolition of the buildings which are now managed by Repsol gas.If he is unable to do this then they want to get the council to foot the bill.The town hall in Bigastro is already 31 million euros in debt and so this would be yet another nail in the coffin.

Last Sunday inland of the Costa Blanca a woman fell 100 metres on scree from a long ridge in the Sierra de Serrella which flanks the north side of the Guadalest Valley.

Her fall was stopped by a tree , she became entangled in its branches.The emergency services were called , both the fire department and the Guardia Civil.The walker was with a larger party and when she was recovered she was taken to hospital in Alcoy where doctors discovered that she had not sustained any serious injuries.She remained conscious throughout her ordeal.

Other accidents occurred on the same afternoon when a woman injured her ankle at “El Moli ” recreation centre at Benimassot and emergency services were called.Then later a 70 year old German woman fell while walking in the Cuta ravine ( Barranco de la Cuta ) in Lliber in the Jalon Valley.Fire services from Denia helped to rescue the woman who had twisted her ankle.

Alicante Province requires speakers of English and other languages according to businesses there.In fact the ability to speak English is the most demanded extra training required of Spanish employees.This is according to the Regional Employment Service ( SERVEF).

Mastery of English is particularly needed in the hotel ,sales , marketing and administration sectors.The hotel and catering services have demanded a lot more language courses for English than others.

The Spanish unemployment situation is still dire and yer SERVEF has detected that there are vacancies available if people have language skills.

Now they are aiming to increase the number of language courses in order to help people find employment.Just having that increased qualification could mean that a job became available.

In 2011 almost 57 million international tourists visited the Spanish peninsular.Twenty four percent of these were British.These were figures released by the Frontur Spanish tourism institute.These figures indicate yet again just how important tourism is to the Spanish economy.

These figures show an increase in numbers of over 7% and it is thought that the troubles in North Africa have benefited tourism in Spain.Germany and France are the next two countries which find Spain an attraction.

Cataluña was the most popular tourist destination with over 13 million visitors.The Canary Islands and the Balearics came in second and third respectively.Then it was Andalucia , the Valencia Region and Madrid.

The Valencia region and Andalucia were the most popular for the British while understandably Cataluña is popular with the French.

Murcia did not come out of these figures very well and came in 10th overall with just over half a million international tourists.This is a drop of 4.6% on 2010.

Most tourists arrived in Spain by plane.Apartment rentals and hotel occupation both increased considerably.Over 11.5 million were accommodated in private holiday homes.

The Guardia Civil in Alicante Province have been alerted via their environmental branch ( Seprona ) that climbing areas in the Sierra de Crevillente , inland Costa Blanca ,are being damaged by climbers.

Screws that are used by mountain climbers to scale rocks are being left in the rocks and are illegal to start with.The climbers have been denounced because of this.

They have been discovered at Raia del Bubo , Barranc Fort and Pas del Soldat nature areas.At Raia there were over 50 screws hammered into the rock.Footholds had also been chisseled out of the rock face to provide footholds.

The councillor for the environment has called this behaviour ” a disgrace ” and has said that it has led to the destruction of plant life.

The Sierra de Crevillente is a ZEPA bird protection area and also an EU site of special interest.Initially it is thought that the people involved are from Crevillente.The Red Cross mountain group have offered to remove the screws without doing any further damage.

The Spanish airline Vueling , a low cost subsiduary of Iberia Airlines has announced that it will be operating seven new routes out of Alicante , beginning in March.

There will be three flights a day to paris as well as reestablishing a cancelled connection to Palma de Mallorca in the Balearic Islands.

As of June 24 it will be flying to Cardiff three times a week and flights to mallorca will start on June 22 , four times a week.

Between January 28 and March 28 all flights are being offered at 19.99 euros as a promotional offer.

These Vueling flights have certainly helped Aena , the Spanish airport authority , get out of a jam because of the loss of Ryanair flights out of El Altet airport. Aena had a massive gap to fill after the Ryanair withdrawals.Aena would welcome any other low cost airlines too to continue filling the gap.Naturally Aena says that they have barely noticed the loss of Ryanair.

The Valencia government is starting a campaign to sell 140,000 unsold new homes in the region.Most of these houses are built on urbanisations which were built just before the property crash.

Banks with liquidity problems are desperate to get rid of these houses as they have been handed these houses by developers in lieu of debts.

The regional councillor for Infrastructure , Land and the Environment unveiled this European sales initiative when she met with the Regional Chamber of Commerce chiefs last week.

There is a huge portfolio of empty houses and the councillor sees this as an opportunity for the development of the Valencia region over the next decade.They want to support the sale of these homes to foreign buyers.It appears that 30% of all property sales in Spain take place in the Valencia region.

In Spain there are 700,000 new homes still unsold.The PSOE government attempted to market these to foreign buyers and had a huge backlash from the victims of property abuses in Spain.The Valencia government do not have the resources to do a roadshow as the central government did and so its success could be limited.

Many also criticise where these houses have been built as they are out in the wilds and have no amenities, even such basic ones as shops.The outlook is seen as a bleak one.

The Rabasa area of Alicante on the Costa Blanca is being developed and includes commercial outlets such as Ikea.They now think that the development costs could run into 200 million euros.

Alicante City hall officials say that the development has currently been given to Enrique Ortiz and partners and had an initial estimated cost of around 167 million euros.However this did not include the development of the Ikea store or the obligatory infrastructure and environmental schemes that are also included in the contract.

Access roads to the Ikea store would alone cost 6 million euros  and a lump sum has to go to what is judged as an important environmental scheme which is the recovery of Rabasa lakes natural park.

The developers want to start building the first 2000 VPO subsidised homes next year.The whole scheme includes almost 14,000 homes , green zones , new roads and infrastructures.