WOMAN PLEADS DEMOLISH MY HOUSE
Mijas resident Isabel called on the Town Hall last Thursday to knock down her house and stop fining her. Sra Mart�n, 56, and her husband began building their house four years ago in the La Rosa urbanisation in La Cala but the Town Hall paralysed the work because of town planning irregularities. Accompanied by Antonio Blanco, president of the Association for the Regularisation of Housing in Mijas, Sra Martin told a press conference that her husband had then gone into a deep depression and died a few months ago. She said: "My husband lost the will to live, his dream had died." Her lawyer had written to the Town Hall on July 11th asking them to demolish the house but had not received a reply. Sra Martin said she had received three fines - the last one on October 3rd - of €2,356 for a house measuring 288 m2 when in fact the building only measured 100 m2. She said it was "not even a house, just a structure". She added: "If they are going to demolish it, then they should do it now and stop fining me because my health is not good and I'm going down the same road as my husband." Antonio Blanco compared the situation to Marbella where the mayor has announced that she will fight to ensure that not a single illegally-built property is knocked down.
BRIDE GETS COMPENSATION FOR LATE ARRIVAL
Malaga City Hall have been ordered to pay a compensation of €3,000 to a couple after police stopped the bride, Ana Belen Quires, from arriving at the church in time for her wedding three years ago. She was in a horse-drawn carriage and the police objected to her using a pedestrian-only street, even though she had a municipal permission to do so. She made her way on foot to the Iglesia de Sagrado Corazon, almost a kilometre away, where she arrived in tears. Ana Belen and her husband, Juan Jose Rivas, said they will use the money to take a trip to "forget their wedding day".
DRASTIC DROP IN SPEEDING FINES
Fines for speeding dropped drastically in Malaga province in the first six months of this year - down to 28,551 as opposed to 43,293 in the same period last year. A spokesman for the provincial Traffic Authority said this was due to the seven installed radar controls and the points system. He said another seven radars will be installed in the near future. Meanwhile, the Guardia Civil traffic patrols have launched a campaign to enforce the correct use of lanes on the highways and of indicators. The spokesman said it was to make drivers more aware of the fact that they should stick to the right-hand lane unless they were going to overtake. He said the incorrect use of the left-hand lane caused back-ups and slowed down the traffic.
MAGIC COIN SWINDLE REACHES MALAGA
The so-called "magic coin" swindle has arrived in Malaga. Las week, police arrested a man in an arcade in the centre of the capital with 400 normal euro coins and 186 painted black. One-armed bandits can't detected the painted coins, and the swindle consists of inserting a number of these coins then pressing the Return button without playing. The machine automatically returns the same number of normal coins and the player continues to introduce painted coins and retrieve normal ones until the machine starts spitting out painted ones. The swindle appears to come from the East. Police in the rest of the country have so far arrested several Chinese but the man arrested in Malaga was a Turk.
BOYS GAMBLING RUINS FAMILY
A 16-year-old boy from Granada has ruined his family by running up a €48,000 debt on his parents' credit cards playing at a virtual casino on the internet. A spokesman for the Spanish Federation of Rehabilitated Gamblers, FEJAR, said such incidents are common because the virtual casinos cannot see or check the age of the players. He said it was getting so common as to be ruining some people's lives forever. He said the latest figures showed that the amount gambled on the internet in Spain is up five-fold since 1997, and could reach €5 billion. He said FEJAR estimates that some five percent of the Spanish population could have a problem with gambling. The spokesman also warned about the amounts now being spent by some children on their mobile phones, especially if they have access to the Internet, with bills of €300 or €400 a month not uncommon. He said some children already suffering from deformed hands from sending so many text messages.
SUMMER SALES NOW AUTUMN ONES
It looks as if the stores in Malaga are having one continuous sale this year. Sale posters offer 2x1 and 50% discounts are splashed across the windows of household goods, clothes and shoe stores and many jewellers', as their owners vie for an ever-dwindling number of shoppers. A spokesman for the Malaga Trade Federation, Fecoma, said most stores had suffered drops in sales ranging from 25% to 40%. He said the mild weather hadn't helped either as people didn't feel the need to buy winter clothes yet. He added that a growing number of people appeared to be prepared to make do with last winter's clothes.
SEVE HAS THIRD OPERATION
Golf legend Seve Ballesteros underwent a successful third operation last Friday to reduce swelling and remove remnants of a tumour in his brain. The operation, led by chief brain surgeon Javier Heredero at La Paz Hospital in Madrid, lasted more than six hours. In a statement, doctors said the 51-year-old five-time major winner was in a stable condition in the hospital's intensive care unit. Ballesteros was admitted to hospital after briefly losing consciousness at Madrid Airport on October 6th. He was subsequently diagnosed with a brain tumour and underwent surgery, but he needed another operation to relieve pressure on the brain last Tuesday. In an open letter to fans, he acknowledged the seriousness of the illness - saying he faced what he called the "most difficult match" of his life. Ballesteros won 87 titles during his career, including the Open in 1979, 1984 and 1988 and the Masters in 1980 and 1983. He was an instrumental figure in Europe's Ryder Cup resurgence after making his debut in 1979 when the competition was expanded from Great Britain and Ireland to include players from continental Europe. After controversially being left out in 1981, Ballesteros returned in 1983 and helped Europe beat the United States for the first time in 28 years in 1985 to begin two decades of dominance. He went on to win eight caps, winning 22 and a half points from 37 matches. He also teamed up with countryman Jose Maria Olazabal to form the most successful partnership in Ryder Cup history, with 11 wins, two losses and two halves. After his last appearance as a player in 1995, Ballesteros captained Europe to victory on home soil at Valderrama in 1997. He retired last year following arthritic back and knee problems late in his career, while doctors discovered an irregular heartbeat when he was admitted to hospital in 2007.
NADAL NUMBER ONE AT AWARDS CEREMONY
The capital of Asturias, Oviedo, pulled out all the stops last Friday to celebrate another Prince of Asturias Awards ceremony. Last week's rain had abated and the sun shone brilliantly on the thousands of people who turned out to watch Queen Sofia, Crown Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia and the winners arrive at the Campoamor Theatre, with tennis's Number One, Rafael Nadal, a clear favourite with the crowd. The second most popular was Ingrid Betancourt, who was running for president in Colombia when she was kidnapped by the Farc guerrilla group more than six years ago. She was rescued by soldiers posing as guerrillas earlier this year and now lives in Paris for security reasons. During her acceptance speech, she told how she had listened to radio commentaries about an up-and-coming tennis player called Rafael Nadal and never dreamed that she would one day sit next to him at the Prince of Asturias Awards ceremony. Nadal was visibly moved and said afterwards that it gave him goose pimples to think of a lonely, brave woman following his career in a jungle hideaway where she was being kept ahainst her will in deplorable conditions. The other award winners were Margaret Atwood, who collected the Literature Award for defending the dignity of women and denouncing social injustice in her work. Co-founder of Google, Larry Page, was there to collect the Communication and Humanities Award and representatives of health centres in Tanzania, Ghana, Mali and Angola received the International Cooperation Award for their work in the fight against malaria. Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu collected the Arts Award on behalf of Venezuela's Foundation for Juvenile and Infantile Orchestras which has been rescuing poor children from the country's slums and giving them careers in music since Sr Abreu founded the first youth orchestra there 20 years ago. Japanese scientists Sumio Iijama and Shuji Nakamura, and the Americans Robert Langer, George M Whitesides and Tobin Marks shared the Scientific and Technical Award, and French-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov collected the Social Sciences Award for his work on freedom and equality, the development of democracy and the impact of violence on the collective memory.
BASQUES DEMAND REFERENDUM
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in six cities in the Basque region last Saturday, demanding the right to a referendum on independence. The governing Basque Nationalist Party had hoped to consult the electorate that day on negotiations towards a full referendum on independence within two years, but last month the Supreme Court declared the plan unconstitutional. In another sign of protest against the court's ruling, there were explosions at two Basque railway stations. Shortly after midnight last Friday, a small bomb brought down the ceiling of a ticket hall in the town of Berriz, and two hours later, petrol bombs were hurled at ticket machines in the nearby town of Amorebieta. There were no injuries. Police are investigating whether the bombings were the work of the armed separatist group ETA or young nationalist sympathisers. During Saturday's march, police had to separate Basque nationalist demonstrators from a rival rally by a far-right party - which proclaimed that Spain would never be divided. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has portrayed the proposed referendum as political manoeuvring ahead of regional elections next March. But in a newspaper interview, the head of the regional government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, said Madrid had shown an arrogant disregard for the rights of the Basque people.
PM SEEKS INVITE TO G20 MEETING
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero used his two-day stay in Beijing, where he attended the Euro-Asian Summit last week, to continue his attempts to get an invitation to the summit on the world economic crisis, to be held in Washington on November 15th. President George W Bush has only invited the leaders of the G-20 nations, which does not include Spain. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is the current EU president, said last Saturday that EU leaders would attend the summit as a bloc. Both Mr Sarkozy and Britain's Gordon Brown, have said Sr Zapatero should be at the summit. Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has said that Spain is doing everything possible to be at the Washington summit: "We consider that we have all the legitimate right to be present in this meeting." Spanish newspapers claim that Mr Bush has not invited Sr Zapatero to the meeting to punish him for withdrawing Spain's peace-keeping troops from Iraq immediate shortly after he was elected in March 2004. They also highlight the incident when Sr Zapatero, then leader of the opposition, refused to stand up when the American troops marched past the politicians' stand at the National Day military parade on October 12, 2003.