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UK telecoms firm buys Spain’s Ono for €7.2bn as markets fall on concerns about western response to Crimea vote Sean Farrell ...

Administrator who sought to revolutionise opera, putting his stamp on three major institutions The Belgian opera administrator Gerard Mortier, who has died aged 70 of pancreatic cancer, was a self-confessed Machiavellian, described entirely without malice by his younger colleague and supporter Peter Sellars as "a little Napoleon, who knows exactly what he wants to do, and then does it". That ambition...

Attractions to include Europe's fastest and highest vertical accelerator and a hotel in the shape of an F1 front wing Ferrari has announced plans to open its first theme park in Europe, bringing the prancing horse to the PortAventura resort near Barcelona. Due to open in 2016, the 75,000 metre square Ferrari Land promises to include Europe's fastest and highest vertical accelerator and a 250-room...

A notorious veterinary drug that killed millions of vultures in India is now on sale in Europe Adam Welz ...

The conspiracy theory that it was not an Islamist attack, but the work of Eta, has become a cult. But there is a silver lining Among many other famous paintings, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid houses Picasso's Guernica . Art's most iconic indictment of mindless violence looked unfairly soft on the morning of 11 March 2004 when the real thing materialised just a few hundred metres down the street....

Juan Soler condemned for spending public money on machista gifts for participants in International Women's Day race A local mayor in Madrid has been lambasted after handing out aprons and nail files to participants in a race for equality on International Women's Day. Juan Soler, a member of the ruling People's party (PP), gave out the items at an event in Getafe, a city in Madrid's metropolitan area....

A Barca, a 15th-century hamlet in northern Spain, is being offered free of charge to anyone willing to restore it. And it is far from the only village for sale in Spain … Most who glance at the hamlet of A Barca in northern Spain see only 12 crumbling stone houses that were abandoned decades ago. But for one Galician mayor, this hamlet is a yet-to-be-built tourist gem that could revitalise the whole...

Academic who drafted plan for support from former slaving nations says ‘Our aim is to open a dialogue with European states’ Ed Pilkington ...

s support organisations face constant threat of closure As Madrid prepares to mark 10 years since the train bombings that killed 192 people and injured more than 1,800, groups representing victims of the attack say they are struggling to provide much-needed support to survivors of the bombings, a battle that has become tougher in the wake of austerity measures. A decade after 10 bombs packed with nails...

s Teatro Real is praised as 'visionary and generous figure' Gerard Mortier, the avant-garde artistic director of Madrid's Teatro Real opera house until September last year, has died after battling cancer, the culture ministry has said. He was 70. Mortier, known for his risk-taking approach to scene work and keen interest in 20th-century opera, commissioned an adaptation of the gay cowboy epic Brokeback...

s thousands of indignados camping out for weeks or a handful of older people rallying against a freeze in pensions, the backdrop is almost always the same: Madrid's Puerta del Sol square . And that's a problem, according to the city's mayor, Ana Botella, local businesses and the regional government, who are calling on the interior ministry to limit the number of protests in the Spanish capital's best...

concerned' over country's response to immigrants Spain is to spend more than €2.3m (£1.89m) fortifying the borders that divide its territories of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco, in an attempt to deter the thousands of migrants who arrive at the borders of its two exclaves in north Africa, the country's interior minister has announced. Reinforcements to be added in the coming weeks include lining the...

s just what we need in this age of burgeoning nationalism It seems incredible that General Franco is still oppressing artists in Spain from beyond the grave. The dictator who rose to power by defeating Spain's Republic in the 1930s civil war and ruled until his death in 1975 might seem to be a forgotten nightmare in today's democratic Spain. But an artist has succeeded in provoking a foundation that...

News that Kremlin has recalled troops from military exercises in areas close to Ukraine sends shares rallying in Moscow and pushes the ruble up a little Graeme Wearden ...

95% finished' Spanish star chef Ferran Adrià unveiled plans on Tuesday for a "cooking laboratory", museum and database of top recipes at his world-beating restaurant, elBulli. Adrià, whose eatery was crowned best in the world five times by Britain's Restaurant magazine before it closed in 2011, gave a preview of the "elBulli foundation", which he said would open next year. For over two decades the...

s blatantly unfair Spain has learned the hard way that designing a federal system of government to accomplish equity goals is exceedingly difficult. And countries wrestling with how to fund various levels of governance – which is to say most of them – should take heed. Only 35 years ago, Spain emerged from one of the 20th century's most enduring dictatorships and created a strong democracy. Today,...

s economic crisis, claim organisers An enterprising association of sex workers in Barcelona has angered some of Spain's most prominent feminists by offering an "intro to prostitution" course in response to what its members say is a growing number of women turning to sex work in the wake of Spain's financial crisis. At a cost of €45 (£37) a person, the four-hour intensive course for aspiring sex workers...

s. Insisting that the "strong reform momentum must be maintained", she called for a continued shakeup of the labour market, and said reforms "should not benefit those in work but those without it". But she was immediately attacked for, in effect, advocating more wage cuts. Joaquín Almunia, the European competition commissioner, who was also in Bilbao, criticised Lagarde for calling for wage cuts, which...

Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series ...

Spanish journalist Marc Marginedas, who was kidnapped in Syria by an Islamic group linked to Al-Qaida in September, has been released in good health. Now in Turkey, Marginedas spoke yesterday by phone to his family and to Spain's prime minister Mariano Rajoy to tell them he was feeling fine after his six months in captivity. Marginedas, a reporter with El Periodico de Catalunya, was abducted near...