s Mediterranean coast have reported losing up to half of their crops since the island apple snail ( Pomacea insularum ) was first seen in 2009. The worst-affected fields have 12 snails per square metre, with each snail capable of eating the roots of up to 15 rice plants each day. Authorities are attempting to destroy the snails by drying out their fields over winter and flooding some with salt water....
s investment arm says five-star hotel in central Barcelona will continue to be run by Marriott chain The investment arm of the Qatari armed forces has bought the five-star Renaissance hotel in central Barcelona for €78.5m (£65m). Management of the hotel will remain with the previous owners, Marriott. The Qatari Armed Forces Investment Portfolio's representative, General Zani al Kuwari, who is also...
s plan to severely restrict women's access to abortion. More than 300 groups plan to march to the Spanish parliament to present a letter demanding that the government abandon its push to enact some of the toughest abortion legislation in Europe. In late December, the governing People's party (PP) approved a bill that would see the country's relatively liberal abortion laws scaled back . Under the new...
comments If higher powers are helping to lift Spain out of its economic crisis, one political party wants to know exactly who they are and what they're doing. Amaiur, a leftwing party from the Basque country, has put a series of questions to the governing People's party after the interior minister, Jorge Fernández Diaz, said recently he was certain that Saint Teresa was "making important intercessions"...
Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series ...
s economy is either stagnant or in decline, a new report shows that the so-called submerged economy is booming and accounted for 24.6% of GDP in 2012, 6.8% higher than in 2008. The report by Spain's inland revenue department titled The Cost of the Submerged Economy: Increased Fraud During the Crisis claims that the black economy is now worth €253bn (£208bn) – €60bn more than in 2008. Meanwhile, figures...
s opera based on Annie Proulx's short story has fine performances, but his music rarely transcends the text enough to enhance the drama • Tom Service blog: Opera's Brokeback Mountain • News: Brokeback Mountain the opera to open in Madrid Originally conceived for New York City Opera, Charles Wuorinen 's idea of composing an opera on Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain was one of the projects Gerard Mortier...
Channelling Pamplona, the Great Bull Run wants extreme sports junkies to know they don't have to travel to Spain to feel pain Tom Dart ...
s DNA found that he already carried mutations that boost the immune system to tackle various nasty bugs. Some live on in modern Europeans today. "Before we started this work, I had some ideas of what we were going to find," said Carles Lalueza-Fox , who led the study at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona. "Most of those ideas turned out to be completely wrong." The Spanish team started...
s unemployment rate has risen above 26%, according to official figures. Data published on Thursday by Spain's statistics office show a further 198,900 jobs were lost in 2013. The total number of unemployed is now 5.9 million. . Although unemployment fell by 65,000 over the course of last year, the percentage has risen because the working age population has fallen by 267,900, through retirement or migration....
s top currency forgers has been arrested, Spanish police said. The 60-year-old man, whom police called "a real artist" of counterfeit money, had worked with such a degree of perfectionism that his €50 note ranked among Europe's top 10 imitation bills. Following a year-long investigation, officials from Spain's national police and Europol detained the man on Monday in the garage of his house outside...
s most dangerous areas Gunmen shot dead six guards protecting a Spanish cyclist on Wednesday in a violent and remote area of western Pakistan where a bus bomb killed 24 Shi'iteShia pilgrims a day earlier, police said. The cyclist, who suffered minor wounds, had crossed into Pakistan's western province of Baluchistan from Iran, they said. Six guards were wounded. Police said they did not know why he...
t (necessarily) have to be paid for, like sex. Rich people, rich women in particular, are having a better time in the bedroom than their poorer counterparts according to a recent analysis of the first Spanish Sexual Health Survey by researchers at Barcelona's Public Health Agency. This disparity in enjoyment levels between the rich and the poor has little to do with what you might be thinking – that...
s abortion debate by promoting an anti-abortion film competition for students. The contest, posted on the website for the ministry of education in Aragon, invites students between the ages of 14 and 18 to submit short films that "demonstrate the value of life, starting at conception, for every single human". Winners stand to earn up to €500 (£410) in prize money. Films will be judged on the extent...
s own food. He was a wonderful unconventional cook, creating in his kitchen the most dazzling dishes and conserves from his home-grown ingredients. His friends Sam and Sam Clark – Samuel and Samantha, who run Moro restaurant in central London – were also grateful beneficiaries of his knowledge of Spanish gastronomy. Frailes was the subject of what many see as Michael's finest book, The Factory of Light:...
tale of doomed lovers, composer Charles Wuorinen knew he had the makings of a tragic opera. "In older operas there would be an illegitimate child or difference of social classes," said Wuorinen. "Same-sex love, especially when it takes place in an environment where it's absolutely forbidden, is a contemporary version of the same eternal problem." The Pulitzer-prize winning American composer approached...
s a bootlegging vibe to it, which has its attractions, particularly after reports at the end of last year that we're facing a "wine shortage" , but these don't necessarily include the taste of the end product. However, what if making your own wine conjured up images, instead, of a valley in Southern Europe, snow-topped mountains in the distance, olive and almond groves climbing up the hillsides and...
Mariano Rajoy makes declaration weeks before princess due to testify in court over alleged tax fraud and money laundering Spain's prime minister says he believes Princess Cristina, daughter of King Juan Carlos, is innocent less than three weeks before she is due to testify in court as a suspect in an investigation of tax fraud and money laundering that has tarnished the reputation of the royal family....
s latest announcement of settlement-building on land the Palestinians want for a future state. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, called the European criticism hypocritical, and in a tit-for-tat move, Lieberman said envoys from the four EU countries had been summoned to a meeting in the foreign ministry in Jerusalem. In a statement, he said Israel would make clear "that the one-sided position...
s prime minister, has repeatedly said he won't allow a Catalonia secession referendum because Spain's 1978 constitution doesn't envision anything but a unified Spanish state, and mandates that referendums affecting Spain must be held nationally and not regionally. He has an absolute majority in parliament that assures he will prevail, and the main opposition Socialist party also opposes a referendum...