Home » 2009 » December (Page 2)

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Rain in Spain boosts hydro, irrigation reserves

Heavy rain has raised Spain´s capacity to generate hydroelectricity and irrigate crops, official data showed on Tuesday in the heavily gas and grain-dependent country. Rainfall over the past 10 days has caused severe flooding in many parts of Spain and on Tuesday the Met Office issued weather alerts for more than half the country. Hydropower [...]

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Spain companies up for sale in 2010; Price? 1 euro

Foreign funds will be the buyers of debt-strapped Spanish businesses putting up “for sale” signs in 2010, many for the symbolic price of 1 euro, the director of a niche investment bank said. As the world starts to emerge from the global economic crisis, Spain is still hovering behind, with deep unemployment and heavy public [...]

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Earthquake: Galicia

Summary: Magnitude ML 2.2 Region SPAIN Galicia – Tras-os-montes Date time 2009-12-29 at 06:26:07.0 UTC Location 42.08 N ; 8.13 W Depth 20 km Distances 35 km SW Ourense (pop 108,083 ; local time 07:26 2009-12-29) 32 km E Ponteareas (pop 21,683 ; local time 07:26 2009-12-29) 6 km S Padrenda (pop 2,433 ; local [...]

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Electrical demand falls 4.6% in 2009 in Spain

Electrical demand falls 4.6% in 2009 in Spain. For the first time, wind energy has produced more than coal. New wind farms contribute 2,576 MW to the installed power, reaching a total of 18,119 MW by the end of 2009. In 2009, the demand for electrical energy on the Spanish peninsula was 251,305 GWh, 4.6% [...]

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Spain grants 3.3 million euros to Cape Verde for desalination

Cape Verde has obtained a credit line of 3.3 million euros from Spain to extend its desalination unit, reliable sources told PANA on Monday. The financing will help programme, set up and start the process and guarantee technical assistance for the exploitation of the new desalting production line. The goals of the project consist in [...]

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Football: Spain’s best and worst

The Premier League has been on full throttle over the holiday period but as La Liga does not start up again until Saturday it´s perhaps a good time to give out the first Phil Awards to acknowledge what´s been happening in Spanish football since the start of the season. Top Team – Can there be [...]

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Spain Retail Sales Continue To Drop In November

Retail sales in Spain dropped 4.3% year-on-year in November after the 4% decrease in the previous month, the Madrid based National Statistics Institute reported on Tuesday. Adjusting for calendar effects, total retail sales slumped 5.5% compared with November 2008. Region wise, sales were down across the Iberian nation excepting Extremadura and Melilla. The largest declines [...]

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Somali pirates hijack chemical tanker

Somali pirates have hijacked a UK-flagged chemical tanker sailing to Thailand from Spain, a maritime official said on Tuesday. Andrew Mwangura of the Kenya-based East Africa Seafarers Association said the St James Park sent out a distress signal on Monday from the Gulf of Aden and had now changed course for the Somali coast. Somali [...]

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Spain comes through for detained Greenpeace activists

Greenpeace- and Copenhagen-related news have slowed dramatically. The only major Greenpeace story is the continued coverage of the arrest of the red carpet activists. Spanish paper El Mundo reports that a huge card signed by thousands will be delivered today to the Danish Embassy to ask for the release of Juan Lopez de Uralde, and [...]

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Spain uncovers cocaine haul beneath flower shipment

Spanish police have intercepted a two-tonne shipment of cocaine, smuggled into the country from Colombia. The drugs, which Spanish media reports say were worth 70m euros (£62.8m), were hidden beneath a consignment of thousands of cut flowers. They were discovered by police in an operation code-named “Flower Power” at Foronda airport, in the Basque Country. [...]

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Spain’s top bank chief sentenced to prison

A court in Spain has sentenced the chief executive of the country´s biggest bank, Santander, to six months in prison for making false accusations against clients 15 years ago. The court found Alfredo Saenz carried out the deception when he was head of Santander subsidiary Banesto. Banesto has said it will appeal the sentence. Saenz [...]

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Spanish banks to offer huge property price discounts?

Banks in Spain, now the country’s biggest property owners having re-possessed so many homes, will have to offer discounts of up to 50% in 2010 if they are to shift their stock of real estate, according to a new report. Current discounts are simply not big enough to interest buyers, says the report from BNP [...]

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Spain’s new-car subsidies ‘to expire in mid-2010′

The Spanish government´s subsidies on new cars — credited with reversing a slump in sales — will expire in mid-2010 and will not be renewed, the industry minister said Monday. If sales continue at their current level the amount allocated will expire in June and “there is no plan to continue,” Miguel Sebastian told a [...]

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SPAIN TAKES OVER EU PRESIDENCY

Speaking at the parliament on December 16, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero said it will act in close coordination with the two following EU presidency holders Belgium (July-December 2010) and Hungary (January-June 2011). He also highlighted four priorities during Spain’s EU Presidency in 2010: – The efficient application of the Treaty of Lisbon, which [...]

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Kylie Minogue and her Spanish model boyfriend jet out to Barcelona

Kylie Minogue and her Spanish model beau, Andres Velencoso, jetted off to Spain for the holiday break after spending family time in Australia. Minogue and Velencoso were spotted at Barcelona airport and then headed straight for the atmospheric town of Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava where Velencoso´s father and sisters reside. Minogue was [...]

28th December – Dia de los Santos Inocentes

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28th December – Dia de los Santos Inocentes

The day of the innocents. In Spain and Ibero-America, the equivalent to April Fools day is held on the 28th December, originally a Christian day of celebration of the Massacre of the Innocents. The Christian celebration is a holiday in its own right, a religious one, but the tradition of pranks not, though the latter [...]

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Spain sentences Barcelona subway terror cell men

A Spanish court has sentenced 11 men to prison sentences for belonging to a terror cell plotting to stage suicide bomb attacks in Barcelona. The group of men – 10 from Pakistan and one from India – were accused of conspiring to blow up part of the city´s transport network. Police discovered the plan during [...]

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Colombia seizes 750 kg of cocaine bound for Europe

Drug enforcement agents in Colombia´s Pacific port Buenaventura seized some 750 kg of cocaine in separate shipments bound for Belgium and Spain, officials said. The cocaine was hidden in coffee and polypropylene shipments, the head of the National Polic´s drug enforcement unit, Gen. Francisco Patino, told reporters Sunday. Drug enforcement agents have seized 123.5 tons [...]

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Qatar bans import of meat and poultry from Spain

Qatar has imposed a temporary ban on the import of meat and poultry products from Spain, following the discovery of a new strain of bird flu virus- H7N7- in the country. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Joint Committee for Food Inspection held in the premises of the Supreme Council of Health. [...]

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More EU citizens seeking advice on social welfare

THE RECESSION has led to an increase in the number of non-Irish EU citizens seeking advice on social welfare entitlements from the office of the European Commission, according to its “citizen adviser”. There has also been an increase in the number of Irish people seeking information on their entitlements abroad. Siobhán Duffy, a solicitor working [...]