Classic sitcom “The Golden Girls” is getting a Spanish makeover with some of Spain´s most acclaimed veteran thesps poised to play the female leads.

Disney Media Networks has teamed up with leading Spanish producer Jose Luis Moreno and Luis Balaguer´s Miami-based production, talent management and marketing company Latin World Entertainment to co-produce the skein, titled “Las Chicas de Oro,” for Spanish pubcaster TVE.

Former Pedro Almodovar muse Carmen Maura (“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”) leads Concha Velasco, Lola Herrera and Alicia Hermida in the roles made famous by Betty White, Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty.

Spain joins the ranks of Greece, Turkey, Russia, the U.K. and Latin America that have each made their own versions.

Deal underscores Disney´s commitment to developing local productions of both scripted and non-scripted formats. In Latin America, Disney has made Spanish-language editions of “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey´s Anatomy” in various territories. A Portuguese-language version of “Desperate Housewives” was also made for Brazil.

“Los Anos Dorados,” the Latino version of “The Golden Girls,” was shot in Caracas, Venezuela for the Latin American and U.S. Hispanic markets last year. “Grey´s Anatomy” has been a hit in Colombia where it was stripped daily. A Mexican version of “Grey´s…” will be shot in the fall for TV Azteca at the custom-built set in Bogota, Colombia.

Disney aims to attract other European networks to make their versions of “The Golden Girls” in their purpose-built set in Madrid, just as they have centralized various Latino versions of “Desperate Housewives” in Buenos Aires, Argentina and “Grey´s…” in Bogota.

“We hope to emulate in Europe what we did in Latin America,” said Fernando Barbosa, Disney Media Networks senior VP for Latin America, U.S. Hispanic and Iberia. Barbosa expanded his purview to include Spain and Portugal just last March.

The first season of 13 one-hour weekly episodes of “Las Chicas de Oro” will debut in September.

In this laffer, Blanca (Blanche), played by Herrera, rents out rooms of her house in order to meet her mortgage payments. Rosa (Rose), played by Maura, and Velasco´s Doroti (Dorothy) answer her ad. Doroti´s mother Sofia (Sophia), played by Hermida, join them when her house burns down.

via ‘Golden Girls’ reborn in Spain – Entertainment News, International News, Media – Variety.

A mother bled to death when she fell over her handbag on to a glass in a Spanish bar, a coroner heard.

Expatriate Sally Feeley was enjoying a late-night hot chocolate with friends when she tripped over her handbag in a freak accident in Malaga.

The 42-year-old hairdresser fell back onto a table with one glass, which shattered and pierced her left armpit severing an major artery.

Friends frantically battled to stem the bleeding but Ms Feeley, who lived on the Costa del Sol with her 12-year-old son, died in hospital.

The inquest into her death heard from the dead woman´s friend Karen Thornton, who also lived in Spain.

She said” Three of us had gone out for a few drinks and by the time of the accident we were drinking hot chocolate.

“We were also chatting to an elderly couple who were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary.

“Sally stood up to say goodbye to somebody, but she tripped over a handbag and fell back onto a table with one glass.

“The glass smashed when she fell. I thought she would get up, but she did not. Everybody tried to stem the bleeding.”

Following the accident last October, a post-mortem examination was carried out in Spain, which found the 7cm cut severed a major blood vessel running under her armpit.

Birmingham´ assistant Deputy Coroner, Michael Snell, said: “I record that Sally Ann Feeley died as a result of an accident.

“She tripped and fell backwards onto a glass and received a severe stab injury. She died from a haemorrhage received from a laceration to the left armpit.”

Ms Feeley lived with her 12-year-old son Shea in Nerja, on the Costa del Sol.

The hairdresser had moved to Spain from Birmingham six years earlier.

Her brother, Steven Feeley, said: “She was very outgoing and very popular in Birmingham and Spain.

“She was a really nice girl. She´d do anything for anybody. She was really kind and considerate.

“The most important thing in her life was her son,” said Mr Feeley.

via Mother bleeds to death after tripping over handbag and landing on drinking glass | Mail Online.

The city had been under the occupation of Napoleon´s army since March 23 of the same year. King Charles IV had been forced to abdicate in favour of his son Ferdinand VII, and at the time of the uprising both were in the French city of Bayonne at the insistence of Napoleon. An attempt by the French general Joachim Murat to move the daughter and youngest son of Charles IV to Bayonne led to a popular rebellion that was harshly suppressed by French troops after hours of fierce street fighting. The uprising in Madrid, together with the subsequent proclamation as king of Napoleon's brother Joseph, provoked resistance across Spain to French rule.

Read more at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Spain´s King Juan Carlos and his wife Queen Sofia unveiled a bronze and aluminium plaque on the 1.3-kilometre avenue to mark the occasion.

Traffic on the Gran Via (“the Great Way”) was halted for the ceremony, also attended by Madrid Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon.

Work on the avenue began on April 4, 1910, under the reign of King Alphonso XIII, who wanted to make Madrid one of the great capitals of Europe, to rival Paris and London.

Hundreds of houses were demolished to create the broad boulevard, which traverses Madrid and connects the old and new parts of the city.

Known as Madrid´s “Broadway”, it includes most of the city´s theatres, the headquarters of many of the country´s financial institutions and features ornate neo-classical and art-deco buildings.

Hemingway lived in the Gran Via´s Hotel Florida when he worked as a correspondent during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War.

One of his favorite watering holes there was the Chicote bar, which later became popular with Spanish filmmakers Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar.

The Gran Via is also mentioned in his novel “The Sun Also Rises,” parts of which are set in Spain.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

via AFP: Madrid’s ‘Broadway’ marks 100 years.

Investigators believe that all of the blasts were caused by improvised explosive devices that were packed in backpacks and brought aboard the trains. The terrorists seem to have targeted Madrid´s Atocha Station, at or near which seven of the bombs were detonated. The other bombs were detonated aboard trains near the El Poso del Tio Raimundo and Santa Eugenia stations, most likely because of delays in the trains´ journeys on their way to Atocha. Three other bombs did not detonate as planned and were later found intact.

Many in Spain and around the world saw the attacks as retaliation for Spain's participation in the war in Iraq, where about 1,400 Spanish soldiers were stationed at the time. The attacks took place two days before a major Spanish election, in which anti-war Socialists swept to power.  The new government, led by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, removed Spanish troops from Iraq, with the last leaving the country in May 2004. A second bombing, of a track of the high-speed AVE train, was attempted on April 2, but was unsuccessful. The next day, Spanish police linked the occupants of an apartment in Leganes, south of Madrid, to the attacks. In the ensuing raid, seven suspects killed themselves and one Spanish special forces agent by setting off bombs in the apartment to avoid capture by the authorities. One other bomber is believed to have been killed in the train bombings and 29 were arrested. After a five-month-long trial in 2007, 21 people were convicted, although five of them, including Rabei Osman, the alleged ringleader, were later acquitted. In memory of the victims of the March 11 bombings, a memorial forest of olive and cypress trees was planted at the El Retiro park in Madrid, near the Atocha railway station.

via Terrorists bomb trains in Madrid — History.com This Day in History — 3/11/2004.

He was carrying 225 Europeans and a large number of natives he had enslaved, but very little gold.

He sailed with a bitter, heavy heart.

Galvez s flotilla survived a hurricane in harbor before initiating two months of constant artillery and cannon bombardment of the British forts. By April 23, reinforcements had arrived, increasing Galvez s total force to 7,800 and, on the morning of May 8, 1781, the 18-year British occupation of Pensacola, Florida, ended with a British surrender. The British lost 105 men; the Spanish lost 78. An additional 198 Spaniards were wounded. Spain took 1,113 prisoners and sent 300 Britons to Georgia on the promise that they would not reenter the British military.

Spain never officially signed an alliance with the American revolutionaries, as King Charles III was hesitant about the precedent he might be starting by encouraging the population of another empire to overthrow their monarch. However, Spain also wanted to regain Gibraltar in the Mediterranean and solidify control of its North American holdings, so it allied itself to France in the international war against Britain. As a result, Spain regained West Florida during the fighting and East Florida, which it exchanged for the Bahamas, in the final peace. Though Gibraltar remained in British control, Spain held all the land surrounding the Gulf of Mexico.

via Spanish siege of Pensacola begins — History.com This Day in History — 3/9/1781.

Part of the French Revolutionary Wars

The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states. Marked by French revolutionary fervour and military innovations, the campaigns saw the French Revolutionary Armies defeat a number of opposing coalitions and expand French control to the Low Countries, Italy, and the Rhineland. The wars involved enormous numbers of soldiers, mainly due to the application of modern mass conscription.

The French Revolutionary Wars are usually divided between the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the Second Coalition (1798–1801), although France was also at war with Great Britain continuously from 1793 to 1802. Hostilities ceased with the Treaty of Amiens (1802). For military events afterwards, see the Napoleonic Wars. Both conflicts together constitute what is sometimes referred to as the “Great French War.”

To read more about this, click here.

Spanish colonization of the Florida peninsula began at St. Augustine in 1565. The Spanish colonists enjoyed a brief period of relative stability before Florida came under attack from resentful Native Americans and ambitious English colonists to the north in the 17th century. Spain´s last-minute entry into the French and Indian War on the side of France cost it Florida, which the British acquired through the first Treaty of Paris in 1763. After 20 years of British rule, however, Florida was returned to Spain as part of the second Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution in 1783.

Spain´s hold on Florida was tenuous in the years after American independence, and numerous boundary disputes developed with the United States. In 1819, after years of negotiations, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams achieved a diplomatic coup with the signing of the Florida Purchase Treaty, which officially put Florida into U.S. hands at no cost beyond the U.S. assumption of some $5 million of claims by U.S. citizens against Spain. Formal U.S. occupation began in 1821, and General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, was appointed military governor. Florida was organized as a U.S. territory in 1822 and was admitted into the Union as a slave state in 1845.

via This Day in History 1819: The U.S. acquires Spanish Florida.

It will present the family of the poet, Miguel Hernandez, with an official letter rehabilitating his memory.

Hernandez was imprisoned as a traitor 70 years ago for supporting the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and died in prison at the age of 31.

The family applied for his rehabilitation under a 2007 law.

The decision to rehabilitate him comes as Spain marks the centenary of the poet´s birth with a series of events.

“We have always lived with this sadness, and finally we have cleansed his memory,” the poet´s daughter-in-law, Lucia Izquierdo, told the BBC.

“We wanted his image restored as a poet of the people, and a great man.”

“Onion Lullaby”

The family applied for the rehabilitation under Spain´s Historical Memory Law, passed in 2007 to recognise the victims on both sides of the Civil War, and during Franco´s rule.

Hernandez never took up arms, but he staunchly supported Republican forces

According to Spain´s justice ministry, 237 people had been recognised under the law out of 831 applications received up until October 2009, with 17 cases refused.

Ranked alongside Federico Garcia Lorca and others as one of Spain´s finest poets, Miguel Hernandez was from a poor, peasant family.

A staunch Republican, many of his poems depict the horror of the Civil War.

He was arrested and imprisoned in 1940, when his family say he refused on principle to sign a confession and apology in return for permission to go into exile.

“He was never a traitor, he was always on the side of justice,” Ms Izquierdo said. “It is frightening to think what they did to him.”

“He never took up arms, but they were against him because he defended Spain with his pen,” she added.

“His legacy is some of the most beautiful poetry we have. His unjust death deprived us of more.”

Gen Franco commuted the death penalty against the poet to a 30-year sentence, but Hernandez died soon after when he contracted tuberculosis, which went untreated in harsh prison conditions.

Many of the poet´s most moving works were written in prison, including the famous “Onion Lullaby”.

He addressed that poem to his wife when he learned she and their child were surviving on nothing but onions.

The poet's family did not request compensation from the state for his treatment, as it could under the 2007 law – only his rehabilitation.

They are now preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court to get the original death sentence against him annulled and clear the last black mark against his name.

via BBC News – Spain to recognise poet civil war Miguel Hernandez.