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A Catalan gentlemen, described as a “professional interrupter”, decided to join in Spain’s Eurovision song last night. About 20 secs in:

Well, the song isn’t as bad as last years Chiquiliquatre, but close…. still, kudos to the singer for not letting the Catalan put him off.

Frankly, it’s all Lenox’s fault.

If he didn’t write an interesting blog over at www.theentertaineronline.com,  the GF would never have found out about Raimundo Amador coming to Mojacar.

And if she hadn´t, I wouldn´t be going to listen to him tonight in Mojacar.

Shouldn´t be too crowded, my ticket numbers are 16 & 17. Might have a chance at winning the guitar they’re raffling off!

Old Conmendedor has been rabbiting on about it for months, and eventually it’s arrived:

http://www.turismodealmeria.org/

The all new interactive website for Almeria city.

Two points: First of all, far too many pages are still blank  (Informacion coming soon, that sort of thing), including the much vaunted “Almeriacard”, which was supposed to give tourists access to discounts (and also, no doubt, identify the tourists to the wily tradespeople of Almeria), and secondly, how come a tourism website is only in Spanish?

It’s nicely linked into twitter and facebook, tho’. Fine until the new webmaster decides he’s bored of Facebook and stop posting.

Worth pointing out that if you go to turismodealmeria.com (note the .com) you get a commercial website, which no doubt is anticipating many people forgetting the difference between .org and .com.

Mind you, I never knew that the Nazis gassed 142 Almerienses in their concentration camps. Says here that 252 people from Almería were sent there, and 142 were executed. A sombre pause for thought, although I doubt this statistic will do much for tourism. The monument dedicated to these men and women can be found in the Parque de las Almadrabillas (just next to the Cable Ingles).

Dad sent me these photos of the remains of a gigantic wasp / hornet / monster from Dr Who which he had a “titanic struggle” with, after coming across it in his tool shed.

“It was a nasty brute” reminisced Dad, “but the 12 bore took him out easily enough”.

If anyone knows what this is, or how prevalent they are in Turre, we would be grateful to know.

The Junta has called a press meeting to promise that the Almanzora motorway will be finished on time in early 2011.

Local residents became alarmed recently when, without warning, all works stopped on the motorway. A rumour quickly circulated that the funding had been pulled as part of ZP’s austerity measures, but this has been denied.

It seems that during the heavy rains of the winter, workers spotted that several parts of the motorway quickly became flooded.

As a result, a new survey has been commissioned in order to determine how best to deal with excess water on the motorway, and all works have been stopped until the survey is completed.

Work is expected to start “shortly” although with no firm date. The completion date is given as “end of 2010 – possible, early 2011″ (really, that’s what it says here!).

Meanwhile, local residents continue to have to suffer up a nasty little diversion and through the sleepy hamlets of this “delightful little Spanish valley”. Ah hem.

INE – the government number crunchers – have released their monthly tourism report for Almería. 85.115 tourists stayed in the province during March – 32,000 less than March 2007, 10,000 less than just two years ago. (source: Ideal)

What’s worse, as tourism figures pointed out, is that Easter, typically a strong period, fell during the end of this month.

Interestingly enough, out of these figures, 60.857 visitors were Spanish, and just 11.944 foriegn.

Actually, I’ve just been looking at the holiday figures for Almería, broken down into the four main holiday areas (Albox, for some reason, does not appear). Mojácar, for example, has had a better April than last year, but is still 50% down on 2006 figures. But the surprising thing is the difference between Spanish and foreign travellers for some area – in Roquetas del Mar, for example, just 1 in 10 of every tourist is a non-Spanish national. Hmm.

Hmm. Let’s graph this, for easy reading:

Well, Níjar is steady, but Roquetas seems to have seen the boom years come and gone – it’s now staying alive by being the Andalucian resort of choice for OAP’s on IMSERSO trips. 13 hotels affiliated to this scheme, last time I looked. Full board for 100€ a week? I’ll have some of that thank you – eh, Maria, look at all these guiri bars, I’ll stay well away from them, thank you.

Normally, when a bank collapses, you hear a lot about it. TV images of people queuing to get their money out. Maybe a riot.

Not, however, over the weekend when Cajasur, the savings bank owned and operated by the Catholic Chuch in Cordoba, quietly gave up the ghost after, amazingly, walking away from a rescue deal offered by Unicaja. Madrid quietly shut off the life support machine on Saturday, and a few grieving relatives had a boozeup in the local pub. All in all, a peaceful passing.

Cajasur, which has -had- a solvency level of just 3,67% on Saturday (far underneath the 8% minimum dictated by law), had been offered a nice deal by Unicaja in which the Cordoba Church got some shares and a director post. Seems this wasn’t enough for the Bishops, who, despite the deal having been accepted by Unicaja, walked away last week in the hope of upping the offer (officially, for “workers rights”, what ever that means).

Goodbye Unicaja, hello UniCajaSur (and a bit for the blighters in Cordoba Church too) posting from July 2009.

However, when their Holinesses went back to the State for another handout, they were shocked to find the door slammed in their face and administration proceedings launched against their Caja.

The Banco de España has forcibly taken control of the bank’s assets and fired the entire board of directors, including Reverend Santiago Gómez Sierra, the President of the Caja. A new board of administrators have been appointed to see how best to wind things up, and have a month to present a plan.

Griñán, via a Junta spokesperson, said that depositors (right, like they had any left), should “remain calm” and that the Banco de España had things in hand. It’s worth pointing out that after the collapse of Caja Castilla La Mancha CCM (later bought for a song by Unicaja) Madrid removed the right to administer bankrupt Caja’s from the regions and gave it to the Banco de España – I don’t think anyone told the Bishops this.

Cajasur represents 0’6% of the Spanish banking system. It lost about 336 million euros last year, and probably even more this year. Most of the money went on dodgy real estate deals that are still half built.

From El Mundo.

The collapse of the bank coincides with an IMF call for Spain to “urgently reform a “dysfunctional” labour market, and its banking sector.” (from the BBC).

On Friday night, a young 23 year lad called David Zamora, playing football in the local league at Turre old football stadium, collapsed and died during the match. He was pronounced dead at Huercal Overa hospital.

He had a small heart problem from birth, but lead a strict life and had a perfect bill of health. He was a regular player in the league.

I know his elder sister, and my heart goes out to his family.

Was anyone else secretly hoping that Unite boss Derek Simpson would be hit by a car as he lead his troops in a chorus of “We are the champions” outside the high court after winning the right to strike?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10130274.stm

God, even his tie looks like it’s stuck in the ’70s.

And so it takes place.
ZP’s massive cutting of public expenditure will affect the Almería AVE line, Minister of Development José Blanco announced last night.
6,400 million euros of public spending on public works is being slashed. The Ministry will be announcing in a few days which contracts, even ones already signed, will not be honoured.
As funds initially earmarked for the project will be reduced, the completion date for the line will be put back by one year. So instead of taking the train from Vera to Murcia in 2016, it’ll be 2017………..???
No news yet on whether this also affects the Almanzora motorway, on which works have stopped “pending a technical review after terrain issues” according to the Ministry of Public Works (they promised that work will restart in two months).
Also, Granada townhall claims that the cutting of public funds has sent it into bankruptcy, saying that 75% of the funds it was expecting have “vanished”. (El Ideal).