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The AVE tunnels under the Cabrera mountains in Sorbas are being sealed up, in order to protect them and save costs until work on the line can be restarted. ADIF, the railways operator, recognising that Almería probably won’t see a high speed train this decade, has decided the best thing to do is wall them up so it doesn’t have to worry about kids getting in, etc.
Jaén has finally mothballed its tram system, which cost the city 120 million euros, never carried a paying passenger, and in fact, never ever started running past initial trials. And nobody has lost their job, or even been censored. Amazing, isn´t it? It took a decade to build it, ripping up streets and laying lines through the city. It was finally finished in 2011, and the PSOE / IU run city council started running tests, Continue reading How Jaen spent 120 million euros on a tram which never worked
A very nice little Welcome to 2009 card (no mention of Christmas, just the new year) turns up in the post from Sevillana Endesa. It’s a third bigger than most Christmas cards, as it has an extra sheet, although 3 pages are blank and another just has a nonsensical, Dali style diagram on it. It waffles on about the sea, the mountains, the valleys, the flowers, the trees, the environment, the trees, you, me, him, Continue reading Irony and Sevillana Endesa
Juan Antonio Segura Vizcaino, PSOE Andalucian Spokesman has announced that the Almeria to Seville air bridge could be operation by 2009, with 60,000 passengers a year. It is expected to take 50 minutes (only takes 65 to Madrid or 130 to London; what sort of planes are they expecting to use?). One million euros has been allocated to start this up, together with another million euros put aside in case the airline makes a loss Continue reading Almeria-Seville Air Bridge could be operational by 2009
Step up those who bet on “30 days” and collect your winnings. That’s how long it took for FlySur (www.flysur.com), “Andalucias first airline” to cease operations. They were flying out of Cordoba airport with a single plane, to Barcelona, Vigo & Bilbao. It seems that Cordoba airport only has a “mobile” control tower, so when it was towed elsewhere, or if it was foggy, they had to land in Seville. This, as you can image, Continue reading FlySur goes bust – only took a month
A fun program currently running on Canal Sur (Andalucia) is an X-Factor style program, but for Coplas. A Copla, for those of you who don’t know, is a style of sung poetry put to music, usually flamenco style – very popular down south. I’m enjoying it! A load of young hopefuls are whittled down by a panel comprising of a moustached gitano who models himself on Simon Cowell (called Pive Amador, a name I hope Continue reading Se llama copla
I thought that this little prize would go to the Yank NBA player Doug Christie and his wife for spending $6000 buying some 3000 shares of failed insurance company AIG – they thought that the money would go to the company, rather then the investor who owned those shares before, and trumpeted this saying it was the duty of all patriotic Americans to buy stock in the company. A naive yet slightly charming story. (Read Continue reading Biggest waste of money this week