ALL WEEK ALICANTE MARQ Archaeological museum – Exhibition – “Deltebre I. History of a shipwreck” displaying artefacts rescued from a British navy ship which was sunk in the mouth of the Ebro in 1813 (until January 11, 2015). Exhibition – Art and archaeology from the Chinese Han Dynasty, 206 BC – 220 AD. Exhibition – […]
The new leader of the Socialist Party (PSOE) in Spain, Pedro Sanchez has promised that he will get the country back on its feet.
He made the statement in front of a packed house of over 3,000 party delegates, on the final day of the Extraordinary Congress held in Madrid last Sunday.
Until just a few months ago Sanchez, a 42 year old economist, was virtually unknown but in the recent leadership contest to replace Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, he polled 49 percent of the votes cast by 130,000 party members putting clear distance between himself and Basque lawmaker Eduardo Madina, who finished second with 36 percent. That primary result was also ratified on Saturday at the same extraordinary congress.
During his inaugural speech, Sanchez said he was “exasperated, angry, hurt” after six years of “unprecedented” economic crisis but that he would lead the party back to power and get the crisis-hit country “back on track”.
He also vowed that he would scrap a labour law reform introduced by the ruling Popular Party that makes it cheaper and easier to fire workers.
A tall, married father of two nicknamed “El Guapo” or “The Handsome One”, Sanchez has cast himself as a fresh face for the party and would appear to be a credible challenger to the conservative Popular Party (PP) which ousted the Socialists from power in a crushing November 2011 election defeat.
With General elections due next year Sanchez has to overcome criticism of how their last government handled an economic crisis sparked by the collapse of a property boom in 2008 that has left one in four out of work.
While Sanchez’s election to the leadership of the party by a wide margin was a relief for the Socialists, who had feared a divisive, and potentially confrontational contest, political analysts said it was too soon to tell whether he can reverse the party’s fortunes.
“Pedro’s Sanchez’s election is a breath of fresh air for the Socialists. But as of now it is nothing more than that,” political analyst Carlos Elordi wrote in an opinion article published recently in a daily newspaper.
“Nothing guarantees that it will last. The Socialists’ many problems can drown him within weeks,” he said.
Sanchez has a master’s degree in politics and economics from a Belgian university. He served as a top aide to the head of a UN high representative during the war in Kosovo.
Last Monday Sanchez met with Mariano Rayoy, at the Moncloa Palace, where the country’s leader expressed the importance and his intention that the pair maintain fluid and on-going dialogue on the various issues of common interest.
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/44454/
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The National Police have arrested 27 people for ‘clocking’, winding back the speedometers, at a number of car dealerships in Spain. The arrests are said to have taken place at garages in Madrid, Toledo, Ciudad Real, Jaen and Alicante
Three of th…
Four palm trees have snapped and fallen over in recent days due to the weight of the weight of the fruit that they bear, the most recent last Thursday afternoon at the Colegio Público Fernando de Loaces causing breakage of the centre’s aircon and heating ducting.
Although there were no injuries locals are saying that over a hundred trees have fallen over since late last year and many now present a very real danger to passers by.
Already there have been several incidents of palm trees that fall in streets abd around public buildings with one collapsing at the entrance of the Bernardo Ruiz sports centre destroying a number of fence posts.
The Department of Environmental asay they are working as fast as they can to remove palm trees and dates to prevent them falling, however the locals complain that this work is long . They say that it should have been carried out in May and now the palms may suffer damage and attract the red weevil beetle plague.
If pruning had occurred when it should have there would not be so much weight and they would not fall down, “they said. Residents complain that there have always been such incidents with palm trees “but not as many as there are now” although the Environmental Department say that the current drought is partly to blame, especially those in many privately owned areas that are not irrigated.
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Thirty young members of the PP spent their day cleaning up el Canal del Acequión at the weekend from the mouth of the canal along la Playa del Acequión, as far as the bridge at la Avenida Gregorio Marañón
In total they picked up over three thousand kilos of scrap and waste, items such as plastics, cans, clothing, glass, wood, metal, broken signs, office equipment, televisions and even household blinds.
Most of the items were simply dumped at the site, apparently by members of the public who have little, or no regard for the environment, although a small amount may well have ended up in the area as a result of being taken there by the rain or wind, “said one of the youngsters.
The Channel Acequión and its surroundings are part of the Natural Park of the Lagunas de La Mata and Torrevieja, so it is important that the area it kept clean, and as such all of the waste collected was removed. There were a number of concrete stones left behind however but only because they were beginning to accumulate some items of marine life , bryozoans, sea urchins, clams, cockles and other similar species.
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Over 14,000 people visited the Second Torrevieja Military Model Exhibition that was held last month at the Sala Vista Alegre, making it one of the most popular exhibitions held in the town in recent years
The Councillor for Culture, Luis María Pizana, expressed his satisfaction at the large attendance saying there was a total of 14,321 people who visited the exhibition organized by the Municipal Institute of Culture “Joaquin Chapaprieta” together with the Spanish Association of Military Modelling of Torrevieja.
Pizana said that in just two years of it’s existence the exhibition has become one of the most popular amongst tourists and residents alike.
In this second edition he made mention of the special collaboration of the Military Corps of the Royal Guard, which provided a great many of the exhibits for the exhibition.
A total of 80 people worked hard to set the exhibition up, assembling over 500 exhibits, amongst which were vehicles of the ground forces, military aircraft, Spanish navy ships, motorcycles from the National Police, a car similar to those used by the Royal Guard, Radio control tanks, 20 complete uniforms and a very interesting collection of model soldiers.
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La Unidad Fox is a Police Unit set up in Alicante to target illegal street vendors who deal in the sale of merchandising, be it sunglasses, bags, clothing or DVD’s, that may have been faked. In the last 12 months they have seized and destroyed over 130…
Whatever the time of the year the crisis continues to hit those families most at risk and for those with children who rely for their main meal of the day that free lunchtime school dinner the long summer holidays are a time of particular hardship.
So …
While speaking at the 2nd International Forum on Public Employment Policies, the PRIME Minister Mariano Rajoy said that the structural reforms and the “enormous effort” made by Spanish society as a whole have managed to achieve a cycle change in the labour market and the start of net job creation.
Based on the data from the Labour Force Survey (EPA) for the second quarter of 2014, Rajoy stressed that the Spanish economy has created 402,400 jobs in the last three months – the highest increase in employment in a single quarter since 2005.
“You can rest assured that I have been waiting a long time – since I took office as President of the Government, – to be able to give you news such as this that am giving you here today”, he said at the official opening of the Forum, which was held in Madrid on 24 and 25 July, and attended by high-ranking officials from almost 50 countries as well as national and international experts.
When considering the recent figures, added the President of the Government, the EPA data “confirm that this improvement in the Spanish labour market is not a temporary phenomenon but rather structural in nature, and that the efforts made by the Spanish people as a whole and the reforms by the Government of Spain are producing results”. The relationship between economic activity and employment, he said, “is currently the best it has ever been in the history of Spain” given that “net employment has never been created with low levels of economic growth. We have stopped the rot”, he said.
The President of the Government underlined three major aspects of the growth in employment: the increase in permanent employment by 180,200, the highest in a second quarter of the year since 2007; the increase in private employment, with 393,500 more people in work than in the first quarter of the year; and the growth in full-time employment by 304,400.
As regards unemployment, this figure has fallen by 310,400 in the last three months, “an unprecedented reduction in the records kept by the Spanish National Statistics Institute”, said Mariano Rajoy. When compared with the same period last year, the number of unemployed has fallen by 424,500. “We have managed to stop the rot: unemployment has gone from an increase of 12.5% when we approved the labour reform to a reduction of 7% in this second quarter of the year”, he said.
Rajoy believes these “are positive figures” but “with an unemployment rate that is still over 24% of our labour force – over 50% among our young people, there is still a lot more to be done”. He argued that this task falls on the public authorities, business leaders, workers and the social stakeholders, whom he encouraged to renew the collective bargaining agreement they approved two years ago and that “has been tremendously useful” in combating unemployment.
As regards the Government of Spain, he explained that it will continue working on the labour market reforms – especially in terms of the active employment policies – with such measures as the Annual Employment Plans and the Spanish Activation Strategy 2014-2016, the Employment and Self-Employment Portal – which is already offering 85,000 jobs – and a new regulatory framework for Vocational Training as a means to improve the employability of workers and the competitiveness of companies, which will be available “soon”.
The Prime Minister believes that “one of the best ways to know a society is to ask oneself what opportunities it offers to its citizens, how it treats those in the worst situation and how it tries to include those who have been excluded”. Offering job opportunities to those who seek work will continue to be the priority for the Government of Spain “because the impact of the crisis on unemployment has helped us see, more clearly than ever, that employment is the social policy par excellence, the veritable backbone, of our welfare system”, he said.
In this regard, Rajoy highlighted the importance of combating youth unemployment, putting an end to duality in the labour market, fostering equality between men and women at work and offering “new incentives to those at risk of being excluded”.
“A society cannot be truly more prosperous if it is not a fairer society, a country cannot progress if its citizens are not progressing, and this magnificent future project that is Spain will only succeed if it is one on which we all work together, pulling in the same direction”, he concluded.
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We all have those days when things seem to go wrong, without any reason at all. This was supposed to be a special day. It was the day when I was returning to the island of La Gomera, which is one of my favourite Canary Islands.
It was going to be a pa…