Spanish News Today Editors Roundup Weekly Bulletin Jan 12
FEATURED ARTICLES: "Spain brings back obligatory face mask rule for hospitals and health centres" and "The low emissions rules which will finally come into force in 2024"
Hi, all! A Happy New Year to you (it’s still acceptable to say that since it’s the first time after the new year has begun, right?).
Welcome back, we’ve returned with the first edition of our Editor’s Roundup Weekly Bulletin for 2024. How was your Christmas break?
Let’s see… what happened while we were away? Well, mainly nothing because it seems that Spain basically closes down for two whole weeks between Christmas Eve and the Three Kings. Yes, it was a slow one for news, for sure, but we’ve still got the usual mix of stories for you in this week’s bulletin, digging into some of the bigger issues that are affecting the foreign community in Spain right now and covering a selection of stories from the southern and eastern areas of Murcia, Alicante and Andalucía.
By the way, 2024 is the year that Murcia Today turns 15 years old! The Spaniards call it the ‘edad del pavo’ or the ‘age of the turkey’, when teenagers become… well, typical teenagers, with all the grumbling, self-consciousness and rebelliousness that that entails. Don’t worry, Murcia Today is not about to go full Kevin on you. We’re just committed to carrying on with our usual high-quality reporting of the stories that matter most to our community of expats, second-home owners, holidaymakers and anyone who is interested in Spain and loves the country.
Without further ado, then, let’s dive in to the bigger stories in Spain right now:
Coronavirus
Masks have once again become a common feature across Spain. No, you haven’t entered the Twilight Zone or time travelled into the past, but the government feels it’s necessary to reintroduce this anti-Covid safety measure to stem the massive upsurge in respiratory illnesses, particularly Influenza A.
From Wednesday January 10, masks are mandatory for everyone – patients, workers, visitors – in hospitals and health centres, a rule that will likely be reviewed in a couple of weeks when the fly season reaches its peak. For the time being, other health settings like pharmacies and residential care homes aren’t included.
Many regions railed against this blast from the past, suggesting that the government may be jumping the gun by reintroducing such a restrictive measure that we last saw at the tail-end of the pandemic, but the figures really are frightening.
Last week, hospitals reported 35% more admissions than the same time last year and that number is expected to continue rising until around the third week of January.
The situation has deteriorated across Spain to the extent that hospitals are actually running out of beds, according to the head of the Emergency Department at the Reina Sofia in Murcia. And in La Paz University Hospital in Madrid, one health care professional revealed that 105 patients are currently waiting to be admitted, while beds are piled up in double rows in the hallways.
Head of the Ministry of Health, Mónica García, argued that the reintroduction of facemasks in hospitals, emergency rooms and health centres is “an effective, common-sense rule, supported by scientific evidence and well received by the general public.”
Not only masks, but vaccines too. They are not obligatory, of course, and never have been, but regional government bodies around the country are expediting the procedures for people to get vaccinated against both flu and Covid – in one single jab – without the need to make a prior appointment.
This is the case in the Region of Murcia, for instance, where, as of this Friday, all Murcia residents can get their jab, regardless of age, profession or health status. Previously, the jabs were only being offered to people deemed to be in at-risk groups, that is young children, the elderly and the immunocompromised.
Low Emission Zones
The Spanish government has been fairly lenient so far on regions who haven’t implemented Low Emission Zones or ZBEs (‘Zonas de Bajas Emisiones’ in Spanish), but the crunch time has arrived and several towns and cities across the country plan to roll-out the new rules sometime this year.
Low Emission Zones are part of the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law approved by the Spanish government in 2021 which seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality in city centres by limiting access to the most polluting cars. Kind of like the ULEZ in London.
Essentially, all municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, which encompasses 149 cities and large towns, will have to set up ZBEs. Furthermore, Low Emission Zones are required in regions with more than 20,000 residents but which exceed the maximum pollution levels.
The likes of Madrid and Barcelona were way ahead of the game, excluding the most polluting vehicles from their city centres before the rule ever came into effect.
Others have since followed suit, including Sevilla, Córdoba, A Coruña, Badalona, Pamplona, Zaragoza, Estepona and La Línea de la Concepción, while the Madrid municipalities of Rivas-Vaciamadrid and Torrejón de Ardoz have recently joined the list.
In fact, the Spanish capital is taking it a step further this year and cars without an environmental label won’t be allowed to drive anywhere in municipality.
However, the majority of regions are still in the planning phase and currently developing their Low Emission Zones, presumably with the aim of having them up and running sometime in 2024.
These include Lugo, Valladolid, Bilbao, Girona, Cáceres, Málaga, Melilla, Palma de Mallorca and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, among others.
While the Costa del Sol might be a bit late to the party, works are steaming ahead at the moment and Málaga expects to have implemented its ZBE by the end of March at the latest.
The good news for drivers is that the City Council is calling the first 12 months a “landing” year so although the zone will be clearly marked and signposted, there won’t be any restrictions on vehicles until the spring of 2025.
After that, Malaga will gradually exclude the most polluting vehicles fro its city centre, beginning with limitations on vehicles with ‘B’ environmental labels and those with no environmental labels, and on from there.
There is one very important restriction that will come into play as soon as the ZBE is deployed, will be at the end of March at the latest, and this affects the most polluting vehicles – those with a ‘B’ environmental label and cars with no label at all.
Any B label or no-label vehicles registered in Malaga after the Low Emission Zone comes into force will be banned from the city centre outright. However, if the car is bought before the ZBE is established and it’s domiciled in Malaga, it will be allowed to circulate just like all other vehicles.
You can check here for the Málaga streets which will be part of the new Low Emission Zone. You can also see which cities have implemented their Low Emission Zones, as well as those in the process of establishing them, on the website of the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
Don’t forget to join our Driving in Spain Facebook group for all the latest motoring, travel and transport updates!
New Murcia and Valencia motorway
Perhaps the story that has people in the southeast of Spain most excited this week is the news that a new stretch of motorway has been opened between Yecla and the Valencian municipality of Fuente La Higuera, passing by Caudete in Albacete.
With the full opening of the road, the A-33, the quickest route north to Alicante and the rest of the Valencian Community from Murcia city and Cartagena is now via Jumilla and Yecla. Previously, drivers had to go via the A-7 coastal road, which is 46 kilometres longer and takes 25 minutes longer from Yecla to Fuente La Higuera than the new road does.
Murcia
January and February are normally a quieter time in the Region of Murcia. Not so many people flying over to visit in these cooler months. Not much going on after most of the Town Halls have blown their budgets on the New Year’s and Three Kinags celebrations.
But the government of the Region has committed itself to improving public services and mobility to and from the airport even at this time of year. Of course, there is a significantly reduced flight roster in autumn and winter, but the few flights that there are are still generally packed out and those out-of-season passengers need public transport links to allow them to get to their final destinations.
That’s why a new temporary airport bus service has been launched as of this Friday that will run until the end of March, when the summer flight season begins. Every Monday and Friday, there will be buses connecting Corvera Airport with Murcia city bus station and Cartagena bus station.
From both of these bus stations, it is easy enough to get onward tickets to San Javier, Mazarrón and other parts of the Region. Tickets to ride the airport bus cost €1.85 and to be honest most of the flights that will coincide with the bus times are domestic flights within Spain, although there will be some international flights that will benefit from it.
The scheme has only cost the Ministry of Development the modest sum of 22,591 euros, and there is no reason why it cannot become a regular feature at the airport, year-round. In fact, for the summer flight season which begins in April 2024, the Regional government has promised an expanded public transport system, which could either mean more direct destinations from the airport or that this same bus will just run at more times and on more than just two days a week. We’ll have to wait a couple of months to find out.
Also in the skies, it has been announced by the Spanish Air and Space Force that, once again, military manoeuvres will be conducted from the air base in Albacete at the end of this month. These are the periodic drills that they do with supersonic fighter jets, so we can expect more loud and scary bangs as the planes break the sound barrier.
This time around, the war games will be taking place from Monday January 29 to Thursday February 8. Out of consideration for the general public, they will limit the supersonic flights to weekdays between 3.30pm and 5.30pm.
Before that, though, you may see other weird flying saucer-like shapes in the skies over southern Murcia this weekend. This strange-looking circle suspended from a helicopter is actually a helicopter time-domain electromagnetic aircraft (HELITEM for short) which will survey the lands of Lorca, Mazarrón, Águilas and Totana below. The aim of the Guadalentín HELITEM geophysics survey is to examine the ground from above to detect any abnormal concentrations of minerals in the earth as a way to predict volcanic or hydrothermal activities. Fairly run of the mill stuff, really, but it looks cool from the ground.On a tragic sort of note, the search continues for a 15-year-old Murcia boy who went missing after falling into the waters of the Mar Menor last Friday, January 5.
Rescue services and volunteers from Los Alcázares and Cartagena have been using all the means at their disposal, from dinghies to drones, to search on land and water for young Petrov, who disappeared after he fell off a kayak which it appears he stole with a couple of friends on the night in question.
When the stolen boat capsized, his two accomplices managed to get to safety but Petrov was not so lucky. The circumstances surrounding the theft and the accident have understandably taken a backseat as authorities prioritise the search for the missing teen.
Check out our EVENTS DIARY for stuff to do in the Region of Murcia:
Spain
The coasts of northern Spain were dusted white this week… but not from snow or hail. It turns out that a huge tanker accidentally spilled some of its cargo into the sea near Portugal, and one of these containers was filled with bags of plastic pellets. These bags split open and the currents washed them up into the Spanish beaches.
You’ll remember that last October, the EU issued a blanket ban on certain microplastics like loose glitter. That’s because when these particles make their way into the soil or water, they don’t degrade and so continue to pollute the environment indefinitely. They destroy marine environments, kill animals that ingest them and can even end up in the human food chain.
While the Spanish government initially tried to contain the problem of the spillage off the coasts of Galicia and Asturias, and even downplay its significance, the European Commission (EC) quickly refuted claims that the particles aren’t “toxic or dangerous”.Instead, Brussels is insistent that the pellets are extremely harmful to the natural environment and could even put humans at risk.
The Environmental Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into this pellet contamination but in the meantime, local volunteers in Galicia and Asturias have taken to the beaches with buckets to collect the dangerous particles by hand.
Good news for people who regularly travel by bus and coach as this week the government confirmed that they will continue to subsidise the cost of all public buses and Metros, so tickets will remain at least 30% cheaper throughout 2024.
Last year, almost all of Spain’s regional governments kicked in an additional 20% to bring the total discount up to 50%. If they refuse to do so again this year then bus trips will be a little more expensive than what passengers have become accustomed to, but still 30% lower than the full price.
This is in addition to the continuation of the discount scheme on light overground rail Cercanías trains and Medium Distance Renfe trains for regular commuter travel, which began in September 2022 and are slated to continue for at least the next 12 months and which are becoming something of a permanent (and very welcome!) feature of life for people in Spain.
With the summer season far behind us, thankfully stories of balcony falls and drunken tourists wreaking havoc for the Spanish authorities have eased off considerably. But thousands of British holidaymakers are still flocking to Spain every day, even during the winter months, and one plane-full of UK travellers was part of a grim drama last week when a man was found dead mid-flight.
The Jet2 flight carrying tourists home to Manchester from Tenerife was well underway when a couple of passengers noticed that one of the toilets had been locked for a really long time. They raised the alarm with cabin crew, who forced the cubicle door open, only to discover an unresponsive male inside.
Jet2 staff did their best to resuscitate the traveller, but there was sadly nothing they could do to save his life.
The flight to the UK was diverted to Cork so the man’s body could be taken off the plane. After landing in southern Ireland, passengers had to wait at the airport while another plane was prepared for them. The flight was originally due to land in Manchester at 8.30pm but it eventually touched down at 1.30am.
Alicante
Levante beach has to be one of the most fantastic stretches of coastline on the Costa Blanca, if not all of Spain, its white shores snaking through the tourist hub of Benidorm. But for years now this sandy paradise has been spoiled by a foul sewage smell wafting up from the degraded water pipes buried along the front line.
The problem is two-fold: the wastewater system is really old, decades old, so if it’s over-burdened at all it leaks. Secondly, the pipes haven’t be set at a steep enough slope, so when there’s heavy rain or floods, the stinky effluence gets backed up, overflows, and spills onto the beach and adjoining Avenida de Madrid.
But thankfully the problem has now been solved and with an investment of 94,710 euros, the damaged section of the wastewater pipes right in front of Levante beach has been replaced.
This project will soon be complemented by another action that has been “highly demanded for years,” according to Councillor José Ramón González de Zárate.
“It will be carried out when the flow of wastewater is the lowest possible and will consist of changing all the old pumping stations on Avenida del Mediterráneo to Ametlla de Mar, thereby improving not only energy savings but also economic savings and preventing these waters from ending up on the beach,” he explained.
The charm of Alicante’s Orihuela Costa continues to grow and each year, thousands of visitors flock to this sunny corner of Spain, with many choosing to make one of its beachside towns their permanent or second home.
Located along the busy N-332, just a stone’s throw away from San Pedro del Pinatar and the bustling neighbourhoods of Cabo Roig and La Zenia, Dehesa de Campoamor is one of the oldest urbanisations on the Orihuela Costa and is home to a multitude of nationalities.
To cater for the growing population, Murcian company Petrogo has submitted plans to develop a new low-cost filling station complete with supermarket, car wash and laundry service on an abandoned plot in the popular Orihuela Costa district of Campoamor. The facilities will be built on the site of the old headquarters of ‘Chiringuitos del Sol’, the former managers of the area’s beach bars.At the moment, there is a Cepsa garage on Calle Salvador Rueda next to the Las Villas restaurant, but this is much smaller than the new complex planned for the site at Miguel de Cervantes Avenue 1.
This expansion into Alicante province should go a long way to alleviating pressure along the dual carriageway during the summer months in particular, but the additional facilities will also be welcomed by this thriving and diverse community.
Andalucía
Málaga Airport is now the third busiest in Spain and last November, it surpassed 20 million passengers for the first time in its 104-year history. With demand for the Costa del Sol expected to continue to grow, big plans are underway to upgrade the airport to accommodate the huge influx.Spain’s airport operator Aena is taking charge of the upgrade and has hired specialist company Aertec to design the improvements.
Last year, the powers that be toyed with the idea of building a whole new terminal but this was dismissed in favour of expanding the current T3. When the work is completed, Málaga airport will have the capacity to cope with around 35 million passengers each year.
New shops, restaurants and leisure services will also fill the increased floor space.
Aertec expects the initial phase of the airport’s functional design work to be completed before the end of the first quarter.
Given the sheer size of the autonomous community of Andalucía and its popularity with holidaymakers from all over the world, the lack of efficient public transport, particularly in coastal areas, is somewhat baffling. Now, the regional government is determined to correct this shortfall, and is examining a proposal for a train line connecting Málaga with the favourite resort of Marbella.
The new trains would complement the current service provided by the Cercanías line between Málaga and Fuengirola, and experts believe the new Marbella route would attract between 34 and 46 million passengers every year.
Furthermore, the state-of-the-art trains, capable of travelling about 160 kilometres per hour, would complete the non-stop route from the Airport to Marbella in 22 minutes and in almost an hour if it makes stops in the different locations along the way.
The bad news is that the preliminary study estimates that the service will take around eight years to get up and running, and the initial budget has been placed at between 2.5 and 2.7 billion euros.
You may have missed…
- VAT on olive oil eliminated as prices reach all-time high in Spain.
Spain is removing all VAT on olive oil as a cost-of-living measure following dramatic price rises. - Mobile and internet providers across Spain increase prices.
In response to unstable inflation, telephone and mobile operators in Spain will begin hiking up their monthly charges this year. Movistar and Vodafone are leading the trend, although all of the other major companies are expected to follow suit. - The title of European Green Capital passes from Tallinn to Valencia.
Valencia will be the European Green Capital of 2024! Expect lots of eco and enviro events and activities to follow in Spain’s third largest city this year. - Is your home waterproofed ahead of the rainy season?
It’s easy to forget, when the weather is as dry and lovely as this, just how bad it can get in the spring. Head off any potential damage that could happen to your property when the rainy season comes by getting your flat roof waterproofed now. - Timetable changes on Murcia-Madrid high-speed trains from January 15.
Several AVE high-speed train schedules linking Murcia and Madrid, in addition to Intercity connections in the South and Levante corridors, will be subject to changes from Monday January 15. Most trains leaving Murcia for the Spanish capital will take between 5 and 12 minutes longer than usual.
And that’s all she (or we) wrote. Thanks for coming back for another year and continuing to read this little roundup week in, week out. We’ll be back next week for more.
See ya then!
