Girona fire under control at last

(Photo: EFE)

Burned for four days, four dead, several injured

CATALONIA / Girona (Agencies) A fire that is reported as having started three days ago thanks to some idiot throwing a lit cigarette butt in a parking lot, spread alarmingly because of high winds in the AltaAmpurdá area of the province of Girona. Although there was a break in the wind yesterday morning, it came up again in the afternoon, but overnight work by the fire brigades and areal units finally brought it under control by early this morning. The father and daughter>>>

20 tons of nickel stolen in Algeciras, recovered in Catalonia

Scrapped nickel (illustration only)

Gang of Eastern Europeans and Spaniards
ALGECIRAS (Agencies) The Mossos d'Esquadra (regional police of Catalonia), in cooperation with the Guardia Civil, have recovered 20 tons of nickel that had been stolen in Algeciras last year. Also recovered at a scrapyard in Sant Adrià de Besòs, near Barcelona, are 35 tons of copper and other metals, as well as three luxury vehicles and two large-cylinder motorbikes (one of them a custom-built Harley valued at €35,000), plus several heavy vehicles used in transporting the metal and stolen from several businesses all over the country. A total of 27 people have been arrested in the operation so far -more are expected- of whom 15 are accused of stealing the metal and the heavy vehicles needed for transport, and the rest of distributing or selling it. Sources report that the gang is made up of people from Eastern Europe -allegedly doing the stealing- and the rest are Spanish, allegedly receiving it.

Catalan candidate insults Andalucía and is forced to 'explain'

Josep Antoni Durán i Lleida

CATALUÑA / ANDALUCÍA There have always been what might as well be called racial or class tensions between Catalonia (NE Spain, capital: Barcelona) and Andalucía and Extremadura. North of the divide, Andalusian workers are considered lazy and too fond of fiestas. South of it, the Catalans are seen as slave drivers, tight with the money (that is the perception of Catalonia in the rest of Spain as well). These are just some of the epithets they occasionally throw at each other. This is one such occasion. The candidate for President of the Government (i.e. Prime Minister, this being a constitutional monarchy), Josep Durán i Lleida, of the CiU nationalist party, said at his party's conference on Saturday ,"No hay derecho a que mientras un agricultor catalán no puede coger alguna fruta porque no le sale a cuenta, en otros sitios de España, con nuestra contribución, reciben un PER para que pasen el resto de la jornada en el bar de su pueblo."  Or:>>>

Resort tries to escape cheap (mainly British) tourism trap

Photo: Gerard Kota

LLORET DE MAR/Catalonia (El Pais / R.Carranco/A.Castedo/R.T.)  A young woman in dangerously high heels wanders around the center of Lloret de Mar handing out flyers for a nightclub. "It's the only fashionable place in town," she tells tourists. "There's a lot of security, Spanish music and they don't let drunk people in." Lloret, a town of 40,000 inhabitants, has 25 discos, 27 music bars, seven nightclubs, 261 watering holes and 31,222 hotel beds. Last year, more than a million people visited the town, which recorded over five million overnight stays. According to the National Statistics Institute, 3,200 people were employed in the hotel sector in Lloret last summer. These are positive figures in times of economic woe. The other side of the coin is the pitched battles between police and young revellers, which last week erupted throughout Lloret.>>>

Catalan seaside resort descends into violence

Photo: GERARD KOTA

CATALONIA (El Pais) Twenty-two people were injured, including nine police officers, as violence erupted in Lloret de Mar for a second time this week in the early hours of Thursday morning. Twenty arrests were made after trouble flared at around 2am, when one of the town's nightclubs, Megadisco Colossos, experienced a power outage. Electricity was restored through a generator but the output was not sufficient to run the air-conditioning, leading to the opening of emergency exits. Groups of youngsters outside tried to enter via the main doors, which were being guarded by police as the venue, with a capacity of 1,800, was already full. Disturbances ensued between hundreds of club-goers as the police arrived in force.>>>

Four killed as gunman goes on rampage

Police outside the bar/Europa Sur

OLOT/Girona (Agencies) A man armed with a shotgun killed four people this morning, two in a bar in La Canya, near Olot (Girona) and two in a bank branch in Olot itself.  He gave himself up to local police immediately after the second killings. According to the police, the incident began shortly after 8am when the suspect, 57-year-old Pere P.P., went into a bar in the centre of La Canya and shot dead two men - a father and son, who owned the construction company where the suspect worked. Police say that the double homicide was motivated by money as the construction company owed the man a large amount of back pay. After the shoot-out in the bar, the suspect then went by car to the Olot branch of the Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo (CAM) and barely ten minutes after the first murders, killed the bank manager and a young woman employed in the branch. The police had already reacted to the emergency calls received after the first shootings, but were unable to stop the gunman before he carried out his second two killings.

Catalonia Parlament votes to ban bullfighting

(BBC / Photo: JimenaPulse file, of 2007 Feria in Jimena) The parliament of Catalonia has voted to ban bullfighting - the first region of mainland Spain to do so. The vote took place as the result of a petition brought to parliament, signed by 180,000 people who say the practice is barbaric and outdated. Bullfight supporters insist that the corrida, as it is known, is an important tradition to preserve. They also fear the vote could be the first of many in the country. The ban takes effect in January 2012. In today's vote, 68 backed a ban, 55 voted against and nine abstained.>

Catalonia 'referendum', a damp squib

(Agencies) Voters turned out yesterday in 166 municipalities of Cataluña in a non-binding 'referendum' aimed at putting pressure on the central government in negotiations for a new Estatut ('statute' in Catalan). Only 30% of those able to vote did so, 200,000 of 700,000 and considerably less than the 50% turnout for a referendum on the Estatut throughout Cataluña in 2006. Of these, the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of independence from Spain. However, most of the national media points out that the 166 municipalities were chosen for their 'independence approval' numbers, and, of course, the referendum has 'no legal validity whatsoever'.