Mother of baby found in freezer goes free

Where it happened

TENERIFE The duty judge at a court that first looked into the matter of a baby found dead last Friday inside a freezer at its mother's home in the La Camella district of Tenerife. The woman, 33, was arrested on Saturday shortly after midnight, and charged with homicide. At the Guardia Civil station she said she had given birth to the child at her home, alone, at night, and she did not know if the baby had been born alive or not. The corpse was found with umbilical chord and placenta attached and no visible signs of violence. On releasing her, the judge said that he had to wait for the autopsy to be completed. The matter has caused much consternation in the media.

Clampdown on undeclared holiday rentals

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SPAIN Dinero negro is the Spanish term for 'under the counter' or 'illegal' money. There are some 120,000 undeclared summer rental properties in the country, which the central government has recently aimed big guns at under the aegis of the Ley de Medidas de Flexibilización y Fomento del Mercado del Alquiler de Viviendas, or the Measures of Flexibilisation and Development of the Property Rental Market Law, which came into effect on June 1 when it was published in the Official State Bulletin (BOE). The law has two basic objectives: to try to change the Spanish habit of property acquisition and encourage the more 'advanced' system of rental. The other objective is clearer, and probably easier to accomplish: the uncovering of illegal, or undeclared, summer rentals.>>>

302 years in jail for 'sex predator' karate teacher

CANARY ISLANDS/Las Palmas It is Spain's biggest paedophilia case ever and the principal defendant ended up with a jail sentence of 302 years after being found guilty recently of 35 counts of sexual abuse and another 13 of corruption of minors. However, Fernando Torres Baena can only serve a total of 20 years, according to Spanish law. His wife, María José González, and a friend Yvonne González were sentenced to 148 and 126 years respectively, but a fourth defendant, Juan Luis Benítez, also a monitor at Torres Baena's martial arts academy, was acquitted. (WARNING: the rest of this story contains material that may not be suitable for minors.)>>>

Cepsa buys out Chevron España

SPAIN / GIBRALTAR The Cepsa Group, which is wholly owned by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), has in turn bought out 100% of the shares of Chevron España. The operation means that Cepsa takes over the distribution of Chevron's petroleum products in the Canary Islands, Gibraltar and Portugal, as well as that ofaviation fuel on the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. Cepsa thus completes its  activities that ranges from production to distribution/retail, with a total of 64 service stations under the Texaco brand in the Canaries, a storage terminal at the port in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; the distribuition of lubricants throughout Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar, as well as other such businesses.

'I want a knife this big - I'm going to kill someone,' said Tenerife decapitator

CANARY ISLANDS/Tenerife (Agencies) Security cameras caught him looking wild-eyed as he held his hands wide apart and declared: ‘I want a knife this big – I’m going to kill someone.’ This was Deyan Valentinov Deyanov, the vagrant now in prison awaiting trial, over the beheading of a British grandmother in Tenerife. Footage shows him walking into the store in the resort of Los Cristianos and explaining what he was about to do. Unable to obtain a knife he left and went to a Chinese souvenir shop where, 20 minutes later, he snatched a knife from the shelf and attacked 60-year-old Jennifer Mills-Westley, stabbing her 14 times before running down the street carrying her severed head.> (Read More, and see more pictures: Daily Mail)

Tenerife decapitator in prison

Jennifer Mills-Westley

CANARY ISLANDS/Tenerife (Agencies) The alleged author of the decapitation of a British woman (photo) in Tenerife on Friday, Deyan Valentinov Deyanov, 28, Bulgarian, was remanded in custody without bail and accused of assassination. Deyanof was arrested shortly after he enetered a Chinese shop at the Valdés shopping center  in Los Cristianos, Arona, south of Tenerife, where he decapitated a 60 year old British woman, after which he ran out holding her head in his hands. The man has a long list of arrests for violence, and there appears to beno relation between him and his victim. Deyanof had tried to buy a large knife at a store, according to a report by TeleCinco TV, about which more, later.

Belgian students removed from Ryanair Canary Islands flight

CANARY ISLANDS/Lanzarote (Agencies) Spanish police were called in to remove over 100 Belgian students from a Ryanair Lanzarote-Belgium flight. A statement by Ryanair says that the university students became disruptive, and refused to comply with crew instructions after a number of their group were required to pay a gate bag fee for outsized luggage. Most of the students are now stranded in Lanzarote because other flights are either full or too expensive, although some of them were able to eventually find alternative flights, but about 70 of are still tranded.. Spanish newspaper La Provincia said airline staff had tried to charge one passenger extra for carry-on baggage and his friends on the plane "mutinied". A spokesman for the Spanish interior ministry said the pilot was preparing for takeoff at Guacimeta airport bound for Charleroi, Belgium, when she radioed for police assistance. The airline statement apologizes to the other 66 passengers for a 3-hour delay.