Don’t you just love the Daily Mail?

I quote

British holidaymakers heading to Spain are being warned to take extra care as the country prepares to be hit by a killer heat wave.

Scorching winds from Saharan Africa with temperatures of 43C are forecast to sweep across the country from tomorrow and are expected to last for a week.

The worst affected areas will be Andalucia and Murciain in southern Spain, but even the normally cooler areas of the north will have temperatures of at least 38 C in the shade.

Note the totally unnecessary emphatic expressions:” killer heat wave” and “scorching winds” and where in Spain is Murciain supposed to be, surely they mean Murcia.

I’d rather go to more reliable sources for weather information like AEMET who are predicting temperatures of 34 during the daytime and 21 at night – much the same as we would expect at this time of year.

A problem in the making

When AENA built the new terminal at Alicante, they predicted a growth in passenger numbers of up to 11 million per year.

So far, that has not materialised mainly because Ryanair, who were the main user of the airport, cut services when they were forced to pay for air bridges to load and offload passengers. However passenger numbers are now rising and so the target is getting ever closer to being met.

If passenger numbers continue to rise, then we will have a major problem because access to the airport via the N-338 will become woefully inadequate. The Institute for Economic Studies in Alicante says that, passengers to the airport combined with events at the future Palacio Ferial at IFA will cause immense traffic problems for the N-338 which they say urgently needs widening.

There are also calls for improvements to alternative means of transport including more bus services and a rail link. 

Back to the bad old days

In the bad old days, workers would queue up at the factory gates or the docks hoping to get a days work. It didn’t just happen in Britain, the practice was common here in Bigastro where workers would assemble at the corner by La Caixa bank hoping to be picked for a job in the fields.

As times improved and legislation was introduced, workers rights abolished those sort of practices. However, we are in a global recession and employers demand more flexibility to control their workforce.

So, in Britain at least, we are seeing the emergence of so called “zero hour” contracts.Sports Direct apparently employs 20,000 staff on this type of contract and have been lambasted by elements of the press for doing so.

However, it seems Sports Direct are not alone in offering this type of contract; Buckingham Palace, Cineworld and the Tate Gallery operate a similar system with no guarantee of working hours. No doubt there are many more companies in Britain that operate the same system for a flexible workforce.

How on earth anyone can live not knowing whether they will have work from one day to the next beats me. 

A lot of responsibility for just a few

According to the list on the town’s web site Aurelio Murcia had responsibility for: Urbanismo, Educación, Fiestas Patronales y Barrios, Cementerio, Sanidad y Salud Pública, Consumo and Camping and Fernando Moya had responsibility for: Obras, Servicios, Mantenimiento, Infraestructuras and Ecoparque.

We know, from the pronouncement made in the press that Charo Bañuls will take over responsibility for Planning and Works and Services and Sonia Belmonte will cover Education and Health but what of the other areas? They may be minor in comparison but if the PP councillors are already working at capacity, how will they cope?

The deed is done

In the past I described the alliance between the PP and the UPLC in Bigastro as unholy and it was. Given that Aurelio Murcia was dismissed from the PP before the 2011 elections in favour of Charo Bañuls, it is hardly surprising that the two did not see eye to eye on many issues. As politicians, they are very different in style. Still, she was Mayor and he was Deputy and so they tried to work together.

That was until Murcia attempted to rally the Socialists, led by Raul Valerio Medina, into a motion of censure. The Socialists were having none of it, the wounds between the PSOE and Murcia are deeper than those between Murcia and the PP.

The final blow came when Murcia told the press that he worked harder than the mayor and so should command a higher salary. For Bañuls that was a step too far and so she asked her local party if she could expel the two Liberal councillors from the government team. The local executive of the PP gave her their unanimous support.

What does that mean?

Bañuls says that she will assume responsibility for Planning and Works and Services whilst Sonia Belmonte, who will be Deputy Mayor, will take on Education and Health. Aurelio Murcia and Fernando Moya will loose both status and their salaries from August.

This whole business could not come at a worse time for the PP who now only have the support of their five councillors  against the eight in opposition. Their three million euro austerity plan will have a rough ride through council. An alternative of a further three million euro loan is being considered.

You can bet that Murcia, Moya and the PSOE will fight either plan point by point and may even decide to force a censure vote which could topple the present administration.

We know that Murcia is a very astute politician who would not risk his and his colleagues future on a whim. I would therefore not be surprised to discover that there a long term plan underlying his recent announcements to the press. Bañuls says that the door is still open to a reformation of the pact between the PP and the UPLC. If that happens, I imagine it will be very much on Murcia’s terms because, as things stand, I would say that she needs his support more than he needs hers.

The mayor fights back

The mayor of Bigastro, Charo Bañuls  could not let the remarks made by Aurelio Murcia to the press go by. Nor could she ignore the motion of censure that he was negotiating with the Socialists. As for a change to salaries – that would be impossible. She attributes Murcia’s claims about  popularity with the people to his responsibility for maintenance. People stop him in the market to complain about things like cracks in the road.

Charo Bañuls  says that the pact between the PP and the UPLC is completely broken and that the responsibilities covered by the two Liberal councillors should now be undertaken by PP members. If her provincial party leaders accept the proposal it would mean that the PP would have to govern Bigastro in a minority.

We have to remember that, in the 2011 elections,  the PSOE won 45% of the votes and have 6 seats on the council against 34% and 5 seats for the PP. At council meetings, the PP on its own would loose every vote to the Socialists. However, I think we can safely rule out a pact between the Socialists and the UPLC who together would have a clear majority.

If the wounds are not healed, then Bigastro faces two years with nothing being decided by a council that is split in three.

More problems for the Rock

The dispute over Gibraltar continues.

Last month, Spanish police on a Guardia Civil boat took pot shots at a jet ski that was close to the beach. It is not clear whether the boat had inadvertently strayed in Spanish waters or not.

David Cameron apparently confronted Mariano Rajoy over the ‘unacceptable’ threats made to Gibraltar following the jet ski incident. He warned the Spanish Prime Minister that he would not tolerate breaches of international law.

Last week, Spanish fishermen attempted to disrupt the creation of an artificial reef in the Bay of Gibraltar by weaving in between the Royal Navy boats. The large concrete blocks are being laid to protect sea life but of course they will also prevent illegal trawling by the fishermen in British waters.

The latest move is to stop every vehicle that leaves Gibraltar. The other day, 10,000 vehicles were held for up to six hours in 30 degree of heat. The Gibraltar police have been forced to create diversion and holding pens for the vehicles.

Although, Spain sees taking over Gibraltar as a very lucrative proposition, Gibraltarians have made it clear many times that they do not want to surrender their status to become part of Spain.

The price of progress

Schools in Britain are adopting the iPad and other similar tablets as a means to make learning more interesting. Many schools though cannot afford to supply the devices from their own budgets and so are asking parents to stump up the cost either outright or in instalments. The fear is that this will create a digital divide between those that can afford and those that cannot.

One of the reasons that schools are looking to tablet computers is supposedly to save on text books which are both expensive and are often out of date by the time they are published. However, they may find the tablets turn out to be a lot more expensive than old fashioned books. 

Better off schools, like academies, can afford to buy the tablets themselves. For example, Honywood community science school in Essex gave all its 1,200 pupils a tablet computer for free, although it did ask for a £50 contribution towards insurance. The cost was estimated at around £500,000.

What they found was that 489 of the tablets had to be replaced after a year and four out of 10 needed to be sent for repairs. I imagine that teaching a class where four out of ten of the pupils didn’t have a working tablet must have been extremely difficult.

Actually, what surprises me about this story is that an insurance company was willing to cover the tablets for just £50 especially if that included accidental damage.

I remember that we supplied our sixth form pupils at Anfield (age 17 to 19) with laptops at Anfield. By the end of the year, some had gone missing i.e. had been sold off to pawn shops, many had keys missing and all had to be reformatted to remove the virus ridden games and  even porn that had been downloaded to them. Supplying tablets to the whole school would have been a nightmare for the IT technicians – even servicing the teachers laptops gave them bad dreams.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Bigastro City Council has just taken out another bank loan for 122,000 euros to cover the payment of overdue invoices to suppliers including the 90,000 that was owed to the Fire Consortium.

The  Mayor tells us that the council now has a total of three bank loans totalling 3,722 million euros. The money is needed to pay part of the town’s debt much of which she says was "inherited" from the previous socialist government.

Mick at 70

As he was	recently at Glastonbury

The only consolation for Mick Jagger must be that Keith Richards looks worse!

Murcia’s son

The PSOE spokesman, Raul Valerio Medina, claims that Aurelio Murcia used his position on the council to secure one of the temporary jobs for his son. In reply, Murcia says that his son met the requirements of Servef and had the same rights as anyone else. He added that, during his time at City Hall. Medina did nothing to reduce the council workforce even though the coffers were empty.

As the temperature rises, so do the tempers!

Tension in the council

When Aurelio Murcia became the leader of the PP party, his hope was that they would gain the majority vote at the 2007 elections and he would become mayor. In fact, the Socialists were returned to power with an increase in votes.

In opposition, Murcia was a fierce and sometimes outrageous opponent - especially once Raul Valerio Medina replaced the disgraced Joaquin Moya as mayor. The PP clearly  regarded Murcia as a loose cannon and therefore decided to drop him and elect the more acceptable Charo Bañuls as their leader in a bid to oust the Socialists at the 2011 elections.

Murcia went on to form his own Liberal Centrist party which gained two seats on the council. Since neither the Socialists nor the conservative PP had sufficient votes to hold a majority, an unholy alliance was formed between the UPLC and the PP. Although Bañuls  was elected mayor, it is clear to all who was really pulling the strings down at the town hall. Murcia says that, whilst the mayor can walk through the Thursday market without a second glance, it takes him more than an hour because he is being constantly stopped by people. He claims that it is to him that people come to air their grievances and it is he that solves their problems –not the mayor. In other words, she carries the “cane” of office but he and his fellow councillor do all the work.

Two years on, Aurelio Murcia (UPLC) explains that the mayor is paid 2,000 euros per month and he gets 1,500. In fact, in the first year of office,  Murcia says he claimed nothing. It was only in the second year that he started to receive payments.

The proposal that he has made to the press is that the mayor should accept a reduction of 800 euros per month to allow an increase in his salary of 500 euros and that of his fellow UPLC councillor 300 euros. Their respective monthly salaries would then be; Aurelio Murcia – 2,000 euros,  Fernando Moya - 1,500 euros and Charo Bañuls – 1,200 euros.

As you can imagine, this will go down like a lead balloon with the PP and only serve to increase tensions between the partners in government. 

Still not clear

Now we know where to buy our tickets from and we know that it all kicks off at 7pm but we are still not clear what the Gran Prix is all about.

It will take place on Saturday 10th outside Perales y Ferrer and it looks like there will be bulls involved but more than that “no se”.

Flex those wrists

You need a sharp eye and fast wrist action to be any good at table football. I am hopeless at the game but I do know that a lot of bigastrese are experts. Expect to find them in action at the Disco Pub on the 29th of this month at 9pm. 

Bring on the new games

A literal translation of this poster might lead you to think that this is a competition for tapes  which it is but we need a bit more explanation than that.

From my research it seems that a “Carrera de Cintas” is in fact a a bit like a jousting competition. Previously this might have taken place on horses but these days it is bicycles that the competitors ride.

The aim is to ride along and collect as many ribbons as you can using a pole to catch them. The ribbons are attached to a wire stretched across the path.

Sounds like it could be a lot of fun and well worth a photo or two.

The driver: 'I want to die. I fucked up '

The engineer of the Alvia  train that crashed just outside Santiago de Compostela  killing 80 said he wanted to die.

The two black boxes from the train are yet to be investigated. However, from the transcripts of conversations between the driver and control, along with video footage, it is clear that the train was going too fast for the bend.

Although he has not been arrested as yet, the driver has been detained by the police pending a statement from him.

The question is, “why was an experienced driver travelling at such speed?” The answer might lie in the fact that the train was apparently late and I understand that RENFE policy is to repay the train fare to passengers when a train is overdue.

A chance for work

The Bigastro band are looking for an administrator to work between 5pm and 9pm two days per week starting in September. 

A tragedy caused by speed

Early reports suggest that the horrific train crash at Santiago de Compostela could have been caused by the driver “overcooking” a bend. The train is suspected of travelling at 180kms per hour when it should have been limited to 80km per hour and all because it was apparently  five minutes late.

We often see drivers on the roads here take similar risks - even passing other cars on bends where they should show more caution. 

Sadly, we live in a world where speed is king. Everything has to be faster so that we can get on with our lives without having to wait. On this occasion though, at least 77 people paid the ultimate price and over 130 have suffered injuries out of a total of 247 that were on the train. I’m sure the relatives of the victims would rather have seen their loved ones a little late than not at all.

The old terminal

Since the opening of the new terminal at El Altet, you may have wondered just what was going to happen to the old building which actually is not that old.

The Alicante company Aerovillage, with support from foreign investors, have submitted plans for a 40 million euro project to the Spanish airport authority, AENA. Their aim is to build a 40,000 square metre area with 109 shops, restaurants and a hotel along with an indoor karting track, flight, skiing and racing simulators.

Although the plan was conceived back in 2011, AENA have not reached a decision about it.

Fascinating to see

In the lobby of the Auditorium Francisco Grau is an exhibition of programmes from the local fiestas Patronales de San Joaquín dating back to the 1930s. The books have been donated by Joaquín María Pérez Moya.

They describe the social history of the town and the changes that have occurred over the years. I hope that digitised copies will be available on the town’s web site for us to look at in the future.