Costa Blanca and Costa Cálida News
New routes for a new airport
Road access planned for the new international airport at Corvera, have been designed handle over 18,500 vehicles a day and 3 million a year.
Two of the three are planned from the A-30, and the Murcia government is awaiting authorisation from the Development Ministry, after which work on the northern access is expected to start this October, with a completion period of 10 months.
Southern access will be from the MU-601.
The new airport will have a 45 metre-wide 3 kilometre runway, with capacity to handle 15,000 aircrafts a year. The airport is designed with an initial annual operating capacity of 1.5 million passengers.
New Commercial centre for Rojales
Work has started at the site of the new 30-million-euro shopping centre that is being built off CV-940 road between Rojales and Benijófer, near to the Sunday Zoccoro market.
The centre will have a Carrefour Express supermarket, a four-screen cinema, restaurants, bars, a bowling alley and a fitness studio along with other stores.
Bars and restaurants have been designed around a plaza with an area available for live music.
High Speed for Barcelona
The two major cities of Spain, Madrid and Barcelona have been connected by high speed train AVE. The service arrived on time at Barcelona in just two hours and 38 minutes exactly, ticket price 180 euros From this week onwards there will be 34 high speed trains a day, 17 each way from Madrid to Barcelona and vice versa. The AVE departed Atocha train station in Madrid and Sants in Barcelona at 06.00 crossing each other at 7.15 in Zaragoza. The cost of the AVE is 7 million euros. The train line is currently continuing towards the French boarder, and is expected to be complete by 2012.
New Promenade for Mazarrón
A brand-new esplanade has given a new face to the port of Mazarrón. Modernisation of the promenade including the placement of benches with a view of the port.
The new look has been praised by many the attractive design.
Unfortunately, as has happened in the past with similar projects in the Costas, red tape has meant it has not been officially opened, leaving many of the shops in the area unable to re-open.
Cleaning Up Torrevieja
A plan has been announced to renovate approximately 240 open public areas of the Torrevieja district encompassing an area of 2.5 million square metres, with the aid of an investment of 25.000.000 euros, also involving the development of new green areas
At present many of these so called green areas have become neglected and are not much better than rubbish tips.
Although council workers have been cleaning up the area for some time this new injection
can increase the number of people working on the green areas, which will be reformed, maintained and conserved.
The ‘plan verde’ scheme has been explained by mayor, Pedro Ángel Hernández Mateo, quoted as saying
" The ‘ambitious and important’ scheme would serve to change the image of many of the green areas".
Approximately 1.94 million euros will be set aside each year for the up-keep and rehabilitation of green areas, with 600,000 euros to be used for the creation of new zones which will have benches, play areas and gardens.
Sr. Hernández Mateo said the project to implement the ten-year plan will be out to tender in the near future.
Alicante get tough with litter louts
Alicante City Hall is planning a substantial increase in fines next year for littering the city’s streets. The minimum fine for dropping cigarette butts or other litter is set to go up from the current €6 to €100 when the new regulations come into force, once the bylaw has been passed by town hall.
Among €100 fines are dog fouling, washing cars on the public way, shaking rugs from windows or balconies, and for watering plant pots outside certain hours, putting waste in rubbish containers outside the times laid down, increasing to € 500 for failing to enclose it in a plastic bag.
Help for Torrevieja hospital
The HELP organization, with branches in Torrevieja and San Miguel de Salinas have made an agreement
with the new hospital for volunteers to visit inpatients three times a week. It is one of the problems for ex pats that the hospitals in Spain to not provide the level of care that we are used to in the United Kingdom. Families of patients are expected to carry out many of the functions and services that are provided by
nurses and auxiliaries in Britain. In addition most patients form the U.K. have not bothered to learn any Spanish, making it difficult to make requests of the nurses, leaving them lonely and vulnerable. Let us hope that the excellent service that HELP are offering may be extended so that they may make visits on any day of the week.
In addition to the hospital visits many patients are in need of help in looking after pets, the payment of bills etc.
Second Runway for San Javier airport
The government’s official bulletin (BOE) reported that the new control tower and landing strip at San Javier have already been finished and will be used by military aircraft.Previously civilian airlines had to share the single runway at San Javier with the air force, now budget operators such as Ryanair and Flybe will have their own runway.
It has been estimated that the number of passengers will treble by 2015 , however operators Aena cannot say when the new strip will come into operation.
Plan Agua
With Plan AGUA the government plans to have 22 desalination plants operating along the Mediterranean coast, several of which are already finished and in use.Costa Blanca, Costa Cálida residents and holidaymakers will be given a leaflet explaining the desalination process, the quality of the water obtained and details of the government’s Plan AGUA
The Plan will guarantee drinking water for eight and a half million people that live in these coastal regions.
New hand held computers for the Guardia Civil
After completing trials on the hand-held PRIDE (Programa de Informatizacíon de Denuncias) devices in the province of Segovia,DGT it wa announced that as from 2008 the equipment will be used nationwide.
PRIDE units will allow Guardia Civil officers to report traffic offences on the spot and motorists who are fined can pay using a credit card thanks to the units’ magnetic band reader.
Officers will also have immediate access to the driver and vehicles details and records on the PRIDE unit screen.
The Guardia Civil will need at least five hundred units to cover the whole of Spain.
The units will be connected to the central computer system via a global positioning system provided by a major mobile phone company.
NATIONAL PROPERTY LAW
Came into force on July 1st 2007.
This law is intended to clean up the Spanish property industry, hopefully putting and end to the land in grabbing by greedy developers and corrupt council officials, especially in the provinces of Valencia and Murcia.
The new law covers three main areas: Land legal system, Property valuation and most importantly Citizens rights and duties.
The law specifically addresses the urban sprawl and is concerned with sustainable managed growth and the protection of the environment.
Transparency is the key, it now being against the law not to make public the details of exactly who will benefit from any re-classification of land and also ensuring that public officials having links to property developers or a particular piece of land, will be obliged to disclose this publicly as part of the planning process.
The law expressly rules on: ownership rights, land owner's obligations, the right to have a decent home and the right of citizens to participate in urban planning proceedings.
Hopefully this will put an end to alcaldes (mayors) becoming millionaires overnight, having been bribed to illegally authorize the re-classification of rural land (this should only be authorized by regional or national government, not local) and the grabbing of land from individual house owners to make an urbanization, charging them for infrastructure they do not want or need, quite the reverse of compensating them, which would be the norm in most countries.
New "Audiovisual without Frontiers" Directive
The new rules, which have been called for especially by the European Parliament, are a response to technological developments and create a new level-playing field in Europe for emerging audiovisual media services (video on demand, mobile TV, audiovisual services on digital TV).
European TV- and filmmakers will be given more flexibility to produce digital content which they can then make freely available to consumers thanks to advertising. The new Directive reaffirms the pillars of Europe's audiovisual model, which are cultural diversity, protection of minors, consumer protection, media pluralism, and the fight against racial and religious hatred,. The Commission also proposes to ensure the independence of national media regulators.
The consolidated text of the new Directive will now go into a second reading by the European Parliament and Council
Consumers today have a much wider choice of TV and TV-style content, such as sports and premium film content, delivered via a huge variety of digital cable and satellite channels. And choice doesn’t just mean zapping among channels. Today’s consumers use their TVs to interact with broadcasters in ways unheard of in 1989, such as choosing content that they like, voting, competing in TV shows, and contributing to charities. Besides interacting via
traditional television, many consumers now choose to buy “video on demand”, delivered via cable, fibre or digital subscriber line. The growth of Internet Protocol TV in many countries is driven by demand for premium content, for which consumers are willing to pay. Other emerging technologies, such as mobile web streaming, are also expected to transform the audiovisual media services market in the coming years.
Europe needs to address today the rules devised for one-to-many broadcasting that are being rendered obsolete by the shift to one-to-one, on-demand services. For the European Commission, according to our principle of better regulation, enhanced end-user control means less need for regulation, which is why the heart of our proposal for a new, modernised Television without Frontiers directive is a substantial deregulation of audiovisual rules.
In addition, the European Commission sees a need for creating a fair regulatory framework and a level playing field for all audiovisual media services.
It is believed that this proposed reform of the EU’s audiovisual rules, which has undergone extensive consultations over the past two years with audiovisual content providers, internet service providers, telecom operators and other interested parties, ensures that wherever possible, red tape is removed, existing rules are made more flexible and co-regulation and self-regulation become the prominent means of implementation. At the same time, vital features of the Television without Frontiers Directive have been reaffirmed: protecting children from harmful content and human dignity from racial hatred; safeguarding consumer interests; facilitating access to our shared cultural heritage for artists, entrepreneurs and consumers; recognising that advertising is the financial basis of a strong and diverse “free to air” audiovisual sector; and promoting pluralism of audiovisual media by encouraging cross-frontier content provision. I expect a constructive dialogue on the Commission proposal in the months to come, in particular with the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which will now deliberate, in the further legislative process, on the future of Television without Frontiers in the EU.
SO THERE WILL BE NO NEED FOR THAT ENORMOUS 2.4 METRE DISH TO RECEIVE FREE TO AIR PROGRAMMES FROM THE U.K. IN SPAIN, INCLUDING I.T.V. AND B.B.C.
No more Residence Cards in Spain for ex pats
The British Embassy in Madrid has advised of new legislation that has removed the requirement of residence cards for EU citizens in Spain. The new decree establishes a requirement for British Nationals and other EU citizens planning to reside in Spain to register with Spanish authorities. Royal Decree (240/2007), approved on the 16th February 2007 by the Spanish Council of Ministers, establishes that from the 28th March 2007, European Union citizens will no longer be issued with residence cards. However, the new decree requires all EU citizens planning to reside in Spain for more than three months to register in person at the Foreigners' Office (Oficina de Extranjeros) in their province of residence or at designated police stations. They will be issued a certificate stating their name, address, nationality, identity number and date of registration.
EU citizens in Spain who already have residence cards will not need to re-register until their residence card expires when they will be issued with a certificate.
The Royal Decree 240/2007 is a transposition of European Directive 2004/38/EC to Spanish legislation and more information on the new requirements will be available on the Spanish Ministry of Interior's website www.mir.es in due course.
The British Embassy in Madrid has recommended that Britons carry identification with them at all times in Spain.