Two British tour operators who come to Spain go bust

 

Two British tour operators who bring tourists to Spain have gone bust. Romano Travel ceased operations on October 26, a day after Airborn Limited. Romano Travel specialized in package holidays to Spain and Turkey and had been operating for 30 years. There were no more than half of dozen or so pending bookings from the Buckinghamshire firm which was fully protected with an ATOL licence and was a member of ABTA. Airborn Limited operated as Airborn Direct and Holiday Hero, and was based in Romford, Essex. It sold packages to Spain, Cyprus and Turkey, and sold its products to other operators. The CAA says there are many clients who have purchased flights with the firm using a credit card, and these flights should be operating normally. If in doubt passengers can confirm with the airline.

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Spain no longer the main destination for Brit's second homes

 

A new survey carried out by the HomeAway holiday rentals company and real estate group Savills International has concluded that Spain is no longer the first choice among the Brits for their second residence. 1,700 British property buyers were questioned. More Britons now prefer France because of its better economic stability and the moderation in its house prices. 40% of Brits who buy in Spain later rent out the property, sometimes obtaining an income of as much as 34,500 € a year, but 24% still say that Spain is the place they have chosen for retirement. Despite the change away from purchasing a second home, Spain continues to be the most popular holiday destination for the Brits. In France, Italy and Switzerland the British purchasers usually opt for restored old properties, while in the United States, Cyprus and also in Spain and Portugal, they tend to go for more modern or new constructions.

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Malaga on the Mediterranean coast, in the Southern Spanish region of Andalucia, was the city you avoided

The city of Malaga on the Mediterranean coast, in the Southern Spanish region of Andalucia, was the city you avoided. An industrial port encircled by a tired ring of Franco-era low-rise apartment buildings, it was always the city tourists dashed by on their way to Torremolinos or Marbella further down the Costa Del Sol.

Being out of favor from the 1970s onwards – when torrid overbuilding ruined the Spanish coast – has served Malaga well, and the tired city around the old port has gone through a revival in recent years: The pedestrian-only squares and streets are washed clean, filled with a mix of fashionable shops selling Ermenegildo Zegna suits and Omega watches, and old men hawking lotto tickets and blanched Andalucian almonds wrapped in paper cones—all in the shadow of the city’s baroque cathedral where the 17th century choir stalls are carved from mahogany and cedar.

The city is still no great beauty, but its unpretentious charm stems from the fact it remains a middle-class working port. The first night I arrived I dined on a plate ofpata negra (thinly-cut slices of cured ham, with a rich marble of fat, made from black pigs that feed on acorns) and some grilled sea bream served with French-cut beans. As I drank my copa de vino tinto, contentedly observing the town’s life from the sidewalk café, a guitar-banging gypsy dashed by, twitchy as a heroin addict, followed by an old man selling to local tapas bars the snails slowly crawling the walls of his white bucket.

Two newly-opened institutions have greatly contributed to Malaga’s cultural revival. The crowd-puller is the Picasso Museum, and I am sure it is a lovely collection, but, in all honesty, I couldn’t bear to see yet another second-tier Picasso Museum. (The Spanish painter, for all his greatness, would have benefitted considerably from being a little less prolific.)

My interest was, however, very much piqued by the new museum housing the collection of Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon.

The Thyssen family, dating back to the 17th century, famously made their fortune supplying the industrializing German state with steel. But they were also great collectors of art, and the late Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza aggressively added works to his father’s stacks of Old Masters until the family’s 1,600-strong collection became the second largest private art collection in the world, second only to the British Royal Family Collection.

Ranging from Hans Holbein to Edward Hopper, the collection was originally housed in the family’s Villa Favorita in Lugano, Switzerland. (The Thyssen family left Germany for Switzerland in the 1930s.) In the mid 1980s, however, the Swiss unwisely barred the baron from expanding his museum at Villa Favorita—they were unimpressed he wanted to show more of his collection to the public.

Enter Spain. In 1985 the baron married his 5th wife, Carmen Cervera, a former Miss Cataluna, just as his battle with Swiss small-mindedness was heating up. The Catalan beauty was instrumental in getting her husband to move his art collection to more flexible Spain, where it now sits in its own museum next to the Prado in Madrid.

But Baroness Carmen Thyssen herself began collecting in the late 1980s, all under her husband’s tutelage, and she focused on Andalucian art of the mid-19th to early 20th century. It was this collection, critically praised throughout Spain when it was first exhibited in the late 1990s, which was squirreled away in the newly-converted palace called the Museo CarmenThyssen Málaga.

The mid-19th century Andalucian works in the collection were largely painted for middle-class European tourists of the day who wanted to return to London and Paris with reminders of their Andalucian holidays. So the first floor of the museum is devoted to these so-calledColumbrista painters, and provides a panoply of chocolate box scenes of idealized Andalucian landscape romanticism: sultry gypsy dancers and battling bandoleros in mountain caves and young fishermen wooing flower girls.

But as the 19th century progresses, so does the sophistication of the paintings. Two paintings in particular stayed with me long afterwards: the dark Columbrista painting of 1851 by the Frenchman, Alfred Dehodencq, painted for the duke occupying the Palace of San Telmo. It’s of a procession through the town during Holy Week. Hooded monks, like an all-black vision of the Ku Klux Klan, are the candle-carrying advance guard of the Mater Dolorosa, and they walk a gauntlet of rapturous women in black mantillas. Powerful stuff.

Later, in 1867, the Spaniard Mariàno Fortuny Marsal painted a bullfight with quick, almost impressionistic brushstrokes that seems to foreshadow what is yet to come in the art world. Called Exquisite Realism, or the Précieux Style, the intense brushstrokes of the “Bullfight” give a blurry sense of speed and movement at the breath-holding moment when a gored picador is carried dying from the ring and another picador is trying to weaken the bull with the hard thrust of his lance. It’s hard to tell who is going to live or die, and it’s a very modern work, in a 19th century way.

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Five arrested for road rage attack in Madrid

 

National Police have arrested five people, two of them underage, for a brutal road rage attack in a tunnel on the M-30 motorway in September. They were taken into custody after they were identified on video footage from security cameras in the tunnel. The aggressors were travelling in two vehicles on the evening of September 17, and were seen on film chasing another car into the tunnel, speeding ahead and cutting across it to bring it to a halt. The eight occupants of the two cars are then seen getting out of their vehicles and dragging the three people travelling in the third car out onto the roadway. They are beaten and kicked, and their car is vandalised. Some personal items were also stolen and one of the victims was stabbed in the back. The reason for the attack was because the victims had criticised their assailants for a dangerous manoeuvre a few kilometres previously. The Interior Ministry released news of the five arrests this week, and said the search continues to locate the three other suspects involved.

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32 arrests in luxury car scam in Spain

 

National Police in Spain have arrested 32 people accused of stealing 25 vehicles worth over a million € from counties such as Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland, to be sold on in Spain. The sale of the vehicles were helped by official dealers and the gang even had the collaboration of workers at several ITV/MOT centres which issued certificates to say the vehicles had no signs of being manipulated. The Ministry of the Interior says that the gang was made up mainly of Hungarians, Romanians and Spaniards, and the vehicles were sold on with false documents in dealers in Madrid, Santander, Tarragona, Castellón, Valencia, Alicante, Cuenca, Almería, Córdoba, Jaén and Granada.

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Spain's first private airport goes bust

 

Spain’s first private airport has closed. The Ciudad Real Airport was opened in December 2008, considering that it could act as a Madrid overflow for residents in the south, but that just has not happened. The very last flight, operated by Vueling and with just 45 passengers, took off for Barcelona on Saturday at 2,45pm. The airline lasted less than a year at the Ciudad Real airport which has been dogged by bad luck from the start. It had problems with the environmental agency in 2005 as it is located in a special bird protection area, there were complaints that as much as 50% of the building works were illegal, it needed a continued supply of capital, and the intervention of the Bank of Spain in the CCM Castilla La Mancha savings bank revealed more irregularities. The airport closes with the company, CR Aeropuertos, owing its creditors more than 290 million €. It opened with debts of 1.7 million, and a poster declaring ‘Our dreams take off’, can still be seen in the Cuidad Real City Hall. The airport had hoped to attract seven million passengers a year, and managed to attract the airlines, Air Nostrum, Air Berlin and Vueling, with the attraction of a AVE high speed train station at its door, and one of the longest runways in Europe, but the facility never attracted more than 500,000 travellers in the first year. It was not long before some flights had more crew than passengers. There has been a rash of private airport projects in Spain, started during the economic boom, and there were six projects in total in Cataluña, Aragón, Valencia, Murcia, Andalucía and in Ciudad Real. Only one has opened, and today, has now closed for business.

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Man stabs three people to death in Valencia

 

A man has stabbed three people to death and injured another two in a hamlet close to Valencia. It happened in Castellar-Oliverar to the south of the city on Friday night at about 9pm. A 48 year old is reported to be very seriously hurt and is in the intensive care unit of the La Fe Hospital. Another 44 year old man has injuries to his back and head, and is stable in the General Hospital. Two of the dead are father and his 13 year old son, while the third is a female pensioner. 33 year old local resident and neighbour to the dead and injured, named as J.P., has been arrested in connection with the triple homicide. Municipal sources say the man carried out his attacks in several flats connected to the stairway of his block after ringing the door bells. A local policeman then saw the man in the street, covered in blood, and asking what had happened. It seems that the case is linked to a dispute between the neighbours, and it is still unclear if the attacker is related in any way to the victims. Several neighbours have described him as ‘a normal man’ who was married and had a young daughter and who had never caused any problems.

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Qantas grounds all flights

 

Australia’s Qantas Airways grounded its entire fleet on Saturday over a bitter labour dispute in an unprecedented move that prompted the government to warn it feared for the airline’s future and would seek action to end the dispute. EDITOR’S CHOICE Strikes cost A$15m-a week in lost sales - Oct-28 US airlines earnings hit by fuel costs - Oct-27 Lufthansa scales back passenger forecasts - Oct-27 Virgin eyes tie-up with Etihad on BMI - Oct-14 Qantas overhauls lossmaking international operations - Aug-16 Qantas said it would lock out all employees from Monday night in a dispute affecting 70,000 passengers and 600 flights on one of the country’s biggest travel weekends. The grounding does not affect Qantas’ budget airline Jetstar or code-share flights on other airlines. Passengers will get a full refund for flights cancelled due to the industrial action, Qantas said on its website. Customers can also rebook their flights for a later date. The announcement took passengers and the government by surprise, embarrassing Prime Minister Julia Gillard who was hosting a Commonwealth leaders summit in Perth. Some of those leaders are booked to fly home on Sunday with Qantas. Unions, from pilots to caterers, have taken strike action since September over pay and opposing Qantas plans to cut its soaring costs, as it looks at setting up two new airlines in Asia and cutting back financially draining long-haul flights. “They are trashing our strategy and our brand. They are deliberately destabilising the company. Customers are now fleeing from us,” Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce said.

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Fresh appeal launched to find man living abroad accused of murdering Nantwich man

 

NEW appeal has been launched to capture a man wanted in connection with the murder of a Stapeley market trader. Christopher Guest More, 33, of Lymm, near Warrington, is one of 10 individuals wanted in the latest campaign being run by Crimestoppers and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). He is suspected to have been part of a gang involved in the torture and murder of market trader and cannabis farmer Brian Waters, who was killed in a barn in Tabley, near Knutsford, in June 2003. Three of his alleged accomplices, Otis Lee Matthews, James Stuart Raven and John Godfrey Wilson, received life sentences for their part in the brutal attack. More is also sought in connection with the attempted murder of Suleman Razak and for the alleged false imprisonment and assault of other victims present during the incident. It is believed he fled to Spain just 24 hours after the incident. The appeal is part of crime charity Crimestoppers’ ‘Operation Captura’ campaign, which is trying to locate wanted criminals abroad. Crimestoppers’ regional manager Gary Murray, said: “This extremely heinous crime saw an individual lose their life and the person responsible needs to be tried for their actions. “I’d urge anyone with information to contact Crimestoppers on our 0800 555 111 number or use our online form on our website – we guarantee your anonymity.” Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Smith said: “Eight years on, we still remain determined and committed to finding and arresting Christopher More for his alleged involvement in the brutal murder of Brian Waters. “Cheshire Police will not close this case until the family of Brian Waters sees justice done.”

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'My limbs may fail me but my heart and soul will carry me through.' Those are the words that bring to an end another grueling training session at Luis' Scorpion Gym in Marbella.

'My limbs may fail me but my heart and soul will carry me through.'

Those are the words that bring to an end another grueling training session at Luis' Scorpion Gym in Marbella.

Now it's time to refuel before a brief rest. 'Train, eat, sleep, repeat' is another well-used refrain in Spain.

In training: Khalid Ismail trades blows with boxer Terry Dunstan in Marbella

Khalid Ismail, 31, one of Britain's best mixed martial artists, is in Marbella for a week-long training camp, which can include two sessions during the day.

 

It is part of a 16-week programme designed to get him in shape for his forthcoming fight.

 

Ismail has an team of nine, each with a specific job. From his diet to counting the number of punches during a session, nothing is left to chance.

 

Fortunately, Ismail embraces the training with obvious vigour. 'The competition side is brilliant,' he says. 'But I'm only going to be in the cage for 15 minutes so I have to love the training that goes into it. The fight is the icing on the cake.'

 

Fifteen minutes might be pushing it; Ismail's last fight lasted a mere seven seconds. Is it worth it even then? 'Yes. It's like passing an exam. You’ve done the hard work and the fight is the exam. As long as you’ve given 100 per cent, it's worth it.'

High regard: Ismail is regarded as one of Britain's leading mixed martial artists

 

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a sport that continues to divide opinion. 

Branded brutal, violent and a form of 'human cockfighting', you don't have to go far to find a vociferous opponent.

 

But for Ismail, these observations are merely misconceptions.

  

'Any combat sport looks brutal from the outside but MMA is an art. There are so many different elements to it. It’s a skilled event with the most primed athletes in the world. It takes things from other sports so you're getting a new type of athlete.'

 

Specifically, an MMA fight can include aspects of boxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, kickboxing, karate and judo.

A study has shown that the number of injuries are in line with other combat sports.

 

MMA has grown exponentially in America and Ismail believes it's only a matter of time before it has the same effect on these shores.

 

'I think MMA is going to be the biggest sport out there; it will overtake boxing. It’s a case of getting it out to the public so that they understand what's going on. Wrestling (Olympic freestyle, not WWE) for example, isn’t well known in the UK but it is in America; jiu-jitsu is the same. When people get the knowledge, it will explode.

Capturing the imagination: MMA has grown exponentially in America

'It's also about understanding the skills side of it. Wrestling and jiu-jitsu are excellent for self-defence for women so that’s another element that can come into it.'

The sport's reputation wasn't helped by reports last month that eight-year old children were taking part in an adult cage fighting event.

But Ismail believes it was the environment - and not the martial art - that was at fault.

'The footage of the eight-year-old boys from Preston fighting in a cage can look shocking. Even to someone in the industry it's an unusual sight to see. However there are deeper issues that need to be addressed rather than simply pulling the children out of the ring and condemning what happened.

'Children of this age can partake in mixed martial arts, but it needs to be suitably controlled and in and appropriate environment for under 18's. At this event you had an adult audience consuming alcohol with scantily clad women and that for me is what the main problem was. If they had that show in a well-lit leisure centre with three or four cages it would have been fine.

Multi-tasking: MMA incorporates several martial arts, including jujitsu

'There are MMA shows for kids in America all year round but they are for children only. Their parents are present, there are plenty of mats and cages and although they are fighting, it's a completely different atmosphere. The kids are not under any pressure, it's about them having fun.

'It also keeps them in the sport for as long as possible so that when they get to the troublesome years later on, they've got something productive in their life. If they're fighting at eight-years-old, they probably won't want to do it after a few years.

'The main issue is there needs to be a governing body that can regulate and control these kinds of events. The physical aspect in this specific footage that's emerged is no worse than what nine-year-olds will experience playing rugby. But there needs to be a stricter, all-encompassing watchdog to make sure it's done in the right environment and for the right reasons.'

Ismail, who has trained in martial arts since he was five, runs the LDG gyms in Essex which cater for youngsters. He also gives talks to young people about the benefits of martial arts.

Shocking: The video of two young boys fighting provoked outrage

He added: 'We do a lot of outreach work with youth centres where we link martial arts to real life. I present myself as a martial artist but show that I am educated and that I run a business and that my training has helped me get where I am.

'The discipline I learned through training and hard work is how I achieved my goals. We tell the kids they don't need to become a fighter but if they understand martial arts, it is a means to improve their life skills.

'Core values like discipline, respect, honour, truth and self-control can all be taught through martial arts. I was five when I started and it was fun. I enjoyed the training because we had a good instructor. When I was seven or eight I approached him and said I wanted to compete. But there was no pressure to win. There are no bad students, just bad teachers and if you have a bad teacher then it can get ugly.

'Through martial arts I stayed out of trouble and it always brought me back to training. I would say that martial arts saved me. I went through a bad time in my life but it was the only thing that was constant.'

Back in London, news reaches me that Ismail has suffered a serious injury. His fight scheduled for later this month has been cancelled and his career could be in jeopardy.

Fight: Ismail faces a long battle back to fitness after injuring his arm

'It happened during my last sparring session,' he confirms. 'I was wrestling and I heard something pop in my arm. I looked down and my bicep was near my shoulder; it was completely detached. I tried to train with it but when I tried to wrestle, I had no strength in my arm so I called it a day.

'I've had the bicep re-attached and my surgeon was happy with the operation. I'm in a full cast from my shoulder to my hand. 

'The surgeon said I had a 50-50 chance of carrying on my career. It depends on whether I can get the strength back in my arm, I think it's more mental than anything else.

'I'm normally so active, training twice a day and I'm still in fight mode so I need to channel that energy and use it positively to get me through this.

'We are all faced with adversity and I'll need my mental strength to get through rehab and to get back in the cage.'

Being so close to the end of a four-month training regime makes the injury even more galling. 

One thing though is for certain. Ismail's limb might have failed him but you guarantee his heart and soul will carry him through

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