Owing perhaps in part to Spain's Francoist employment rules (14 months or more payments per year, expensive firings and so on, corrupt unions funded by the state...), our unemployment remains the highest in Europe and, according to El Economista, stood at Year's End at 5.27 million - almost 23% of the workforce (not including me, since like many others I don't appear on the INEM list*). Figures for Almería stand at 33.3% unemployed (December 2011).

*Parados son aquellos que buscan un empleo. Muchos no aparecen en el dato del INE porque se han ido del país o han dejado de buscarlo. (El Mundo)

And just to make the point - I and many other foreigners living in Spain really love this country and its people and only wish it and them the best. Unfortunately, until the endless political corruption diminishes and rampant greed is brought under control; until the judiciary is brought to justice and a few sensible and intelligent people are able to be heard and to act; we can only watch as the place falls to pieces...

The Mojácar town hall pleno tonight was - as usual - poorly supported by the public. Less than ten of us came to hear (or rather not hear thanks to the mechanical bangs going on outside in the Church Square) the points of the meeting. Later, in questions and suggestions, the Councillor for Tourism said that the Town Hall was in no way supporting the 'Mojácar Spring Break' (see below) to be held in mid April. The mayoress, asked about the municipal radio, said that she still hadn't received a licence from Seville (the rumour on this is that she is sitting on it): she also denied blocking the signal ('sabotajeando' according to the PSOE councillor) of Vera Comunicación, which often casts her administration in a bad light.
Once again, Angel Medina, opposition councillor for Ciudadanos Europeos, was absent from the meeting. He has yet to show up to any of them held since the May elections, in protest, he says, at the corrupt process of those local elections in Mojácar.

In Seville, a 178m tall office-tower is being built 'con absoluta normalidad' by a local bank, the Cajasol, against the wishes (huh?) of the town hall. More seriously, the UNESCO has threatened to remove Seville's 'World Heritage' status if the building is completed. It seems the licence was given by the previous mayor of the city. Meanwhile, in Murcia, the soon-to-be-closed airport of San Javier is currently getting a three million euro refit (having spent a further five million since last Easter). The new airport at Corvera will open apparently between March and May of this year and all commercial flights will use this new airport (easier for eastern Almería residents!).

'The Crisis has finished Residential Tourism on the Costa del Sol' says the headline in El Mundo. In 2011, only 600 homes were bought by non-residents against 4,600 just five years earlier on the Costa del Sol, according to the indignant real-estate sector. Angry? 'The first problem, even before the crisis, was the urban corruption... which mainly concerns the foreign residential market and then the lack of legal security that we have in Spain. If you you buy a home with all the right papers and then suddenly it appears that the Junta de Andalucía, having merrily charged IVA, then claims that the houses are illegal, they won't even return the IVA and then the Superior Court of Justice of Andalucía also says the homes are illegal what would you think? No one is going to buy under those conditions' said the president of the builders and promoters association in FITUR recently, who recommends buyers to find a good lawyer.
The president of the Andalucian Federation of Urbanisers for Residential Tourism, for his part, thinks that future buyers will come from Russia and the Middle East.

The Casa del Burro in the Cordoba town of Rute is to close down after 13 years of operation for lack of funding. The installations are closing and the director has been 'let go' by the local diputación. The fifty burros andaluzas-cordobesas - an animal in danger of extinction - are being supported (more or less) by private donations. There is the likelihood however of a large donation from the estate of a woman who died in 2009 (as the courts go through her will).

Fiestas, music and fun for Mojácar's 'Spring Break' 11th - 15th April, according to El Almería. There will be concerts, fiestas on the beach, live DJ competitions excursions, beach hand-ball championships, volley-playa, water polo (!) and indoor football, together with special events at Mandala, Maui and the Lua discotheques. For special offers on hotels for this event (including entrance to clubs etc), see link above. 'Music, sun and good times'.

The leading news on page three of this week's local English language freebie is about British men changing (or otherwise) their underwear. It seems that British women change theirs more regularly. Whether 'the estimated near one million British people living in Spain' bide by these rules is unclear. Oddly, a quick search of Google shows a similar story appearing in the Daily Mail, The Scotsman (Scottish men wear underwear?) and the Hindustan Times (ahh..).

The founding president of the PP Manuel Fraga Irribarne died over the weekend at the age of 89. Fraga was probably Spain's best known and longest serving politician with sixty years of service to his country, starting as the Minister for Tourism under Franco in 1962. In that position, his name became linked with Mojácar. Our local mayor in those days Jacinto Alarcón persuaded Fraga to help Mojácar's re-birth by creating a special prize for the town in 1964 of 'Pueblo Blanco' (the entire village was painted white for the occasion, colour it has remained ever since) and, the following year, Fraga ordered a government-owned Parador hotel to be built on the Mojácar coast and - despite Franco's long-held objections to Almería - an airport outside that city. Fraga's next connection with Mojácar was the famous swim of the Parador beach with the American ambassador after the Palomares nuclear bomb scare of January 1966 (understandably, they didn't want to swim any closer to the site of impact).
Finally, Fraga was awarded a Golden Indalo for his friendship with Mojácar at the FITUR two years ago.

The White House will not support the American version of the Ley de Sinde, recently passed in Spain to 'stop online piracy' or rather, to ensure that Spanish sites who use or hold copyright material can be closed down in 72 hours (from March 2012). In the surprising announcement today, the White House spoke out against Congressional pressure to pass several (extreme) anti-piracy laws under the heading of SOPA and PIPA. The statement reads in part: '...we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet...'. Several large Internet names - Google, Reddit, YouTube and others - had announced a 'black-out' day later this month to show their opposition to Internet Censorship.
All of which leaves the Spanish Government, both PP and the PSOE before it - looking distinctly stupid.

The Junta de Andalucía published today its latest version of the 'illegal homes' with the following points (as made by Josefina Cruz, the Secretary for Housing): For every ten homes built in non-urbanisable areas, one can be fully legalised; eight can be regularised (lovely word) and will receive basic services (water and electric), these homes won't be demolished since they have been standing for long enough to avoid the law in this matter, but they also won't be legalised; and the tenth one will be demolished. With such an exact science as this, it's easy to see that of the 250,000 homes concerned, 25,000 will be legalised; 200,000 will not; and 25,000 homes will be demolished.
The AUAN in Albox has issued a statement regarding this piece of piracy, including this gem: 'I sometimes despair at how little the administration is in contact with the real problems of its citizens. They must know that what looks nice on paper is not always workable in practice. It appears that they don’t and all they want to do is inundate us with a byzantine tangle of laws and, whilst they are about it, completely destroy foreign investment in Spain'...
Note: Mojácar has no houses under threat as all homes here are raised in urban areas.