News From Alicante & Murcia Provinces Spain
Most Recent News
MARINA COPE DEVELOPMENT ÁGUILAS PLANNED
A vast development will involve 21 million square metres of land and is estimated to cost about four billion euros to complete. Environmentalists are opposed to the ambitious project but the Murcia regional government, which is behind the Cope development, argues that it is, in fact, an environmentally-friendly idea. The construction density will be very low, it says, with the figure standing at 0.14 square metres per square metre. By planning future development properly and including rigorous requirements as to zoning, supervision, re-cycling and waste disposal, the government can be sure that the highest standards are met, it is claimed. The design has been prepared by major international firms with extensive experience around the world of preparing high-quality low-impact developments. A feature of the plan is that, though the project is close to the coast, the majority of buildings will be set well back and there will be no construction within 500 metres of the sea. The actual coastline itself will be unaffected and will remain in its original condition. This is achieved by having a single canal which gives access into an inland network of moorings grouped into separate lagoons. It is forecast that there will be a total of 2,000 moorings available eventually.
The Marina de Cope will see a tram system running north to south along the development thus reducing the need for vehicles and for parking areas. Access will be easy from the new Vera motorway and Murcia's new airport at Corvera is expected to be only 30 or 40 minutes drive away when it opens in a few years' time. It is expected that the development will feature some 20 hotels and about 9,000 houses for leisure use. There will also be five golf courses, ten football fields, the marina and a congress centre. A polo centre is also a possibility. The government says that the intention that the Cope development will be in the same league as high-class resort areas of places such as Cannes and Nice. The development is taking place in an area that is under the responsibilities of the town halls of Lorca and Águilas and last week local councilors in both places voted in favour of the project, allowing planning and other work to move ahead. The project is classified as being an official regional project of the Murcia Comunidad Autónoma. There is opposition, however, with left-wing parties voicing their concern. The PP, which is strongly behind the scheme and which controls the regional government says that Cope is the major tourism project of Murcia and that it will significantly contribute to developing economic activity throughout the region, and particularly in Águilas. A left-wing opponent, however, described the go-ahead decisions as another step in the destruction of the last remaining areas of virgin coastline in the Mediterranean.
NEW ROADS FOR MURCIA'S FUTURE 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.
HIGH SPEED TRAIN 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.
IMPROVED WATER SUPPLY FOR TORREVIEJA
New water pipes are being placed in Torrevieja to improve the water supply.
The pipes, which are nearly a kilometre long will go from Avenida de Pinoso to Calle Ciudad de Barcelona.
The network will be connected with both the northern water network and reservoirs in order to improve the pressure and the amount of water being supplied to the town. The southern network should supply 75% of the water. The pipes are intended to connect both networks and should be finished in about six months.
NEW HEALTH CENTRE FOR LA SIESTA
The health centre will have eight GP surgeries, two paediatrics surgeries, five nursing rooms and a treatment area, along with a team of 28 staff.
The health centre in La Siesta – which has been named the Centro de Salud San Luis, Torrevieja – will be the fifth in the municipality, with centres already functioning at La Loma, El Acequión, Centro and La Mata.
It will offer a service to a large are many of the patients will be expats living in urbanisations such as San Luis, El Chaparral, La Siesta, El Limonar and Ciudad Jardín.
NEW BUS STATION FOR BENIDORM
The new bus station will also connect buses from Benidorm to different parts of Spain and European countries.
Regional buses include Callosa, Villajoyosa, Alicante and surrounding areas, Valencia and Manises airport.
Long distance domestic services include Algeciras, Málaga, Barcelona, Madrid, Teruel , Jaén, Badajoz, Sevilla, Vitoria, Bilbao, Zaragoza and the region of Andalucía.
International routes going to Italy, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Morocco, Sweden, Poland, Romania, France, Portugal, Holland and the Czech Republic are also scheduled to stop at the new station..
The building has 32 platforms: platforms one to four are for regional and long distance services, platform five to 14 and 28 to 32 are for all long distance routes.
Platforms 21 to 27 are for international routes, each of them being clearly signed on an electronic board inside the station.
There is also a café and restaurant, toilet facilities and 10 ticket booths. A car park and taxis are also available.
The building also includes a hotel that will be open in the near future.
AT LAST AUDIO VISUAL WITHOUT FRONTIERS
After much lobbying by the ukgovabusesexpats.co.uk
for the European Union to stop the blocking by various countries within the Union, of the freedom to receive information, WITHOUT INTERFERENCE BY PUBLIC AUTHORITY REGARDLESS OF FRONTIERS.
The new directive (a re-hash of our rights already contained in the right for the free movement of goods and services within the EU) is going through the second reading.
This means that shortly the "Free to Air" from the BBC and ITV will be available without the the enormous 2.4 metre dish, currently necessary for people living in the southern Cost Blanca to receive this service.
We await the reaction from BSB sky who will no doubt still find a way of screwing the public.
OFFICIAL POPULATION REACHES 100.000 IN TORREVIEJA
More than half the residents on the Padron list are foreigners
As at July 2007, the Padron municipal list of residents in Torrevieja has broken the 100,000 people barrier, and more than half of them, 52,700 are foreigners of more than a hundred different nationalities.
The British lead the number of foreigners in the town with 12,353 registered, followed by 5,797 Scandinavians and 3,638 Germans.
However many expats are too lazy or devious to sign on the padron in their respective towns robbing the town halls of essential funding by the national and regional governments. Many people believe that the official number of British expats in Spain is less than 30% of the true figure. But many of them are hiding their homes in Spain from the British authorities so that they can carry on claiming the various hand outs they receive.
NEW NATIONAL PROPERTY LAW
Having come into force on July 1st. 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 rule 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.
ALICANTE'S FOREIGN RESIDENTS
Increase in population last year is thanks to foreigners
The new census in Alicante shows that foreigners account for 82% of the increase in population in the province.
The number of residents in the province is up by 37,971 over the past year, and of those 31,427 are foreign residents.
The numbers come from the National Statistics Institute INE and were published yesterday.
The population of Alicante Province is now 1,821,466 – up 2% on the year.
The foreign population is now 21.4% of the total population of the province, with the British the most
numerous and making up a quarter of the foreign residents.