The Junta de Andalucia has just published data on births in the region for 2007 with a total of 96,150 babies being born last year. The average number of babies per mother in the whole of Andalucia was 1.5 but the province with the highest baby to mother ratio was Almeria with 1.59 babies per mother. Almeria also has by far the highest proportion of children born to foreign mothers with almost a third of babies; 29.45%, being parented by non Spanish mothers, the province with the second highest proportion is Malaga with 19% of babies born last year having foreign mothers. Only ten years ago the percentages of babies born to mothers from outside Spain were 2.88 in Almeria and 4.43 in Malaga. On the increase too is the number of babies born to unmarried women, almost 35 per cent in Almeria last year, up from 15% ten years ago and 2.76% thirty years ago. Curiously all the provinces in Andalucia have a similar proportion of births to unmarried mums, around thirty per cent, except the two land-locked provinces; Jaen and Cordoba, which both have a figure of twenty per cent.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Women in Almeria have most babies in Andalucia
Camino de la Ermita works in Bedar completed
The Mancomunidad de Municipios de Levante Almeriense, an organisation consisting of municipalities throughout the Almeria Levante area which have joined forces to work on projects of general benefit to the area, has announced the completion of the improvements to the Camino de la Ermita as part of their touristic plan for the Levante area. The works, which cost 23,415 euros, have made the route a suitable tourist access to the area, and take advantage of the possibilities it offers as a viewpoint from which to appreciate the local landscape. The works involved conditioning a two metre wide footpath, constructing containing walls where necessary to ensure the stability of the path and installing a handrail, lighting, benches and wastepaper bins along its length.
New private school in Vera gets official approval
The new independent school on the Vera to Garrucha road has received its official approval from the regional government in the official bulletin of the Junta de Andalucia. The Valdeserra school, which is due to open this September will have places for 1,600 children from kindergarten age up to eighteen (and above for 'formacion profesional', something similar to vocational training). The school, which will offer a bilingual education in English and Spanish, is the sixth independent school in the province with others in Huercal de Almeria, El Ejido, Vicar and two in Roquetas. There is another planned in Nijar. This compares to 300 state run schools in Almeria.
The new school, which is covers a total area of two hectares, consists of a separate building for each educational level; pre-school, primary, secondary, bachillerato (baccalaureate) and formacion profesional as well as a school dining room which seats a thousand and a school gymnasium.
Independent education in Spain has a different image to that in the U.K. as the personal goal of most teachers is to get a permanent teaching post in the state school system, which is perceived as more secure, often better paid and less demanding (in terms of hours worked) than the private sector. Independent schools follow a timetable similar to that of U.K. schools with a lunch break and classes continuing after lunch as opposed to the 2.00 p.m. finish in state schools. There is generally more emphasis on sports and extracurricular activities (the latter not included in the basic school fees) and of course the obligatory school uniform. The cost of the Valdeserra school comes to around 5,000 euros per annum, with reduced fees for siblings.
Works begin to improve main access to Albox
Works have begun on the Avenida de la Estacion in Albox the mayor of the municipality, Jose Garcia Navarro, has announced. The road is destined to become the main access into the town from the new 'Autovia del marmol' motorway, from the exit to the west of the bridge over the rambla which will be signposted as 'Albox Centro'. The road is to be widened, new pavements will be put in on both sides and the electricity and telephone cables will be reinstalled underground. The sewers and water pipes that run beneath the road will also be renewed.
The budget for the works is 300,000 euros and the company Nila S.A. has been contracted to complete the project in a time span of two months.
Cuevas town hall stops construction work in Villaricos project
The Cuevas del Almanzora town hall has decreed that building works on a block of 18 apartments being constructed just 15 metres from the shore in Villaricos must stop temporarily due to lack of compliance with municipal regulations on noise pollution caused by the use of heavy machinery on the site. The site in Calle La Herradura has been cordoned off by local police.
The building in question has been the cause of much controversy in the town with more than 200 people holding a demonstration in the town centre two weeks ago protesting against the construction works. The protest group 'Salvemos Villaricos' has started legal proceedings against the project claiming that irregularities such as the projected building having three floors when local byelaws allow building only two floors should be investigated. The group also claims that the plot being built on invades public space and that there are discrepancies between the borders shown in the cadastral register and the space the building site occupies.
New car park now open in Vera
The Vera town hall has announced that the new public car park, called Los Cuatro Canos, is now open to the public. It has 424 spaces underground on two floors with the first floor reserved for short and long term stays charged by the minute or with special rates for daily, nightly or monthly parking. The spaces on the second floor are private. The new car park is in the Paseo Miguel de Cervantes which is in the area behind the Mercadonna supermarket.
The car park cost close to 4.5 million euros to construct and boasts up to the minute technology in safety and security with automatic fire control equipment, 24 hour video surveillance and automatic number plate recognition systems.
Almeria could soon generate all its electricity needs from wind
With projects in progress to install eight new wind farms in Almeria, by this time next year Almeria's capacity to generate electricity from wind power will outstrip its power demand. Currently there are nine wind farms operating in the province which it is estimated will produce 530,640 megawatts per hour each year, equivalent to the power consumption of a population of 343,000 people – that is about half the population of Almeria. With construction of eight new wind farms the province should be able to generate from the wind virtually all the energy its 660,000 population needs.
Andalucia is the region with the greatest growth in installation of wind farms; 2007 saw an increase over the previous year of 140 per cent in the electricity generated form wind. In Spain as a whole wind generated power increased by 30 per cent from 2006 to 2007. In our province the area of Seron-Tijola is where most wind generated electricity is produced with almost 245 megawatts coming from four wind farms. There are a total of 260 wind turbines in Almeria each with the potential to meet the energy needs of more than 550 households.
Man arrested in Los Gallardos for violating workers’ rights
A local of Los Gallardos, identified by the Guardia Civil as Jesus Angel N.P., aged 34, went to the local police station to report his car stolen claiming that a man who worked for him had not returned the vehicle after being lent it to do a job. After giving a statement the alleged car thief returned the vehicle to its rightful owner but as a result of the statement and subsequent investigations by the Guardia Civil it turned out that the reason the worker had kept the car was because he was owed three months salary by Jesus Angel. He and another man had been working for Jesus Angel without any kind of contract despite repeated requests to him to give them formal work contracts. In three months only one of the two had been paid 600 euros for the work they had done, with the total amount being owed to them allegedly coming to 3,290 euros. Things came to a head and one of the workers decided to keep the car in lieu of payment. Jesus Angel was arrested for an alleged crime of violating workers' rights and will be tried in the first instance before court number three in Vera.
Almeria has only desert but not most at risk from desertification
The Ministry for the Environment has approved the Programa de Accion Nacional de Lucha contra la Desertificación (PAND – national programme of action to combat desertification) thus complying with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. According to the diagnostic report of the PAND 37 per cent of Spanish territory is at risk from desertification, almost 18% classified as at very high or risk and 19% medium risk. The areas most affected are the Canary Islands and the south-east of the peninsula.
Most recognized deserts have an annual rainfall below 400 millimetres. Some authorities consider 250 millimetres the upper limit for mean annual precipitation for true deserts, describing places with a mean annual rainfall of between 250 and 400 millimetres as semideserts. Measurement of rainfall alone can't provide an accurate definition of what a desert is because being arid also depends on evaporation which depends in part on temperature. The main preoccupation in the case of Spain is that of land becoming unable to sustain vegetation which in turn leads to problems with erosion which in turn accelerates desertification.
Jaen is the Andalucian province with the greatest area, 50 per cent, classified as being at very high or high risk of desertification followed by Almeria (home to Europe's only desert; the Tabernas desert, with an area of 280 square kilometres, an average annual rainfall of 243 mm. and around 3,000 hours of sun per year) with 49% of its territory at this level of risk, Granada with 47%, Cordoba with 44%, Malaga with 30%, Sevilla with 29% and lastly Cadiz with only ten per cent of its area at high or very high risk.
Some of the measures to be taken are protection and special management of existing forests, reforestation programmes, control of grazing and steps to stop erosion and retain more rainfall.
More fines imposed for invading beach space
The provincial coasts service or 'Costas' has fined a beach bar on Vera Playa over 4,000 euros for enlarging without authorisation the area of the chiringuito to more than 271 square metres.
Another fine of 3,840 euros was handed out to a Mojacar resident for installing umbrellas and sun loungers, occupying an area of 480 square metres, without the necessary permission from Costas.
In both cases those fined have a right to appeal to the appropriate ministry.
Seven immigrants rescued off Cabo de Gata
Seven men were rescued after being spotted 47 miles south-east of the cabo de Gata natural park in an inflatable dinghy. The boat was spotted by a fishing boat and the sighting and the position of the boat were confirmed by the Serviola II lifeguard plane. The immigrants were brought into port in Garrucha by the town's lifeboat Salvamar Algenib and were attended to by a Red Cross emergency immediate response team.
So far this year 758 immigrants have been intercepted coming into the province via the Adra, Nijar, Carboneras and Cabo de Gata coastline.
Drugs seized on ‘Dog Bottom’
The Guardia Civil made six arrests and seized 2,800 kilos of hashish in an operation in the municipality of El Ejido. The Guardia Civil had received information on the presence of a boat off the Guardias Viejas area, specifically off the beach known as 'Culo Perro' or 'Dog Bottom'. Patrol vehicles in the zone closed off the area and observed packages being transferred to a lorry parked close to the beach. Once the Guardia Civil were sure that it was a drug smuggling operation the agents intervened and stopped the lorry, discovering 67 bales of hashish, and arresting four men, identified as Hongwu L., Shao C.F., Wu Q. Y. and Zha H.L. Later on another 23 bales of hashish were found and another two arrests were made; Weiyong P. and Jose Antonio F. R., who were caught trying to escape the scene by car.
Ola brings big names to El Ejido
A week after the Creamfields festival the residents of El Ejido in Almeria bore witness to another musical event, this time more pop oriented although you could still say that there was a chemical attraction among the party goers.
The diverse line-up of this edition of the Ola festival reflected the efforts made by the Catalan promoters, Sinnamon, to present new musical values such as MGMT, Ratatat or Hercules and Love Affair, to give us some established styles such as Bjork, Massive Attack or Goldfrapp and even the come-backs to rock, Kula Shaker.
The Icelander appeared as part of her 'Volta' album world tour and offered nothing different to her concert in Las Ventas, Madrid, more than a year ago. Apart from some saving moments with old favourites like Hunter, Bachelorette or an impressive, sinister interpretation of Army of Me it was a dense concert lacking in energy. A sensation which was augmented by a deafening sound set up with poor definition. Bjork's voice occasionally lost out to the 'React Table', the musical toy invented by the University of Barcelona and which was the constant theme of the giant screens around the stage.
Leaving Bjork for Massive Attack on another stage, this Bristol group offered several new tracks in a dark concert where the melodies and dense rhythms made the crowd vibrate. The style showed little change from that on their album Mezzanine, with female voices singing melodic lyrics over a complex and hypnotic rhythmic base. Highlights were the interpretations of Inertia Creeps, a brutal Save From Harm and Angel.
And onto the LO.LI.TA. stage for the end of Kula Shaker's set. Sixties psychedelic rock which had everybody dancing and a great finish with their cover of Joe South's Hush.
When The Editors finished their set the responsibility for keeping the crowds dancing passed to the hands of names like Soulwax, 2manydjs or d.a.r.y.l. giving those whose energy couldn't be sapped electronic and house music to dance to until the dawn.
Local group working to open Bedar mines to tourists
Bedar Sostenible (sustainable Bedar) is the name of the group which has already organised several excursions in the old mines in Bedar. They would like to set up an information centre on the mines and their history and even a mining museum inside one of the mines.
The earliest data on mining in the area around Bedar dates back to 1525 when a concession was awarded to mine iron in the Serena area just south of Bedar. By 1846 there were115 mines in Bedar, all working on a small scale due to lack of adequate transport. This changed in 1888 when the Compañia de Aguilas installed an aerial cable system from Serena down to the port in Garrucha, at the time the longest in Spain and the second longest in Europe. The English vice-consul in Garrucha at the time, Clifton Pecket, then ceded a group of mines to a Biscayan businessman on the condition that he build a railway. Now with the railway and the aerial cable transporter there was an explosion in mining in the area, with the creation of several companies including the Garrucha Iron Mining Company Ltd. Mining activity was paralysed during the First World War and then continued in and off until the last mine closed in 1970.
Juan Antonio Soler, who has studied the mines and their history and is one of the organisers of the excursions, said that the group has wanted to create walking routes in the mountains around Bedar but that the ayuntamiento hasn't helped them at all. Bedar Sostenible has organised several guided tours of the mining works for .
Farmers complain of vertiginous mark ups
The Union de Pequeños Agricultores y Ganaderos (the UPA, the union of small farmers) here in Andalucia has made public the mark ups added to the prices of vegetables in an effort to show that it is not the producers who are responsible for the recent rises in food prices. The UPA accused distribution companies of making abusive increases to prices, to the cost of producers and consumers alike. One example is the cucumber; in August 2007 producers were being paid 0.47 euros per kilo and the market price was 1.00 euro per kilo, a mark up of 113 per cent. This year producers are receiving only 0.30 euros per kilo while market prices are around 1.60 euro per kilo, a mark up of 533 per cent. The mark up on courgettes has increased from 259% last year to 750% this year; the mark up on lettuces has increased from 389% to 813%. Some of this can be put down to the rises in fuel prices but now fuel prices are starting to fall again food prices do not seem to be.
Many livestock farmers are also suffering as a result of continuing price rises for cereals for animal feed despite the decrease in prices paid to cereal producers and the drop in fuel prices.
The UPA has asked the regional and national governments to intervene by introducing a Law of Commercial Margins which would control the mark ups at each link of the chain form producer to consumer.
