In association with <strong>Costa</strong> Cálida International Radio and www.angloINFO.com Calls for King’s Abdication over Elephant Hunting Row Calls for King Juan Carlos of Spain to abdicate over his recent hunting trip scandal are growing ever louder, with criticism of the monarch by the Spanish media and social networks reaching previously unrecorded levels. An online petition on the actuable.es website said more than 46,000 people had backed a petition calling for the King’s resignation from WWF. The Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund has begun the process of removing King Juan Carlos as its ‘honorary president’. Spanish TV has debated whether the 72-yearold king should have been hunting in Africa at all while his people are struggling through one of the most precarious moments in the country’s economic crisis. Many newspaper editorials have suggested that it was deeply inappropriate to spend 45,000€ shooting elephants, whilst the people of Spain were having to swallow austerity measures. Such biting, public criticism of the Spanish monarch is uncommon, and other senior opposition politicians and members of Spain’s government have not passed judgement when asked to comment. Although the royal household has not confirmed the elephanthunting allegations, they have also not denied them. Botswana, the country is well known as a destination for elephant-hunting and it is well known that the king shot elephants there back in 2006. It is not the first time that King Juan Carlos’s taste for hunting has landed him in trouble. In 2006, an official in the Vologda region in north-eastern Russia alleged that he had shot dead a tame bear that had been plied with vodka, although royal officials said the claim was ridiculous. The Spanish Royals are already under intense scrutiny, with the King’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin currently embroiled in a high-profile corruption scandal, and his 13-year-old grandson, Froilan, having to be treated in hospital last week after shooting himself in the foot while doing target practice outside a family home at the end of his Easter holiday. Uproar over government plans to abolish free prescriptions for pensioners The government’s latest plans to make pensioners pay between 10 and 20% of their prescription charges has been met with alarm by support groups and associations across the country. Page 8 The draft bill will mean that all pensioners will have to pay a minimum of 10% of their prescription charges, rising to 20% for those with greater income. The government will debate a formula to help the chronically ill, by capping the charges at a monthly maximum of between 10€ and 20€. Bailout fears for Spain as cost of Borrowing Jumps to over 6% Spain’s cost of borrowing has risen to over 6%, again, prompting talk of an EU bailout. The country’s cost of borrowing has been rising steadily over the past four months and if it wanted to borrow for ten years today, it would pay 6.1%, considerably more than the 1.73% Germany would pay. The Bank of Spain said recently that the county’s economy contracted in the first quarter of the year - but it did not say by how much. The economy shrank by 0.3% in the three months to December, so this additional contraction implies that Spain’s economy is in recession. The Economy Minister said that in the first three months of the year the country had probably contracted by as much as the last quarter of 2011 again, but added this was actually better than expected. Investors, however, are concerned that Spain’s banks are relying too heavily on cheap, emergency loans from the European Central Bank, raising fears of an imminent bailout. Since 2010, Greece has needed two bailouts, and the Republic of Ireland and Portugal also needed bailouts to stay afloat. Postal Worker Jailed for a Year for Throwing 7,100 Letters Away A 28-year-old Valencian man has been fined 630€ and sentenced to a year in prison after being found guilty of throwing away 7,100 letters when he was working for Correos, the Spanish postal service, in the town of Arganda del Rey (Madrid) back in 2006. Sergio A.P. was found guilty of “negligence in his custody of documents”, but the prosecution reduced its original demand for a twoand-a-half-year custodial sentence and a fine of 4,500€. Since the events in question took place six years ago, extenuating circumstances and unnecessary delays were take into account when sentencing. Human Trafficking and Low Rates make Spain Top for ‘Sex Tourism’ Trafficking of women and prostitution have become rife in Spain and parts of the country are beginning to rival Thailand for their fame as ‘sex tourism’ destinations, according to the New York Times and 9 in 10 of the women who provide these services are being held against their will and threatened. La Jonquera (Girona), one of the first towns in Spain as you cross the French border heading south, used to be famous for its home-made arts and crafts, but now sees most of its tourism come from brothels or women working in apartments and on the streets. This is partly due to the fact that French law is much tighter on prostitution and women’s services are more expensive, says the report. Most of the women are foreigners and many have been either kidnapped in their home countries or duped into travelling to Spain, believing lucrative work in hotels awaits them. This is what happened to Valentina, a Romanian girl who told NYT reporters, through tears, that the person she believed to be her boyfriend convinced her to travel to Spain with him to start a new life. Upon arrival, she found out that the hotel job did not exist, and she had to work as a sex slave for between 20€ and 30€ per client, handing over all her money to her ‘boyfriend’, who turned out to be a pimp. He threatened her with violence and with killing her children if she did not cooperate. Described as ‘hanging around a roundabout all day’ with ‘her greasy hair tied back in a ponytail’, Valentina said in the article: “My life is over. I’ll never be able to forget that I ended up in this.” Police recently rescued a 19-year-old Romanian girl who had been under the control of two clans of pimps. They had tattooed a barcode on her wrist, which indicated the 2,000€ ‘debt’ she had with the traffickers and which she had to pay back out of her earnings before she was able to see a single cent of them for herself. The report says that the majority of prostitutes’ clients used to be middle-aged men, but are now mainly young men who go off in crowds of friends and weekends ‘for a bit of fun’. “Young people used to go to nightclubs, but now they go to brothels – it’s just another way of having a good time, for them,” says Francina Vila i Valls, councillor for women and civil rights in Barcelona. Police say the number of prostitutes working in Spain, in brothels, private flats, industrial estates and on streets is close to 400,000 and rising by the thousand. At least 90 per cent are victims of human trafficking. The problem of trafficking became rife in Europe in the 1990s, when hundreds of women came over from the then USSR, but since then EU member states have been working hard on regulations to deal with prostitution and human trafficking. The problem has worsened since the EU became a reality and free movement between countries was made possible. A survey by the United Nations found that 39 per cent of Spaniards admitted to having been with a prostitute, and that it was even becoming socially-acceptable for business meetings to end with an evening meal in a restaurant followed by a trip to a brothel. La Jonquera has set up a brothel next to a 24-hour petrol station, with 101 rooms, making it one of the largest in Europe. Most of its clients are from French border towns. Please tell our customers where you saw their advertisement in the <strong>Costa</strong> Cálida <strong>Chronicle</strong> To place an advertisement with us please see page 5 or contact Teresa 619 199 407 www.costacalidachronicle.com email: costacalidachronicle@gmail.com
Please tell our customers where you saw their advertisement in the <strong>Costa</strong> Cálida <strong>Chronicle</strong> To place an advertisement with us please see page 5 or contact Teresa 619 199 407 www.costacalidachronicle.com email: costacalidachronicle@gmail.com Page 9 In association with <strong>Costa</strong> Cálida International Radio and www.angloINFO.com