Almerimar & Spanish News: w/e 28th February 2009
March 1st, 2009 - Chris Marshall
It has been a strange week in many way! Busier than normal work wise and certainly socially, I somehow managed to go out every night during the week. That is one reason for this post and podcast been a little late, the other is I am thinking of moving it to the weekend anyway, plus I wanted to wait until the end of the month so we could include details of the FREE Taste of Spain Meals In Almerimar – February Winners
Items that caught the eye for one reason or another recently include:
Of Local Interest
Had a couple of chats with Salvador of LiSal this week about a few projects and he pointed out to me that there are negotiations going on at the moment between a consortium of fruit and vegetable businesses here in Almerimar and Dubai. It seems that they are trying to sort out flying the produce by charter from Almería airport direct to Dubai which is a great initiative and opens up other possibilities I am sure. He also explained to me about a initiative in Roquetas with 70 or so businesses have set up a sort of outdoor emporium in a marquee to sell their produce at reduced rates.
Having talked last week about the Credit Crunch it is good to see that the Macondo bar has reopened. It is located just on the edge of the ‘music bars’ opposite Leo’s Bar.
Friday night we went down to the opening of Las Marias now under the watchful of eye of Mario, with some speculation about who is backing him. When I next speak to Mario I will ask him, but it was far too busy to try on Friday. This is the fourth opening of a bar in the premises since we have lived here, but hopefully Mario will make a go of it. I know he wants to make it a combination of Spanish and English with Tostadas and a Full English in the morning, open all day etc but it started off very much as an English bar on the opening night, and will continue to be if Karaoke is offered up. I have to say I HATE Karaoke, so Wayne and I ducked out to Fusion for a couple of hours and a chat with Phil. By way of contrast Fusion is a very Spanish bar and is great!
On the subject of bars, the Romanian lady has pulled out of the La Bahia so that is back up for rent.
Talking to friends who play golf this week it seems that the condition of the course is still really bad, and that while progress on the clubhouse seems to be progressing (money still on it stopping at 80% completion though!), it would be much better if they spent the money on the actual course itself. But then again, the clubhouse is primarily being built to secure the building permit after the debacle with the hotel, hence the speculation that they wont actually finish it!!!
Our latest venture Almerimar Life Rentals is doing really well. We have now added the option to add videos to a post. I was going to use my existing video hosting service but looking at the volumes I think will need to move to a premier one that will cost quite a bit of dosh. In the meantime am sticking them on YouTube anyway so using that service, but watch this space. We have more properties to add this week, and are already getting a huge amount of hits and doing well on the natural SEO. Will be adding some more content pages this week and starting the Ad Words campaign.
We are having fun at the moment with little Oscar, a stray that we are fostering for a while!
Around Spain
It was good to read that Spain to spend EUR 1 bn to reform tourism sector, as the decline in visitors picked up pace in January, especially from Britain, Spain’s main source of foreign visitors. A total of 2.6 million foreign tourists visited Spain last month, down 10.1 percent over the same month in 2008.
The new bridge linking Spain and Portugal opened which means the Spanish village of La Granado is now just 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) away by car from the Portuguese village of Pomarao.
For those interested in politics today (Sunday) sees Spain’s Basque and Galicia regions to vote where the Madrid government is seeking to gauge its support as the country reels from an economic crisis and Basque separatist violence.
Elsewhere in Europe
Thought that for a bit of a laugh I would list the Ryanair posts that we did this week.
Ryanair to charge to go the toilet on flights
Ryanair calls bloggers idiots
Ryanair to remove check-in desks
As to be honest the rest of the news is just depressing:
Eurozone jobless queues lengthen
Foreign students leaving UK debts
Spanish mayor detained as part of corruption probe
