Amy Fitzpatrick renewing their efforts to find her with a new campaign to distribute between 100,000 pamphlets with her photos

No sign of missing Irish teenager Amy Fitzpatrick since her disappearance on January 1 from Mijas Costa. During that period the Guardia Civil have tried to trace two cars and have now found the second vehicle they were looking for.According to an eyewitness, either Amy or a girl looking like her got into the vehicle, a Mazda, around the time she is thought to...

Malaga prostitution in the city centre

Residents in Málaga are threatening unprecedented protests against prostitution in the city centre. Referring to “the serious situation in which we find ourselves,” the collective ‘Centro Sur’ says it will create road blocks, stage demonstrations and patrol the streets to bring to an end the problems arising from prostitution in the area. The group’s vice-president,...

Organized crime on the Costa del Sol

The Spanish ministry is determined to tackle organized crime on the Costa del Sol. It is targeting the large international gangs that are using the latest technology and modern methods of moving money. Two new special police units are to be formed to work alongside the existing drugs, organized and violent crime groups. They will gather intelligence on gangs and liaise with international law enforcement agencies in the criminals’ countries...

Mohamed Taieb Ahmen Spanish police arrests "El Nene" fugitive Moroccan citizen

Spanish police arrests "El Nene" fugitive Moroccan citizenPolice say he had bribed his way out of jail and Moroccan authorities issued an international arrest warrant in December after discovering he was missing.A man known as ‘El Nene’, one of the most wanted hashish drug traffickers in the world, has been captured by the Spanish National Police in the Spanish...

across-the-board personal income tax rebate of EUR 400, worth a total of around EUR 6 billion.

The Finance Department on Wednesday reported that the public surplus shrank to EUR 3.280 billion in the first quarter, or 0.29 percent of GDP. The surplus in the first quarter of last year was EUR 6.747 billion, equivalent to 0.64 percent of GDP.The government's coffers are starting to feel the effects of a sharp slowdown in the economy as the housing market moves from boom to crisis.Spain posted a surplus of 1.83 percent of GDP last year...

medical records of 11,000 patients on an internet file-sharing programne.

Spain's Data Protection Agency has fined a medical centre in Bilbao EUR 150,000 after an employee accidentally disclosed the medical records of 11,000 patients on an internet file-sharing programne.The records include details of 4,000 women who underwent abortions at the Lasaitasuna clinic and are therefore of an exceptionally sensitive nature."This is an inexcusable mistake on the part of the medical centre, which did not have adequate...

Years of overbuilding means Spain has around half a million new homes on the market, a Spanish property developer association said on Wednesday.

Spaniards have borrowed heavily by guaranteeing consumer loans against the value of their homes, which have more than tripled in the last ten years.Households are feeling poorer since Spanish house price growth fell below the rate of inflation for the first time in a decade during the first quarter.Expectations Spanish house prices will fall this year have led to a sharp decline in housing demand, especially for second homes, real estate...

Benalmadena Ray Griffin,"It's getting terrible in Spain. Villains are making a living out of ripping off tourists."

Ray Griffin, of Dowell Street, fell victim to thieves preying on tourists while staying in a hotel resort in Benalmadena on the Costa del Sol earlier this month.The incident happened just two weeks after a Welsh tourist was left for dead following a bungled bag snatch.The female victim was thrown to the ground as a man on a moped tried to snatch her bag, leaving her with a blood clot on the brain.Mr Griffin was on holiday with his wife,...

The preliminary report from the Civil Guard into the Benalmadena bypass accident

The preliminary report from the Civil Guard into the accident, which says that the KIA was travelling at excessive speed for the conditions at the time, and that the overtaking manoeuvre on the left saw a collision first with the central reservation which caused a rebound into the bus which then turned over. The definitive report on the accident is now expected in a few days time.13 of the injured in the accident remain in different hospitals...

Playa de Bakio attacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean

According to the El País newspaper today, the Spanish Ministry of Defence is planning a rescue operation as a last option in the case of the Basque tuna fishing boat, ‘Playa de Bakio’ which has been kidnapped by pirates off the coast of Somalia in the demand of a ransom.The Spanish Government says that all diplomatic contacts are being intensified to try to...

syndicate had been using Madrid as its centre in Europe and recruited Malaysian women as couriers to Brazil, Australia, Mexico and China.

On Thursday, Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said the ministry would seek Interpol's assistance in tracking international syndicates using Malaysian women as drug couriers.The previous day, it was reported that more than 20 Malaysian women in their 20s were detained by a drug syndicate in a house in Madrid.The syndicate had been using Madrid as its centre in Europe and recruited Malaysian women as couriers to Brazil, Australia,...

Nine Finnish tourists including a seven-year-old girl died following a bus crash near the Spanish resort town of Benalmadena

Nine Finnish tourists including a seven-year-old girl died following a bus crash near the Spanish resort town of Benalmadena on the Costa del Sol yesterday. Some 16 others were injured, some seriously, when their bus veered off the road and over-turned after a collision with another vehicle. The driver of car has been detained on suspicion of being over the drink driving limit The bus was taking the tourists to Malaga airport to catch...

Repossessions loom as the once buoyant homes market goes into freefall,

The Santa Ursula based publisher of The Tenerife Property Price Guide, today releases the results of its survey of Tenerife property prices, showing falls in prices for the three regions of Tenerife, (the South and South East, the North, and the Metropolitan region). During the last six months, property prices have fallen by 3,48% in the South and South East (from Candelaria around the coast to Santiago del Teide). In the North, prices...

Costa del Sol Home Information Packs are a legal requirement

Felipe Martinez de Marmol, from solicitors Martinez-Echevarria Perez & Ferrero Abogados, explained in further detail the regulations surrounding Decree 218, passed in 2005, which requires all agencies selling property on the Costa del Sol to have a Documento Informativo Abreviado (DIA) and a Ficha Informativa (FI) - similar to the UK’s Home Information Packs (HIPS). De Marmol believes the need to be compliant with the Decree is becoming...

International drug trafficking ring originating in Spain

Malta Police drug squad has smashed a international drug trafficking ring originating in Spain after capturing two young Malaysian women smuggling drugs through the Malta International Airport a few weeks ago.The case was kept under wraps by local authorities as the two women were also charged in Maltese Courts 'behind closed doors'. But the story was exposed in the Malaysian press which reported how Malaysian women are being lured by a...

Juan Antonio Roca attempted robbery at Cala d'Or villa

A 45 year old Austrian woman with no previous criminal record is on bail pending trial after being arrested for attempting to steal a number of high-value items from a chalet in Cala d'Or (Mallorca) belonging to Juan Antonio Roca, who is one of the main suspects in the 'Operación Malaya' Marbella council corruption case. The woman was caught red-handed with...

Smuggling routes in the sub-Saharan Sahel region of Africa that were traditionally used for cigarettes, arms and illegal migrants

Smuggling routes in the sub-Saharan Sahel region of Africa that were traditionally used for cigarettes, arms and illegal migrants are now becoming highways for cocaine, heroin and hashish, with kidnapping and banditry rife, the United Nations chief crime fighter warned today.“The international community must act to prevent a further deterioration of the situation...

Spain "It's a spoiled generation. They've suffered little, matured little and are not well-educated,"

Spain has become the top consumer of cocaine in continental Europe, according to a recent European Union study on drug use. By a United Nations count, 3% of Spain's adult population consumes cocaine; that's a bigger percentage than the erstwhile leader, the United States, at 2.3%. Around dawn on a Sunday, packs of young people are huddled at stoplights, or ambling...

'Martin the Bag' Lance from Marbella arrested suspected of being the Cocaine boss of Marbella.

Spanish police have arrested a British man suspected by French authorities of being the head of a cocaine trafficking network, the interior ministry said Monday.It identified the man as Martin Lance N., 40, also known as "Martin the Bag", born in the central English town of Oadby near Leicester and a resident of the southern Spanish resort of Marbella.It said...

Juan Antonio Roca told the press on his release that he is considering returning to his job in Marbella Town Hall

Juan Antonio Roca walked free from prison in Granada – two years since his arrest on charges of urban corruption, fraud, money laundering, embezzlement, the misappropriation of public funds, falsifying official documents and the illegal possession of firearms.Judge Óscar Pérez – who granted bail for the former chief of urban planning at Marbella town hall in...

Angelo Caratenutto decapitated his mother and then went for a walk though the town hall square

When police intervened at around 9pm last night, and took the package from the man, he told them that was his mother’s head.It happened yesterday in Santomera in Murcia, and the Civil Guard say the man, named as a 35 year old called Angelo Caratenutto, has now been arrested. Reports indicate that he killed his mother in a bar in the town, and the Civil Guard say he has been admitted to psychiatric units on several occasions.He had decapitated...

100 people in the El Torrejón district of Huelva have tried to lynch the brother of Santiago del Valle

100 people in the El Torrejón district of Huelva have tried to lynch the brother of Santiago del Valle, the man accused of killing the five year old local girl Mari Luz Cortés. The group tried to get into the brother’s home and threw stones at the building, shouting that he had helped to cover up the crime.Francisco del Valle has however told the press that...

Secrets of the Duchess of Medina-Sidonia

One of Spain’s most eccentric, blue-blooded and rebellious aristocrats, Doña Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo, Duchess of Medina-Sidonia, died on March 7 leaving behind a scandal almost as big as the political scrapes that bedevilled her life spent championing the poor and defying Franco.The three children of the 71-year-old Red Duchess as she was known, are grappling with the revelation that she had married her lesbian lover on her deathbed...

Business groups on the island say pulling down 22 hotels will leave hundreds out of work and hit the tourist trade hard.

Lanzarote court ruled 22 hotels were illegally built.The Canary Islands supreme court has annulled the hotels' building licences after it was ruled that two councils had openly flouted a ban on building hotels. Lanzarote council will now consider whether to grant an amnesty, or send in the bulldozers.A police unit which fights organised crime has been called...

Expat Brits dependent on UK pension and with Inflation in Spain which is running at a 10 year high are hit by the worstening exchange rate

Brits dependent on UK pension or savings are the worst hit - although anyone in business who has income in sterling has taken an involuntary pay cut. This week currency markets valued £1 at 1.246 euros. Last summer, banks were offering an average exchange rate of 1.42 euros to the pound. However, number crunching for those on a tight budget makes stark reading as disposable income is squeezed. The current UK basic state pension is £90.70...

Spanish judge has been fined and suspended for a year for allowing a man to spend 455 days in prison for a crime of which he was acquitted.

The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia said in Wednesday's ruling that Judge Adelina Entrena was guilty of grave negligence.Her case comes amid an uproar in Spain over a judicial system seen as overworked, underfunded and increasingly sloppy.In the most glaring recent case, it emerged that a judge failed to execute a jailing order against a man convicted...

The justice system failed Mari Luz, Paedophile freedom in Spain

In 2007, the provincial court of Seville sentenced a man identified only as M. to 14 years in prison for repeatedly abusing his own daughter. The Supreme Court rejected his appeal on 8 November, but M. never set foot inside the penitentiary because he vanished from the village where he lived, although a few neighbours claim to have seen him. Santiago del Valle, who allegedly murdered a five-year-old girl named Mari Luz Cortés in Huelva...

John Gonzales the Stelios of sperm lived the high life on the Costa del Sol

John Gonzales, was jailed for 16 months after being found guilty of fraud, perjury and forgery at Wood Green Crown Court, London. he started an internet firm charging up to £2,000 a time to women who wanted a tot. John Gonzales, who ran online sperm bank Mannotincluded.com catering mainly for lesbians and single women, has been sentenced to 16 months in prison.He pled guilty to five offences including fraud, forgery and perjury and was...

Gran Canarian prostitution ring has been smashed

Police in Gran Canaria have smashed a prostitution ring which is thought to have brought at least 50 Brazilian women into the country posing as tourists. The racket is said to have earned the gang well in excess of one and a half million euros. So far seven people have been arrested in connection with running the operation but further detentions are expected.The...

Two experienced divers were presumed drowned off Punta de Rasca in south Tenerife

Two experienced divers were missing presumed drowned off Punta de Rasca in south Tenerife where they and a party of eight others had gone out for a morning’s diving. It was shortly after 10am and after a submersion of some eighty minutes when the divers came up and discovered that two of their group were missing, one a 46-year-old Guardia Civil sergeant and the other a Belgian resident of Arona.Immediately the alarm went up and a search...

Spain has a bigger real estate bubble than “even America”.

“The real estate bubble is bigger than most European countries, even bigger than the one in the United States,”“The real estate bubble is bigger than most European countries, even bigger than the one in the United States,” Alan Greenspan explained. “In that sense one would have to presume that there is more vulnerability.”His prognosis comes as it emerged that...

Mark Longhurst aka Mark Cadogan linked with crime gangs in Spain

Mark Longhurst had links with crime gangs in Spain, was caught after an 18-month investigation. The 45-year-old, of Chapel House, Newcastle, admitted conspiring to supply cannabis and money laundering. Newcastle Crown Court heard how Longhurst enjoyed exotic holidays, expensive cars and jewellery. As well as a jail term, Longhurst, who was arrested in March...

Last piece of the coast goes under concrete largest tourist complexe in Europe to be built at Cabo Cope.

A 21-million-square-metre area of land – which includes small rocky coves backed onto by farmers’ fields – is to be completely transformed.The fate of one of the largest remaining areas of virgin coastline on the Spanish Mediterranean was sealed last week when councillors at Lorca and Águilas town halls voted in the initial modifications to their town plans...

Nueva Villa Lepe,The crew of a trawler based in Isla Cristina, Huelva province, were rescued out at sea.

Four men jumped overboard minutes before the boat sank The crew of a trawler based in Isla Cristina, Huelva province, were rescued out at sea on Tuesday after they were forced to jump overboard when the boat began to sank some 20 miles off the coast of Punta Umbría. The call to the Coastguard came late on Tuesday morning when, according to the newspaper ‘Huleva Información,’ the crew reported that the ‘Nueva Villa Lepe,’ a boat which was...

Santiago del Valle was ordered to prison without bail last weekend on charges of murder and against sexual freedom.

Santiago del Valle, has been transferred to Granada prison for his own security.His sister Rosa has been transferred in prison with him to the Granada jail of Albolote. Both were imprisoned firstly in Huelva on the orders of the judge in Instruction Court One in Huelva on March 22. A prison spokesman commented that such a transfer was normal in such circumstances.Santiago...

Amy Fitzpatrick Police are reportedly looking for a second car

Police are reportedly looking for another car linked to the disappearance of the 15 year old Irish youngster Amy Fitzpatrick who vanished from Mijas Costa three months ago.The Police now consider that, given the time passed without any news, that it is no longer likely that Amy left of her own free will on January 1. Searches carried out locally, and also in...

Marí Luz Cortés body taken in a supermarket trolley to the marshes before the family started to search for the child.

In a reconstruction of the day which five year old Marí Luz Cortés disappeared from Huelva, allegedly at the hands of Santiago del Valle, the main suspect, has concluded that he killed the child and, with the help of his sister Isabel García, got rid of the body within forty-five minutes to an hour. He hid the body in a supermarket trolley and took it to the...

Russian gang has been given the job of kidnapping Mark Thatcher and taking him to Equatorial Guinea

Russian gang has been given the job of kidnapping Mark Thatcher and taking him to Equatorial Guinea There are more claims in the press today about the situation of Sir Mark Thatcher who got married in a quiet ceremony on Gibraltar last week.The Gibraltar Chronicle met him in the Rock Hotel yesterday and he told the paper that he would be on the Rock for a few...

The chief inspector of the unit against drugs and organised crime (UDYCO) in Marbella says he is ‘very affected’ by the accusations against him.

The chief inspector of the unit against drugs and organised crime (UDYCO) in Marbella says he is ‘very affected’ by the accusations against him. He says if he has committed any infraction, it ‘must be administrative and not criminal’.Alfredo M and his co-chief, Carlos F, are being held in preventative custody pending trial. Two others from the Fuengirola branch of UDYCO were released on conditional bail whilst a doctor from a Marbella clinic...

Costa del Sol villas and quality apartments in good locations have dropped by as much as £20,000 to £80,000.

Costa del Sol villas and quality apartments in good locations have dropped by as much as £20,000 to £80,000. Some high-end properties costing over £1m have lost £200,000 off their initial valuations in the past few months. Sellers are also gravitating towards auction houses, where properties can achieve a fast sale at knock-down prices. Inez Rix of Direct Auctions...

Spain extradited Ricardo Miguel Cavallo

Spain extradited Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, a former member of Argentina's armed forces suspected of crimes against humanity committed under his home country's military dictatorship, Efe reported. Cavallo will arrive in Buenos Aires later today, the newswire said, citing police sources. Madrid's National Court authorized his extradition two weeks ago after shelving a case in Spain accusing him of genocide, terrorism and torture, Efe said....

Marí Luz Cortés errors made which resulted in the death of the five year old from Huelva

second judge is to be investigated regarding the errors made which resulted in the death of the five year old from Huelva, Marí Luz Cortés. The magistrate, Javier González, took nearly three years to confirm the sentence which condemned Santiago del Valle to prison for abusing his own five year old daughter.Meanwhile the General Council for Judicial Power, the body which oversees the judiciary in Spain has admitted that mistakes were made,...