Archive for March, 2008

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Badalona gets rid of half of its “pisos patera”

I suppose I’d better explain what a “piso patera” is first. It’s usually a flat in a rundown area of a city which is “over occupied” usually with immigrants who have no official documents or who are in the middle of getting them processed by the good old Spanish government.
Badalona, which is just on the [...]

26Mar2008 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
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Hamilton finishes 5th despite 2 setbacks

Lewis Hamilton revealed that he battled dehydration on his way to a fifth-place finish in the Malaysian Grand Prix.
The McLaren-Mercedes driver suffered a problem with his on-board water dispenser but nevertheless battled back from the twin setbacks of a five-place grid penalty and a slow opening pit stop at Sepang.
His hopes of a podium finish [...]

23Mar2008 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
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Gemma Mengual gets 4 gold medals

Congratulations to Gemma Mengual and her team that triumphed at the European synchronized swimming championships in Eindhoven, Holland.Gemma, from Barcelona, Catalonia won 4 gold medals at the event in the Dutch city. In the morning she took the gold medal in the doubles category with her partner Andrea Fuentes and in the afternoon triumphed with [...]

18Mar2008 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
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Hamilton brings home the bacon at Melbourne!

Lewis Hamilton’s win for McLaren at the Australian Grand Prix almost went unnoticed at Albert Park this afternoon - and that tells you just what sort of race it was.The 23 year-old Briton dominated an event characterised by safety car interventions following a series of dramatic incidents that all happened behind him. Hamilton would build [...]

16Mar2008 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
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Expat voters give PP an extra seat

Although still pending official confirmation, it seems that Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular has wrested a seat from the CiU in Barcelona by just 238 votes.
After the initial count last Sunday gave the seat to the moderate nationalist party by a slim margin of 71, the expatriate result - 3,927 votes for PP vs 3,689 for [...]

13Mar2008 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
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Young pedestrian dies after being hit by police car

A 7 year old boy died in Barcelona’s Sant Joan de Déu Hospital last night just hours after being knocked down by an unmarked police car in Terrassa.
The driver, who was not responding to an emergency, later tested negative for alcohol.
An official inquiry has been launched though eye-witnesses report that there were roadworks in the [...]

11Mar2008 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
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Zapatero Wins Reelection, Pledging Tax Cuts

(Bloomberg) - Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was reelected Spanish prime minister after promising tax cuts and increased benefits to voters facing rising unemployment and slower economic growth.
Zapatero’s Socialist Party won 43.6 percent of the vote compared with 40.1 percent for the People’s Party, the Interior Ministry said on its Web site. That will give Zapatero [...]

10Mar2008 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
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Spain hurts ETA but crackdown angers Basque people

HERNANI, Spain (Reuters) - The mayor of the Basque town of Hernani is defiant. She will not be voting in Sunday’s election because her party has been banned, but she says Spain cannot ignore separatists’ calls for independence.
Marian Beitialarrangoitia enraged many Spaniards when she publicly applauded two suspected members of the Basque separatist group ETA, [...]

3Mar2008 | admin | 0 comments | Continued