Coldplay concert in San Sebastian

Coldplay´s last concert in Spain took place in San Sebastian on Friday 25th November. Despite the freezing temperatures and torrential rain up to 10,000 people turned up to see them play.

Although the support band Goldfrapp, who played for less than half an hour, failed to impress the public, once Coldplay took to the stage, the party began. The group played a selection of songs from all three albums one of the most memorable being ‘Yellow’ when huge yellow balloons descended from the ceiling, finally bursting and showering the audience with gold streamers.

Coldplay surprised the audience with their energy, at one point Chris Martin appeared amongst the audience in one of the furthest seating areas. After a long encore which included Swallowed in the Sea and Fix You the group left the stage to deafening cheers from the public.

Spanish police make arrests connected to Al Qaeda

The Spanish Interior Minister confirmed minutes ago that the arrests made in Alicante, Murcia and Granada today have been carried out as part of an operation in Spain aimed at identifying groups linked to Al Qaeda.

Spanish police have made 10 arrests, and minister José Antonio Alonso appeared in a press conference this morning to confirm that all ten are related to a radical Islamic group called The Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat, considered to be the Algerian arm of Al Qaeda. All 10 suspects are accused of using drug trafficking and fraud to finance the terrorist group Al Qaeda.

Alonso said that police do not think that the suspects formed a military cell and so were not planning any new terrorist attacks in Spain. He did not discard the possibility of further arrests, because he said that the anti-terrorism police operation, was still open. Alonso revealed that the arrests were the result of a 10-month secret investigation into the actitivities of the suspects.

During the operation, the Spanish civil guard seized drugs, documents and 35,000 euros in cash. According to reports, the men arrested formed part of a logistical support cell and maintained contact with other radical Algerian groups in Germany, Holland, UK, Belgium and Denmark.

Thirty civil guards were involved in the operation in Alicante, where 4 people have been arrested. In Torrevieja, just south of Alicante, 3 more Algerians have been arrested, two in Granada and one in Murcia.

Smoking in Spain

Sales of cheap cigarettes in Spain are booming according to a study published by El Pais this month. In 2004 cheaper brands of cigarettes (i.e. between 1 and 1.7 euros) represented 9.5 percent of all cigarettes sold in Spain. So far this year however, sales of cheaper brands have shot up and now represent 28 percent of the Spanish tobacco market.

Low-priced cigarettes mean that the government will find it even harder to reduce the number of smokers among the main target group of the Health Ministry's anti-smoking campaign - children and adolescents.

Moreover, booming sales present the Spanish Treasury with further problems, partly because the tax put on cheap cigarettes is negligible, and partly because health problems caused by people who are able to indulge their habit thanks to the existence of cheap brands represent a further strain on funding of the Spanish national health system.

In theory the Spanish tax office could put a minimum tax on cigarretes. As legislation stands now, the tax on a packet of cigarretes that costs 2.8 euros is 1.6 euros, whereas the tax on a cheaper brand is half that at about 80 centimos. The government could establish a minimum tax, so that the cheapest brands have to pay as much as normal-priced cigarretes. Last year cigarette taxes contributed 7,400 million euros to the Treasury.

This year the sales of cheaper brands is expected to reach nearly 30 percent total cigarette sales, representing an unprecedented shift in the tobacco market in Spain.

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Drugs in Spain

Malaria vaccine seems nearer

According to one of the leading articles published in El País yesterday, the latest news about the new malaria vaccine developed by Spanish scientist Pedro Alonso and presented to the international media last year is very encouraging.

The new malaria vaccine has successfully passed the latest tests carried out to measure its lasting effectiveness on children aged up to four years old. The trials have so far overcome the hurdles which led to scientist Manuel Patarroyo withdrawing his malaria vaccine some ten years ago after unsuccessful tests were carried out in Tanzania.

According to the news report, the British medical journel Lancet will publish an article by Alonso describing the results of these latest trials which prove that the new vaccine has not lost its efficacy over a period of 18 months. Another member of Alonso's research team participating in this project writes in the article "the most important thing is that this is the first time ever that a vaccine against malaria has had such a long-lasting effect". Trials have been carried out in Mozambique where children who have been administered the vaccine will continue to be monitored twice a year in order to assess the long-term effectiveness of the vaccine.

When the announcement of a possible new malaria vaccine discovered by Spanish scientists was published by the same journal in October last year, trials carried out then had proven lasting effects at six months. So proven efficacy of the new malaria vaccine one year later has been extended to 18 months, and Dr. Alonso is optimistic about the continued effectiveness of the new drug.

Each year between one and three million children are killed by malaria, and ninety percent of all malaria cases are in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is the biggest killer of African children and a successful vaccine would transform public health facilities in many African countries.

The long-term efficacy of the new vaccine in children aged under one will now be tested in new trials. Pedro Alonso believes that if the results of the current trials enjoy continued success, then the vaccine could be distributed on a massive scale within five years time.

Dr. Alonso directs the International Health Centre at Barcelona University as well as the Health Research Center in Manhica (Mozambique) which is financed by the Spanish government. The development of a new malaria vaccine has been made possible by funds granted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the drugs company Glaxo Smith Kline.

Related:
Spanish scientists use maths to cure cancer

Photo of Spain's baby Princess Leonor

This is the first public photo of Princess Leonor, future queen of Spain, taken as her mother carried her out of the Ruber International Clinic this morning after a week in hospital.

Hundreds of photographers waited all morning to get their first camera shot of the baby since she was born last week. It is also the first time her mother, Letizia has made an appearance before the press since the birth. She has stayed in the rooms made available for her and her family in the Clinic all week, accompanied day and night by Prince Felipe and most of the time by her mother too. Queen Sofia has visited most days and is said to carry her new grandaughter's photo on her mobile phone. On Saturday she and Letizia's mother and grandparents spent the whole day in the Clinic. Yesterday was the first day since the birth that the royal couple and their new baby received no visits.

Meanwhile Leonor's arrival has speeded up the long awaited constitutional change in Spain to allow female royal descendents the same hereditary rights as males. The Spanish vice-president confirmed last Friday that the Socialist Government intends to initiate the process necessary to modify the article referring to succession to the Spanish throne from male-preference primogeniture in favor of lineal primogeniture. The Popular Party also supports the proposed change.

Meanwhile the latest public opinion poll carried out by Cadena Ser today confirms the current crisis of the Socialist government. Support has slidden down to an all-time low, and according to the results of the pulsometro poll, if elections were held today the Socialists would not win a majority nor have enough support to form a government. The PSOE party has a lead of just half a point over the Popular Party, and since the parliamentary debate on the Catalan Statute last week, the popularity of Rodriguez Zapatero has fallen by 4 points whereas that of Mariano Rajoy, leader of the opposition, has risen by the same number.

The past few months have been the worst of this government, and with unemployment rising, the intensity of strikes increasing (the miners have been on strike for the past week, following damaging strikes by the fishing and transport industries in October), the issue of the Catalan statute unlikely to go away, and the drought in Spain where government policies on water administration have divided regions and public opinion, things are not likely to get better in the short term unless their is a change in the socialist government's style, personalities and policies.

Congress debates new Catalan Statute

The leaders of all main Catalan political parties attended yesterday’s long debate in Spain's parliament about whether or not to admit for discussion the proposal of the Catalan government for a new statute giving the region greater autonomous powers.

The whole issue has further divided the two main streams of Spanish politics. The Spanish president, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has given the statute his support, (pending some modifications concerning the fiscal system), whereas the Popular Party claims the Catalan initiative infringes constitutional law and that as such it would be impossible for the Spanish congress to pass the statute without first ammending the Spanish Constitution. And by law, in order to ammend the Constitution, first parliament has to approve the ammendment by a large majority, and then the proposal must be put to the Spanish people in a referendum.

Yesterday, despite the conciliatory tone of the three Catalan leaders who presented their proposal before Congress, all three defended possibly the most controversial aspect of the estatuto: the fact that it refers to Catalonia as a “nation”. This makes Zapatero’s job of convincing public opinion even more difficult than it already is. The Popular Party argues that it is constitutionally impossible to have a nation within a nation, and since the Spanish constitution refers to Spain as a Nation, debate of a statute proposing to change an autonomous “region” into a “nation” is impossible unless the wording of the constitution is changed first and Spain becomes some sort of federal state of nations.

This is one hot potato that Zapatero is going to find hard to juggle with. He said that yesterday that some ammendments would have to be introduced into the proposal, but he insisted that the essence of the statute would remain the same and asserted that “national identity of Catalonia” was “perfectly compatible” with Article II of the Constitution which “considers Spain as the nation of all its people”.

The Spanish president looked tired during yesterday’s debate which started in the morning and went on until late evening. His speech was generally unconvincing and reflected the difficult (some would say impossible) position he is in at the moment. It contrasted sharply with the open optimism and satisfaction of the Catalans and the energetic, if not aggressive, opposition of the PP who are encouraged by latest opinion polls showing that the majority of Spaniards outside Catalonia do not approve of the statute, especially the “nation” part.

The whole concept of Spanish state is still a very sensitive issue in this still relatively young democracy, and despite the president’s boast that his government is not afraid of debate or reform, a lot of Spaniards secretly are very wary of constitutional reform, especially if it touches on sensitive issues. Many Spaniards from the rest of Spain regard Catalonian politics with a mixture of suspicion and unease, relations between Madrid and Barcelona have always been strained, and the leader of the Catalan Separatist Party, Carod Rovira, is very unpopular throughout mainstream Spain. Rodriguez Zapatero may end up having to pay a high price for his firm defence of the ambitious aims of his Catalan allies, upon whom the stability of his government majority depends.

In the end, after over 10 hours of heated debate, Congress voted to accept the Catalan Statute for further discussion, by 197 votes to 146. Only the Popular Party voted against. The plan will now be passed onto the constitutional committee, where it is expected to be amended over the next two months.