Birth of Sofia, the Prince of Spain's second daughter

Second daughter of the Prince of Asturias was born yesterday

The second daughter to the Prince and Princess of Asturias is called Sofía according to an announcement made by Felipe de Borbón in a press conference yesterday at the Ruber International Clinic in Madrid where Sofía was born. Both parents have spoken of her physical likeness to her elder sister Leonor.

Princess Letizia gave birth by caesarean section four and a half hours after being admitted to the clinic yesterday afternoon. As well as Felipe, she was accompanied by her mother Paloma Rocasolano.

Sofía was born in the same clinic where her sister Leonor was born in October 2005. Doña Letizia and her daughter were attended by the same team, headed by the gynaecologist Luis Ignacio Recasens, who assisted the birth of Leonor one and a half years ago.

Outside the Ruber International Clinic in Madrid mobile telephones belonging to the numerous journalists who were awaiting news of the birth rang simultaneously when they received a text message from the Zarzuela Palace which announced the birth the second daughter of the Prince and Princess of Asturias at 17.28 on Sunday afternoon.
Hardly two hours later, the Prince of Asturias appeared before the press in a provisional marquee that had been set up outside the clinic to announce that his second daughter would be called Sofía, the doctor in charge of the medical team, Luis Ignacio Recasens, explained that the birth had been by caesarean section. He also announced that Sofá weighed 3.310 kilos and measured 50 centimetres and that both mother and daughter were in perfect health.

The king was informed of the birth of his 8th grandchild by phone and the Queen went straight to the hospital to meet her new grandaughter and namesake on her return from Moscow where she had been attending the funeral of the Russian cellist and very close friend, Mstislav Rostropovich, who passed away last Friday.

Sofia is the third successor to the throne of Spain after her father Felipe de Borbona and her elder sister Leonor.

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Expansion of Santander Group

Record Profits for Santander Group

Santander Group obtained 1,802 million euros in the first quarter of this year which is 20.7% more than the same period in 2006 according to an official spokesperson.
Fortis, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Santander announced today that they have informed ABN Amro of their intention to launch a takeover bid for 100% of the social capital of the Dutch company.

Santander Group attributes the rate of growth in profits to the fact that money received by the group was more than double their costs.

The takeover bid depends on the terms of the contract that ABN has signed with the Bank of America with respect to LaSalle Bank. Barclays, who are also interested in taking over the Dutch entity, has placed the condition that ABN sells its subsidiary company LaSalle to the Bank of America. The new offer led by Santander Group however, places the condition that the Dutch bank does not get rid of LaSalle.

Dutch legislation forbids publicising the price of the offer for the timebeing although Santander, Fortis and RBS communicated their offer of 39 euros per share for the bank last Wednesday which would appear to be 13% more than Barclay’s latest offer of 75.500 million euros.

Santander, Fortis and RBS argue that their take over bid offers significantly more value for shareholders and advantages for clients and employees than Barclays'. They have requested a reply from ABN as soon as possible.

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The most expensive and cheapest supermarkets in Spain

Choosing where to do your weekly supermarket shop could be a key factor in reducing the household budget according to a study carried out by a consumer’s organisation (la Organización de Consumidores y Usuarios - OCU). It found that Sánchez Romero was the most expensive supermarket while Dani was the cheapest with a 46% difference in prices.

The study by OCU demonstrated that a typical weekly shop which included 132 products by well known brands was once again cheapest at Dani, a supermarket chain in Andalucia. Using the same criteria Cemar, Herbu's, Simply Market and Alcampo came next on the list.

Sánchez Romero was found to be the most expensive supermarket followed by Ercoreca (32% more expensive than Dani) and El Corte Inglés (27% more expensive).

On a national level Alcampo was the cheapest supermarket chain in 16 Spanish cities followed by Sabeco which was the most economic in 6 cities while Mercadona was found to have the most reasonable prices in 3 of the cities in the study.

Eroski and Carrefour were also found to be among the cheapest supermarkets. OCU highlighted the fact that local and regional supermarket chains are the most economic places to shop for food in more than half of the Spanish cities included in their study.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, San Sebastian, Pamplona and Bilbao were found to be the most expensive places to buy branded food products while Cuenca, Lugo, Orense, Zamora, León, Ávila, Pontevedra, Soria and Vigo, were the cheapest.

According to OCU an average household spends 4,683 euros a year on food and that savings of up to euros could be achieved by selecting the right place to shop.
In Madrid, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Granada, Castellón and Barcelona families could save over 1000 euros. In fact in Madrid an average household could save in the region of 1575 euros by selecting the cheapest supermarket.

On the other hand supermarkets in Teruel, Cuenca, Puertollano and Ciudad Real had the most uniform prices and families could only save 83 euros in Teruel and Cuenca, 137 euros in Puertollano and 201 euros in Ciudad Real.

The study by OCU looked at more than 87,000 prices in 762 establishments in 54 different cities and on-line supermarkets. It concluded that households should choose a supermarket that has economic prices in general rather than be seduced by special offers in more expensive chains. It also discovered that there is a growing trend to buy the cheapest product regardless of the brand.

The best restaurant in the world: El Bulli

Ferrán Adrià’s restaurant called El Bulli near Girona has been rated as the best restaurant in the world for the second year running according to Restaurant, a prestigious food magazine.

El Bulli received a majority vote by The majority of the 651 judges who participated in the survey voted in favour of this restaurant. This means that once again El Bulli is at the top of the list of the best 50 restaurants in the world according to this magazine which includes another 5 Spanish restaurants. In fact El Bulli has not dropped lower than third place over the last 6 years and has now been at the top of the list 3 times in 2001, 2006 and this year.

Mugaritz Restaurant in Rentería, Guipuzcoa rated 7th, Arzak Restaurant in San Sebastian, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona rated 10th, Can Fabes, de Sant Celoni in Barcelona rated 22nd and Martin Berasategui in Lasarte, Guipúzcoa rated 27th are the other Spanish restaurants on the list.

The Brazilian restaurant DOM in São Paulo in 38th place is the only Latin American restaurant to get onto the list of the 50 best restaurants according to the magazine Restaurant. Last year it came 50th.

France with 12 restaurants on the list, the US with 8 and the UK with 7 were above Spain which occupied 4th place together with Italy which also had 6 restaurants on the list.

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Electronic ID cards in Spain

Half a million Spaniards now have an electronic National Identity Card

500,000 electronic National Identity Cards have now been issued by the National Police, a figure which meets targets set by Spain's Home Office. Joan Mesquida, the director of the National Police and Civil Guards has announced yestoday that the second phase of introducing these electronic identity cards will be launched in 27 provinces throughout Spain before the end of autumn.

By the end of the year, there should be more than two and a half million Spanish citizens with electronic national identity cards, and by the end of 2008 it is expected that this figure will have grown to over six and a half million. At present there are 47 offices in 22 provinces where electronic cards are being issued. Electronic cardholders are guaranteed extra security when using their cards over the internet.

One of the government’s main objectives is to achieve maximum security and respect for the privacy of citizens as well as making the new electronic IDs easy and straightforward to use.

The electronic national identity cards consist of a physical document which contains numerous secure elements. It is the first system in Spain which guarantees security for the card holder to authorize actions over the Internet or to prove their identity electronically.

Zapatero offers French socialists "model of success"

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish president participated in a large rally in Toulouse yesterday in support of the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, Ségolène Royal. During the meeting, attended by thousands, he said that, Ségolène was the future for France. According to official sources this will be Ségolène’s last rally before the first round of voting on Sunday.

Zapatero said that Europe was waiting for an innovative, committed, brave and modern France to emerge from the elections. He also said that he was convinced that Ségolène would achieve this because she represented a real alternative and would offer another form of government. According to Zapatero Spain feels close to France. His speech, which was translated using subtitles on two giant screens either side of the stage, was greeted with applause and chants of ‘Zapatero, Zapatero’.

When asked why he had chosen to show such strong support to Ségolène he justified his presence saying that he wanted to accompany her in this decisive phase of her campaign because of the commitment to social democratic ideas which they both shared and to offer a model of success to the French.

Ségolène Royal, was given the nickname Zapatera by the press in 2004 when she became the first female president of the region Poitou-Charentes. When she was still competing to be the candidate for the French presidency, she visited Madrid to participate in PSOE’s annual political conference last September, where she had a meeing with Zapatero. The Socialist leader committed her party to following a similar programme of equality designed by Zapatero’s government.

The French opinion polls only show that three out of four voters are still undecided on who to vote for. Although the outcome is still uncertain, latest polls show Nicolas Sarkozy as the front runner and many foreign policy analysts will question Zapatero's very public display of support for the opposition candidate, especially since Franco-Spanish relations and cooperation are vital in the on-going fight against Basque terrorism.

Spanish boy bullfighter seriously injured

Spanish teenage bullfighter in intensive care

Jairo Miguel, 14 years old just last month, is in intensive care in a hospital in Mexico following being seriously injured when one of his lungs was perforated during a bullfight. The bull who pierced his lung last Sunday weighed 430 kilos. His father, Antonio Sánchez Cáceres who was a bullfighter during the 70’s, is said to be in shock. This week Spanish television has shown footage of the father complaining about the fact that whereas boys are allowed to play other high risk "sports" in Spain, bullfighters have to be at least 16 year old before they are allowed into an official bullring. He said that he had only brought his son to Mexico to bide time because in Spain his son wasn't allowed to fight.

Last Sunday’s bullfight was Jairo's 25th and was held in the third largest bullring in Mexico and was supposed to celebrate the start of the San Marcos fiestas. Jorge de Haro, president of the National Association of Bull Breeders in Mexico told Spanish reporters that he had seen Jairo in a bullfight against a bull weighing 450 kilos last year and claimed that like tennis or any other sport bullfighting was better learnt as a child and in his opinion ‘the younger the better’.

In Spain bullfighting is prohibited until the age of 16, although in the world of bullfighting not everyone agrees with this age restriction. According to Emiliano López, from the Bullfighting school in Ciudad Real, what happened to Jairo last Sunday was an accident which was possible whatever age the bullfighter be it 12, 14 or 35 years old. He told El Pais that it was like learning to read or teething because not all children do that at the same time. He said that the laws in Spain were far too strict.

On the other hand, José Conde, from another bullfighting school in Algeciras said that a 14 year old should not be allowed to fight a bull in a bullring and said that this situation would never have arisen in Spain where the limit was set taking into account many factors like physical ability and maturity.

The latest child bullfighter in Mexico who drove the crowds wild is Rafita Mirabal who is just nine years old. At present he is fighting young bulls just under 2 years old in Mexico.

Meanwhile Jairo Miguel’s father, Antonio Sánchez Cáceres, was still trying to justify the situation from the hospital in Aguascalientes, Mexico where his son is in a serious condition. He said that at first Jairo’s Cuban mother did not understand how important bullfighting was for his son but that eventually she understood, like him, that this is a passion for Jairo, even a vocation and that nobody had put ideas into his son’s head.

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America's Cup in Valencia

The 32nd America's Cup started last weekend in Valencia. Following a winter of training and preparing their boats the 11 teams are preparing for their definitive test - their challenge for the right to compete against the Swiss team, the Alinghi, winners of last year’s American Cup in this year’s competition.

On Tuesday 16th April, the 11 boats will leave the port in Valencia for the last boat race before the hopefuls compete against each other in the Louis Vuitton cup. The Alinghi will train alone in preparation for the final later on.

Most of the 11 teams will compete in new boats built in accordance with the most recent rules, approved during the winter break. The team from New Zealand, winners of last year’s season are preparing to compete using the latest technology.
According to Terry Hutchinson, the strategist for the New Zealand team, the teams which competed in old boats last year but with good teams will have increased their chances of winning considerably.

With a Chinese team and a team representing Asia and Africa (the Shosholoza) the 22nd American Cup is the first time that 5 continents will compete for the oldest trophy in the history of the sport. There are 3 other Italian teams taking part together with the BMW Oracle team representing the US and teams from Germany, Spain, Switzerland, France and New Zealand.

The state of Spanish roads

The Minister for Transport, Magdalena Álvarez, announced in an interview with Cadena Ser that she had requested a report to analyse the number of traffic accidents during the Easter period. Over 100 people were killed in road accidents during the Easter weekend, a higher figure than last year and a blow for the Socialist government's new penalty points licence system introduced last year as a way of reducing driving accidents.

Talking about the number of accidents on the roads over Easter she recognised that many roads were in a bad state. However, she said that the government had doubled investment in road maintenance and had reinforced safety measures on the roads.
She said that they had set up an important programme of improvement in which motorways were being improved using the latest technology with the objective of ensuring the highest safety standards.

With regards to speed limits she said that this was not in her jurisdiction. She said that it was up to the experts to study what measures were necessary and that it was the governments responsibility to improve the state of the roads and in this way help reduce the number of accidents.

The Minister also mentioned expansion of high-speed rail connections which the government hopes will serve to reduce the number of vehicles on Spanish roads. She said that a new high-speed AVE link to Tarragona will be in place by May 7th this year. By 2007 a third of the Spanish population will be linked directly by this high speed train service.

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Spanish scientist makes breakthrough discovery for prevention of metastasis

Key to metastasis from lung and breast cancer discovered by Spanish scientist Joan Massagué

According to a study on breast cancer led by Joan Massagué, director of the Biology and Genetic Cancer Programme in the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York (MSKCC) and director of the Biomedical Research Institute in Barcelona (IRB), reported in El País today, just a few genes provide the conditions necessary for a malignant cell to form a new tumour in a distant organ, leading to metastasis. The study found that certain genes are responsible for the formation of new capillaries where a malignant cell from a primary tumour can escape from.

The investigative team has identified to date a group of 18 genes which are strongly implicated in the spread of tumours. This latest study by Massagué has discovered that out of all these 18 genes there are 4 which provoke at least 2 circumstances in which the spread of a cancer can take place. On the one hand the formation of new blood vessels around the tumour and on the other hand, the perforation of small capillaries which feed and give oxygen to a certain organ. The study carried out by Massagué, published today in Nature magazine, looked specifically at the breast and lungs.

This latest research has discovered that 4 proteins acting together cause the formation of new blood vessels around a tumour, as demonstrated in experiments on mice. It is these new vessels which are responsible for giving oxygen and feeding the tumour which in turn favours its growth. However, these vessels are imperfect in that they are porous and it is through these pores that malignant cells can escape into the blood stream. Massagué pointed out that it was already known that for every cubic centimetre of a tumour a million malignant cells could escape, however what was unknown until now was which genes or specific proteins were implicated in this.

It was also known that once cancer cells reach the blood stream they needed to be sufficiently prepared in order to resist attacks by the body’s own natural defence system in order to reach a distant organ. The study by Massagué and his research team explains how a malignant cell can leave the capillaries surrounding the lungs and survive in the blood stream.

Again it is the action of 4 proteins that allow a cancerous cell to leave the cells that form the walls of a tiny capillary. It was discovered that the way that they do this is by almost sliding between the substances that cement the cells of the capillary.

In another study published in the magazine PNAS, Massagué and other scientists from other countries investigate the role that the group of 18 genes play in breast cancer and the way it spreads to the lungs. Massagué thinks that more than half of the 18 genes could have a relevant role in the spread of this type of cancer.

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Military capacity of ETA

ETA still has capacity to hit major targets

The latest report on Terrorism in the European Union carried out by Europol (the European Police Agency) has confirmed that ETA has reorganised its cells and renewed its capacity to attack major targets since the ceasefire began in March 2006.

The report highlights the fact that during the ceasefire ETA has carried out two attacks, one of which was the bombing of Barajas - Spain’s busiest airport in Madrid which on 30th december 2006 claimed the lives of two people and caused damages estimated at 30 million euros.

According to the report, since then ETA has ‘not only maintained but reorganised its capacity to carry out major attacks against high profile targets’. It also states that before the ceasefire announced in March 2006, ETA used ‘kale borroka’ to maintain pressure on the government and to demonstrate to those who support the organisation its determination to fight for its objectives. The report holds groups made up of young people who sympathise with ETA responsible for ‘kale borroka’ which can be literally translated as street warfare and consists of acts of vandalism. It states that they follow the orders of ETA to attack targets such as cash points, banks or PSOE (the Spanish socialist party) headquarters using urban guerrilla tactics.

According to the report ‘kale borroka’ only stopped for two months following the declaration of the ceasefire. In June 2006 ten attacks were recorded covering 37 cities, towns and villages in Spain. A total of 144 attacks by Basque separatists were recorded for the whole of 2006 in both France and Spain.

Woody Allen offers film role to his Spanish dubber

Filming of Woody Allen's next production, starring Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johanson, is due to start this Summer. The film is set in Barcelona and Allen has offered a role to Joan Pera, the Spanish actor who has dubbed Allen's voice in all his films shown in Spain for the past 20 years.

The role offered to Joan Pera is apparantly a silent one, and also very brief, and is Woody Allen's way of expressing his gratitude to Pera who has put his voice to Allen's roles in all Spanish and Catalan versions for over two decades (according to information published on the Spanish dubbers site El Doblaje, he also dubbs Rowan Atkinson's voice). According to an article published by El Periódico today, Pera passed an audition for the part last week.

Joan Pera is a comedy actor and is well-known especially in his native Catalonia. He claims that last time Woody Allen was in Barcelona, the New York director thanked him for all his effort and said that thank's to Pera he had become much more of a hero than he really is (Woody Allen's films have always been extremely popular in Spain). Joan Pera does an excellent imitation of Allen's style and entonation.

British Museum Exhibition in Alicante

The British Museum exhibition Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum opens today in the MARQ Museum in Alicante with exhibits dating from the 9th and 7th centuries B.C.. This exhibition has already been shown in museums in New York, Mexico, Copenhagen and Shanghai.

The Treasures from Assyria exhibition consists of more than 200 pieces and objects from the ancient Assyrian culture. It is divided into three main exhibition halls with exhibits from palaces and temples, magic and religion and everyday life and handicraft. Together these exhibits describe life, culture and art in the Assyrian Empire of ancient Mesopotamia from the Ninth to the Seventh Centuries B.C.

The exhibition opens today in Alicante and runs through to 30th September. Alicante's MARQ Museum is considered to be one of Europe's best and most didactic archeological museums. Security measures have been increased inside and outside the museum to ensure proper protection of the British Museum exhibition and the museum has also improved temperature and humidity levels in order to guarantee returning the exhibits to the British Museum in perfect condition. An audio guide is available to visitors in English, Spanish and Valenciano.

MARQ has announced that the exhibition marks the beginning of a new and ongoing collaboration between the British Museum and MARQ which will include exchange visits of art experts from both museums.

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