ISSUE NO. 1689
COSTA DE ALMERÍA
16 - 22 Nov 2017
YOUR PAPER, YOUR VOICE, YOUR OPINION
Mojacar town hall
Photo credit Salvamento Maritimo
Marathon winners
SHAKY LEGS: Councillor Garcia awards athletes. WITH a time of one hour, 18 minutes and 26 seconds, Blas Jesus Quiles Parra won the Mojacar half marathon. He edged out Antonio Manual Diaz Rodriguez who finished second. In the women’s race, Esther Galvez Jimenez was victorious with a time of one hour, 33 minutes and 80 seconds. Zacarias Roig Iglesias won the shorter seven kilometre race. Both amateur and professional runners competed and prizes were awarded by Sports councillor Ana Garcia Fernandez.
RUBBER DINGHY: Commonly used to cross the Gibraltar Strait.
All at sea Number of migrants almost triples in a year By Karl Smallman
French fiasco TWO Frenchmen were held at Almeria port with a stolen moped. Guardia Civil officers conducted a search on a van destined for North Africa, uncovering a range of stolen goods. The French nationals, aged 38 and 45, were placed under arrest. They denied having anything to declare, but police inspectors were suspicious of the bulky van and its unusual cargo. The first item they checked was a freezer. Inside police found the parts and engine of a moped, which later turned out to have been stolen in France.
S p a i n ’s m a r i t i m e r e s c u e service recovered more than 400 migrants from boats making the dangerous crossing in the Mediterranean Sea over the weekend. It is believed good weather and sea conditions saw the increase in traffic, much of which was bound for Almeria. On Saturday Salvamento M a r i t i m o t w e e t e d : ‘ We saved 276 people from seven improvised vessels.’ A n d , o n S u n d a y, t h e y rescued a further 144 people from another seven boats. According to the International Organisation for Mi-
gration (since January) 15,600 migrants have made it to Spanish shores by sea with at least 156 killed during the dangerous crossing from Morocco. H o w e v e r, S p a i n i s s t i l l w e l l b e h i n d I t a l y, w h i c h h a s r e c o r d e d 11 4 , 4 0 0 a r rivals by sea since January. North Africans appear to choose the Strait of Gibraltar crossing in small crafts of between four and 10 people.
Meanwhile sub-Saharans often use the Alboran Sea crossing in ‘pateras’ carrying up to 60 people on a journey that can take up to 30 hours. It comes as the skipper of a people-trafficking boat has been released on bail by an Almeria court. He was caught ferrying a dozen Algerian passengers on a boat intercepted 19 nautical miles south-east of Cabo de Gata.
WWW.EUROWEEKLYNEWS.COM
Blackspot warning TWO black spots have been identified as needing urgent attention by the Directorate General of Traffic (DGT). They are at kilometre 3.5 of the AL-12 road through Almeria City and the intersection at kilometre two of the AL-3117 from Mami to Viator. Black spots are considered areas where there have been three of more accidents in less than a year all within 100 metres of one another. At the AL-12 blackspot there were 11 accidents with 16 injuries last year. In the second blackspot there were three accidents last year with four injuries.