News
Cartagena Bonanza
Domestic Rise
Caravan and campsites across Alicante Province saw an 11 percent rise in overnight stays compared to figures for 2015. Juan Delgado of the Alicante Camping Association said that the increased figures include more Spaniards staying on sites in caravans or cabins/bungalows during the off-peak months. He says a key factor has been people choosing to stay
Cartagena’s local police have rounded up a record seizure of almost 600 counterfeit items that were set to be sold illegally around the area. Clothing items led the list of goods that were taken from an unnamed location in the historical quarter of the city. Of greatest concern was the impounding of 29 toy swords that had a laser in them, which could easily cause blindness if aimed at a human eye.
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Friday 13th January 2017
in the area, as opposed to going for a break to Tunisia, where attacks on tourists had taken place. Delgado added that overnight stays had risen by 46 percent in the last decade, with Patrick Le Metayer of La Marina camping saying he had certainly noted increased demand from the domestic market looking for accommodation, be it a caravan or a cabin.
Falling Figures The number of unemployed people in Spain fell by 390,534 to 3,702,974 in 2016, a reduction of 9.54 percent, according to figures published by the employment ministry. The drop is the highest in Spain since 1996 in absolute terms and since 1999 in relative terms and is the fourth year in row that the number of people out of work has fallen, following falls of 147,385 in 2013, 253,627 in 2014, and 354,203 in 2015. December saw
Traffickers Stopped
unemployment reduced by 86,849, thanks mainly to the number of short-term contracts signed over the Christmas period. Locally, there were just over 170 thousand people out of work in Alicante Province at the end of 2016, a fall of almost eight percent over the year. Whilst there was a nine percent drop in the Murcia region, with over 117 thousand registered last month as unemployed.
Nine people have been arrested by the National Police, after submitting young migrant women to voodoo rituals before being forced into prostitution in Benidorm and Bilbao. Authorities say that the trafficking group used illegal migration routes to smuggle young girls from their home countries to Spain, with the gang headed by three Nigerian women. Seven women were “rescued� after the police operation. The victims, all poor,
were approached 'very young' with promises of a good job in Europe, and they were then submitted to voodoo rituals threatening serious consequences if they disobeyed orders, before undertaking their journey to Spain via Niger and Libya. After arriving in Spain, they were instructed to ask for asylum so as to avoid potential deportation. They were told they owed the organisation around 40 thousand euro, and forced into prostitution in Bilbao
and Benidorm. A National Police spokesman said: 'They had to go and prostitute themselves every day and couldn't come back until the early hours of the morning, after more than 14 hours... regardless of the inclement weather or their own health.' Such was the fear of their bosses, that one of the victims who fell pregnant aborted straightaway and continued to prostitute herself so that they would never know.