Edition 50
www.thecourier.es
Friday, February 3, 2012
OLYMPIC BLAMES Courier readers fnac-kered by ticket mix-up By AMANDA BLACK THE great Olympic Games ticket hunt was thrown into confusion this week following our report last week that Spanish chain fnac was selling tickets for this summer’s London spectacular. Readers who rushed to buy tickets at the company’s Alicante branch were told: ‘’We don’t have tickets and we are not agents for the Olympics.’’ Yet days earlier, he Murcia branch had insisted they had tickets for virtually every sport. Reader David Pindred emailed us to say: “I called into the FNAC store in Alicante hoping to buy some tickets. However, I was told by the girl on the information desk that fnac do not sell tickets to Olympic events and that they can only be bought from authorised outlets. She suggested I try the web.” A similar situation had previously occurred at fnac in Madrid, where staff were unaware the store stocked Olympic tickets. In a bid to get to the bottom of the confusion, we contacted fnac head office in Madrid this week - and were assured that Olympic tickets for the London Games ARE on sale in ALL branches. Told of the problems our readers were experiencing, spokesman Víctor Moreno told us from Madrid: “I suppose there must have been a misunderstanding because tickets for London 2012 have been selling without problems from all
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Tetrapak are tops as fund for Aitana hits €154,500
THE remarkable campaign to raise €200,000 to send 10-year-old Aitana Garcia Doiz for lifesaving surgery in America has received another astonishing boost. With thousands of people avidly collecting plastic bottle tops to be sold for recycling on Aitana’s behalf, the Tetra Pak worldwide packaging company have donated no fewer than 1,741,924 surplus tops to the campaign. The plastic tops are surplus due to changes in packaging design - and at €300 per tonne, will give the fund a sizeable boost. Meanwhile, tops continue to flood in from all sources, along with donations and proceeds of fundraising events which have boosted the total raised to €154,500. The tops are recycled by the Acieco plastics firm at Ibi - and the colourful campaign to collect them has virtually become a cult in many neighbourhoods. Aitana will go to Boston in April for a second operation on her left lung. The surgery follows similar treatment in 2010 on her right lung, which is now functioning at 95 per cent. Instead, it appears to read 20020. The logo was designed by Luis Peiret, a 22-year-old graphic art student from Zaragoza, and chosen in a competition by the Spanish Olympic Committee. The script did read M20 in Peiret’s original design, but officials modified it, trimming the bottom to create the confusing 20020. The logo was quickly trashed on social networking sites in Spain, with Twitterers condemning it as looking like “a display of flip-flops on the beach” and a “colourful array of Bishops’ mitres”.
Never mind, it’s only 18,000 years to the Madrid Games! MADRID launched its bid to host the 2020 Olympics on Monday – 18,000 years too soon. At least that’s what it seemed like from the appearance of the official logo. The logo appeared to be for the Madrid 20020 Olympics, prompting the thought that it might take that long before Spain could afford to host the Games. The design is supposed to show the letter M for Madrid and the number 20 in front of the coloured Olympic rings stylised into arches inspired by the Madrid landmark, Puerta de Alcala.