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Schools out!
NEARLY 220 schools across Spain have recorded incidents of COVID-19, leading to the quarantine of classrooms and in some cases total closures. A total of 12 schools and 35 classes have been affected in Valencia. The Basque Country is the second most affected region with around 30 schools reporting cases of coronavirus either among staff or students by Tuesday. In total, only four of them had to be closed with the other centres adopting partial quarantine. Meanwhile Aragon has seen the closure of 24 classrooms, Castilla-La Mancha 20 classrooms, Madrid 26 classrooms. In the Balearic Islands, a total of 29 students have tested positive for coronavirus since the beginning of the school year.
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Vol. 2 Issue 39 www.theolivepress.es September 17th - September 30th 2020
Hopping in
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EMPTY: Deserted classes
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WE’VE had to put up with the Germans bagging the sunbeds. Now it’ll be the French grabbing all the
best tables. When it comes to tourism in Spain, Britain’s Gallic neighbour – and tra-
ditional arch rival - has overtaken the UK. For the first time in decades – possibly since
Napoleon’s troops swept through Spain before meeting their Waterloo with Wellington – French
Zut Alors! Brits forced to relinquish tourist top spot to our Gallic neighbours
FRENCH INVASION: Gallic visitors have taken over from Brits in the tourism stakes
SALES & RENTALS SPECIALISTS Moriara•Calpe•Jalon•Javea•Denia•Altea
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SPOKEN
We are still living in fear NOTHING is in place to stop a repeat of the devastating floods that happened a year ago.
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That is the verdict of a high-profile Costa Blanca mayor as experts met up at the National Flood Congress in Orihuela. A gota fria (cold drop) storm over the weekend of September 12 to 15 last year wiped out towns and villages across the Vega Baja region, killing seven people and causing millions of euros of devastation. “Yet we are still in fear as the urgent works have still not been done,” said the mayor of Orihuela, Emilio Bascuñana. He added: “The reality is we don’t have infrastructure to prevent floods from happening again.” He revealed that Orihuela has still not received aid that was promised from the regional government soon after the natural disaster. But urgent aid has failed to arrive in many areas, with the President of the PPCV party Isabel Bonig also slamming the regional and national authorities.
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visitors have outnumbered Brits. To make it even worse, the Germans have also overtaken the UK when it comes to the number of tourists landing on Spanish shores. Just 378,000 Brits visited Spain in July when the UK government imposed quarantine restrictions on returning visitors… or a paltry 18% of the 2.2 million who arrived in July 2019. By comparison, French visitors numbered 597,000 – still a big drop from the 1.43 million seen in the same month last year. Second spot in the ranking went to the 432,302 Germans who visited, compared to 1.24 million the previous year. It is a historic reversal of trends – but perhaps a ray of light for the hard-hit Costa Blanca tourism industry. Some 80% of French holidaymakers arrive in Spain by road meaning the Costa Blanca is within easy reach for many.
Eclipsed
DEVASTATION: Floods brought chaos Paying tribute to the victims needed to alleviate ‘so much at an Almoradi event, she de- suffering’ because the entire manded it was not allowed to Vega Baja needs investments. happen again. “We must use all the means at our disposal to prevent a similar catastrophe from happening again,” she said. The PPCV president called for ‘more will’ on the part of the national and regional authorities to sort out the situation. She added that the money was
With Catalunya – long a favourite for the French – put out of bounds due to coronavirus outbreaks, many kept on driving into the Valencia region. The figures for August have yet to be released. And with the UK government unlikely to remove the current, strict travel restrictions on visitors to Spain, it could put Britain’s annual tourism top spot in danger of being eclipsed too. So if Britons are ever to emulate Wellington’s heroics and usurp the French, they will probably have to wait until next year when hopefully the coronavirus crisis is over.
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