P O E T R Y C O R N E R

by Peter Craig

most prone and most active" is the so-called Bético, in the south of Valencia and Alicante.

"We expect earthquakes of large magnitudes, from 6 up on the Richter scale. If the previous ones have been of great destructive quantity, why couldn't they be repeated if they are the same faults," he said. "Active quaternary faults are the ones that are of most concern."

García also pointed out that earthquake prediction is "in its infancy" because "we do not know where they will occur, in the areas where there is more probability, yes, but not when".

He also pointed out that new buildings are constructed with earthquakes in mind, and so the destruction should not be as intense, although we have seen from Turkey, for example, it could still be catastrophic. What he did completely ruled out, however, is that the Valencian coast could suffer a tsunami, because "the magnitude of that earthquake will not reach a 6 or 7 and we have a highly developed continental shelf and the depth is very small, 200 or 300 metres", unlike that, which occurs, in the Gulf of Cádiz or the coast of Malaga, Ceuta, Melilla and the Moroccan and Algerian coast.

King to Visit Volkswagen Battery Factory on Friday

King Felipe will be in the Valencia region on Friday to preside over the opening ceremony of the start of construction of the battery gigafactory in Sagunto. The battery company, PowerCo SE, owned by the Volkswagen Group, was founded in July 2022.

It is located on a 130hectare plot of land, about 25 kilometres north of Valencia, where the Group's second cell factory will be built in Europe, which will be connected to the Group's network of gigafactories in 2026.

The gigafactory in Valencia has an annual production capacity of 40 GWh per year and will supply battery cells to the Volkswagen Group's car plants in Martorell and Pamplona.

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Rain! Not pitter-patter, dingle-dangle spring rain, but rushing, racing, drain-the-sky pale rain.Not drizzle or mizzle but raging rain, flashing and dashing out of the mist, splishing and splashing around my head. Our father said it would ‘refresh’the parched land.

But more refreshments poured down to slake that land, soaking the streets like a surging spring, spraying us all like a screw-loose showerhead. Sluicing each tub, bucket, barrel, and pail, it crashed and plashed, and narrowly missed drowning our poor pet dingo secured by his rein.

Then father declared the land right as rain, but the clouds didn’t care and crashed down to land, turning the bush to a bog, shrouded in mist. Billabongs conjoined, spawning brand new offspring, sweeping away fenceposts, pickets and pales, and all the damned rivers burst out of their heads.

So, we squished and squelched our way ahead, cloyed and clogged in the runnels of rain, as buildings collapsed and conspired to impale anything adrift on the spongy swampland. Then father’s nerves twanged taut as a hairspring, so he drained a wee dram of his Highland Mist.

Flotsam and jetsam ebbed and flowed through the mist, a chair, a table, an old bedhead, an inflatable doll, a mattress spring and a bust of the Queen (what a sad end to her reign). Would we ever again put our feet on dry land? (No longer a question beyond the pale.)

Then our father prayed, looking pious and pale, eyes clouded over in a supernal mist, picturing ‘boats, beasts and a flight from the land’, while a still, small voice of calm in his head forewarned about, ‘FORTY DAYS AND NIGHTS OF RAIN.’ So, like convicts in a get-out-of-gaol spring …

With paddles and pails and a makeshift masthead, we sailed out of the mist, away from the rain. Farewell to Queensland.G’day Alice Springs.

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The start of production is scheduled for 2026.

After last month’s approval by the Congress of Deputies, the new Animal Protection Law has now been approved by the Senate, with a majority of just a couple of votes. If the law had received just one more objection, it would have failed.

The more than 6,000 allegations and 450 amendments presented summarise the misgivings that the law has raised. For months, Unidas Podemos maintained pressure on the PSOE to open up to returning hunting dogs to the protection guaranteed by law as it came out of the Council of Ministers.

The Socialists managed to include during the debate in the commissionthanks to the support of PP, Vox and other parties such as the Basque Nationalist Party and the Canary Islands Coalition - an amendment that left out dogs used for hunting, as well as those used for grazing, guarding, those which participate in sports activities and other professional dogs such as State security forces and bodies.

Minister Ione Belarra, during her speech in the plenary session of the Senate, apologised for the law leaving out hunting dogs. "I repeat my apologies to the people who see the consequences every day, at the end of the hunting season, when many hundreds of dogs are abandoned, or because there are puppies buried in quicklime," she said, linking the hunting sector - there are some 750,000 hunters in Spain — where animal abuse is still present.

Of all the amendments presented, the amendments propose to eliminate the concept of "begging" in the article that prohibits the use of animals as lure, and another that eliminates the obligation to microchip and sterilise stray cats. Likewise, the eight partial amendments of the PSOE have also been approved, the majority of a technical nature. Specifically, they seek that people who have animals that are prohibited by law as pets must notify the authorities within six months of its entry into force, which will adopt the necessary measures for their intervention, and making them available to centres of pro- tection of wild animals, zoos or animal protection entities.

While in the modification of the Penal Code in relation to animal abuse, an amendment has been supported that proposes that the future of confiscated animals be resolved, taking into account their protection and well-being in order to avoid "unwanted" situations, such as the return of abused animals to their abuser after the period of disqualification.

WHAT’S YOUR OPINION

Both laws will be approved by Congress in the coming weeks after the incorporation of the amendments. They will then be published in the Official State Gazette (BOE), although for their entry into force it will be necessary to wait another six months, and even longer for aspects with a moratorium. Once again, we must now wait for the 450 amendments to be added to the text of the law, and for the publication, before we know exactly the full implications, but one thing we do now know for sure is that the bulk of the law has been approved, affording more protection to animals.

Do you support the new bill which, because of lobbying by hunters, still excludes hunting dogs and ignores bullfighting? Email us with your view at: office@theleader.info