The Supplement #43

“It’s choice -not chance- that determines your destiny” Jean Nidetch

ISSUE 43

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Saturday 23 June 2012

MAYOR HINTS AT POOL COMPLEX CHANGE Santa Cruz’s flagship open-air swimming pool complex could be put to additional uses if the city mayor gets his way. The popular Parque Marítimo next to the Auditorium is ideally suited to offer much more than swimming and sunbathing, according to mayor

José Manuel Bermúdez, who has signalled his intention to seek a change in the uses currently authorised for the complex and make it an ‘engine-room’ of the local scene.

‘The idea is not to turn it into an open-air discotheque but there is certainly scope to add

sporting activities, entertainment and formal dinners to its range of uses, particularly in winter when the pools are not operating’ said Bermúdez, who believes that restricting the complex to swimming only is a sure way of causing its financial ruin.

POLITICS

Canarian MPs vote to take a 5% pay-cut ◗MPs in the Canarian regional Parliament have bowed at last to public pressure and voted in favour of a pay-cut in line with the cuts applied to public sector workers in recent months.

The MPs agreed to reduce their salaries by an average of 5%, which means they will lose approximately 200 euros from their paypacket every month.

Parliament also adjusted the daily allowances payable to MPs for attendance at sessions and for travel outside the Canaries on official business.

LA LAGUNA

Parents relieved at sex-abuse teacher ban

The Parque Marítimo, which was designed by César Manrique, should extend its activities to attract more business, according to the mayor. / DA

TENERIFE

POLITICS

CHINESE PRESIDENT MAKES FLYING VISIT TO TENERIFE

Elderly woman drowns in Güímar tragedy ◗A 70-year-old woman has drowned while swimming on the Puertito de Güímar beach. The elderly woman, who is from La Laguna, was pulled from the sea by other swimmers after geting into difficulty but died from heart failure shortly afterwards.

◗Parents of pupils at a wellknown La Laguna school have expressed relief at the decision to ban a teacher who was formally accused a year ago of sexually abusing two boys.

The ban was served this week by a local judge, who has ordered the male teacher to stay at least 200 metres away from the premises, the two boys and any off-premise activities organised by the school.

The investigation into the allegations continues.

The Chinese president pictured with Spain’s deputy prime minister. / DA www.diariodeavisos.com/thesupplement

◗China’s President paid a fleeting 9-hour visit to Tenerife on Wednesday. Hu Jintao called in on his way home from the G-20 Summit in Mexico and met with

Spain’s deputy prime minister Soraya Sáez and tourism minister José Manuel Soria in the plush Anthelia hotel in Costa Adeje to discuss bilateral cooperation.

2 The Supplement

Saturday 23 June 2012

TENERIFE GEARS UP FOR BIG SAN JUAN BONFIRE NIGHT Diario de Avisos Santa Cruz de Tenerife

This week-end sees hundreds of bonfires lit across the Canaries to mark the longest day of the year.

Midsummer Night or Noche de San Juan as it is known in Spanish, is of particular importance in Gran Canaria, especially the island’s capital Las Palmas, which was founded by Spanish conquistadors on 24 June 1478. The highpoint of the city’s commemoration of the historic event is the giant bonfire on the Las Canteras beach, which draws a crowd of around 150,000 every year and needs approximately 250 police to ensure safety.

Tenerife’s biggest San Juan fire also takes place on a beach and gives the authorities a massive logistics headache due to the tens of thousands of party-goers who head to Las Teresitas outside Santa Cruz, bringing congestion to the roads throughout the night.

Although the austerity drive by Santa Cruz council has seen the size of the celebrations reduced considerably in the past couple of years, the beach is still the mustgo venue.

Bonfires are also taking place in virtually all towns on the island, some of them ‘official’ on designated sites and others purely private affairs organised by people in their back gardens. Puerto de la Cruz is holding its traditional bonfire on the beach at Punta BravaPlaya Jardín and has laid on a range of activities, including fun events for children as of 6pm, a

fireworks display, and live music throughout the night.

Those that manage to stay the course until dawn will be treated to the sight of hundreds of goats taking an early swim in the sea at the town harbour, a pagan tradition dating back hundreds of years to the days when native Guanches brought their herds down from the hills to wash and

purify the goats in readiness for the mating season.

San Juan is one of the dates marked in red on the calendar of the island’s fire brigade due to the number of emergency call-outs to deal with fires that get out of control, often due to negligence by the organisers.

The combination of breezes and very dry conditions can prove

lethal, sending sparks from fires to surrounding fields and triggering much bigger blazes if the proper precautions are not taken.

Equally worrying for the emergency services is the combination of foolhardiness and alcohol, which can lead to serious accidents when participants try to jump over the fires to show their bravado.

The San Juan bonfires are hugely popular but can have undesired consequences occasionally. / DA

Spain hails new Tenerife singing sensation DA Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Tenerife has a new heart-throb singer, who is tipped by the industry to go all the way and establish himself as Spain’s new singing sensation. Local boy José Luis Delgado, better known by his stage name Jadel, won the country’s latest TV talent show this week and set himself up for a moneyspinning career in the pop industry with his unique blend of latino pop and R&B. The 25-year-old took 57% of the vote in Thursday night’s Final, which attracted a massive live TV audience across Spain as well as a big crowd to the Víctor Cinema in Santa Cruz, where hundreds of fans joined his family to watch the show on a giant screen.

Jadel has been the public’s favourite throughout the competition, which is called Number One and has given the well-known budget fashion retailer from here of the same name an unexpected publicity boost for the last few months.

It is likely he will release a record immediately before planning a concert tour.

Schoolkids fare badly in English survey DA Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Drilling protest moves outside Canaries

Las Chumberas anger at fresh funding delays

Diario de Avisos Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Diario de Avisos Santa Cruz de Tenerife

The current wave of protests against plans to drill for oil off Fuerteventura and Lanzarote has moved beyond the Canaries.

More than a hundred opponents of the controversial plans to allow Repsol to search for oil in various locations in the waters off the two islands heeded a call by Canarian environmentalists living in the Barcelona area and turned out for a protest on one of the city’s beaches.

Green group Ben Magec, which organised the demonstration, said a human chain 150 metres long was formed on the Barceloneta beach at the week-end.

Curious beach-users, including many foreign tourists, enquired

about the reason for the action and were given detailed information on the oil drilling which was authorised by the Spanish government back in March. The group says the action was a big success and generated considerable interest not just on the actual beach but also on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The Cabildos of both Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, who are engaged in a legal battle to block the oil search, played an active part in encouraging people originally from the two islands and now living in Barcelona to turn out for the protest. Further demonstrations are in the process of being organised in other parts of the country to raise the visibility of the oil-drilling issue.

Residents of a La Laguna estate where blocks of flats need to be pulled down due to serious structural problems are up in arms over what they say is yet more feet-dragging by the Spanish government over payment for the massive housing replacement programme. Locals had been assured some months ago that Madrid would contribute much of the funding for the mammoth project to replace nearly 500 flats affected by concrete degradation, which was caused by the use of poor-quality cement when the estate was built in the early 1970s.

The rebuilding work is expected to cost around 90 million

euros, half of it payable by central government, but Madrid has now expressed doubts about the project, particularly the reliability of information supplied by the local authorities and the viability of the redevelopment plans.

The news has come as a bombshell to the Las Chumberas residents, who have vowed to resume their street protests in and around the Alcampo shopping centre if the government does not give funding guarantees immediately. ‘When the Popular Party was in opposition, its politicians in Tenerife led the fight for the rebuilding work, but now it is in power those same politicians are nowhere to be seen’ complained one of those affected.

Efforts in recent years to improve Canarian pupils’ proficiency in English appear not to be achieving the desired effect, judging by the disappointing results obtained by the Canaries in a comprehensive assessment of language skills. According to the findings of a 14-country study published this week, Canarian schoolchildren come some way below the Spanish and European averages when it comes to expressing themselves in even the most basic English.

The study, which was carried out in hundreds of schools across the country, has revealed that nearly 40% of children here are unable to communicate properly at the most elementary level (pre A1) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) by the time they complete their compulsory secondary schooling.

The Supplement

Saturday 23 June 2012

CC party suffers damaging internal rift at conference

Astrophysics Observatory Open Days DA Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Election of chairman triggers split Diario de Avisos Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Annual conferences are usually the opportunity for political parties to put on a show of strength and unity but last week-end’s gathering of the Canarian Coalition (CC) proved anything but that. Indeed, for many observers the power struggle that plagued the proceedings exemplifies the internal problems that could cause a highly damaging split between the newly-elected chairman and regional president, Paulino Rivero, and a number of influential figures, including several to whom he owes his current political status.

As predicted in the weeks running up to the conference, Rivero launched a late bid to be elected party chairman even though CC statutes bar anyone from holding both the chair and high regional

office at the same time. Rivero’s supporters succeeded in forcing through an amendment to make the two posts compatible and the news that he was bidding for the leadership led potential candidates to pull out, leaving him as the only nominee.

When the vote was taken on the leadership, Rivero obtained just 56%, which has been interpreted as a clear signal from a large sector of the party that he has made a big mistake in pushing his case. Critics include some of the most influential names in the CC, such as Spanish MP Ana Oramas and Cabildo president Ricardo Melchior.

In all 355 party members out of a total attendance of 862 gave the thumbs down to the president in an explicit message that he may have severely damaged his hopes of being the CC candidate in the next regional elections. Talk is already emerging that the critics

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Rivero (left) pictured after his designation as CC leader. / DA

are quietly going about preparing a new candidate to challenge Rivero, possibly in an extraordinary party conference before the end of the year.

Rivero himself deftly played down the repercussions of the split and insisted that the conference had been a resounding success in

strengthening the CC’s internal democracy. However, he was dealt a further blow when Narvay Quintero, the up and coming young Senator from El Hierro, refused to be part of the new party executive, even though his presence had been formally announced by the CC after the conference.

Tenerife’s Observatory is holding its annual Open Days this week to give the public an insight into the work done at the big telescope facility at the foot of Mt Teide. The Observatory, which belongs to the Canarian Astrophysics Institute (IAC), houses some of the most advanced instruments of their kind, including the recentlyinaugurated Gregor telescope the largest solar telescope in Europe and the third-largest in the world-, which took just over ten years to develop.

The Open Days take place on Friday 22 and Saturday 23 June from 10 am to 5 pm.

Observatory staff offer guided tours on a ‘first come first served’ basis. Visitors are advised to wear sturdy footwear and ensure they have cream to protect against the sun, which can be deceptively strong at the Observatory’s altitude. Anyone who suffers from a heart condition or respiratory problems is urged to consult their doctor on the risks associated with altitude before making the trip up to Teide.

SPORT ◗HANDBALL

Handball star moves to France

Tenerife rally for one last effort Players confident of return-leg victory

DA Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Diario de Avisos Santa Cruz de Tenerife

One of Tenerife’s brightest sporting talents is to try her luck in France. Women’s handball star Eli Chávez is leaving her Spanish club Mar Sagunto for Nice on the Cote d’Azur due to the financial problems at the former. ‘We have been told the club is going to fold, which is very sad. We were not paid for the last four months of the season and the only future is abroad at present’ said the La Orotava-born player.

Before turning out for her new club, who have won promotion to the French 1st Division, Chávez has, she hopes, an important appointment to keep in another EU country.

She is a member of the Spain squad that has qualified for the London Olympics although selection is not 100% guaranteed. 18 players are in the preliminary squad for the training camp which begins this weekend and that number will be gradually trimmed to the final 14. ‘I have plenty of time ahead of me for other Games if I don’t make it’ she said this week.

Tenerife can count themselves very lucky to be still in with a realistic chance of winning the final promotion playoff and returning to the 2nd Division. Manager Quique Medina and his players have admitted that they could have lost the first leg against Ponferradina by a much bigger margin than the 1-0 scoreline but are ready to remedy the problem tomorrow in the return in the Heliodoro Rodríguez, in front of what will surely be the biggest crowd of the season.

More than 500 fans travelled from Tenerife to Ponferrada for the first game, only to see their side take a battering not just from their opponents but also from the torrential rain that lashed down for much of the second half. Ponferradina won courtesy of a controversial penalty awarded against Pablo Sicilia for handball in the dying seconds of the first half but they could have scored four or five goals against a very poor Tenerife.

The second leg will decide which of the two teams goes back up to the 2nd Division after both

made the national sporting headlines, have been strenuously denied by Tenerife, who have threatened legal action for the damage caused to the club’s image. On the purely footballing front, Tenerife are confident of overturning the 1-0 deficit but will need to be very careful not to concede an away goal to Ponferradina, whose speedy forwards Yuri and Acorán, proved a handful for the Canarians’ defence last week.

A goal would force the home side to score three to take the tie on Tenerife are 1-0 down from the first leg. / DA aggregate and, judging by the showing in were relegated a year ago. The Ponferrada, it is a task that looks run-up to the tie has been shrou- beyond Tenerife. The positive ded in controversy following note a week ago was the spectaallegations that Ponferradina cular performance yet again of goalkeeper Orlando Quintero Sergio Aragoneses in goal and if received a phone call from some- he repeats his heroics tomorrow one acting on behalf of Tenerife by keeping a clean sheet he might and offering him money to throw just give Tenerife a reasonable the game. The allegations, which chance of glory.

CYCLING

No room for Canaries in 2013 Vuelta race ◗The Canaries will not figure in next year’s Tour of Spain (Vuelta Ciclista a España) cycle race, the organisers have announced. Race boss Javier Guillén says the current economic climate ruled out further consideration of the widelypublicised plans to hold up to four stages of the prestigious event in the islands, although he would review the situation for 2014.

OLYMPICS

Pestano turns down government funding for Games ◗Mario Pestano has turned down the ‘paltry’ sponsorship offered to him by the Canarian government to take part in the London Olympics. The Tenerife discus thrower, who is also Spain’s athletics team captain, said the funding (48,000 euros to be divided among all the Canaries’ Games athletes) was very poor and had ‘too many conditions attached to be worth the bother’.

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