Edition 302
www.thecourier.es
Friday 16th December 2016
XMAS GIFT HUNT
TIME CALLED FOR SIESTA
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lans to bring Spain’s clocks in line with Britain, Ireland, and Portugal are set to go forward, with the employment minister Fátima Báñez announcing that the Madrid government plans to put forward a motion on a possible time switch. That would be part of a package which would see an end to Spain’s traditional long day involving the afternoon siesta. The news from Madrid though could lead to a clash with the regional Valencian government and the Balaeric Islands administration, who both said that more daylight is needed in the winter evenings to encourage tourism, and have called for the clocks not to be changed in the winter. A move to Greenwich
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Mean Time though would see the reverse with the sun setting at around 4.45 pm in December, and an earlier sunset of around 8.30 pm in June. Meanwhile, the Murcia regional government recently passed a motion supporting a return to GMT in Spain. Three years ago, a parliamentary commission recommended returning Spain to its proper time zone. Although the country used to be on the same time as the UK and Portugal, it has run an hour ahead since 1942, when the dictator General Franco shifted it forward in solidarity with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Despite their being a minority Partido Popular administration in power in Madrid, the PP along with the main opposition socialist PSOE party and the centrist
BY ALEX TRELINSKI Ciudadanos all broadly agree on a time change, along with the ending of the siesta, with Spanish workers brought into line with most of Europe by working a nineto-five day. “We want our workdays to finish at six o’clock, and to achieve this we will work towards striking a deal with representatives from both
companies and trade unions,” Fátima Báñez told Parliament. “Someone’s got to take the first step, and that’s why I’m asking for the support of the biggest companies and the trade unions.” The Catalunya region is already in the middle of plans to introduce a nine-tofive workday.
AIRPORT BOOM TIME
licante-Elche airport will break the 12 million passenger barrier this month in a record-breaking year, which will see the best ever traveller figures in the airport’s 49-year history, with at least 600,000 people projected to use the airport this December. The latest November figures published this week by airport owner AENA saw a 20 percent rise on numbers compared to a year earlier, with nearly 775,000 passengers travelling through the facility, leading to a total of 11.6 million so far in
2016, which works out as a rise of around 17 percent over last year, which finished at 10.6 million passengers. AENA says that 40 percent of last month’s travellers (whose figures were up by 20 percent on the same month last year) were British nationals coming in at 327,000, followed by Spanish passengers at 111 thousand, with Dutch visitors at 59,000, and German tourists at 48,000. The airport at Alicante-Elche ran over 5,800 flights last month.
To get you in the Christmas spirit, we have a very special treat for you this week. Throughout The Courier newspaper, we have hidden a number of tiny presents (exactly like the one above only much smaller. We don´t want to make it too easy now, do we?) on some of the adverts. All you have to do is find all ten of them, and send the names of the adverts you found the gifts on to our competition email address, win@tko.media There are some great prizes up for grabs, including food vouchers, Sunday lunch, shopping vouchers, a free haircut, a cut and blow dry, a medical consultation and even a day trip to Benidorm for 2 people. We will tell you where the adverts were next week in our Christmas edition, but those lovely presenters on TKO have said that they will give you clues all week to help you out. Make sure you keep your radio tuned in to 90.8fm or 91.fm, or listen via the Internet at tko.fm for those clues and pointers. Get searching and see how many you can find.
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