FILM FEAST

A HUNDRED short films from 17 countries have been chosen for screening at this June's Alicante International Film Festival. Judges had to sift through over 2,000 submissions across various categories including Spanish fiction and an 'Alicante Cinema' section which will feature 28 works made by local filmmakers.

Festival director, Vicente Seva, said: “For yet another year, the jury has had a difficult time selecting what was going to be shown due to the high quality and variety of the material.”

The movies will be screened between June 4 and June 9 at two venues - the Kinepolis and Casa Mediterraneo, with June 10 being the day that winners are declared with a prize fund of €3,500. Besides Spain, the participating countries in the 20th festival include France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Ireland.

‘HUMILIATING’ comedy bullfights and erotic shows at hen and stag dos featuring dwarves could soon be banned in Spain

Legislation has just been approved by the Senate based on a European Union directive that prohibits entertainment shows that involve the humiliation of people with a disability.

The new law has been promoted by the Social Rights Ministry, and will still have to be sent back to the lower house of parliament, the

By Simon Hunter

Congress of Deputies, for final approval.

“These kinds of shows provoke laughter and the mockery of people with dwarfism, and they teach children how to laugh at us,” Marta Castillo, the president of the CERMI committee for disabled persons in Andalucia, told El Pais “We are not clowns,” she added. “Clowns put on and take off their costumes, but we are

Many Visits

HUMANS have been visiting the Nerja Caves in Andalucia for 41,000 years, a new study by the University of Cordoba has revealed. The team used ‘smoke archaeology’ which dates charcoal and remains of fossilised soot on stalagmites in the cave. Its results pushed the earliest known use of the caverns by humans back by 10,000 years and documented 73 different phases of visits/occupation over 35,000 years.

BAN: Such spectacles may soon be outlawed

who we are 24 hours a day.”

In September 2022, an event featuring bullfighting clowns with dwarfism that was due