Olive Press Costa Blanca South and Murcia Issue 98

VILLA OF KISSING FA BOSS

EXCLUSIVE

The Olive Press has tracked down a villa allegedly rented by controversial football kiss row boss Luis Rubiales to host an orgy with ‘eight to 10’ young women.

The stunning home is nestled in an exclusive Granada urbanisation, near where the ousted Spanish FA (RFEF) boss grew up in Motril, Granada.

Rubiales is alleged to have held the late night ‘orgy’ in Salobrena, with women as young as 18 during the Covid lockdown in 2020, according to his uncle Juan Rubiales.

The pair are embroiled in an ongoing feud after Luis sacked him from his press officer role at RFEF. The series of wild nights, which went on until 6am and broke Covid rules, was anything but popular with angry neighbours, the Olive Press can reveal.

“I remember when he was here, the noise was crazy,” one neighbour revealed. “Boom, boom, boom until the early hours, there was lots of music, drinking and lots of girls.

“I could hear them all laughing and partying until five or six in the morning. They were here for a couple of days.”

The local, who only gave her name as Maria, said the property is owned by an Italian businesswoman.

She added: “It was during the Covid pandemic and it was annoying but we did not call the police because that’s not the kind of neighbours we are.” Last year, Juan Rubiales, told an anti-corruption trial in Madrid that Luis had illegally used RFEF funds to rent the luxury villa for an ‘orgy’.

See Sordid and seedy, p6

ONE OF OUR OWN

‘Belli’ in Madrid: Instant hero or just another expat struggling to adapt and settle into his new life in Spain?

See page 6

Southcoast sounds

Kicked out!

Single mother and young son are branded squatters by ‘heartless’ landlord despite never missing rent

A BRITISH single mother is being evicted from her home in Javea for being a squatter - despite not missing a rent payment in SEVEN YEARS.

Kate Langshaw, 44, and her sevenyear-old son Lucas were given notice to leave their property, after becoming embroiled in an inheritance row between the owner and her ‘heartless’ politician son.

Despite Kate winning her case in May, the son, who stood in the local elections for the anti-feminist Vox party, was able to reverse the decision on appeal in just three months.

Questions remain over how the ruling was made so rapidly in a legal system that is famed for its slow pace.

Kate, for example, has not received a single alimony payment from the father of her son for four years after a successful domestic violence case She is now facing tens of thousands of euros in court costs, legal fees and backdated rent - and the prospect of being left homeless with a young son and their dog Orri.

the Olive Press: “I’ve always paid my rent and did everything I was told to by the rental company, it’s terrifying to think we could all be “We are still in the summer season and I cannot afford to find a new place near my son’s school.

“I might even have to give up my dog

EXCLUSIVE

By Laurence Dollimore

as very few rental properties accept pets which would be heartbreaking for me but especially my son. He suffers from anxiety and Orri is crucial for his mental health.

“How can it be fair that I’m being kicked out? It’s madness. I hear stories that it can take three years to evict an actual squatter, and yet I am being asked to leave as a single mother paying rent.”

The issues began when the millionaire patriarch of the influential Bas family, based in Javea, died some years ago, leaving a slew of homes, land and money to his wife Christine Englishand his four children.

Developer

The father had been a successful property developer and was behind the large Don Pepe urbanization just off Javea’s celebrated Arenal beach.

He left a number of apartments in the block, plus various other homes, over which the siblings are understood to have squabbled.

The Olive Press understands at least one child, including son Daniel, took their mother to court to obtain more properties and money from her.

Unbeknown to Kate, who began renting her two-bed villa from mother Christine in 2017, son Danie managed to acquire the deeds in 2019. Despite this, the rental company handling the tenancy advised her to continue paying rent to

the mother, particularly as official notary papers still indicated that Christine was the owner.

Finally last year, the son tried to ‘bully’ Kate to pay him instead of the mum with an increase of €200 more a month, despite her having a fixed contract of €600 in place until 2026. When this failed, he instead took her to court, claiming she was a ‘squatter’ because she had no contract with himdespite proving she had paid rent since 2017.

He claimed he had the right to any earnings (known as usufructo) on the property, including rent. However his case failed in Denia court in May, when a judge ruled that mother Christine had the usufructo when Kate signed the rental agreement and she had therefore paid the right person.

But the son took an appeal to the courts in Alicante, and, extraordinarily, the decision was reversed in July making the latest rental contract void.

Worse, he is now suing Kate for backdated rent which totals over €30,000. She has been receiving help from social services, the Citizens Advice bureau and a local charity called Guardian

Angels. “They are all shocked by the decision and can’t understand how it happened,” added Kate.

Continues on Page 4

EVICTED: Mum Kate and Lucas in happier times

Summer toll

JULY and August road accident deaths totalled 19 in the Valencian Community- seven more than last year and the third-highest figure in Spain’s 17 regions.

New pound

TORREVIEJA council has spent over €520,000 on a new municipal vehicle pound next to the fire station which will be home to towed-away cars or vehicles involved in crashes.

Tax back

TORREVIEJA bars and restaurants will have to pay terrace taxes once again from 2024 after the charge was scrapped in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, costing the council €1.5 annually.

New look

ALMORADI’S Plaza

Ciudad de Elche is to get €224,000 of renovations including improved walkways and an overhaul of the children’s play area.

TWO Brazilian women have been arrested for assaulting another prostitute that wanted to ‘work’ on the same Alicante street.

The assailants aged 36 and 40 told their rival that they she had to pay a facility fee of €50 to search for cli -

Turf war

ents on the same road. When she refused, she was attacked by them and had her bag stolen.

The victim went to the police to report the incident who discovered the attackers had a long history of similar acts and had been previously arrested in 2020. They have been charged with extortion and robbery with violence.

BEATING THE RAP

INFAMOUS Irish mobster, John Gilligan, 71, walked out of court a free man, after doing a plea bargain deal with prosecutors over drug trafficking and gun possession.

The gangster - accused of being behind the murder of crime journalist Veronica Guerin - will not spend another night in prison in Spain.

The same applies to seven of his associates, including ‘Fat’

Infamous Irish mobster John Gilligan walks free from drug trial after bargain plea deal

By Alex Trelinski

Tony Armstrong, who were told of the good news by a Costa Blanca judge on Monday.

HIT AND RUN

fences and belonging to a criminal organisation, while the boss had an extra charge of weapon possession after a gun was found in his

Vacation scam

A TORREVIEJA holiday rental scam has been busted with three Spaniards arrestedsome of whom had previously committed similar frauds.

Some 30 victims from Germany, Algeria, Colombia, Ecuador, Poland, Ukraine and Spain were fooled by bogus online vacation property adverts. The fraudsters impersonated genuine real estate agencies and mocked up websites to offer rentals of properties that they did not own.

Unsuspecting clients made bank and cash transfers for their stays, and were left out of pocket to the tune of thousands of Euros as the scammers dropped all contact with them.

FREE: Gilligan cut a deal

The gang had faced drug of- villa garden, in Torrevieja. He had been accused of masterminding an operation to smuggle cannabis and powerful sleeping-pills to his native Ireland in consignments of flip-flops.

POLICE are looking for an Irish motorist who collided head-on with another car - killing the other driver in Torrevieja - before running away.

The smash happened at around 4.50am on Saturday on the N-332 as it passed through the Park of Nations area of the city.

The deceased motorist, 44, was a Peruvian man who lived in Guardamar.

Torrevieja Policia Local said the Irish driver was using a hire car apparently in the wrong lane. No more information has been provided about him, except that the vehicle had been rented ‘recently’.

Likewise there were no details as to whether there had been any passengers in the two cars.

Other defendants at the Torrevieja hearing included Milligan’s son, Darren, 47, who skipped Spain last autumn - forcing two trial postponements - but was extradited in July. Police had first raided their homes between Torrevieja and Orihuela Costa in 2020. The three-day trial ended before it started when judge Francisco Ruiz was informed about the plea bargain deal. Despite prosecutors wanting

Gilligan jailed for over eight years, the deal gives him a 22-month suspended sentence and fines amounting to €14,000.

The rest of Gilligan’s crew each got suspended 18-month prison sentences as opposed to original demands for nearly seven years behind bars. Gilligan spent 17 years in an Irish jail before being freed in 2013 after he was convicted of running a large-scale drug trafficking gang in the nineties that netted over €35 million.

He was acquitted in 1996 for the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin with associate Brian Meehan receiving a life sentence for the killing.

Copped it

A PAIR of cops were beaten up when they asked a family group to move an illegally parked van - and the driver to take a breathalyser test.

They approached the group and asked them to move the vehicle and then noticed the driver seemed intoxicated. When they demanded the driver take a breath test the Spanish group launched an attack, with one officer being pushed against a wall and felled by a punch. He needed several stitches in his mouth. His colleague was thrown to the ground trying to help him. Police reinforcements arrived andmade five arrests.

Ice cool Jenni

SHE could be the most famous woman in the world right now. But female football star Jenni Hermoso looked nothing but ice cool as she spent a few days on holiday in southern Spain. Heading to Marbella after getting embroiled in the massive Spanish FA kiss scandal, she was spotted out and about in the Old Town.

And luckily the sharp eyed boss of ice cream parlour La Valenciana managed to

get a snap to record her visit.

“She came in with her family and ordered a nougat and white chocolate ice cream,” said Daniel Vila, who was working behind the counter at the time.

“At first, we didn’t realise it was her, but then I saw her tattoos while she was reaching out to pay.

“‘It’s the world champion!’ I blurted out.”

After agreeing to pose for a picture she revealed she was in Marbella for a week, before jetting to Mexico.

See Sordid and Seedy, p6/7

HIDDEN THOUGHTS

IT was on a long drive back from Portugal to Denia to catch the ferry to Ibiza that Paul Richardson stumbled across the little known region that would eventually become his home.

He was to turn his back on fastpaced modern life for a rural idyll – for the second time.

A decade earlier, he had landed in Ibiza to escape a hectic life in London, arriving on the White Isle in his ‘little brown mini’.

Apart from a suitcase full of New Romantic-style clothes he also had a deal to write his first book.

So eschewing the party hotspots – the clubbing scene in Ibiza was exploding in 1989 – he found a typical whitewashed cottage and settled into a self-sufficient lifestyle growing vegetables and keeping chickens.

“I didn’t know how long I’d be in Ibiza, but I knew it’d be at least a year to write the book,” Paul told the Olive Press. “In the end I was there for 10 years.”

While he still loves the island, he slowly watched the rural lifestyle disappear, as it became the St Tropez of Spain.

“Affordable rural living was not an option any more,” he explained, adding he had been harking for the old lifestyle back – and that was when he came across the perfect spot by accident. He had been to Portugal to interview classical pianist Maria João Pires, ‘she is quite brilliant’ says Paul, and on the way back he crossed into Caceres province. Here he was to find what he had lost. He fell in love with the wide-open landscape, traffic-free roads and lack of ugly modern buildings and was to return to explore alongside his partner, Nacho Trives, several times.

On one of those occasions they came across a finca for sale outside the village of Hoyos and made the decision to stay.

Now 23 years on he and Nacho - who married in 2010 - are still there. It is this period in his life that is the subject of his latest book Hidden Valley, which came out this summer.

“Everyone thought we were mad to leap off a cliff moving to such a remote place, especially as a gay couple,” said Paul.

In fact this is part of what the 59-year-old former Chichester Cathedral choirboy, Old Etonian and Cambridge University alum-

As the Olive Press continues with the serialisation of respected author Paul Richardson’s new book, Dilip Kuner finds out about his last 30 years in Ibiza and finally unspoilt Extremadura

the land and the people he got to know on his journey through the coming decades – but it was definitely not all a bed of roses.

Paul added: “It was like the wild west. People lived full on, with bar fights and all. It was a hard environment and you had to be tough enough to stand up for yourself.

“I was petrified and stayed at home a lot. It was quite a while until l earned their respect.”

But earn their respect he did and the help and advice he got from

CAN YOU SEE ME? THEN SO CAN ALL OUR READERS

that is very satisfying – it is a twoway process,” says Paul. But all things change even in Extremadura.

Paul explained: “Up until five to 10 years ago the matanza (pig slaughter) was a big thing. Everyone had a pig and came together for the slaughter. It was a cultural experience, something that had been done for hundreds of years. This is just one example of what is being lost.

“When I moved here it was remote, now communications are vastly improved.

“Madrid is just three-and-a half hours away. It is not just a transport thing. It is communication. Back when I moved here there was no internet, no mobile phone coverage. Now everyone is connected.

“Youngsters don’t want to stay, so farms and land are abandoned, which leads to fires.

“Old ways of doing things –collective knowledge – are forgotten. Even the weather has changed.”

He concluded: “It is a real shame that this cultural richness is being lost.”

Will he move on again? Are there any more, hidden rural idylls out there for Paul to discover? We’ll find out in his next book, perhaps.

NOW turn to page 12 for the next serialisation of his new book Hidden Valley, exclusively in the Olive Press

Hidden Valley: Finding freedom in Spain's deep country is published by Abacus Books.

ONE of British television’s most successful and popular actors is coming to Spain this month to shoot a drama series about - British television!

David Tennant is one of an all-star cast filming Jilly Cooper’s novel Rivals set in the ruthless world of television back in the 1980s.

The Scottish actor shot to fame in 2005 when he took over the iconic role of Doctor Who from Christopher Eccleston and has reprised that role for three 60th anniversary specials that will be screened in November.

Shooting for the Disney+ production is heading to the Costa del Sol on September 18, where Tennant will be joined by an all-star cast including former Eastenders hard-man Danny Dyer.

One out, one in

NO sooner had heir to the Spanish throne Princess Leonor graduated from her Welsh school then her alma mater welcomed another royal student. Her younger sister, the Infanta Sofia, has started her Baccalaureate studies at the UWC Atlantic College. The school is 35 kilometres from Cardiff, and her schooling will cost her parents around €82,000 from their own pockets for the two years of study.

HAPPY COUPLE: Paul (left) and Nacho at home on their finca

Everyone had a pig and came together for the slaughter

Pedal protest

DOZENS of cyclists temporarily blocked the removal of a second cycle lane in Elche ordered by the new Partido Popular-Vox council. Workers were preparing to scrub-out painted cycleway markings on Calle Jose Maria Buck but had to call the police as two-wheeled protestors arrived.

Some €38,000 has already been spent dismantling a cycle lane on Avenida Carlos I, as part of a deal struck between the PP and Vox to take over the running of Elche council. They cite ‘safety issues’ and traffic congestion as the reason. Local cycle groups have announced a ‘friendly’ bike ride on September 23 that will take in two roads that have had cycleways removed, threatened bicycle paths and highways they believe should have cycle routes on them in Elche.

Squat shock

Myra Azzopardi, senior adviser and paralegal at Citizens Advice in Spain, told the Olive Press: “This case is shocking.

First of all, the fact the appeal was won so quickly is very surprising, any other person in Spain would be thrilled to get a case through a court in three months.

“But Kate is the victim here, she was paying the rent and the mother should have known exactly what was happening with her property.

“If that mother didn’t know what was going on I’d eat my hat. She has acted unjust and fraudulently and Kate should be taking her to court.

“The fact that the son wants to sue Kate for the huge rent allegedly owed is ridiculous. He should be suing his mother, as she was collecting the rent that the courts have now ruled she had no right to.”

The case has shocked the local expat community, which has set up a GoFundMe page to help with legal costs and a deposit for a new home, if needed. Search Kate Langshaw legal battle to find the donation page.

The Olive Press has contacted Daniel Bas and the agency for comment.

Water hounds

A SIX-YEAR dream has come true for a young couple to open a water park especially for dogs.

Worldog Aquapark Camino has recently welcomed its first clients at La Marina village.

At its heart is a huge 700 m2 pool - 65 centimetres deep - filled with 300,000 litres of water.

Co-owners Pablo Canovas and Jessica Diaz, both 27, said the idea came about because their Yorkshire Terrier loves the water but had no public pools to use and only limited access to the sea.

They are already considering innovations for next summer including an improved agility water course and a water slide for dogs to pull.

Another plus for the pool is that it can help in dog rehabilitation.

“The other day a dog with three legs came and the owner told us that the pool was a great place for it to exercise. It is very satisfying,” said Pablo.

Mini-matadors

Dwarf bullfight stopped as ‘dogooders’ brand it ‘degrading’

A TROUPE of dwarf bullfighters are up in arms after Murcia’s government banned a comedic show.

The mini-matadors insist they are the ‘victims’ of do-gooders, who claim it is humiliating for little people to take part in such a show.

But they insist they are ‘entirely happy’ and don’t feel at all degraded.

They argue that banning their show is ‘a total lack of respect’ for their feelings.

Their popular routine sees them dressed in gaudy clothes and heavily made-up, darting about the ring and leaping skillfully out of the path of charging bulls.

By Alex Trelinski

Above all, they insist they do not actually harm the animals. But now the event, scheduled for Murcia’s bullring, next Wednesday (Sept 13), has been cancelled. It comes after an official complaint was filed by an animal protection group to the region’s acting president, Fernando Lopez Miras.

The Franz Weber foundation made their plea to the Ministry of Social Rights, as well as the Disabled Persons Directorate at the Murcia government headquarters. The foundation described the

STUBBED OUT!

EL VERGER has banned bull runs with fires attached to the horns.

The controversial bous embolats runs have come under mounting protest over recent years.

BRAVE FUN: but troupe has been banned

shows as ‘degrading’ for the dwarfs and a ‘cruel mockery’.

They cited a section of Spain’s General Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that specifically vetoes ‘any bullfighting show in which there is mockery, ridicule or humiliation for people with functional diversity’.

Skilled

Quarry anger

A RESIDENTS group in San Miguel de Salinas are launching a protest against a clay quarry to reopen. They argue heavy lorries using narrow roads will have a negative effect on the local environment.

It comes after the Valencian government passed an environmental impact study for the 32,000 m2 site to resume activity at Las Majadas, near Villamartin.

The quarry is in a protected forestry zone and the annual amount of clay to be extracted is projected to be 10,000 cubic metres.

The Association of Neighbours of San Miguel has appealed to the council to oppose the reopening which will see a big increase of lorries using the CV-95 and CV941 highways.

Almost full

HOTEL occupancy topped 90% in the Valencian Community in August, according to the Hosbec hoteliers association.

like other performers.”

He added: “All those who enter the ring are registered as bullfighters at Spain’s Ministry of Culture, whatever size they are, and we enter of our own free will.

“Surely it’s discrimination to stop us from doing so?”

Hosbec said that a strong influx of British and Portuguese visitors were responsible for boosting the August total. International tourists accounted for 59% of visitors, with the British market dominating foreign tourists at 29.6% followed by Portugal (14.1%) and France a distant third on 2.3% The Costa Blanca (minus Benidorm) reported 91% occupation in August - down just 1.2% on 2019, with twothirds of hotel stays coming from non-Spanish residents.

Turtley awesome!

During the runs a wooden frame was set alight between the horns before the terrified bull was sent to roam the streets. New Compromis mayor of El Verger, Basili Sartort, said that the practice ‘no longer represents the current values of good treatment of animals’. The traditional bous al carrer runs without fire will continue to be organised.

Spain’s parliament saw its Senate upper house back a measure last April to ban such events but the move still has to be approved by the lower house.

Daniel Calderon - a bullfighter and manager of the company, Diversiones en el Ruedo comedy troupe, insisted: “It shows a complete lack of respect and freedom.

“We are skilled professionals who work hard and entertain

SOME 57 loggerhead sea turtles have hatched on the Arenal es del Sol beach in Elche despite torrential rains that lashed the coast on Sunday.

It was a special moment for the 100 volunteers who had guarded the nest since July 15. As the storm threatened to swamp the beach they even built a sand dyke to protect the nest from the waves.

As soon as the eggs hatched, volun teers placed the hatchlings in a safe place until the waves had subsided

EXTINGUISHED: Cruel practice

ORIHUELA council has been slammed for snubbing children after it said that a new primary school in Dehesa de Campoamor will not open until 2024.

The centre is meant to replace the current overcrowded Los Dolses school, but despite plans to be ready for this September, no construction has started.

“Once again children and schools are being penalised through no fault of their own,” insisted a spokesman for local political party PIOC.

The party claims that a computer and music room at Los Dolses will now have to become extra classrooms due to added pupil numbers.

The spokesman added it ‘could be a long and frustrating period’ before the new school opens.

The Valencian government approved funding for a new prefab school in December 2022, but different Orihuela council administrations were unable to find a suitable piece of municipal land.

Hard lines

A €1.2 million construction contract was awarded in April with 380 infant and junior students set to be catered for in a temporary arrangement lasting around three years.

The original proposed site on Calle Nispero on the Los Dolses urbanisation was rejected due to the state of the ground.

An option by the Zenia Boulevard Shopping Centre was ignored due to a lack of parking.

Land on Calle Madreperla was identified but when the PP-Vox coalition took control of Orihuela council after May’s election, they decided to reject that site.

The PIOC said: “All of the delays are putting extra pressure on existing schools like Los Dolses to expand to cater for the increased intake.”

Orihuela council has been approached for comment.

TOMATO SQUASH

pants than last year in the hourlong pitched battle as 150,000 kilos of pear tomatoes were dumped from several trucks.

Buñol mayor Virginia Sanz said she was pleased that attendance was up - boosted by German, Korean, Australian, and Italian visitors - the latter of which she described as being the ‘most fanatical supporters of the party’.

“It's an event that raises a lot of curiosity among on-lookers but despite it being very sticky, it is very safe and a lot of fun,” Sanz said.

On a more serious note, two people were arrested for stealing 21 mobile phones during the day and another person for drug trafficking.

DEADLY DANA

Half a dozen dead, including a man in an elevator, as extreme storms rock the country blocking railways and roads

AT least five people have died, while railways and motorways were blocked in serious floods around Spain.

The ‘historic’ DANA storms wrought destruction throughout the mainland, leaving a further three people missing.

Thousands were forced from their homes as the weekend’s heavy rains swept through the country.

The deaths came despite everyone in the Madrid region receiving alarming text messages telling them to stay in their homes.

Among the saddest deaths was a 20-year-old man stuck in an elevator in the Toledo town of Casarrubios del Monte.

The man got caught when he went down to his basement garage to move his car away from rapidly rising floodwaters.

However, the power cut while in the lift, trapping him in what would become a metal coffin.

Body

“We heard him inside, crying for help, but it was impossible to reach him,” revealed neighbour Manuel de Vera, 28.

As the sun rose on Monday morning, authorities discovered the lifeless body of a man inside a stranded car in the nearby town of Bargas.

The body of a 50-year-old man from Camarena meanwhile, was found in an open field.

To the north, two more lives were lost after a pair of hikers went missing exploring the Gorgol ravine in Tramacastilla de Tena, in Huesca.

Authorities had better luck when they managed to save the life of a terrified 10-year-old boy who had spent a whole night clinging to a tree branch in El Santo, near Toledo.

The car containing young Ethan and his family had been swept away into the Alberche River - which according to neighbours looked like the ‘Mississippi’ - as it crossed a bridge.

His 14-year-old sister fell out of the backseat door but made it to a nearby fire station soon after, while his mother was found clinging to another tree.

Ethan was carried by the torrent a full three kilometres until he managed to grab the branch of a seven-metre ash tree that his rescuer said was ‘as thin as a finger’.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Ethan repeated to the security guard who found him, his face covered in mud, bruises and scratches .

“He clung on to life, I don’t know how he made it,” the security guard said. Ethan’s father is still among the missing, as well as an 83-year-old man swept away by the current in Villamanta and a woman, 54, vanished from her car in Valmojado.

Human seafood

WARM sea temperatures have encouraged small fish to take a bite out of Costa Blanca bathers. Around 15 people a day have been treated on Benidorm’s Poniente beach for bites caused by small grey fish - oblada melanura - also known as saddled seabream.

They target bathers with small cuts, moles or warts, particularly prevalent among older people. In the worst cases they draw blood and leave teeth marks, while swimmers with jewellery appear to be attracting attention.

By Walter Finch

An extensive search with divers is scouring the flood zones to find them.

Alicante province firefighters only dealt with 17 weather-related incidents during a day-long orange alert period.

Separatist risk

SPAIN’S deputy prime minister Yolanda Diaz has been slammed for meeting with Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont.

The politician has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium since 2017 in a bid to avoid arrest for his role in the independence drive in Catalunya that year.

Popular Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo called Diaz’s meeting ‘outrageous’ and insisted if Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had not given her permission, she should be sacked.

TORNADO: Formed off the coast of Torremolinos

Voted top expat paper in Spain

A campaigning, community newspaper, the Olive Press represents the huge expatriate community in Spain with an estimated readership, including the websites, of more than two million people a month.

OPINION

IT is an absolute travesty that a fully legal, tax-paying British expat is being branded a squatter after paying rent for seven years.

How on earth could a judge side with a landlord when Kate Langshaw had not missed a single payment to HIS OWN MOTHER.

In particular, after Kate was specifically told by the estate agency that arranged the contract to continue paying the mother.

There are some serious questions that still need answering about this case.

As Citizens Advice chief Myra Azzopardi points out, the mother must have known she had no right to collect rent when she handed over the property to her son - but she collected it anyway.

Surely it is SHE who should be sued for backdated rent, not innocent Kate, who acted within the law at all times.

In addition, why did the son - who stood for the far-right party Vox in recent local elections - not address the actual contract?

This is yet another miscarriage of justice in Spain and a stark reminder of how seemingly unfair the legal system can be here - especially if you are vulnerable and appear an easy target.

We must make as much noise as possible to stop Kate being made to pay tens of thousands of euros that she simply cannot afford - and more importantly, to keep her from being left homeless.

The Olive Press vows to continue searching for answers and to expose the shameless, heartless family that has taken this unfortunate single mother, her son and her dog Orri for a ride.

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WITH his own mother locking herself in a Granada church and going on an ‘indefinite’ hunger strike until the ‘inhuman witch hunt’ against her son ended, it’s easy to think that Luis Rubiales must be a victim. The boss of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) has certainly tried to play the underdog as he took on the might of the Spanish government and Fifa. His unquestioning belief that it’s OK to kiss a female player on the lips, throw another over the shoulder, and joke about marrying another in the locker room, has certainly

led to much navel-gazing in Spanish society.

But crucially, his kissing of Spanish striker Jenni Hermoso as Spain won the World Cup has shone a light on his six year-long position at RFEF, as well as how he got onto the podium in the first place.

And it isn’t pretty reading, with numerous ‘victims’ and witnesses coming forward over the way he allegedly trampled on and abused them on his way to the top of Spain’s football pyramid.

The accusations range from misogyny and sexual harassment to misappropriation of

SUPPORT: Locals get behind Rubiales calling for ‘the truth’

public funds, while anyone who dares to expose his alleged conduct is subject to aggressive legal threats - as Hermoso disgracefully, found out herself.

“The list of women and men aggrieved by Rubiales and his insults, bravado, blackmail, threats, espionage and persecution is too long and must stop,” La Liga President Javier Tebas wrote on X (formerly Twitter) after the furore broke. And the rotten smell of corruption and sleaze has, it turns out, been pervading the halls of the Spanish RFEF in Madrid for years. Indeed, his own uncle, Juan Rubiales, came out

SORDID AND SEEDY ONE OF OUR OWN

from his job at RFEF over accusations of leaking confidential information with the aim of damaging his nephew’s reputation. Juan Rubiales confided that Luis would use a villa on the Granada coast (see Orgy Villa on page 1) to host sordid parties for his closest allies and fellow board members.

Present at these gatherings, he described as ‘orgies’, would be around eight to 10 young women, under the pretence of a ‘work event’, with their pay and all other expenses stuck on the federations tab.

“He is a man obsessed with power, obsessed with luxury, obsessed with money, even with women,” he claimed to El Confidencial . “I think this boy needs a programme of social re-education.”

He has a point. While president of the Football Players’ Association (AFE) between 2010 and 2017 he would allegedly ask marketing manager Tamara Ramos what colour underwear she was wearing and tell her to ‘put her knee pads on’. When she informed him in confidence she was pregnant, the first thing he did was to organise a meeting to announce it to the whole office - clearly irked that she would soon take maternity leave.

month

‘HE’S one of our own, he’s one of our own. Jude Bellingham, is… well, actually he’s another expat, settling in well into one of the largest diaspora in Europe, the Brits in Spain. Movie star looks and being the first Englishman to win La Liga’s Player of the Month award - a feat neither David Beckham, Steve McManaman nor Gary Lineker ever achieved - has certainly helped the English midfield maestro feel at home. Indeed, it couldn’t have been a better start for the Brummie, who has become an instant hero in Madrid following his €103 million signing from Borussia Dortmund last month. He has even managed to equal Real legend Cristiano Ronaldo’s explosive start to life in Madrid after netting five goals in his first four games - including his most recent feat: scoring a 95th minute winner against Getafe at the weekend. We will have to wait two weeks - after the international break

- when Madrid take on Champions League (CL) debutants Real Sociedad to see if he can break Ronnie’s record.

But is he to become a galactico, like Ronaldo, Zidane or Beckham - or a flop like Michael Owen and Eden Hazard?

The first warning signs must come from the awkward spell of the last famous British player who attempted to adapt to life in Spain.

Despite winning four Champions League medals, Welshman Gareth Bale became a major figure-of-fun over his lack of Spanish and efforts to integrate after arriving for a world record fee in 2013.

While the former Tottenham forward performed wonders for the merengues (in particularly CL finals), he was not well-liked either in the dressing room or the stands.

Bellingham, the opposite face of Bale

What’s been apparent since Jude landed in Madrid has been his attitude as much as his

football.

GALACTICO: Belli slots the

Unlike Bale, he has made it clear he is keen to integrate as quickly as possible, which will mean eating at strange hours, getting used to extreme temperatures (cold and boiling) and plenty of late nights.

According to sources he is also insistent on mastering the language, unlike Bale who ‘only spoke in English’.

But then again, he does have a head start: He studied Spanish at school until the age of 13 and apparently has sought the advice of Beckham who stressed the importance of learning the lingo.

From day one, he has been seen joking with everyone, with many of the players sharing pics of themselves with Belli at the gym or just hanging out together.

It is probably fair to say that his previous experience in Germany served as the ideal apprenticeship. While he spoke to the media in English, he was known to speak halting Ger-

From orgies with ‘eight to 10 young girls’ to using public money to pay for home renovations, the scandalous own goals of football boss Luis Rubiales are raining in, writes Walter Finch

‘Belli’ in Madrid: Instant hero or just another expat struggling to adapt and settle in his new life in Spain? Walt Finch finds out if Jude Bellingham is to be the next Gary Lineker or a flop like Michael Owen

LEGEND: €103m Belli has won over the fans in a

Miscarriage of justice is a travesty

OP QUICK CROSSWORD

By Laurence Dollimore

THE unpretentious tourist resort of Motril, on Granada’s Costa Tropical, should have been enjoying the last few days of summer last week.

Instead, it found itself at the centre of a global media frenzy over a story that wouldn’t look out of place in a Pedro Almodovar film.

The protagonist was the 72-year-old mother of ousted football boss Luis Rubiales, who had locked herself inside the Divina Pastora church, declaring a hunger strike over the ‘mistreatment’ of her ‘honourable’ son.

Angeles Bejar insisted he had done nothing wrong by kissing Jenni Hermoso and she was passing the hours of her self-confinement ‘crying and praying’.

Within hours, dozens of camera crews and journalists from Spain, Portugal and the UK had camped outside - including the Olive Press.

We were expecting a huge backlash and, indeed, we heard that a counter-protest would be arriving, but it soon transpired to be the total opposite.

While thousands of Jenni supporters had gathered in Madrid, there was no chance of Motril turning on their ‘son’, the local boy who had ‘made it big’.

for the PSOE socialist party at the Junta. Indeed, he had risen to the very top as the Employment Delegate for Granada and, almost inev-

HUNGER:

Angeles on strike in local church

itably, we discovered got sucked into the huge ERE scandal.

It emerges he is still facing trial for his part in the biggest corruption case in Spanish history that during a decade alone saw €680 million stolen from public coffers.

An inconvenient truth brushed under the carpet by local supporters

And we quickly discovered why: Luis was born into privilege as the son of Manuel Rubiales, the mayor of Motril for over a decade. And therein lay the crux - indeed probably the exact reasons why poor little Luis thought he could get away with anything.

For daddy had not only run the town like his fiefdom, as most mayors invariably do in Andalucia, but he had gone on to become a senior bigwig

He is facing three years in prison for using public money from Brussels, via Madrid, to help stimulate employment and help ailing companies.

But that’s ancient history here in old school Andalucia - an inconvenient truth brushed under the carpet by locals who are still suspicious of the central government. Indeed the onslaught of national - and international - criticism against Luis only served to provoke a rally-round-the-flag effect in Motril.

Dozens of residents showed up to voice their support for Rubiales and his mother, decrying the ‘extreme feminism’ they claim is ‘sweeping across Spain.’

This fervent support laid bare the fractures caused by Spain’s ongoing culture wars, symbolised by the rise of Vox, which calls to redefine domestic violence as ‘intrafamilial violence’, claiming male victims are too often ignored.

Gender-based violence is a key issue for far-right Vox and shows the country has a long way to go to shake off the ‘machismo’ attitudes that still run rife in southern Spain.

Motril is no exception, with women and men of all ages blasting the ‘witch hunt’ of Rubiales.

“Men do much worse in the streets everyday and never get punished,” one local told the Olive Press, adding: “The justice system in Spain is broken.”

While the dust has seemingly settled on Motril, for now, the issue of women’s rights is far from over in Spain.

After the meeting he allegedly made the vulgar comment that she should have ‘got f***ed from behind instead’. He has insisted the claims are false and announced ‘legal proceedings’. Almost as sinister are the allegations he used

Across

1 “Tales from the --woods” (Strauss waltz) (6)

5 Moony (6)

8 Chopped up tree fern is complimentary, property-wise (4-4)

9 Leave out (4)

10 Pond flower (4)

11 Christmas tradition (4,3)

12 Cargo platform (4)

14 Not hers (3)

15 Rotate (4)

17 Stomach-related (7)

19 Salt away (4)

20 Heroic narrative (4)

21 Too much (8)

22 Programme of political violence (6)

23 Inhuman human (6)

Down

2 Climber’s tool (3-4)

3 Bananas (5)

4 Marshal (5)

5 Support for climbers (7)

6 Not much water (7)

7 Not being straight (5)

13 All at sea, aspired to give up (7)

14 Conceal (7)

16 Examines and corrects (7)

17 Brilliant reflection (5)

18 Ships’ companies (5)

19 Got into bed (5)

All solutions are on page 14

€120,000 of AFE funds to pay for a renovation to his house, not to mention suspicious trips to New York with female colleagues.

Architect Yasmina Eid-Mached claimed he told her to ‘send the costs’ of his sumptuous Madrid villa to the union.

She also alleged that during a later argument, he subsequently pushed her aggressively and grabbed her arm, leaving her with injuries to her wrist and ribs.

This apparent attitude towards women continued after he won election to become the president of the RFEF in 2017.

It was most publicly noticeable in his rock-solid support for divisive and unpopular women’s coach Jorge Vilda (who eventually managed the team to its World Cup victory).

Come late 2021, three senior players of the women’s team, Alexia Putellas, Patri Guijarro and Irene Paredes, wrote an email to the RFEF complaining about Vilda and the federation itself.

the 95th minute winner home against Getafe man among his teammates.

An atypical football player

Bellingham decided at a very young age to bravely take the step to try a new country and quickly adapted to life in Germany, having landed in Dortmund at just 17.

However, the difference between England and Germany is not as great as with Spain

Fortunately the powers that be at Real believe he can adapt to life in the capital, although inevitably there are still some niggling ‘fears’ that he will find the pressure too much.

For now, the backroom staff at Real - not to mention his entourage of staff and family - are working around the clock to ensure one of the great talents of world football stays wrapped in cotton wool off the pitch.

And on the pitch - fingers crossed unless you are a Barca or Athletico fan - we are looking at a cross between Zidane, Ronaldo and all-time legend Emilio Butragueño.

Among various complaints was their anger that Vilda refused to let the players lock their hotel room doors and search their bags while on national duty.

Rubiales and the RFEF then made a public statement lambasting the criticism and threatening the players with a five-year ban from the national team.

They implied the players were blackmailing them by ‘applying pressure to the federation’.

Many of the players had simply had enough, and on September 23, 2022, 15 players posted an open letter to the federation.

This resulted in all the players being banned ‘until they apologised’. Only three did in the end. Now they are joined by the rest of the squadsome 56 in total - who have announced they will not play again for Spain while ‘the current management’ remains at the RFEF. It is hard to disagree with them.

After Rubiales mum brought her own protest to a rapid end after just three days, she would do well to put herself in the boots of those four and a half dozen players… and the thoughts of 99.9% of the Spanish female population.

My poor little boy… the son of a political ‘fraudster’!

FATHER AND SON: The Rubiales

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Climate change cost

AUTHORITIES in Tenerife are estimating that the forest fire that broke out on the Canary Island on August 15, and which razed 15,000 hectares of land, has caused €80 million worth of damage.

The fire is still burning three weeks later, but is reported to be stable. The blaze has so far affected a perimeter of 90 kilometres across a total of 12 municipalities, with 13,000 people evacuated. Most of these have since returned home.

The island’s premier Rosa Davila gave the damage estimate, and added that the local government is likely to declare the island a ‘disaster area’.

Calling the blaze ‘the biggest seen in the Canary Islands in the last 40 years’, Davila added that the impact would

Wolves out

THE EU is having doubts about the viability of a project tackling the recovery of the wolf population in Europe.

The institution is now considering how ‘dangerous’ the species can be for humans and other animals.

“The number of wolf packs in some European regions is becoming a real danger,” Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said.

She added that the commission is having talks with scientists and environmental experts to implement ‘measures’ to tackle the issue. The talks come a month after wolves were declared extinct in Andalucia, however, they are still present in other areas of Spain.

Damage worth €80m of devastating fire on Tenerife

By Simon Hunter

be severe for those working in agriculture and livestock farming.

She also used the opportunity to call for a ‘permanent base for firefighting planes’ to be built on the island.

“After three years suffering terrible fires all over the Canaries and after the fire that the island of Tenerife has suffered, I don’t think there is any question that the Canary Islands need a permanent base for firefighting planes,” she said.

Elsewhere, firefighters have been tackling devastating blazes in Greece, Italy and Portugal, driven by searing

temperatures and dry and windy conditions that scientists have linked to climate change.

WATER BARONS

POLICE have dismantled a network of illegal water extractors after discovering 51 clandestine wells used to irrigate farmland. Operation Underwater was launched by the Guardia in March 2022 after a tip-off that farmers were breaking the law in the Rambla da Ramonete in Mazzaron.

Now 18 people have been identified for illegally siphoning-off over 2.5 million cubic metres of water said to be valued at around €2 million.

The suspects face charges of crimes against natural resources and the environment as well as water usurpation.

Potential penalties include prison sentences of between six months and two years, as well as substantial fines based on the amount of water taken.

The Guardia used ground and aerial means to map out areas that were benefiting from the water supplies including several agricultural greenhouses.

Some 53 farms were inspected with a number of the illegal wells hidden in areas that were difficult to access and covered by plastic or metal sheets.

NOT ALL EMISSIONS CAN BE REDUCED TO ZERO

Industrial processes will always produce emissions.

These gases increase global temperatures by trapping the sun’s energy.

WHERE DOES 2050 COME FROM ?

Now politics come into play.

Back in 2015, some 197 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature increases to 1.5C by 2100. We have failed to do this. For this to happen, scientists calculated that we would need to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

As with most political endeavours talk is cheap, and making long term promises just kicks the problem down the road.

Individuals can do their bit – reduce travel, install solar panels, switch to electric vehicles, eat less red meat etc, but real changes need to come from the world’s governments. In the main, governments continue to over promise and under deliver.

To negate this we have to offset these emissions by actively removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Planting trees is a natural method…but rapid world deforestation still continues. Fewer trees absorb less CO2.

The world’s largest polluters do not have a cohesive, effective, plan.

China says it aims for carbon neutrality by 2060. The US still emits more carbon per head than China. The EU still talks about 2050, but is failing miserably.

India, a huge emitter, has pledged net zero by 2070 but has published very little by way of policy to make you believe this is possible.

India is more intent on its massive space programme investment.

Russia has claimed 2060 as a target date. But nobody believes much that comes out of the Kremlin. Meanwhile we witness increasing climate devastation around the world.

SAVE

OUR TREES: to fight climate change

Ambitious rhetoric lacks the extra investment needed and the new policies that need implementing are left in limbo.

It’s ironic that the world’s biggest polluters are suffering the most.

LA CULTURA

Southcoast sounds

THE Cala Mijas Festival returned with a bang on Thursday and brought with it a host of stellar names and up-n-comers to set Andalucia alight.

In just its second year, it topped last year’s attendance by 3,000 as 110,000 music lovers turned up over the three nights.

Expats and foreign visitors made up over 30,000 of the attendees, with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy best represented among the crowds.

Some 60-odd bands graced the four stages, including Arcade Fire, The Strokes, Pabllo Vittar, Idles, Foals and Moderat

Cala Mijas Festival has already become the leading music festival in southern Spain, and will look to take the indie crown currently worn by the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona (and sometimes Madrid) in the coming years.

But it still has a way to go. The Barcelona extravaganza attracted 253,000 guests this year - although that was across five nights. Indeed, the festival received a

presidential seal of approval when acting prime minister Pedro Sanchez showed up on the second night to watch the Strokes Sanchez may have even set the tone for a remarkably well-behaved three-day music party, with a grand total of zero incidents reported by festival authorities.

Londoners Florence + The Machine nearly pulled out due to health reasons, but in the end kept their word to close out the festival on Saturday night.

Rhythm stick

By Jon Clarke in Mijas

WITH his unusual yoga stances, he stalked the stage with the grace of a ballet dancer.

But, make no mistake, Baxter Dury had the presence of a pit bull, at his first major concert in southern Spain, at Cala Mijas Festival. The enigmatic Londoner has all the swagger of his famous dad, the legendary Ian Dury (and his Blockheads), but with more finesse. And the intelligence of his lyrics, as well as the way he cleverly ad-libbed his way through various songs, with references to Spain, had the crowd in stitches.

This was Brit pop (for want of a better word) at its best, particularly on standout tracks like Cocaine Man and particularly, Baxter (these are my friends)

Another UK band with an even edgier, angrier sound were Idles, from Bristol. The five-piece blew the (mostly) Spanish crowd away as they stomped around stage behind frontman Joe Talbot, his neck pulsating with aggression.

Mesmerizing and brilliant, only guitarist Mark Bowen in full Arabic dish dash came close to matching the showman.

Of the major acts across the well-organized three-day festival, the plaudits had to go to Canadian legends Arcade Fire, who played an absolutely faultless set on Friday.

Different Strokes

WHILE his political rivals at the PP battled against the odds to form a government, the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez let his hair down at a music festival.

The PSOE leader watched one of his favourite bands, the Strokes, from the US, as well as Spanish rockers Lori Mey- ers at the Cala Mijas music fes- tival, on the Costa del Sol. Sanchez, 51, was seen posing for selfies with fans before tak- ing to social media to praise the event. “Atmosphere and good music at CalaMijasFest,” he wrote, adding: “Very proud of the cultural power of Spain.”

STAND OUT: Arcade Fire

ICONIC: Baxter and dad Ian (inset)

This collective of talented musicians just keep going from strength to strength, and will no doubt be playing these brilliant tunes, like the Rolling Stones do into their 70s. Thier first headline show of the year in Spain, they had come to enjoy themselves as they descended down the 100 steps from the hills behind, waving to the crowd. Hits; they played them all, with the excellent Rebellion (Lies), Haiti and, in particular, Afterlife, getting everyone jumping.

Saturday’s headliners the Strokes, while hitting the heights, in particular with hits from their seminal first album, Is This It, failed to truly ignite, largely due to lead singer Julian Casavantes clearly being worse for wear.

Luckily an excellent performance from experimental French group, M83, made up for it, while the house was well and truly blown away by UK dance legends, Underworld, who came on at 2.30am and rocked till the wee hours.

PICTURE CREDITS: Walter Finch

The second Cala Mijas Festival opened with a bang and burned bright for three nights with passion,

ROCKING!: Florence + the Machine were a big hit, while (top) Idles, (far left) the Strokes (middle) Belle and Sebastian, and (left) JoeGonzalez

The Olive Press attempts to demystify Back to School 2023, by mother-of-two Jo Chipchase

WITH the holiday season winding down, tourists heading home and the nights drawing in, this can only mean one thing: the kids are back to school.

While most parents and children look forward to the vuelta al cole, and some can’t wait for the school gates to open, it can be a nerve-wracking expe rience for some families, especially if they’re new to the Spanish system.

Perhaps your primary-age daughter is shy about joining class, or your teen has spent most of the holiday out till 5am and lying in bed and it’s a major jolt to the system. Many of you will have a child who isn’t fluent at Spanish and is worried about communicating with classmates.

Some students will be changing their school, which can be a life-changing decision. They might be switching from a state school to an international college, or a Montosorri or a Warldorf establishment.

Other students will be repeating an academic year, having failed to pass an exam or two in June, presenting a particular set of challenges for both the kid and parents alike.

Or, perhaps, you’re simply wondering where to obtain this year’s school materials without it costing a small fortune.

Whatever your child’s school circumstances this September the Olive Press sets out to demystify ‘back to school 2023’.

Get to know the Spanish state system

There are four phases:

• Educacion Infantil (Preschool) - 3 to 5 years of age (inclusive, i.e. three years). This is optional.

• Educacion Primaria (Primary Education) - 6 to 11 years of age (six years). Compulsory.

• Educacion Secundaria Obligitoria or ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education) - 12 to 15 years of age (four years).

• Bachillerato (Post-Compulsory Schooling) - 16 and 17 years of age (two years).

The Pre-school stage (infantil or popularly known as pre-escolar) is free for all children but not compulsory. However, it is regarded as an integral part of the education system with infants’ classes at almost every primary school. There are some separate nursery schools, colegios infantiles, also. The next two phases, primary (colegio) and secondary school (instituto) education are compulsory and free of charge.

At the end of the ESO successful pupils are awarded a Secondary Education Certificate, which is necessary to enter the post-compulsory stage of schooling for their university or vocational studies. Alternatively they may leave school and get a job.

Once pupils have their Bachillerato they can take their university entrance exam.

What types of education are available in Spain?

For parents who consider their children to be individual ‘square pegs’, who don’t fit into the ‘round holes’ of state education, based largely on continuous assessment and exams, there are alternative choices available throughout Spain.

There are 7,806 private schools in Spain, with 14,694 In the public sector…so roughly a third of the schools are independent.

Among other interesting official stats, with a 97.3% enrolment rate, there isn’t much homeschooling or truancy going on in Spain.

Meanwhile 9.9% of Spain’s pupils are foreign, while in Andalucia, 21% are educated outside the state system and in Valencia this rises to 25%, explaining why there are so

many international schools on the costas, including many with French, British and American syllabuses.

International schools

In the case of British schools, these offer Cambridge exams and allow pupils to take GCSEs and A-Levels. Most offer an individualised learning plan, which wouldn’t be available in state schools and they are likely to have excellent purpose-built facilities. They communicate with parents in their native language, making parent-teacher meetings a breeze.

International schools also provide a convenient pathway to enter the UK university system seamlessly.

They are a popular choice with parents who come to Spain for contract work, or a limited time only, and don’t plan to remain here – although this sort of working life has decreased with Brexit.

AS ‘Back to school’ season is right around the corner, parents all over the country will be fretting about the upcoming school year while their children are glued to their tablets. To help soothe this arduous season, the Olive Press has created a list of important tasks to tackle to ensure a smooth sailing start to the year.

BUYING UNIFORM/NEW CLOTHES

One very important thing to remember when preparing your child for going back to school is clothing. Even if your school does not require a uniform, children grow very quickly in very short periods of time. New clothes that are adequate for all weather types and that fit your child perfectly are necessary for back-to-school prep.

EQUIPMENT

The list of equipment your child needs will grow exponentially as they get older. Helpfully, schools sometimes send out lists of what you will need, from pencils to protractors.

It may also be helpful to ask your child if there is anything they personally would add; not every child is the same, and some may work better with extra or different items.

TRAVEL

Whether your child is starting at a new school and you haven’t decided on the best way to get them there or you need to get them a bus pass, having travel to school sorted is imperative.

It’s the first obstacle for your young ones on their first day back and having an easy experience with the bus or already being familiar with their walk will make them feel well prepared for their first day back.

LUNCH

Lunch is a big part of the school day, and sometimes it is a child’s favourite hour. Whether pack-up or school dinner, making sure they have either mon -

STATE EDUCATION

PROS

3 Your child will be involved in your local community

3 Their friends will live locally

3 They will quickly be fluent at Spanish / bilingual

3 There’s no need to transport your children to school

3 It is free of charge

CONS

2 Rigid structure based on continuous assessment

2 Difficult for parents who don’t speak Spanish to understand what’s going on

VS

PRIVATE EDUCATION

PROS

3 Cambridge exams are provided

3 Caters for entry to UK universities

3 International Baccalaureate entry

3 Individualised learning plan

3 Constant contact with parents / partici- pation in the learning experience

3 Speak to educators in English

CONS

2 The cost each year

2 Paying for school uniform, that your child must wear

2 Less immersion of your child in their local community

2 Not much creative learning, in terms of art, drama, etc.

2 It is relatively easy for your child to repeat a year. Re secondary education, the repetition rate is 5.5% for state institutions combined to 1.4% for independent.

Parents can expect to pay from €10,000 to €35,000 per year, depending on whether the child boards at the school. Parents will also have to buy uniforms and other extras for their children.

BE PREPARED

Half a dozen things to think about before starting school, with Kayleigh Beardsley

ey or food is essential. For school dinners, it’s pretty simple—setting aside some money every day for them. Packed lunches are a little more complicated, but they are great for picky eaters or for you to keep tabs on what your child is eating. Some schools have some strict rules about the contents of the lunchbox, so check in to see if anything is prohibited.

PREP THE UNIFORM

Children may not like having tags in their clothes as it is not ‘cool’ but having your child's name in their uniform can be a game-changer. No more rummaging around in a pile of jumpers left in a pile at school.

In addition to adding their names to their clothes, getting them to wear in their shoes is a life saver. The first day of school may be daunting for them anyway, why add uncomfy shoes to the mix? Letting them wear their shoes means no blisters on the first day and one less thing for them to worry about.

PRINT OUT A TIMETABLE

As soon as your child has got one, print out a timetable so you can keep up to date with what they need everyday. Gone are the days of being told they have no ingredients for their food tech lesson or PE kit for their PE lesson. Not only does this help for classes but also for any after school clubs.

2 Friends might live further away

2 Child is less likely to be fluent at Span- ish

2 The need to transport children to school – possibly at a geographic dis- tance

2 The school holidays do not match Spanish holidays

Montessori

Spain has various Montessori schools, with most big cities offering at least one.

Developed in the early 20th century by Italian physician, Maria Montessori, and based on scientific experimentation, the emphasis is on developing natural interests and activities, and on hands-on learning and real-life skills, rather than using formal teaching methods.

The idea is to encourage independence by supporting children to learn in a well-prepared environment and it discourages grades and tests. Popular elements of this system include mixed-age classrooms, freedom of students to choose their own activities, uninterrupted work time, and specially-trained teachers. The cost can be from around €200 per month.

The Waldorf / Steiner system

Spain has over 70 Waldorf, or Steiner schools. Dating back to 1919 in Germany, they are based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner.

It is one of the world’s largest independent school groups and the educational style is holistic and is intended to develop the pupils’ intellectual, artistic and practical skills, as well as their imagination and creativity.

Under this system, teachers play a significant role in defining the curriculum and classroom methods. Assessments are integrated into the daily classroom activities and formal testing is limited to the actual requirements for students to enter post-secondary education, and not the continuous, formal assessment that occurs in a state school.

Fees are from around €200 per month.

FOOD,DRINK & TRAVEL

WINE TIME

THE simplicity of late-summer eating, the sensuousness of it and the concentrated taste of produce at a pitch of ripeness: figs, nectarines, melon, pears. The balm of an ice-cold salmorejo, silky with oil and piquant with garlic. Yellow figs, intensely sweet, with thin slices of ham. A Russian salad made with cooked carrots and peas, potatoes and a little onion and a boiled egg, all of it diced and bound together with homemade mayonnaise. Hunger comes at odd times of the day and night. I’ve taken to eating at five in the afternoon and sleeping until eight. For lunch today, my summer staple: linguine with a raw tomato sauce. For midnight supper a thin fillet of our own pork, a scatter of oregano, pepper and salt sizzled on the griddle and sliced

Figs, pears and melons in baffling quantities… And - finally - the grapes swelled and were ready to pick for wine. Their variety, no one could tell me, writes Paul Richardson of life in September in his new book, Hidden Valley

into strips.

Just beside the stove stands a bowl with the remains of the grated raw tomato from lunch, ready seasoned with fresh basil and olive oil, so I slide the red slick on to the hot pan, push it around a bit, et voilà, an instant sauce for my pork steak.

Struggling to eat the fruit that now arrives in baffling quantities. Pears that are green and hard and

then turn yellow, aromatic and juicy. (I’ve taken to drying them in slices out in the sun, on the chicken-wire rack we use for sun-drying tomatoes.) Strawberries, smaller and smaller as the season progresses but more and more strongly perfumed, to the point that a cloud of strawberry smell bursts out from the fridge when you open the door. Japanese nashi, shaped like apples but tasting more like pears, with a pellucid crispness to their pearly flesh. Small yellow peaches, good to eat but even better peeled, sliced and bottled in syrup for the winter. Cantaloupe melons, the round ones with the orange flesh, gloriously perfumed, the best of all possible breakfast foods. The pig gets all the peelings and pips. Meanwhile the fire has retreated from the forefront of my consciousness. This morning on my early rounds I catch myself thinking: How can a landscape be so ravaged, so damaged, and still retain its loveliness? Yet it does. The surface may be temporarily scarred, but the lie of the land, its shape, its soul, can’t be touched. As the sun came up I walked out of the house and away to the edge of the forest. From here there was a view that filled up my senses always, the

AT just over 1,500 metres above sea level, it could be the highest-rated restaurant with rooms in Spain.

‘Certainly in Catalunya,’ insists chef, Oliver, a lively father-of-three, who trained at a cookery school in Barcelona before making a life choice to run the stunning Can Borrell retreat in the Pyrenees with his wife Laura. It was her parents’ hotel, a retreat for hikers and skiers just a 40-minute drive from the nearest ski station, and counting on roaring open fires and views to die for.

Two decades on and they’ve had three boys, all junior national skiing champions, who help out in the kitchen and sala at the busiest times of year.

It’s all part of the charm - these strong, stocky specimens floating about with verve, particularly in midsummer.

This is surely the best time to visit - when the rest of Spain is roasting, and Can Borrell delivers no more than 27 or 28 degrees, dropping to 16 at night.

It’s normally warm enough to dine on the charming terrace, with its agricultural vernacular to the fore - and you can sleep with the windows open as it’s mostly mozzie free.

It’s also a popular weekend retreat for sophisticates from Barce- lona, who come to hike in the near- by hills.

PICKING: The grapes were plentiful but noone knew the variety

land falling away towards the stream, the valley holding the village clustered around the church as if in cupped hands, and sometimes a big horizontal brushstroke of snow tinted rose-pink on the distant peaks. All around me lay the vineyard. A faint dew had fallen overnight, moistening the leaves. Trailing fronds of grapevine reached out to touch each other, their leaves having lost their sprightly greenness and begun to turn brownish yellow and redden around the edg-

es, as if the lifeforce was now being diverted away from the plant itself and into the swelling fruit.

One vine was a lonely thing, but a large number of them were magical

I liked the way the vines surrounded the house, hugging it protectively, gently bobbing like a lake of green. At any time of year they were worthy of my attention. The black, wrinkled stumps standing mute and unflinching in a winter downpour had an air of something mineral rather than vegetable, as if carved out of black volcanic basalt. In April the buds burst into delicate

HIGH LIFE

There are a myriad of paths from the door, a couple that take you to swimmable glacial lakes in just over an hour, plus the third highest peak in the Pyrenees, Puigpedros - now that’s a challenge!

There are nine functional rooms - and one amazing suite - that adhere to the rustic architecture of this centuries-old farmhouse (or Can, in Catalan) - but you can expect central heating in winter.

The main dining room and entrance area will sweep you back a century, and romance is guaranteed, if that’s your thing.

My wife and I ended up staying here for three days two decades ago, arriving from the Costa Brava after a two-day bout of gastroenteritis. It was the perfect tonic and we bimbled around the hamlet of 60 souls, until we’d improved enough to attempt Puigpedros.

Why on earth we’ve only just made it back now is anyone’s guess, but I guess like Laura and Oliver, kids got in the way.

And the best thing of all is that while the food was good back then, today it is so much more assured.

Think mountain tucker, but with real verve and plenty of extra touches, thanks to the proximity of France just over the hill.

Take the foie gras starter which has a touch of black truffle. It’s a great kick off, despite its obvious negative connotation today.

The goat’s cheese and spinach in puff pastry may be more palatable to many, while the ‘brik of duck’ melted in the mouth.

Mains were, naturally, meaty with the standout dish being a fantastic solomillo from a local free range breed of cattle that hugs the nearby contours.

The tarte tatin comes with tremendous vanilla ice cream.

There were other options to eat (albeit at least a 10 minute drive downhill) but as a mark of how good this is: we stayed put four nights in a row!

It’s fair to say, we’d truly acclimatised to the High Life!

www.can-borrell.com

FATTENED UP: The pig gets all the peelings and pips

Jon Clarke reviews the charming mountain retreat, the highest restaurant with rooms in Catalunya

CHARMING: Can Borrell in the Pyrenees

FOOD,DRINK & TRAVEL

shoots, which unfurled into tiny leaves and grew tiny clusters of green pinheads: embryo grapes. One vine on its own was a lonely thing, but a large number of them was a magical collective entity, sprouting and fruiting as one, branches moving in the breeze like a single organism.

Baudilio, the old man who had worked this land for half a century, once told me his father had first laid out the vineyard nearly a century ago, planting it with vine cuttings brought from an important winemaking region far from here where he regularly worked the grape harvest. Baudilio had more

vineyards around the village and a bar in the main street serve glasses of his strong, pungent white wine. In springtime he ploughed between the rows with a plough drawn by the family mule, which lived in the hut that would eventually become my bedroom.

What no one could tell me, not even he, were the grape varieties. In the old days nobody much worried about such things; varietal identity is a modern obsession.

There was white and there

A new season

LATE SEPTEMBER: Practically its own season. Bright, fresh days with the memory of water – the downpours of last week, which stopped summer dead in its tracks – still present in corners of the land where the sun seldom reaches, still damp, the soil still dark after rain.

was red, and these were mostly white, with an occasional red one popping up randomly in the midst of them. The wines we had tasted in the village bars were white, but strong and sometimes slightly oxidised or sherry-ish, and surprisingly pallid in colour.

They were fermented and stored in big-bellied clay urns or vats, which made the cellars of village houses look like a set for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The vats were treated inside with a resin derived from pine sap to seal and disinfect the clay, which often gave the wines a hint of the balsamic piney taste you find, much more prominently, in Greek retsina.

The idea was appealing to me: I imagined a link, over huge distances of time and space, between the amphoras of Attica and the clay vats of this village in twenty-first-century Spain.

How the grass revives, brave little blades of a vivacious green pushing up and out, stippling the ground like a computer-generated colouring-in. There’s a pleasant mental confusion about walking out in the early morning and seeing these tender shoots, feeling the humid air on your face.

The sheep are energised, running this way and that, hardly able to believe these pastures new, this deliciousness right under their muzzles.

The maize hangs in long rows, the dry cobs tied into pairs –a job that has us channelling crabbed old Galician grandmothers as we sit on wooden

In search of setas

IN the damp afternoon after a rain shower I go to the woods to walk, and also to forage for wild fungi Mushrooming is a subtle and mysterious art. The mental attitude required is a via negativa, a not- wanting-too-much, a not-looking- too-hard. Synoptic vision, casting your whole eye over an expanse of ground, ready to pick up the signals, the curve of the cap, the colour a shade or two away from the sur- rounding variants of brown, a fun- gal aroma your nose detects. When you see one there’s a tiny charge of pleasure in the brain, like the dopa- mine hit a new email in your inbox is meant to produce. It’s a knowing before you even real- ly know; a prescience. Or perhaps a reverse déjà vu: you imagine you knew it was there, how could it not have been? The tell-tale way the mushroom has pushed up the

leaf layer then again, you’ve poked carefully with a stick or your foot at dozens of such tell-tale liftings and found nothing underneath but a tussock of grass that has pushed through a wodge of dry leaves and raised it slightly, and even as you did so some thing told you it was a waste of time, so there’s hardly a cast-iron logic there. Yet this time it’s textbook. The hard, round cap the russet brown of a Hov- is loaf; the thick bulbous stem white as marble. When your fingers reach

PRODUCE: Everything from the maize to olives and fruit gets conserved and potted

stools out on the porch. We tear off the dry outer sheaths leaving just enough on either side to twist and tie, shooting the breeze all the while.

This year’s colours in the cobs’ mosaic patterns are a pastel pink, a drop-dead coral red, dark elegant grey and a dun green that’s almost khaki. As we twist and tie we speculate and joke about the randomness or otherwise of the cobs’ intricate patterning: a message from an alien culture? Some kind of heavenly barcode? Or simply nature in all her meticulous unfathomable beauty?

around that cool, dry pillar, that’s when you know you’ve found your perfect Boletus edulis. That’s the first satisfaction. The second comes soon after, bundled up with the first. I like them best baked with potato and garlic, with buttered eggs, a rich autumnal rice with rabbit and pumpkin, and raw in slicescarpaccio-thin dribbled with olive oil and scattered with parmesan.

Tonight

Nacho makes a salad in the scattergun inven- tive manner of his cooking, and it’s a palpable hit. Peppery rocket and carrot julienne and crisp sweet apple and shavings of raw cep, which imbue the dish with their insinuating perfume; a memory of damp leaf mulch; a whis- per from the woods.

PERFECTLY RIPE: Succulent peaches and tasty peppers

Motoring on

AN Alicante company that runs secure parking areas for motorbikes and mopeds has gone down the crowdfunding route to help it expand across Spain.

Mimoto opened its first park in 2018 and in March it announced franchise plans for 18 openings in four cities.

It has also listed Malaga, Sevilla, San Sebastian, Zaragoza, A Coruña, Valladolid and Burgos as centres that it wants to break into.

It currently has 50,000 spaces at its sites and has reached the €33,000 mark in a crowdfunding target of €150,000.

The firm’s owners say the company’s value has gone up 10fold in the last two years.

THE release of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in SpainMutant Mayhem - is great news for an Alicante province toy maker.

Canal Toys España based in Onil is a subsidiary of a French company and it has created an official toy linked to the film called the Ninja Turtles Fidget Ooze.

The company specialises in making soft toys and toys that ooze with slime with the new offerings featuring the

Slimey tactics

four starring turtles. The ‘ooze’ represents the material that turns the ordinary turtles into mutants and then ninjas. The slime can simply be put back into the turtle with the toys offering relaxing multi-stress functions that allow them to be squeezed and stretched but always returning to their original form.

PRICES RISE

Fuel pumps up inflation as costs surge

INFLATION in August

stood at 2.6%, according to preliminary figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE).

A warm welcome

By Alex Trelinski

The top line rise - up by 0.3% on July’s figurecame as no surprise due to the surge in fuel costs with motorists having to pay the highest pump prices for nearly a year.

SPAIN welcomed 47.6 million tourists - 9.8 million of them British - to its shores in the year from January to July, up 21% on the same period of 2022. That’s according to the latest figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE), which also reported that visitors spent nearly €60 billion while in the country, a rise of 25% compared to 2022.

The number of tourists in the period this year was, however, o.8% lower than the same months in 2019, the last full year before the Covid-19 pandemic. Spending has risen compared to 2019, with the €60 billion figure representing a 25% ries.

Cuts in Saudi Arabia oil production have been the cause, which has also impacted on electricity and oil tariffs. Raymond Torres, director of economic think-tank Funcas, said: “We have seen rebounds in gas and oil, and they may cause some upside surprises, but we are still far from the highs reached last year.” Tourists paying higher hotel, bar, and restaurant

prices has also boosted consumption and therefore inflation. Despite the rate rise, Spain's inflation stands at over half of the rest of the Eurozone and is just above the European Central Bank's target figure of 2%.

In August 2022, inflation was at 10.5% and the average rate was 9% for the

Switch to private

FALLING birth rates are said to be having a ‘profound’ impact on Spain’s public education system with over 304,000 fewer children in kindergartens and primary schools compared to 2018. Some 112 schools have closed down in a decade but 80 additional private schools have opened during the same period.

In the last five years, children in school aged between three and six years have dropped by 145,071 students, while there are 159,288 fewer in the six to 12 years category.

The figures are only going to continue to decline as the first half of 2023 recorded a birth rate low of just 155,629 babies.

Right now there are 32 fewer primary schools in Spain compared to 10 years ago - a 0.2% fall - with a total of 13,387 centres.

first nine months of last year. So far in 2023, the average nine month rate is 3.6%. Core inflation which excludes energy and fresh food is at 6.1% - 0.1% down compared to July's figure. Economic experts estimate that the year will finish with a core rate of between 4% and 5%.

Burger bros boom

VALENCIA gourmet burger restaurant chain The Fitzgerald plans to celebrate its 10th anniversary this year with the opening of two new wholly-owned shops plus 10 franchises in Barcelona, Granada, Sevilla, Murcia and Badajoz, among others.

It aims to have a network of 50 restaurants by 2024 and one hundred outlets before 2028- it currently has 23 establishments in the Valencian Community, Albacete, and Madrid.

Two Valencian brothers, Mario and Carlos Gelabert, had a vision a decade ago to bring something new to the fastfood burger market, and they now have a company reporting a €17 million turnover in 2022 with 380 staff and 1.5 million hamburger sales.

Its turnover targets for 2023 are planned to exceed €20 million- climbing to €35 million in 2028.

OP Puzzle solutions Quick Crossword

Across: 1 Vienna, 5 Tiddly, 8 Rent-free, 9 Omit, 10 Lily, 11 Yule log, 12 Skid, 14 His, 15 Turn, 17 Gastric, 19 Save, 20 Saga, 21 Overdose, 22 Terror, 23 Sadist.

Down: 2 Ice-pick, 3 Nutty, 4 Array, 5 Trellis, 6 Droplet, 7 Lying, 13 Despair, 14 Harbour, 16 Revises, 17 Glare, 18 Crews, 19 Sided.

Many of the public schools closures have been in rural areas that have been suffering from depopulation while the private school network offers a ‘full service’ from infant to secondary age ranges, and are also predominantly based in more-affluent urban communities.

Just four regions - Madrid, Aragon, the Basque Country, and the Balearic Islands - have seen public schools actually increase in numbers.

Policy

Aragon's former Education Minister, Felipe Facci, said: “We had a policy of where just three pupils were needed to keep a rural school open and when a school does close, that has an impact on the rural environment which sees associated services like school canteens, transport, and other activities cease.”

“The last thing parents want is for a school to close and for their children to travel up to 30 kilometres a day elsewhere,” the minister added. Large communities have also suffered due to falling birth rates with schools and teaching staff being integrated with larger class sizes as a consequence.

The Esade Centre for Economic Policy is an independent think-tank based in Madrid that looks at creating public policy based on consensus and evidence.

Its education head, Lucas Gortazar, said: “The incessant decline of the birth rate is the greatest educational challenge of our time.” He believes there will be extra money available to spend per student but the issue will be what the cash will be spent on.

BROTHERS: Mario and Carlos

Deadly summer CRACKING CANCER’S CODE

A TOTAL of 90 people have died of heat stroke in Malaga province this summer.

Some 51 people lost their lives from heat stroke in July, and 39 in August, according to the Carlos III Health Institute. The institution says that this is the highest number of heat stroke deaths since 2015, the year its started registering them.

Some 92% of the deceased (83) were over 65 years old, and 46 of them were over 85. However, two victims were under 44 years old. In Andalucia as a whole there were 609 heat stroke deaths during June, July and August, over 25% more than last year, when there were 434 victims.

Extra jabbing

All children under six to get flu jab while new Covid vaccination campaign starts

ALL children in Spain aged between six months and five years will be eligible to get a flu vaccine this autumn.

Previous policy has been for only youngsters with underlying conditions to receive a flu shot.

The age range extension according to the Spanish Association of Pediatrics will mean that between 55% and 60% of young children will get a dose.

SPAIN is grappling with a rise in youth suicides that poses serious questions about the country's child mental health services.

Last year 22 youngsters aged 10 to 14 ended their lives – the highest figures since 1991.

And calls to child helplines have grown nearly five-fold, from 958 in 2019 to 4,554, according to the Foundation Anar, a non-profit organisation that helps children and adolescents at risk in Spain.

The suffering endured during the pandemic exacerbated issues such as eating disorders and self-harm among youngsters.

Spain’s public healthcare system struggled to cope, with only one in five trained

By Alex Trelinski

Javier Alvarez of the Association said: “This will bring added protection as children are the main spreaders of influenza in schools and nurseries - passing on the virus to people they live with.”

He pointed out that flu affects up to 40% of young children, and that 5% of cas-

Help needed

clinical psychologists specialising in child and adolescent care – around 540 in total. Experts are advocating for immediate action, demanding more placements in the psychology training program and a specialised child psychology branch.

People can also call Samaritans in Spain between 10am and 10pm on FREEPHONE 900 525 100 for a confidential service in English or email pat@samaritansinspain.com Spain’s national suicide helpline 024 also offers a service in English.

es end up in hospital - especially if somebody is suffering with other ailments. Evidence also shows that when children are vaccinated, the number of flu cases among adults is reduced. The autumn flu vaccination campaign will start in tandem with a fresh set of Covid-19 booster shots, focused on the most vulnerable with everybody aged over 60 included.

The Covid injections will start with the most elderly whose risks of contracting a serious disease increases if they contract the coronavirus. Other groups include health and social workers as well as people who work in institutions like residences, disability centres, and prisons. It is not yet clear which drugs will be used as Spain has

bought more than 100 mil-

lion doses that are outdated as new Covid variants have appeared over the past year.

Spanish scientists have made a groundbreaking discovery in the fight against the most aggressive and untreatable form of breast cancer. The work has involved identifying a crucial molecule for treating triple-negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive forms of the disease known for its rapid spread and resistance to conventional therapies.

Laboratory experiments and studies with live animals have honed in on how this molecule can affect the growth and movement of triple-negative breast cancer cells.

Legionnaires’ death

AN 85-year-old man has died in Caceres from Legionnaires disease, with six others affected and hospitalised. Among the affected were an 85-year-old woman and three men aged 76, 71, and 55. Additionally, two 65-yearold men were admitted to intensive care..

Rafael Mateos, the city’s mayor, said: “The problems are usually in the vapour sprays, and that is where controls have to be increased.”

Eight public fountains were turned off until the source of the outbreak could be traced. Typically, Legionnaires’ disease is not contagious but is very easily spread through bacteria inhaled from water or soil particles. The bacterium was discovered as a result of precautionary measures.

The bacteria that causes Legionnaires disease also causes Pontiac fever, an illness resembling flu which usually clears on its own, but untreated Legionnaires’ disease can be fatal.

REuse REduce REcycle

We use recycled paper

Late for lunch

A HELICOPTER pilot from Spain’s DGT traffic authority crashed while trying to make a lunch stop a restaurant in Almeria.

Battle ready

A FIVE-DAY course for people wanting to go and fight in Ukraine against Russian forces is being offered by a company in Catalunya’s Lleida for €700.

In vane?

MALAGA’S iconic Caminito del Rey will install a weather station provided by Spain’s Met Office AEMET to display more accurate weather data after it was closed several times for feared high winds that never materialised.

O P LIVE RESS The

COSTA BLANCA SUR / MURCIA

Get on the horn!

MASON MOVES

Greenwood, 21, is granted luxury villa near his new training ground in Madrid

HE is the controversial ‘other’ British footballer who has moved to Madrid this season.

Manchester United star Mason Greenwood was unveiled as the new loan signing of La Liga team Getafe this week (just a month after Jude Bellingham at Real Madrid).

In a shock transfer the 21-yearold is moving to Madrid with his girlfriend Harriet Robson, with whom he has a baby son. He has been granted a €10,000-per-month rental allowance to find a villa ‘near to his training ground’ after Manchester United agreed a loan deal.

It comes after charges of attempted rape, assault and controlling and coercive behaviour against him were dropped at the start of this year.

The Olive Press understands he is looking at a number of upmarket barrios to live.

By Laurence Dollimore

They include the exclusive neighbourhood of La Finca, which is just a 20-minute drive from Getafe and has played host to some of the game’s biggest stars, including David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale.

Safe

Described as a ‘footballer’s paradise’ Spain internationals Fernando Torres and Sergio Ramos are among the current residents in LaFinca, where properties sell for around €15 million and can cost up to €20,000 per month to rent.

A private security firm has agents patrolling its tree-lined streets, while guards are stationed at the entrance 24/7. It has three perimeter fenc-

es to keep out any potential intruders, while scores of security cameras have every corner covered.

It is deemed so safe that many of the homeowners reportedly don’t even bother installing an alarm system.

A spokeswoman from estate agency Promora told the Olive Press: “He will most likely live in either La Finca or La Morajela. Both are a footballer’s paradise because they are very green with wide avenues and

great 24-hour security.

“They have everything with their own shops, supermarkets and cinemas etc, meaning they don’t ever have to leave.”

Getafe hailed their new signing on social media on Monday, posting a video, ‘The MasonMania’, showing fans queuing up for pictures with him. They have already received criticism online from a number of fans unhappy with the signing, one saying they had ‘zero shame’.

A GROUP of bulls managed to successfully block the A3 motorway near Valencia. They managed to escape from their truck after it tipped over. The incident caused tailbacks of two kilometres.

RECORD RIND

A SPANISH cheese has become the most expensive ever sold. The 2.2-kilo fromage, from Cabrales, in Asturias, sold for a record €30,000.

Artisan Ivan Suarez smashed his previous Guinness World Record of €20,500 paid in 2019. Made from cow, goat and sheep milk, it undertakes a ten-month maturation process in a cave 1,400 metres up in the soaring Picos de Europa.

Suarez has won the award at the Cabrales Cheese Contest for four years in a row.

"It's my passion for my local area and its cheesemakers that fuels my competitive streak," he insisted.

NEW LIFE: Greenwood hopes for fresh start