Quality not quantity

high-speed fibre optics as well as its excellent sporting facilities, which are mostly free to re- sidents.

So good are the free golf lessons that one youngster to benefit, Julia Lopez Ramirez, 20, has recently moved to Mississippi to compete on the competitive US women’s golf circuit. The town is modernising and upgrading all the facilities all the time and has recently installed a full size running track.

DID YOU KNOW?

Seaborne Jesus, Alicante

EASTER celebrations in Alicante have a maritime flavour starting with the figure of Christ of the Sea coming into harbour aboard a boat, accompanied by port police. Another unusual event is the Last Supper, where a monumental float requiring nearly 200 bearers is paraded through the streets.

Genarin’s Burial, León, Castile-Leon

ONE of the most unusual traditions during Semana Santa is the pagan celebration of Genarin’s Burial. A mock funeral procession takes place in the historic centre of Leon on Holy Thursday, in honour of Genaro Blanco, a drunk known for frequenting all the brothels in the city. He was run over by a truck in 1929, and, on the first anniversary of his death, four of his friends staged the mock funeral in homage to their dearly departed party companion. Over time, it became an excuse to parody the Holy Week processions. Though subjected to censorship during Franco’s dictatorship, the tradition re-emerged in the 1970s.

Holy Week of Ben-Hur, Lorca (Murcia)

DECLARED a Festival of International Tourist Interest in 2007, this procession is more reminiscent of a flamboyant carnival. The city’s different religious brotherhoods spend months preparing floats for what has become something of a competition. Marc Anthony, Nero and Cleopatra are among some of the pre-Christian characters that feature in this Easter procession.

cluding Toyota and Hyundai have begun exploring solar-powered vehicles. The first order of business has been to enable normal ‘plug-in’ EVs to use solar to top up the batteries, providing ‘an auxiliary add-on’ to extend the EVs’ range.

Other manufacturers, mostly start-ups, are looking at ways to make cars that are totally powered by solar, or which use the grid solely as backup. Aperta Motors in California, for example, is on a mission ‘to build lightweight and aerodynamic vehicles powered by the sun that are able to handle most daily needs completely off the grid’.

Using solar roof panels, the Aperta charging system can provide enough energy to power a daily range of 44 km (as long as it’s sunny). The average commute in the US is 30 km per day (in Europe it is 28 km), and so, for the commuter, the need to stop and charge during the day is eliminated. Designed with three wheels, the vehicle can achieve speeds of over 95 km per hour, and, the manufacturers claim, reduce emissions by more than 6000 kg of CO2 per year.

At the time of writing, Aperta’s solar car is yet to pass all federal safety standards, but there is already a backlog of 12,000 pre-orders for the vehicles which cost between €27,000 and €42,000.

Germany’s Sono Motors aims to make ‘every vehicle solar for a world without fossil fuels’ and is developing an EV that charges itself. In a bid to achieve a ‘grid-free’ range of 305 km, more than 1000 solar cells have been adapted and embedded in the plastic body panels of the roof, the sides and the boot. Their prototypes use two to three times less battery power than any EV currently on the market, and already meet legal safety standards. They’re also more suited to today’s consumers, being four-wheeled, multi-passenger and traditional sedan style.

Prisoner freed, Malaga

WHEN plague broke out in 1759, prisoners rioted when they found out that Easter processions were cancelled. In the hope they could be saved from the plague, they then forced their way out of jail and carried a statue of Jesus through the streets before returning to their cells. King Carlos III was so impressed by their piety that from that day on he declared a prisoner should be set free in Malaga every Easter, so long as they had not been convicted

Dance of Death, Verges (Girona)

ON Maundy Tuesday, Verges lays on a Dance of Death. Two adults and three children dress up as skeletons and dance to the rhythm of drums. The origins of the tradition stem from medieval times when Christianity provided hope during the terror of the plague.

Look out below, Valencia

On Easter Saturday Valencianos like to make a noise. They celebrate Christ’s Resurrection with fireworks at midnight but they are not noisy enough for the locals. They join in the noise by throwing pots and old crockery from upper floor balconies. Take an umbrella if you are visiting - water is regularly dumped on unwary visitors too.

Very Successful

Mail-out restaurant campaign bites BIG with our thousands of registered users

WITH a new restaurant opening looming and a need to spread the word, Malaga’s leading Metro Group turned to the Olive Press to help. Via two enticing emails, we hoped our 30,000 registered website users would bite. And bite, they certainly did.

For a limited period of just 11 days, our readers at www. theolivepress.es were offered a unique 50% discount code to redeem against a meal at the hot new restaurant Nomad, opening last month in Marbella. And boy, did they use it, with a staggering 83 BOOKINGS coming in for the launch.

“It was very successful and we have actually been a bit overwhelmed with the reservations,” Metro’s marketing manager Karen Wolfson explained.

“All in all we are very pleased with the result. Thanks so much. We will definitely be doing more with the Olive Press.”

One of the lucky readers to benefit from the generous meal offer was Danish expat, Carsten Christensen, based in San Pedro.

“We jumped at the offer and I took my wife for her birthday with friends,” he explained. “The meal came to €300, which dropped to only €150 after the discount code was applied.

“It was a great meal and we have already booked to come back, not to mention recommended it to a few of our friends.”

For more information on how to run a similar campaign for your restaurant or another business contact sales@theolivepress.es

The top five most read stories on www.theolivepress.es in the past two weeks are:

1- Light at the end of the tunnel: Gibraltar’s new runway tunnel opens March 31 much to commuters’ glee

2- Why are the Semana Santa hats conical and are they linked to the KKK?

3- British parents pay £200 bill each after going on drinking session with their baby at a Gibraltar bar

4- Ryanair boss fumes over latest Spain flight disruptions caused by French air traffic controller strike

5- Spanish celebrity Ana Obregon become a mother at 68

Get in touch today at sales@theolivepress.es or call us at 00 34 951273575 for more info