To improve efficiency, director Francisco Macho confirmed an expandation of Gran Canaria Airport completed by the year 2020. The expandation will effect an increase of flight operations up to 80 flights per hour and is to be realised in three steps.

The first construction phase should be finished in 2011 containing the extension of parking sites. The second period includes the constitution of a third runway.

For this purpose the motorway GC-1 will be diverted. Start of construction is in 2015. Five years later the expandation of the airport should be completed implying the launch of the new runway.

After this the Gran Canaria Airport will be able to handle over 15 million passengers per year.

is known to be very bad tasting. Though the sanitary quality of the water is acceptable already, enough to be drunk, the taste is not as good to be comparable with bottled water. This is about to change.

José Luís Talavera, the production director of ‘Emalsa’, Las Palmas‘ water company, stated that they’re testing a new system at the ‘Las Palmas III‘ desalination plant which will be working in a matter of more or less a month. This new system will treat the water to achieve a better taste of it, for now its rather disgusting than tasteful.

Well, that is good news. Its only thought to be done in Las Palmas at first, for its very expensive to be done anywhere else. Either way, great news, one step more towards future.

the night of sunday, a pipe which supplies the Unelco Power station with fuel-oil, the one situated at the entrance of Las Palmas, got damaged, causing a yet unknown amount of fuel-oil to get out and affect a shore stretch of 600m at the ‘Las Gaviotas’ beach near ‘Jinamar’. The same night ‘Disa’, the company in charge of the supply, was alerted of this problem aswell as the ‘Guardia Civil’ and the local environment office.

Though, there was barely nothing to do until the next day when the diggers started to clean the sand and the adjacent land, which luckily acted as a ‘sponge’, impeding huge ammounts of fuel-oil getting into the water. The cleaning works still continue today as this last two days the workers have been removing as much as possible with shovels and their bare hands. Tomorrow they will continue but with pressurizee vapor stream guns.

Here are some pictures i managed to take:

Really sad , lets just hope they’re able to clean all that mess up… :S

PICTURE SOURCE : www.canarias7.es – Borja Suárez

wasn’t hard enough, as people give up all their savings for just an opportunity to make it alive to a 1st world country, to try for a better life, risking their lives and normaly resulting in an almost certain repatriation, things like this unluckily happen more often every time.

The tragedy happened yesterday at daybreak when a ‘patera‘, those small, unstable boats, subsaharian immigrants use to get here from Africa, arrived at the ‘risco verde‘ beach in Agüimes at darkness, or at least that is what the occupants thought. What really happened is that they docked to an underwater rock formation, 20 meters off shore, which the immigrants thought to be the beach, but which in reality was surrounded by 2 meters(6 feet) of water, causing 10 of the 16 immigrants to drown.

The Chief of the ‘GEAS‘, the special group for scuba activities from the ‘Guardia Civil‘(one of our police corps), Juan Ortega Machín said that it wasn’t clear that the reason for them to drown was that they couldn’t swim since, even if they could, they all arrive exhausted and numb, packed with clothes and tend to drown instantaneously.

According to the ‘GEAS‘, 5 of the 10 casualties were said to be between age 16 and 20. The other 6 occupants survived and were taken to the hospital affected with hypoglycemia and hypothermia.

Really sad

Not a ‘million dollar, baby,’

but 380 mil. € is the estimated budget of the project for the new Gando Airport Runway. The president of the Gran Canaria Council, José Miguel Pérez, advanced yesterday some details of the project that soon will be presented by the ‘furtherance ministry’.

The time-frame is estimated to be 38 months but the beginning hasn’t been determined yet. The new runway will be connected to the actual one and will have a length of 1.100 meters and will also be suitable for class F aircrafts, like the new Airbus A380.
This new runway will make Gran Canaria a very important enclave for trans atlantic flights.

Well…, though good for us on the one side, the environmental impact of this will be also considerable.

naturist association has been demanding a nudist area at the ‘Las Canteras‘ beach in Las Palmas for years, an idea that is now being overthought by the local coastal councillorship. Last July 15th was the international “swimsuitless day” and due to this the canary islands naturist association (Aniscan) wanted to state their claim for a nudist area at the ‘Las Canteras‘ beach.

Paco Ojeda, the president of Aniscan, is greatful that the Las Palmas council is going through this idea, which he stated would be a great touristic appeal for those naturists who decide to stay at the south of Gran Canaria since there are only nudist areas in this part of the isle.

Well, good news for those who like to hang around the beach in their birthday suit

if not the most famous, ‘fiesta’ on Gran Canaria is “La Rama“, which literally means ‘the branch’ but is at the same time short for “La Bajada de la Rama” or ‘the descent of the branch’, is held every year in August 4th, which would be tomorrow.

Traditionally the celebration is about going up the valley of Agaete dancing to the sound of a marching band, getting some tree branches, previously taken from trees in the ‘tamadaba forrest’, and taking them down (always dancing) to the ‘port of Las Nieves’ (the port of Agaete) to Our Lady of Las Nieves, who reside in the port hermitage, as an offering, after hitting the ports’ waters with them.

The mayor and the different neighbourhood associations of Agaete have decided not to carry branches this year, as a gesture of solidarity for the catastrophe suffered by the island due to the forrest fires. Only a few selected people, the usual devotees, will carry some, and the rest will get green handkerchiefs at the same place where they would normally get their branch.

Wow…, i got no words for this…
That is a really really nice gesture.

that the fire, though still active, is ‘under control’. It has affected 20.000 hectares and about 5000 people who start to get back to their homes progressively.

Beside the firemen/women, the emergency intervention group, civil protection and the red cross, the gando UME (military emergency unit) took also part in the extinction works with help from units from Valencia, Zaragoza and Madrid.

This has unfortunately been the worst natural disaster ever for Gran Canaria.

listening to the constant radio reports about the fires i didn’t realize how close the fire was to Maspalomas until my mother gave me a call and told me: “…go out and take some pictures of the red sun…”. So i took my cam and went outside and saw that the smoke was almost over us. The smell of burnt wood was impossible to go unnoticed:

I couldn’t really see much, so i took my car and went to higher grounds, i made it a few kilometers above ‘El Salobre’, the neighbourhood over ‘El Tablero’. Here is what i saw:

Really sad

which was aparently controlled, was stoked up due to the high temperatures and the extreme wind that hit us last night. The municipality of Mogan got the worst part, since there have been people evacuated from their homes to avoid human casualties. Almost 60 to 70 homes have been already affected by the fire and around 2000 people evacuated. The towns of Ayacata, La Plata, Veneguera, Barranquillo de San Andrés and Cercados de Araña are within the heavily affected area.

The area burnt until yesterday was about 3500 hectares, wich should be unfortunately way over 4000 hectares. Lets hope all the firemen and all volunteers manage to extinguish it as soon as possible.

Some of the evacuated people shelter at the beach in ‘Mogan Playa’ were the ashes carried by the wind fall to their feet.
In Maspalomas we had 42º degrees at midnight with extreme strong wind gusts and now we are at 47º.

46º degrees as you see on the picture showed the thermometers this midday in Maspalomas. The streets were almost desert and those who had the courgage or the obligation to walk the streets looked like they were being tortured.
This, so called, ‘CALIMA’ is warm sticky air from the sahara is not unusual here but seldom reaches as high as today.

The extreme heat favour the formation of forest fires which have been the order of these last few days. There was one in Mogan a few days ago and a bigger one in the center of the isle, talking over to the municipalities of San Bartolomé De Tirajana and Tejeda. In Spite of the 3500 hectare that it has already burnt down the president of the Gran Canaria Council if confident that it should be controlled by todays evening.

Wow, that is some sad news.
The bad thing is, that the fire was set by forest ranger who was about to get fired next month.

to provide sunshine wherever it’s needed and we on Gran Canaria fortunately have plenty of it. The Red Cross organizes from this monday till mid september and initiative to help handicaped people enjoy the beach as much as we do. The “leisure at the beach program” gives people with mobility problems the oportunity to take walk at the shore or a dip of the ‘Las Canteras‘ beach in Las Palmas.

For those living in Las Palmas the program includes a “pick-up service” in the morning for those who need it and then from 11:30 till 16:30, several volunteers will help take care of them. Other activities are planed too, swapping the seashore with visits to different places of Gran Canaria.

Now that is one good news i think. Great guys!!

here on the isle, and everywhere else. The simpsons make it to hollywood in “The Simpsons Movie”. The official release date is this friday (27/07/07) but some theatres will screen it tomorrow. This weekend was the pre-release in the small town of Springfield, in the US state of Vermont, who won the airing of this movie in their town after a voting contest with 13 other Springfields’.

Yesterday was the premiere in L.A.(California) with about 300 invited guests. The Simpsons as a show for its own celebrate this year their 18 years of airing, with 400 episodes yet aired in 18 seasons, but “the Simpsons-franchise” celebrate their 20th birthday since it first started to see the light in April 1987 in “The Tracey Ullman Show”.

Whatever your age, sex, political orientation or religion is, i think this movie will be great!!

I’m back again yeeaayy!! hahaha
I have been very busy the last months and I just wanted to start over again with some good news.

Therefore, here I go. The ‘port of Mogan‘ and the ‘Amadores beach‘, both in the municipality of Mogan, have been awarded once again with the so called "blue flag", which is given by the ‘Federation for Environmental Education’ for excelcent quality, cleanliness, accessibility and security of their waters and beaches.

The other "blueflagged" beaches on Gran Canaria are: the ‘Las Canteras‘ beach in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the ‘Melenara‘ beach in Telde and the beaches of ‘San Agustín‘, ‘Playa del Inglés‘ and ‘Maspalomas‘ in San Bartolomé de Tirajana.
The other "blueflagged" ports are: the port of ‘Pasito Blanco‘ in the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana and the only "blueflagged" non coastal area is the nature park of the ‘Dunes of Maspalomas‘, also in San Bartolomé

That’s nice, huh?? 27 beaches and 3 ports are "blueflagged" this year on the entire archipielago.

Don’t think it’s intentionally but a students life is busy while the exams last.
Please be patient, i finish this Tuesday and hopefully be posting again from then onwards

Thank you, Rayco.

Don’t get alarmed tonight,

if the entire island seems to be submerged in chaos with bonfires everywhere. We are neither under attack nor have been hit by a meteor shower.
If you don’t have nothing to do tonight, i higly recomend you wherever you are on the isle, but specially those near to the Playa del Inlges (San Bartolomé) and the Canteras (Las Palmas) beaches to visit these beaches around 12:00 PM.

Like every year in june, normally coinciding with days around the summer solstice, the night of the 23rd to 24th, we celebrate
“San Juan”. In this peculiar festivity there is a large fireworks spectacle and people make huge bonfires almost everywhere but the bigest are seen at the beaches. This was originally made to “strengthen the sun”, since the days will get shorter every day until the winter solstice.

You should witness this festivity, it is very spectacular.

at 12:00 PM i got a tip from a “source” i have telling me a light plane was at the beach of Playa del Águila at the south of the isle. I drove over there and to my surprise i saw a floatplane being pulled out of the water by the firemen. Specifically it was Lake Seawolf Renegade.

The pilot was forced to land on the water after using up all hise fuel. Aparently hedid nothing wrong beside that, since he had all his documents in order, but then police found out that he had thrown out the plane several bales of cocain. The 40 year old uruguayan pilot, who said he came from the Sahara, was initially set free last night, but was aprehended this morning with a few carafes of kerosene, in order to refill the planes’ tanks and flee

Police has retrieved several bales one of them of 25kg of weight, of estimated 200kg, and the search continued through all the day supported by and red cross speedboat and a helicopter.

Wow, what you think about that?? Lotta mafia-like stuff going on lately…. Here are some exclusive pictures y managed to take:

3 months since the 7 year old Yeremi Vargas disappeared in the municipality of Santa Lucia but he still hasn’t been forgotten. Now, the security councillor of Santa Lucia has started an initiative to try to find him once again, but this time he intents to search in every well known in this municipality.

He thinks that, as the other searched places haven’t given any positive results, maybe he could have fallen into a well and hasn’t been found for that reason.

I don’t mean to sound cruel, but i think if this kid hasn’t been found yet and no one has demanded a ransom, he’d be possibly either dead or very far away. Let’s hope it’s the second option.

June 8th, a firemen corporal from the Las Palmas firefighter consortium, a sergeant exam to pass and two hooded people. Might not tell you a lot, but that were the “ingredients” of a mafia-like incident on Friday.

The mentioned corporal was on its way to do his theory exam to promote for a post as a sergeant when he was attacked and beat up by two hooded people. While he was beat up one of them said something like: “that’ll teach you not want to do promotion exams“.

There were 25 firemen that aspirated for the 3 availiable sergeant posts, which became only 5 after the first aptitude test. The corporal was among those 5, something that made him suspect the two hooded to be some of his colleagues and report this incident to the police.

Kinda shocked about that. Never thought we would live between such despicable people.

has come to an agreement with the airline ‘Jet2‘ wich will offer, starting in October this year, low cost flights from the UK to Gran Canaria. Leeds, Manchester, NewCastle and Belfast are the cities chosen for this particular project which will offer one daily low cost flight from each city to Gran Canaria, increasing the actual air traffic between Gran Canaria and the UK in almost 10%.

In adition to this the Tourist Board has also made another agreement with ‘Nowegian Air‘ which will offer low cost flights from Oslo to Gran Canaria. This new service is supposed to start in winter this year.

How you like that ?!?! Kinda cool i think. That’ll give our tourism-based economy a little push.

June 8th the CAAM, the spanish acronym for Atlantic Center for Modern Art, offers an ‘open night’ due to the ‘Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely’ exhibition titled L’Art et L’Amour. The center will not close its doors at 9 p.m. as usually and will remain open till 12 p.m. for this ‘open night’.

The exhibition will also include the performance of the ‘Rayko León Trío’ jazz group, but you will also be able to visit the rest of exhibition rooms of this museum.

I won’t be able to go but if anybody is, don’t hesitate to comment on this. I think It’ll be interesting to read more about it.

May 30th is the ‘dia de canarias‘, that is literally, the canaries day. The ‘dia de canarias’ celebrates the aniversary of the first session of the canarian parliament held in 1983, 10 months after we were publicly declared an autonomous region.

A lot of municipalities decorate the streets and organize special events. I would like to focus on th municipality of Mogan, where there’ll be a lot of interesting things done. Today will be the official start of the ‘San Antonio’ festivities in Mogan. At the 30th there will be a craftwork and gastronomy fair held in the ‘Plaza de las Marañuelas’ in Arguineguin at 18:00 which is something i highly recomend you.

Have a nice ‘canaries day’

for thos of you who are interested, and if you voted yesterday for regional elections you probably are, the results are commonly known but i will summ them up a bit. Though i don’t like to talk about politics, this change for Las Palmas is worth to mention.
Big knock out for the Partido Popular in our capital since the PSOE won with absolute majority, ending a 3 terms in a row of “popularity”.

Jeronimo Saavedra (PSOE) is new Las Palmas major, Jose Manuel Soria (Partido Popular) is president of the council again but socialist candidate Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar (PSOE) has 10 days to state a vote of no confidence and make a pact with other parties to gain the presidency. The parliament results are: 26 M.P.’s for PSOE, 17 M.P.’s for CC-PNC, 15 for the PP and 2 for CC-AHI.

Telde got took over almost entirely by Nueva Canarias and San Bartolomé (the south of the island) is mainly in control of Agrupacion de Vecinos lead by Marco Aurelio Perez.

For more detailed results look it up here: Municipalities – Council – Parliament

There you go again,

big screen time with the (aparently) last part of this amazing adventure ‘saga’. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is the title of Disney’s last top production. Its’ official realease date was supposed to be on may 25th but Disney decided finally to release it a day earlier. Therefore, tomorrow is the big date.

Casting returnees are Johnny Depp (Captain Jack Sparrow), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann) and Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa) with Chow Yun Fat making his first appearance as singapore pirate Sao Feng.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards makes a star appearance as Jack Sparrows father.

Oh, this makes now clear why he fell from a coconut palm a couple of months ago… …he was practicing his pirate role

One of these days i’ll finish uploading all the info on the main page on appartments and homes to rent, hotels, cottages, etc… here on Gran Canaria. When i have everything uploaded i’ll post again with all the main links, but i think you’ll find it very interesting to have a look at its’ content.

Stay tuned for the upcoming info.

you might’ve noticed a thick grey cloud layer above us. That what we have to deal with due to being a miniature continent. After a sunny hot week it’s now all cloudy as if it was deep winter.

The national institute of meteorology has predicted more clouds and possibly rain for tomorrow with temperatures between 17º and 24º degrees.

Leave your speedos and bikinis at home, it’s time not to sunbath

but apart from the 324 that arrived during the weekend, yesterday 6 ‘cayucos’ (dugboats) arrived to our islands with the astonishing number of 464 illegal immigrants. 4 boats arrived to the ‘Los Cristianos’ port (Tenerife), 1 to the ‘Las Carpinteras’ beach in San Bartolomé de Tirajana (Gran Canaria) and another one to Arrecife (Lanzarote).

I’ve said it once but this is really a tremendous job these days and i give a big ‘thumbs up!!’ for the Sea Rescue Team and the Guardial Civil Sea Patrol as well as to all the Red Cross and other volunteers that help out with these people, specially making it possible to rescue all the immigrants in time, no lifes lost this time.

Great job guys!!

have been extremely hot and sunny. The ‘Calima’ striked us once again this week bringing, apart from the sticky hot air, its usual lack of any other weather phenomenon. Unfortunately this brings, not only beach mood, but also an inmense ‘wave’ of illegal immigrants who take advantage of this weather condition to make try their way to us.

Yesterday, the astonishing number of 241 subsaharian immigrants arrived at Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Tenerife, intercepted by Sea Rescue and the ‘Guardia Civil’. Today, a new ‘cayuco’, the type boat they travel in, was intercepted on its way to Tenerife with 101 immigrants on board, raising the whole number of subsaharian immigrants to 342 in less then 48 hours.

Really sad . How bad has their life to be over there to risk their lifes and savings over and over again, knowing their possibility of getting caught is almost 95%.

Las Palmas mayor Pepa Luzardo and its citizen mobility & security councillor Paulino Montesdeoca presented the capitals’ local police new acquisition. It’s a new “high-tech” surveillance car which will allow to detect and process traffic infractions more easily. This acquisition is part of a security improvement plan i posted earlier about. (read more here)

This new police car, which looks suspiciously like a New York cab, not really to oversee, is equipped with a GPS reciever, a high resolution camera, a license plate acquisition system, an optical character recognition module, a touchscreen and an entire PC in its trunk, being able to detect cars through their license plate. It’ll be able to elaborate parking tickets and other infractions almost on its own.

How you like that?
Some will be pissed, others will think it’s great, but it will surely avoid traffic jams in areas with dense traffic scaring drivers of making double parking.