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

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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.

for what seems to be the, the worst shooting massacre at schools or universities ever happened in the countrys’ history, concerning this kind of incidents, this time at the ‘Virginia Tech University‘. On monday the 23 year old korean student took the life of 32 people, comitting suicide after the massacre.

The student was studying the last year of his english major and those who barely knew him said he was a very lonely person with apparently no friends. He apparently also wrote two plays with great violence and, according to them, “extremely disturbing“. According to recent investigations the student used a ‘9mm Glock 19 pistol‘, which he had buyed nearly a month ago for 571$ US Dollars, to perpetrate the shooting.

This still gives me the creeps… What is going through this peoples minds while doing this… I deffinitely don’t get it. This deffinitely puts the debate on the table about gunlaws in the US.
Our deepest condolences to all the families affected and to those who had to witness it.

Gran Canaria is also in the formula 1 fever. This morning at 3:00am took place the first GrandPrix of the 2007 season. Albert Park, in Melbourne – Australia, was the its’ location. Kimi Räikkönen started on first place followed by Fernando Alonso and Nick Heidfeld on third position.

McLaren Mercedes and F1 debutant Lewis Hamilton managed to get on the podium on his first race in F1 on the lower step together with Räikkönen and Alonso which held their positions almost through the entire race.

The race itself wasn’t very exiting due to Albert Park’s difficulty to pass other vehicles but the tension is still to come. Next stop, the “Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix” in Kuala Lumpur. Let’s hope to see a good race.

It has barely anynthing to do with Gran Canaria, but some of you might have kids, so listen. Last week a 9 year old kid, from Seattle (Washington) stole a car parked in front of his home, which was left open and with its engine running. He was detected by police on the highway doing 150km/h. He got caught by the police after he crashed into a tree and luckily didn’t get hurt. The police said they were not putting a 9 year old kid with prison inmates, so they set him free.

The day after Semaj Booker dissappeared again. He made it to the airport, managed to avoid their security and got on a plane, saying that his mother was waiting for him in that plane, making it to Phoenix. There, using the same “strategy”, he managed to get on another plane to Dallas where he finally was caught.

Apparently the kid “hated to live in Seattle”, with no paternal figure his mother said, and just wanted to leave his home to live with his “grandpa”.

and truly has nothing to do with our island but i thought it might be curious to write about it.

As the title says, a new action figure is on the market. This risky campagin is promoted by "hero builders", a small business from Conecticut, that has been making action figures from famous politicians and celebrities for 4 years now.

Their new figure, Saddam Hussein with a gallow-rope around his neck and a white T-shirt, accompained with a slogan that says "Dope on a rope".

This is kinda strange, on one hand it’s macabre but on the other hand it’s somehow funny. Who has the crazy idea of doing this??…And what is worse, who thinks this is viable and is willing to promote it?? Crazy people…

No, i’m not crazy. As a, not only canarian but, entirely spanish tradition we celebrate the countdown to the new year in a very particular way. The last 12 gongs, from normally a tower-clock, of the year when it gets 0:00 are ment to be accompained with a sigle grape with every gong. It normally broadcasted live on TV from the “Puerta del Sol” in Madrid, but since we have it one hour later, it’s normally done from a local church with tower-clock. It has its origin 1909 from wine growers who celebrated a good years harvest and is now one of the most deeply rooted habits.

You’d be probably tired of hearing this today and i don’t want to be the one to miss this chance to get on your nerves too.

A big hug for everybody, and have a !!! HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!.

On the one hand:
The terrorist act of vasque terrorist group ETA that striked the Barajas airport in Madrid this morning. At 9:00am an artifact, of supposed 200Kg of explosives, detonated at the bottom floor of the T4 terminals parking lot, causing heavy structural damage to nearly every floor above it. A few calls warned from this act several minutes before, making the police evacuate everybody as quick as possible. 2 People still missing.

On the other hand:
You’ve probably herad of it and i confirm it again. Last night, former political leader of Irak, Saddam Hussein was executed. The rapidity of this act surprised everyone as the court gave a 30-day term for its execution. Saddam asked not to cover his head during the procedure.

No coment on the first one, yet.
On the last one: Well, done!! One tyrant less on earth.

And may the fat bearded man, leave a lot of presents for you under the tree.

This new measures are the result of the succsessful dismantelation in London, in August this year, of planned terrorist mid-flight attacks on planes departing from british airports. The suicide attackers planned to use a peroxide-based solution (liquid) that could ignite when sparked by a camera flash or another electronic device.

Due to this, there are no liquids in your hand baggage allowed which contain more than 100ml. All liquids you are allowed to carry in your hand baggage must be put in a transparent plastic bag and will be limited to a maximum of one liter.
Things such as baby food, medicines or special food for diabetic people will be allowed.

Airport authorities will be allowed to scan portable pc’s and other electronic devices aswell as coats and other pieces of cloth with a molecular scanner to detect explosives.

There were also things mentioned by the press such as that the plane’s cabines will be armored or that pilots will be allowed to be armed on board, but this is not confirmed.

Let’s see if this measures are helpful.