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1 day ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
Depending on your perspective and where you come from, you might think Spain has either a lot or very few homeless people. If you’ve come from a small town in Sweden or Switzerland, for example, or even rural Spain, taking a night stroll through central Madrid or Barcelona might shock you in terms of the numbers of personas sin hogar or sin techo (homeless people) on the street.
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2 days ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
A new transatlantic flight route will soon link Spain's third main city with Montreal in Canada. For the first time in 13 years, Valencia’s Manises airport will have a connection to the other side of the Atlantic. The service will be run by Air Transat and judging by schedules online, it will fly on Saturdays. The eastern Spanish city has not had an transatlantic flight since 2012, when its connection with New York was scrapped.
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3 days ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
Through a new series of measures, including the possibility for business owners to request the removal of reviews if they can prove they're fake, the change forms part of broader amendments to the country's Customer Services Law, which is currently in the final stages of parliamentary processing.
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1 week ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
The return of Donald Trump to the White House has had political implications far beyond Washington. A new, more adversarial dynamic now dominates the US-EU relationship, with Trump slapping tariffs on the block but also threatening to withdraw American military presence and funding, or a significant proportion of it, at least, unless European countries bolster their defence spending.
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1 week ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
Spain’s Interior has angered police unions by instructing the country’s security forces not to report or fine people for the consumption or possession of drugs in parked cars, as long as they are not for the purpose of trafficking. This is because a parked car is considered “a private space” and in Spain, drug possession and consumption is decriminalised on private property.
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1 week ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
A bar in Barcelona has caused controversy by tying its coffee prices to how how long customers spend on the terrace. Perfetto bar, in the Catalan capital’s popular Barceloneta neighbourhood, has added small signs on the tables explaining the rising price structure. Firstly, it has the price of a regular café con leche (€1.60), but the new pricing structure explains that if you take more than half an hour to drink it, the price rises to €2.50.
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1 week ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
Spain’s Ministry of Health recently took steps to ban the sale and distribution of synthetic cannabis sweets and gummies in the country, as part of a wider bid to limit the sale of new types of cannabis compounds used to skirt legislation. The order was published in the Official State Gazette on April 22nd and has already come into force.
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1 week ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
For many foreigners, especially non-EU nationals, getting Spanish residency is a long-term goal that not only gives them a way into the country long-term but chance at a new life in Europe. However, getting it doesn’t mean it’s yours forever and the state can, in serious cases, remove it. There’s also a long list of residency ‘breaches’ that can cause you to be fined by the authorities.
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3 weeks ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
Spain’s so-called ‘anti-squatter law’, intended to speed up the legal process and allow for 'express evictions', recently came into force. Until now, evicting squatters (known as okupas in Spanish) has been a notoriously slow process bogged down by bureaucratic procedure. In some cases, it has taken months or even years for homeowners to recover their property. The new law, however, promises to be able to throw out squatters within 15 days of the complaint being filed.
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3 weeks ago | 
thelocal.es | Conor Patrick Faulkner
A new report has revealed that people in Spain now spend almost half their gross income on rent, laying bare the severity of the rental market situation for local people. Last year saw a wave of protests to demand affordable housing across Spain, strongly linked to the rise in short-term tourist rental accommodation in Spain’s major cities and tourist destinations. The trend has continued into this year, with a nationwide demonstration held simultaneously in Spanish 40 cities earlier in April.
