06.29.09
Posted in Canary island news at 8:10 am by admin
A fin whale which was found entangled in fishermans nets off the coast of Lanzarote has been freed by a team of divers from the Emerlan emergency consortium on the island.
The juvenile whale, weighing around twenty tons and measuring some ten metres long, was initially spotted by staff from SECAC Cetaceans Society. Vidal Martín, president of SECAC, stated that the whale was scarcely able to move and is believed to have been entangled, unable to eat, for a number of days. Closer inspection revealed the nets had become embedded in the whale’s flesh and were cutting through its tail fin.
It’s the second such incident off the Canary Islands in recent weeks. Another fin whale which had also become entangled in nets was recently found dead off of the coast of Gran Canaria.
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Posted in Canary island news at 8:09 am by admin
Climate change has had an enormous impact on the Canary Islands, whose rugged volcanic landscape and unique native flora have inspired one of this year’s most dramatic show gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show, the Canary Island’s Spa Garden. The lush, exotic beauty of the Islands’ has made them a magnet for beach-loving sun-seekers as we all know, but this exhibit aims to offer an alternative view.
“There is so much more to the Canary Islands than sun, sea and sand,” says David Cubero, a professional florist, award-winning garden designer and Canary Island native, who collaborated on the design with James Wong, an ethnobotanist who will be familiar to many from the BBC2 series Grow Your Own Drugs.
“We wanted to show a side of the islands that many visitors never see – a unique, remote archipelago of breathtaking landscapes and utterly unique plant life.” This strikingly modern garden, the pair’s first design for Chelsea, is set 1,000m above sea level within the collapsed crater of an extinct volcano.
At its centre is a bathing pavilion, surrounded by a steaming spa (a stunning effect that has been achieved with mist-scaping, which is used on film sets), with gushing fountains, and both covered and open-air bathing areas. The water is from a natural spring – reducing the design’s reliance on costly desalinated seawater – which generates enough heat to power the pumps and lighting. It will even benefit the island’s wildlife by providing food, water and shelter. As well as blurring the distinction between inside and outside space, the garden juxtaposes nature and artifice by framing its exuberant, naturalistic planting – designed to mimic the native vegetation that lies between the island’s endemic highland cloud forest and its rugged arid lowland – with the disciplined lines and angles of hard landscaping.
“David and I have been keen to challenge many of the conventional beliefs of how gardens ’should’ look,” says James. “Like many parts of the world, the Canary Islands have tended to look abroad for their horticultural inspiration, with gardeners struggling against climate to create idealised pastoral landscapes. In this design we aim to discard these imported concepts and create a truly Canarian garden that embraces local climate, planting, landscape and materials.”
Working with the environment, natural springs, monochrome blocks of lava and soaring palms have replaced traditional manicured lawns and flower borders. Showpieces include the statuesque 1.9m Dragon’s Blood Tree (Dracaena draco) dracaena aborea, which is familiar as a houseplant in this country but was once sacred to the island’s Guanche people and is becoming increasingly rare in the wild, the lush fronds of Woodwardia ferns (Woodwardia radicans is close to a native Canarian tree fern) and Euphorbia mellifera, which is popular in British gardens but close is to extinction in its natural home.
All of the plants have been sourced in Britain or Europe instead of being flown from their homeland “We decided that all our plants would come from within 300 miles of the showground,” says James. “This was for environmental reasons but also because many of them, such as echiums, are simply not cultivated in the Canary Islands, where they are considered to be little better then weeds. Luckily we managed to find nearly everything we wanted in Cornish and Dutch nurseries.” Even the “lava” rock is actually clinker, a by-product from British coal-fired power stations that the designers have recycled.
When the garden is eventually dismantled all the planting will be donated to charitable projects – most notably the Chelsea Physic Garden. “Their exotics were decimated by the harsh winter weather,” James explains. “We have plants of a size that they would never normally be able to afford, so we are thrilled that we can contribute them to this world-famous educational botanic garden.”
So now there will always be a little bit of Canarian sunshine in Chelsea.
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Posted in Canary Island property at 8:07 am by admin
On the second day of the State of the Nation debate in Congress, the Prime Minister has presented a new measure to boost a sector which is key to the Spanish economy – tourism. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced that airlines which bring in more tourists to the country will be freed from airport tax.
The government will pay the tax on behalf of all passengers for airlines which carry more passengers in the second half of 2009 than their amount for the last six months of 2008. There will be increased travel assistance for residents of the Canary Islands in the form of a 30% subsidy on tickets for flights between the islands and the mainland. They currently get 15%.
In reply to a spokesman of the ‘Grupo Miixto’ during the second session of the debate of the state of the nation, Zapatero indicated that this modification in airport rates will have national reach and will be set in motion ‘immediately’. Zapatero was sure that this would be “a much more efficient and useful incentive” to increase tourism and passengers.
The CEOE employers’ organisation has meanwhile said that most of the measures announced by the Prime Minister are going in the right direction. The organisation said in a release that the tax reduction was a positive move.
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Posted in Canary Island property at 8:02 am by admin
As prices in the Spanish and Canarian property markets hit rock bottom, interest rates fall and stock markets remain volatile, a growing number of industry specialists believe that the first signs of recovery in the market are being seen. Leading the charge are high net-worth (HNW) individuals, according to the latest Wealth Report from Knight Frank, with 55% recognising present fundamentals and planning to increase their exposure to residential property over the next two years. “In turbulent times the wealthy want their investments to be both tangible and transparent,” said Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank. HNWs are not the only ones looking for a relative safe-haven for their money at present. In spite of difficult economic conditions and significant falls in the value of Sterling, online searches for international property have increased by up to 72% month-on-month. Some analysts believe that the resurgent mortgage market in the UK is also behind the sudden rise in confidence. “Further evidence that the pick-up in buyer interest in the UK housing market is feeding through into actual activity is seen in the latest mortgage approvals data from the Bank of England,” said Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist at RICS. “The number of mortgages sanctioned last month climbed to the best level since May 2008.” Behind these fundamentals, a growing number in the industry are recording a rising level of sales. Across Spain and the Canaries there seems to be a realistic, but optimistic sense that the beginning of the end could be approaching as more buyers discover the value. “I believe that there will be enough volume of sales this year that people will start to wake up and think that they better get in now before prices rise any further after the bottom of the market has been reached,” said one agent. “This means that the beginning of a recovery can commence, with total recovery happening within three to four years.”
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Posted in Canary Island property at 7:25 am by admin
Thousands of UK holiday-home owners face losing a range of tax benefits under changes announced in the Budget.
From April next year, holiday property landlords will no longer be able to write off “trading” losses from second homes against their tax bill. Capital allowances and capital gains benefits will also go.
Tax experts say the move is likely to anger tens of thousands of people – many of whom based retirement plans on the current tax rules for second homes.
In a small silver lining, those owning homes within the EU, but outside the UK, will get the tax benefits currently enjoyed by owners of UK holiday homes until April 2010. However, these will then also be scrapped.
“You are going to see a very vocal, articulate section of society screaming blue murder about this,” said tax expert Anne Redston, Visiting Professor at King’s College, London.
“People have bought holiday properties and worked out their projections based on the tax rules as they exist at the moment.”
The Government withdrew the concession after the European Union ruled that it breached EU law by discriminating against non UK owners of second homes in other European countries.
Although the most published elements of the recent Budget concentrated on tax increases, much less published is the new opportunity for owners of holiday lets in Spain and the Canary Islands, who have been given the chance to apply retrospectively for tax repayments going back up to a full five tax years. Property owners who think they may be eligible should act quickly, as the tax breaks will cease in April 2010.
Currently a home qualifies as a holiday property if it is furnished, being run as a commercial business and available for rent to the public for at least 140 days per year. It must also be let for at least 70 days a year to attract the tax benefits.
HM Revenue and Customs said it was extending the tax benefit to those owning holiday homes inside the EU but outside the UK until next April because it feared it was unlawful to have the current discrepancy.
More than two million Britons currently own a property abroad, and a number may recently have become eligible for one of these tax breaks. Many owners who previously kept their homes for private use have been renting them out to holiday makers over the last couple of years, to generate an extra source of income during the economic downturn.
This is a one-off opportunity in the 2009/10 tax year to secure a unique tax rebate. In 2010/11 the set-off or carry back allowances which create the rebate will no longer apply. To be eligible for the allowance, properties must have been let for ten weeks a year and available to let for 140 days.
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