Canary Island property blog » Canary island news

New routes to the Canaries from Jet2

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:37:55 +0000

Low cost airline Jet 2.com began flights to the Canary Islands from East Midlands airport on May 20th, last month. Jet 2.com’s new services will operate out of the East Midlands airport, with the first flight being to Lanzarote adding to the airlines sevices from Manchester, Leeds And Newcastle. Flights to Tenerife begin on Friday 21st May, strengthening their commitment to the island by adding to the routes already in operation from Manchester, Leeds, Belfast, Newcastle and Blackpool.

€15 Billion Austerity Plan Approved for Spain

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:53:37 +0000

The Spanish parliament has backed a 15bn-euro ($18.4bn; £13bn) austerity package by one vote as the country strives to cut its budget deficit.
The vote saw 169 in favour of the Socialist government’s austerity plan and 168 against, with 13 abstentions.
Spain announced the austerity package earlier this month. It includes wage cuts of 5% or more for civil servants and slashes public investment plans.
Spain hopes to rein in its deficit and ease fears of a Greek-style crisis.
A parliamentary defeat would have been a blow to the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Spain’s programme is intended to reduce a deficit of 11% of GDP to 6% by 2011.
“The result is calming for the markets because a vote against would have been very worrying,” said a strategist at Citigroup.
Many Spaniards fear the effect the cuts will have on the economy, where the unemployment rate exceeds 20% – twice the eurozone average.
The country moved out of recession in the first quarter of this year, with growth of 0.1%.
The European Union has been anxious to see more fragile European economies, including Spain, Portugal and Greece, impose tougher austerity measures.
Before the vote, finance minister Elena Salgado had asked politicians to vote in favour, saying the measures were “painful but inevitable”.

Bad weather in UK spells good news for Canaries

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:29:56 +0000

UK weather reports predicting a fantastic English summer started the era of the ‘Staycation’.
It was predicted that many Brits would be staying in the UK for their vacations this summer and enjoying the great weather. As usual the British weather decided not to co-operate and summer was a bit of a wash out.
Families that tried holidaying at home now want to have a real holiday with some sun involved. Due to this October bookings for overseas destinations have risen by 41 per cent.
Amongst the top five destinations for holidays from the UK were Tenerife and Lanzarote.
The Canaries have the best climate in Europe and probably the world. Tourists visiting these shores know that there money is well spent and the weather is pretty much guaranteed.

Canary Island health care drawing overseas patients

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:27:52 +0000

According to a recently printed article the Canary Islands are attracting thousands of visitors from across Europe for their health care service.
Over the period of May to October in health centres across the Canaries over one million non residents are treated. The majority of this group are retired British and German nationals. The health care comes at a cost of 20 million euros.
British residents are drawn by the lack of queues and that smokers can still obtain treatments without having to first go on a give up smoking programme.
Visitors from Belgium and Holland come for dialysis treatment as their national health service does not cover this treatment.
Free health care is not only exclusive to EU citizens either; many users are from family members of Latin American immigrants living in Spain; once they obtain resident status they return to their own country to undergo an operation which they can then claim through the Spanish national health system.
During summer in Tenerife, in the municipalities of Adeje and Arona around 60% of their patients are foreigners who, after an initial consultation, go on to have surgery before returning home.
The most popular operations are hip or knee replacements, heart surgery or treatment for tumours.

Bad property loans drop

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:59:21 +0000

The Bank of Spain finally has some good new for the Spanish property market. For the first time since December 2006 the amount of bad loans on the market has finally dropped.
Confidence is still slow to return as market analysts have noted that interbank activity has remained subdued.
“A lot of aspects of the market are back to normal. But one thing is to look at levels and another is to look at the activity around the number and we see activity is still fairly subdued,” said Gianluca Salford, a strategist at JP Morgan in London.
“Banks are still in a deleveraging process and it’s not clear lending by the banks is the best use of their money at this point in time,” he said.

UK property prices on the up

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:57:59 +0000

A little optimism is returning to the UK property market. This will have a positive knock on effect for the property market in the Canary Islands.
Recent figures have shown that property prices in the UK are at a five year high. The figures were published by the ‘Land Registry office’ who are seen as a very reliable source of information in this field.
The report goes on to say that the increases in prices are especially market in London based property. House prices increased by 1.7% in July, this being the largest single increase since July 2004.
The land registry office were not alone in quoting this good news. In agreement with them are Savills who reported sales in the London area rising by 52% on the same period a year ago. Marking a three year high for them. The largest players being cash rich investors snapping up bargains.

Internet alternative in Canaries

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:41:06 +0000

At long last there is a viable internet connection alternative to Telefonica. Vodafone have launched their own internet service in the Canary Islands. Vodafone can now offer internet connectivity all across Spain. No longer does Movistar have the Spanish monopoly on this market.
Vodafone Spain have installed a total of six telephone exchanges across the islands. New customers to this service will receive free installation, a wifi router and a USB modem for mobile internet connection.
The new Vodafone service will start at 29.90 euros per month for speeds of up to 6 mega bits per second.

New species discovered in Lanzarote.

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:05:44 +0000

Jameos del Agua in Lanzarote has the worlds longest lava tubes. It is here that Thomas Llife from a Texas University has discovered several new species. Among the species discovered, two new species of worms and one crustacean were found.
One of the new species of crustacean, which belongs in the ‘Remipedia’ class, is one of the most primitive species known to man. Another has poisonous fangs strong enough to kill a shrimp. This species is at least 200 million years of age and was around when dinosaurs where alive.

Row from Canary Islands to Antigua.

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:59:59 +0000

East Londoner Peter van Kets is set to row single handed across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to Antigua. He will undertake the 5,500 km journey in a rowing boat specially designed by himself. The 7.1m by 1.8 m boat is made from carbon fibre. Peter’s target time for the row is 50 days but he has enough supplies to last him 120 days. In 2007 he completed a two man row across the Atlantic and lost 14 kg. He is preparing this time by fattening himself up beforehand. Van Kets used to be a teacher but is now a full time adventurer. In 2012 he is preparing to row around the world.

Truce coming to sun lounger wars

admin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:41:30 +0000

A well known travel company may have found the solution to the bane of many a pool side lovers life.
The stress of leaving breakfast and seeking out a pool side sun lounger only to encounter a sea of towel reserved sunbeds could be a thing of the past. Leaving the city rat race only to find yourself in another kind of sunbed rat race could be over.
Thomas Cook have started a test scheme which they are launching in the Canary Islands, Turkey and Egypt. Families, for 49 euros per week, can reserver one sun lounger for each person plus an umbrella and their own dining table.
One of the firm’s managers, Peter Fankhauser, said that “with this we’re relieving our clients of early morning stress”.
He was quoted as saying he too found it “really tiresome” on vacation to be sent out early in the morning to place beach towels on poolside loungers, Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.