Tag: Spain

• Friday, January 3rd 2014 - 23:05 UTC

  Spain steps in to try to resolve cost dispute over Panama Canal expansion

  

  Spain stepped in on Friday to try to resolve a cost dispute over the expansion of Panama's canal, which has triggered a sell-off in the shares of Sacyr SA, the Spanish builder leading the project. Spain's Public Works minister, Ana Pastor, and Sacyr Chairman Manuel Manrique are due to travel to Panama on the weekend, Panama's president, Ricardo Martinelli, said.

• Friday, January 3rd 2014 - 06:02 UTC

  Catalonia president takes vote on independence case to EU heads of government

  

  Catalonia's president has called on European Union prime ministers for support as the region seeks a vote on independence in November this year, the source of an increasingly bitter fight with Spain's central government.

• Monday, December 16th 2013 - 17:16 UTC

  Spain finally prepared to tackle political corruption: bill to control political parties finances

  

  Spain’s government proposed a law to control more tightly the financial activities of political parties, after corruption scandals in recent years involving both left and right. The law will ban legal and corporate entities from making donations to parties, and banks will no longer be allowed to cancel their debts or negotiate with them interest rates that would be below market levels. Donations are currently allowed up to a limit of 100,000 Euros a year.

• Friday, December 13th 2013 - 13:14 UTC

  Madrid vows to block any independence referendum in Catalonia

  

  The Spanish government has vowed to block plans by parties in Catalonia to hold a referendum on independence on 9 November of next year. “The poll will not be held,” Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon told journalists moments after Catalonia's President, Artur Mas, announced a deal.

• Friday, December 13th 2013 - 12:18 UTC

  Spain not sure about success in legal challenge of Gibraltar waters

  

  Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel García-Margallo has expressed confidence that Madrid would win a legal case over jurisdiction of Gibraltar’s isthmus, though he was less certain about success in any challenge over the waters. He said the isthmus was not ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht and “illegally” occupied, but that Spain had yet to decide whether to “legally reclaim it or not”.

• Saturday, November 30th 2013 - 07:14 UTC

  Gibraltar chief minister mobbed by extremists in Spanish university

  

  Hooded far right extremists disrupted an academic event in the Spanish port of Algeciras at which Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo was due to have delivered a speech on cross-border cooperation Thursday night. They were joined by a group of fishermen from La Linea and Algeciras standing next to a banner that read “Picardo Fascista”.

• Thursday, November 28th 2013 - 11:02 UTC

  Repsol board backs compensation deal offered by Argentina for seized YPF

  

  Spanish oil group Repsol's board Wednesday backed a draft multi-billion-dollar compensation deal over Argentina's 2012 seizure of the company's YPF subsidiary. The deal seeks to repair the financial hit taken by Repsol when Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez in April 2012 ordered the seizure of Repsol's 51-percent stake in YPF.

• Thursday, November 28th 2013 - 10:36 UTC

  Spain assures it will not open UK government bags with official correspondence

  

  Spain has assured London that the incident in which UK government bags containing official correspondence and communications were opened by Spanish officials at the Gibraltar border, “will not see a repeat of these actions”, according to an official release from the Foreign Office on the update to Parliament on the incident.

• Tuesday, November 26th 2013 - 20:34 UTC

  Spain prepared to take UK to the EU Court of Justice over Gibraltar waters

  

  Spain’s Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, Miguel Arias Cañete, said Spain would take the UK to the European Court of Justice if the European Commission failed to take action over reclamation works in Gibraltar waters.

• Friday, November 22nd 2013 - 20:21 UTC

  “Excellent relations with UK” but “tough controls on Gibraltar” announced Rajoy

  

  Spain’s President Mariano Rajoy has declared his intent to sustain both good relations with Britain and tough controls on Gibraltar at the border. The remarks came in an interview with Radio Nacional de España in which he defended Spain’s attitude to Gibraltar.