Spain Travel News 11/19/2010

One sunny Saturday a friend and I hopped on a commuter train for the 50-minute ride to Málaga to visit the recently reopened Atarazanas market and have lunch at La Moraga a “gastrobar” that’s been getting a lot of attention since it opened two years ago.

Spain is moving to exact dosage prescriptions from January 1 2011, in a move which is forecast to save patients 1.3 billion € a year. Not only will patients save, only having to buy medicines for their exact requirements, but also the Spanish Health Service will see lower pharmaceutical costs.

Guess where in Spain this is!

Andalucia has six World Heritage Sites – five cultural and one natural: Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín (Granada); Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias (Seville); the Historic City Centre of Cordoba; the Renaissance Monumental Ensembles of Úbeda and Baeza; and 68 items of cave art in Almeria, Granada and Jean provinces, which is included in Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula; and Doñana National Park.

It’s no wonder why many Basques like to consider themselves a separate country from Spain. There was no gradual ease into the stark differences; one minute I was flying out of the sunny south, the next, flying beneath a blanket of dark clouds and green rolling hills that break off into jagged coastline hugging the Bay of Biscay.

Richard Morley's take on Madrid's complicating bus network.

Proof that mushroom hunting is a hugely popular Catalan custom – the Generalitat de Catalunya has a very informative section on their website dedicated to mushroom season. Here you will find information on edible and toxic mushrooms, what to do in a mushroom poisoning emergency and how to properly gather a mushroom. Even precautions to take to avoid becoming a lost mushroom gatherer who costs the Catalan government 2200 Euros to rescue. 

Valencia has recently been put on the world map after hosting hte 2007 and 2010 America's Cup. This fact, along with the construction of the "City of Arts and Science" [by renowned architect and Valencian Santiago Calatrava have transformed the City. Massive construction  over the last 10 years have turned a once little-considered medium city into a more interesting travel destination.

Antonio Banderas the famous Spanish actor (born in Madrid in 1960) and based in Hollywood since 1992, where he has developed a successful career and married to actress Melanie Griffith since 1996, with whom he had a daughter (Stella del Carmen) is a very multifaceted man, also an actor, director, producer and singer.

And now after completing the shooting of Pedro Almodovar's  latest film "The skin I live in", he has just come to Madrid to surprise us with a new facet, that of photographer, he has just opened an exhibition here, entitled "Secrets on black", which will be at the Cervantes Institute until 21st November.

Managing to turn rubbish into art is a valuable skill for a city like Madrid, which is trying to enhance its cultural credentials by opening more galleries, turning old industrial space into art centers and holding festivals in the midst of an unprecedented financial crisis.

That may explain why, in a break with the past, the Spanish capital selected an unconventional artistic group, Basurama, as the official curator for its “La Noche en Blanco” or white-night festival, which was held in September and attracted massive crowds through to the early hours of the morning.