World Of Tourism

The plan hatched last year to merge CAM (Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo), an Alicante-based savings bank, with three other savings banks (Cajastur, Caja Cantabria and Cajas Extremadura) came unstuck yesterday when the last three decided against a merger with CAM. CAM is now seeking a rescue package from the Bank Restructuring Fund (FROB - Fondo de Reestructuración Ordenada Bancaria), in other

The project to construct a covered swimming pool in Mazarrón, plus the maintenance and operation of the facility for a period of 40 years, is now open to tender. The project was published on 20AUG (search under the 'Bookmarks' section) in page 46247 of the Official Journal of the Murcia Region (BORM) under paragraph 13557 and the announcement is included in the Mazarrón municipality website here.

In an article published here a few days ago, I mentioned that one item discussed during the 'extraordinary' Council meeting was the tentative plan to build a covered municipal swimming pool for Mazarrón.Now some more details of what is planned are becoming available. Once the plans are published in the Official Gazette of the Murcia Region (BORM), which the linked article implies will be 'soon',

Mazarron Council was in extraordinary session on 6th August to agree budget reductions for next year in view of the economic downturn. Highlights of decisions taken include:- the ordinances governing property taxes and the increase in land value have been amended such that the rate of IBI tax will for next year be reduced from 0.67 to 0.55 per cent, a reduction of slightly less than 15 per cent.-

Mazarrón is named as one of the municipalities, in the category of those with populations in excess of 20,000 (and less than 50,000) which is delinquent in reporting its budgetary estimates to central government. Other named municipalities in this population band to have failed to submit their budget estimates by 31 October 2008 are Almuñécar (Granada), Ames (A Coruña) and Caravaca de la Cruz (

The turmoil in the world's financial markets is now (as we heard over the past weekend) beginning to affect Europe severely too, resulting in the Euro falling against the dollar and, incidentally, against the pound - my latest information shows a pound to be worth roughly 1.29 euros, as against 1.23 about a week ago. I won't be cheering too loudly though - who knows what any of these bits of