Tenerife Magazine’s round up of some of the most interesting news stories of the week in Tenerife.
Craig David in Tenerife
Last week it was Michael Bolton, this week it’s a singer who is a bit more contemporary; Bo Selecta himself Craig David who seems to make of habit of turning up for festivals on Tenerife every now and again. The R&B singer who had massive hits with Walking Away and 7 Days headlines the I Love Music Festival at Tropicana Gardens on Saturday 23rd April. The festival lasts from 3pm till midnight and tickets are available at various outlets and online. See here for more details…if your Spanish is good enough. As well as Craig David performing on Tenerife, Queen guitarist Brian May announced he would be joining Tangerine Dream during their Sonic Universe concert at the Starmus Festival in the Magma Arts & Congress Centre in Adeje on 24th June. Looks like lots of good music to look out for on Tenerife over the next few months.
Fewer Foreigners Living in The Canary Islands
For the third consecutive year the trend towards foreigners leaving the Canary Islands rather than setting up home here continues. Spain’s National Statistics Institute has recorded that there are 70,000 fewer foreigners living in the Canary Islands than there were two years ago. The economic crisis and lack of jobs are partly to blame. However, the drop in foreign residents is attributed mainly to the departure of South American immigrants. EU residents, especially Romanian, British and German, bucked the trend by actually increasing.
But, and this is a massive but, the statistics refer to foreigners who actually registered with their local councils. As there are potentially thousands of foreign residents on Tenerife and the other islands who live outside the system and therefore are never included in any statistical data, it’s impossible to know how accurate a picture their findings paint.
The Saga of the South Hospital
Every few weeks there seems to be an announcement about the progress, or lack of, regarding the construction of the long awaited and quasi mythical hospital in the south of Tenerife. The latest news is that building works have been given the green light again and the hospital should be ready to open in the summer of 2012…only a year behind schedule. The work will be in two phases so only part of the hospital will be completed then. The rest won’t be finished until the summer of 2013 ““ that would be two years behind schedule then (if the building work is completed on schedule). Of course these were only announcements; the next stage of the building process has actually yet to get under way.
The Two Most Unsafe Destinations in the Canary Islands…
…Are La Palma and Playa de las Américas. But maybe not for the reasons you may think. The National Police Force have declared them so because financial cutbacks have left them without the officers and the equipment they feel is necessary to ensure the safety and security of the public in both locations. There is a shortage of cars in Playa de las Américas and there is currently only one van that drops officers off at various points in the resort. After that they have to patrol on foot rather than by car. Wouldn’t that be called pounding the beat and represent the sort of police presence that a lot of people prefer? The crisis isn’t only affecting resorts, Santa Cruz suffers from a shortage of cars, and radio transmissions are so bad that officers sometimes have to use mobile phones to communicate…so they’re not just chatting to their mates after all.
No Smoking in Tenerife ““ What’s the Score?
The first three months of life under the controversial (to many Spanish) no smoking law has passed. Many predicted protests and serious opposition against a law that some claimed was unfeasable to implement. So what has the reality been? It’s been that everyone more or less accepted it with little more than a bar room moan and the threat of protests dissipated like a puff of smoke. The threatened closure of bars during carnaval didn’t take place and instead little tables and chairs started to appear outside many bars giving them quite an attractively quaint look. The doorways to some bars became crowded as puffing patrons kept most of their body inside and whilst the hand holding the cigarette amusingly remained outside. Although statistics are still being compiled first reports are that there have only been 40 denuncias (cases of official action) issued across the whole of the Canary Islands.
And finally the TIT (This Is Tenerife) of the week award goes to…Creators of the I Love Music Festival website.
The I Love Music Festival is a fantastic boost to Tenerife’s image as a destination that offers visitors a diverse range of musical experiences from world class ballet to contemporary dance music. It’s an event that adds a buzz to Easter weekend on Tenerife and one that many visitors would love to attend. So why then, when the festival is right in the heart of Tenerife tourist land, is the website only in Spanish? The navigation bar has English translations but after that non-Spanish speakers are cast adrift. Apart from not seeming to cater for many of the people who might be interested in knowing more about the festival, it’s crazy from a business point of view as non-Spanish speakers might struggle to buy tickets and clearly that can affect sales. Sometimes you’d never know there had been decades of mass tourism on Tenerife as the basics of how to market to visitors still seems to be beyond some businesses.
