Tenerife Magazine’s round up of some of the most interesting news stories of the week in Tenerife.
Back to the Future
It was announced that the Tenerife government are considering a revolutionary piece of German engineering as the model for the north and south train. The Transrapid would be able to travel at a top speed of 385 kph on a magnetic monorail. It’s so advanced that it doesn’t need a driver and doesn’t have any wheels or even an engine, plus there would be no need for any landscape-ruining power lines. This train of the future would only cost 3.000 million euros ““ a bargain. The German government have apparently even offered to provide some funding for the project.
The Transrapid does have a lot of plus points; it’s environmentally sound and should cause less of an upheaval to the landscape. It would also be one of the most modern trains in the world; something that the government claim would be a big tourist draw.
It’s good to see Tenerife waking up to the new technology that exists in the outside world. Maybe after the train, they might start looking at this new fangled way of communicating that everybody else raves about. What’s it called again? Oh yes”¦the internet.
A Right Old Chestnut
November is chestnut month on Tenerife with a whole load of events timed to coincide with the lighting of the braziers. Soon plazas across north Tenerife will be filled with the aroma of roasting chestnuts – here they eat them instead of smacking each other across the knuckles with them. But local chestnut vendors have warned that the hotter than usual weather this year on Tenerife hasn’t been good for chestnut harvesting. Subsequently there aren’t as many chestnuts ready for collecting as is usual for this time of year. Ironically, whilst visitors are lapping up the hot weather, the chestnut sellers are praying for the nights to get cooler. The cooler the night, the more roasted chestnuts they sell.
Por Fin CD Tenerife
It was starting to look as though Christmas would arrive first, but CD Tenerife finally managed to huff and puff their way to their first win of the season against what the Spanish press called a commendable and tenacious Elche in an encounter described by Tenerife Magazine’s Colin Kirby as ‘a real minger’. Still it moves them from the bottom of the league to the giddy heights of second bottom, so congratulations are in order. Maybe a chink of light is breaking through the gloomy skies above the Heliodoro stadium – figuratively speaking of course.
The Saga of the Adeje Botellon
The Adeje botellon (impromptu street party) is possibly one of the few topics that bridge the gap between Spanish language press and English language Tenerife forums. Further rhetoric is coming out of Adeje council about clamping down strongly on this weekend tradition. This time the reason is about as tenuous as you can get; the authorities don’t want the tragedy that occurred at the Berlin Love Parade to happen on Tenerife. At a botellon? Come on, get serious.
What’s more worrying is that there appears to be a sub-agenda about restricting nightly entertainment in Tenerife’s main southern resorts, with some bars seemingly being targeted for playing music after a certain hour. One website even suggested that bars should be forced to close at 1am.
The explanation for a lot of this is that it adversely affects Adeje’s reputation as a tourist resort. Interesting concept, but here’s a question. Don’t a lot of people come to Adeje and Playa de las Américas precisely because the nightlife is lively? Who exactly is it that these party poopers are representing?
They Seek Him Here, They Seek Him There”¦
The south west of Tenerife is generally considered a tranquil part of the island; not this week when the combined might of the Guardia Civil, local police forces and even the army took part in a high speed pursuit through the area. The fugitive they were after, an habitual traffic offender amusingly known as the “˜mouflon’ because of his ability to evade his pursuers, led the island’s security forces on a merry chase through the streets. Roadblocks were set up at strategic points in Puerto Santiago, Alcalá, Playa San Juan and even on the TF1, but the mouflon evaded them all. He was eventually apprehended, but only after he abandoned his stolen Mercedes in La Hoya in Adeje, and is safely behind bars”¦for now.
Tourism is Up
The first nine months of the year has seen 3,598,574 visitors to Tenerife; an increase of 1.35% on the same period last year. Okay it’s not much but it is a step in the right direction and when you look at trends it’s a bigger step than it at first seems. During summer, mainland Spanish visitors fell by 3.08%, unsurprisingly as their economic crisis is a bit behind everybody else’s (no jokes please). However in the same period Brit visitors were up nearly 7%, Germans 9%, French 5%, Belgians 21% and Italians a whopping great 25%. Good news all round.
And finally the TIT (This Is Tenerife) of the week award goes to… the owners of a restaurant in San Miguel de Abona
We all know that Tenerife suffers from more than its fair share of cowboy employers but the owners of a restaurant in Golf del Sur really plumbed new depths of exploitation. Employing illegal immigrants on the black market is hardly going to shock anyone on Tenerife. However, these guys apparently lured illegal immigrants by saying that they would pay them good money and arrange residency. Once in their employ they forced the illegal aliens to work non-stop and often without pay by threatening to turn them over to the police for deportation if they didn’t.
The perpetrators are now also doing long hours for no pay”¦in prison.
Transrapid photo © Fritz Stoiber courtesy of Transrapid International GmbH & Co. K
