RE: Political leaders

Leaving away political, economical, and technical matters.You´ve to admit that it´s not the same, changing from the UK (or a british colony as I see the rock) to Spain won´t suppose a big change for gibraltarians, the speak the same language and they will maintain the autonomy they´ve today (so economical godness will continue to be their business).
If you see Ceuta and Melilla, if we returned those 2 cities (we can´t because the kingdom from whom we get them no longer exists) the will be kicked out of the EU to Morocco, a third world country. I´ve been living in London for 2 months and I can assure you that the difference between living in Spain and in the UK has nathing to do with the difference between Morocco and Spain.

RE: BA’s Preffered Merger Partner-Iberia

>My understanding is that the Spanish government is powerless
>to prevent a sale purely because the acquiror is foreign.

Wrong, actual Iberia owners cannot sell they shares (I mean the big owners, not the investors who have two or three shares) or take decissions about letting new investors to take part in IB without goverment permission. It´s spanish law, any change in the main owners can be refused by the gov.

>This would contravene the intra-EU principle of free
>movement of capital and the single market.

True, this law does not complain with EU laws, the Commision has bee trying to make “golden shares” disappear from countries such as France or Spain, but you know, burocracy goes very slow and in fact, it would be very difficult to achieve this with countries as France against it.

RE: EU-immigration policy

A EU border police is asked by Spain (and Italy) not as a way of reducing inmigration (or at least that´s how I see it) but because of the cost of the strait of Gibraltar surveilance. Spanish Guardia Civil and SVA (border police) deploy a lot of people and machines (fast boats, helicopters, etc) which could be used in other places but nowadays are stopping (and saving, something frequently forgotten by the media) inmigrants from Africa. Much money has been inverted in the strait with radars, IR cameras, etc but the problem remains.
Maybe Europe should pay part of this cost, as many of these people came to Spain in order to reach other european countries.

I guess the same happens with Italy.

RE: Caos in Spain

Even planes came really late last night. I
>still don´t see any conection between telephone lines and
>air traffic.

Well, the communication between Madrid FIR center in Torrejon and Santiago (which holds not only Santiago Airport Traffic but all of Galicia´s airports aproximations) is by telephone link, so I guess they had to redirect all the communications.

RE: SPAIN

Well, I agree that Spain should invest more on airports but the network is a very good one, in fact i think it´s oversized. Much more money should be spent in Barajas and Barcelona (well, it seems that Barajas is finally developing but we still need the fouth runway which noboby knows when will enter service, but Barcelona needs more runways, a new terminal, etc.).In the other hand, the new airports are a nosense. Who needs an airport in Leon or Badajoz?, those cities don´t have economical power to support an airport. I´m from a village near Leon and I can tell you why the airport was built. A regionalist party (UPL) gave the regional power to the PP, the party who rules the national goverment. So the PP had to pay back, the UPL invented a new reason to protest in the media, they wanted and airport (thats what they asked for, perhaps tomorrow the will ask for a space station or another funny and useless item for the region because that party gets votes thanks to the fairy tales they sell to the people) and now we´ve an airport in Leon. Because nobody wants to operate routes from Leon (not enough profit) the regional gov has to pay Air Nostrum so the airport is used. And this is a example of the problem with AENA (Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegacion Aerea-Spanish Airports and Aerial Navigation), the goverment rules it, so it is used for political reasons.Also AENA can´t take painful decisions (i.e. build another runway because the major of the area will use politics to redesign the project so he will not loss any votes).
And because of this the network is oversized.We´ve three major airports in Galicia, separated less than 100 kilometers, when the one in Santiago will be enough (maybe keltic doesn´t agree with me, for sure he´s better informed than me) but AENA won´t close even one of them, the PP also rules Galicia (I´m not an anti-PP, the same will happen with every other party).
So I agree, we need a better network, and a rational one. I would like to see AENA state owned (I believe some bussines should be done by the state because of their importance) but independent. The problem is political interference into technical matters.
I´ve hear from the media that it´s pretended to split AENA between the airports side and the aerial navigation side.

Bufff, this is my longest post ever, I´m tired

Regards:
Jorge

RE: Binter Airlines crash

Althought is always sad to remeber this kind of events, this is some kind of “victory” (if we cant said that word about an aviation accident) for the CN235. When this acccident happened everybody criticized the airplane, the media reported prior problems of the plane forgetting the fact that the airplane could fly with just one engine. Now the fault was made by the copilot but nobody remembers the reputation of the of the CN235 and their builders.

Regerds

Jorge

RE: Your pic….

This is me in a party las month, the guy at the left of the pic is a friend of mine, thousands of hours of counter-strike played with him.
I don´t know why i was surprised in that moment.Anyway it was a great night.

Regards
Jorge
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RE: Tallest hotel in Europe

Anyone here go on holiday to Denia?
It´s about 50 kilometers north of Benidorm, and it´s something completely different

Regards

Jorge