Tenerife in the news today

Looks like Mr Weasley might have part-chopped the flying family car on the island! :)

Blog of the island's VW Bus Fanatics.

Tenerife Tourism has a channel on Youtube featuring promotional videos of Tenerife, playlists and other interesting snippets.

Each meter of the El Guincho tunel cost 13,466 euros. The works, between Icod and Garachico, in the north of Tenerife, therefore are, proportionally, one of the most expensive in the history of the Canary Islands. During the 6 years that work has been carried out on the 720 meter long tunnel, 40.4 million euros have been spent. The Greens are calling for an investigation in Brussels into this supposed "waste of public funds".

The Canaries Autonomous Community received a total of 7.6 million tourists between January and October, a 0.5% increase on the same period last year.

The Ministry of Culture has awarded an exceptional payment of 50,000 euros to Puerto de la Cruz town hall to "resuscitate" a Festival de Cine Ecológico (Ecological Film Festival) in the town. The last one took place in 1994. The next will be some time in May 2009.

Wife batterers with a restraining order against them, are to wear GPS bracelets. The initiative will start in 2009 at a cost of 5 million euros. Numerous deaths of women at the hands of their partners or ex-partners occur when the aggressor breaks the terms of such exclusion orders, which has led to the passing of measures to control their proximity electronically.

Photographic evidence: the famous black cars of Google Street View (a feature of Google Maps and Google Earth that provides 360° panoramic street-level views and allows users to view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level) have been spotted on the streets of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and in Tenerife. Smile for Big Brother!

The number of foreign tourists to arrive in Spain during the first 10 months of the year was 51.7 million, 1.4% less than during the same period in 2007, although, in the Canary Islands, similar figures to the previous year have been maintained. 7.7 million tourists visited the Canary Islands between January and October, almost the same number as the year before. Numbers from the principal market of origin, the United Kindom, were down 2.1%, but these were replaced by the Nordic market.

The director of the Institute of Economic Policy of the University of Cologne, Juergen Donges, said Friday, that the Canary Islands should start to study how to develop without European funds, because, following the enlargement of the EU, it's one of the regions that should "forget" about [getting] such handouts.

A rare opportunity to see the complete set of engravings by legendary Spanish artist, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (30 March 1746 ? 16 April 1828) at the Espacio Cultural of the CajaCanarias (Plaza del Patriotismo 1, 38002, Santa Cruz de Tenerife). Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturdays 11 a.m to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m to 8 p.m., from now until December 20th.