Business&Finance: Spain’s mini gold rush beset by concerns over development

Spain’s mini gold rush beset by concerns over development

By The Financial Times

Until recently, anyone looking for treasure in the Spanish regions of Galicia and Asturias would have been directed to the sea: the waters off the northwest tip of the country are renowned for prized seafood.

However, interest – and controversy – has been growing over the riches on dry land. Buried but apparently ripe for extraction are some of the biggest untapped gold deposits in western Europe.

Edgewater Exploration and Astur Gold, two mining companies based in Vancouver, have invested millions of dollars with the aim of bringing these deposits into production. Edgewater acquired the rights to produce gold at a site called Corcoesto in Galicia in 2010, the same year that Astur Gold took control of the Salave deposit in Asturias.

Together, the sites contain more than 2m ounces of gold, on a measured and indicated basis, but the amount that can be produced profitably is likely to be much lower.

What drew the Canadian miners to the area were not only promising geological findings but also the broader political climate in Spain, which has been scarred by a deep recession and record unemployment.

“One of our mandates was to find projects in the EU where politicians wanted to say yes to jobs, in areas where jobs were important,” said Cary Pinkowski, chief executive of Astur Gold.

Mr Pinkowski hopes to have final approval from the regional government for the Salave project by the end of the year, and to ramp up production at the site towards the end of 2015. He says his company has received more than 11,000 applications for the 800 jobs Astur Gold hopes to create during the construction phase. The mine itself will need 200-250 workers.

The two projects are part of a broader movement by foreign investors seeking to turn Spain’s woes to their advantage and to find an economy more ready to embrace otherwise controversial investments.

One prominent example is the Eurovegas mega-casino, backed by Sheldon Adelson, the US billionaire, who has lobbied the government to change local laws on smoking and other issues in exchange for creating jobs.

Galicia and Asturias have unemployment rates above 20 per cent, so are as keen as the rest of Spain to attract employers.

However, Edgewater has discovered that employment concerns do not always seal the deal. Having embraced the project at the start, the Galicia government has backed away in recent months.

The company was told in July that it had to show it had access to an additional €30m in funding before the project could proceed – equivalent to a quarter of the total investment.

“They are killing the game for us,” said George Salamis, president of Edgewater. “This has sent a shockwave through our shareholder base and it impedes our ability to finance the project.”

Mr Salamis added: “The people of Galicia need this project and they need it now.” Edgewater had received 15,000 applications for the 270 jobs the company has promised to create. The mine enjoyed strong backing from locals, but he conceded there was opposition from environmental groups. This is also the case in Salave.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Galician regional president, said this month that the Corcoesto plan could not be approved in its current form. He declared: “Every mining project has to be in strict compliance with environmental laws, business laws and [those] that relate to industry and technical feasibility.”

Mr Salamis still hopes that Edgewater will be able to win over the authorities, possibly after bringing in other investors and partners. For his company, however, much of the early enthusiasm over a mini gold rush has started to fade.

“There is tremendous gold potential here,” he said. “You can have the best deposit on the planet, but if the government doesn’t support you, it’s basically worthless.”

Learning English: ´Becouse´, principal error de los españoles con el inglés

´Becouse´, principal error de los españoles con el inglés

Corpus, el mayor software lingüístico de errores del mundo, recoge los 50 errores más comunes

La Opinión – A Coruña

Está claro que hablar y escribir en inglés es la tarea pendiente de muchos españoles. Comernos letras, cambiarlas de posición o incluso añadir alguna de más son los errores más frecuentes que cometemos con el inglés.

Por ello, Cambridge University Press desarrolló Corpus, el mayor software lingüístico de errores en inglés en el mundo, creado a través del análisis y la investigación del uso real del inglés por parte de los hablantes nativos y no nativos. Este programa informático otorga una definida imagen del uso actual de la lengua, permitiendo el desarrollo de métodos de aprendizaje específicos y diferenciados para cada país.

Con motivo del 20 aniversario de Corpus, la editorial inglesa ha dado a conocer los 50 errores más comunes de los españoles. A la cabeza, "wich", "confortable" y "becouse", estas tres son las palabras que más se nos resisten a los españoles. Tanto que el término ´because´, según Corpus, puede llegar a escribirse hasta de 237 formas diferentes.

Además, también son muy típicas las confusiones de los llamados "false friends", palabras que se escriben de forma muy similar o idéntica en ambas lenguas, pero que significan cosas completamente distintas.

Partir de los errores más comunes que cometemos y conocerlos, es sin duda una de las claves para facilitar el aprendizaje del idioma. Por ello, Corpus recopila en torno a 1.800 palabras codificadas y analiza los exámenes de más 200.000 alumnos españoles, para facilitar así el aprendizaje a través de los propios errores y la evolución del inglés.

Current Affairs: European Court of Human Rights rules Spain must free Eta prisoner

European Court of Human Rights rules Spain must free Eta prisoner

By The Financial Times

Spain could be forced to release dozens of prisoners belonging to the Basque separatist organisation Eta after the European Court of Human Rights overturned a controversial Spanish sentencing practice that was strongly backed by the government in Madrid.

The Strasbourg court on Monday struck down the so-called Parot doctrine, which has been used by Spanish courts since 2006 to prevent the early release of prisoners convicted of grave crimes, typically linked to terrorism and involving multiple murders. The ruling is binding on Spain and is likely to pave the way for a speedy – and fiercely unpopular – release of at least 61 Eta prisoners and 14 other convicts.

Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, Spain’s justice minister, criticised the ruling, saying: “It cannot be that someone who has killed 20 people is treated in the same way as someone who committed a single murder.”

Eta declared an “indefinite” ceasefire in 2011, after a decades-long campaign that claimed the lives of more than 800 people. However, it has so far refused to give up its arms and formally disband itself. Many see the Basque group’s stance as an attempt to keep a bargaining chip to secure better conditions for hundreds of Eta members who remain in jail, and possibly even their release.

But the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is under intense pressure from Eta victims and their families, who argue that the state should ensure tougher sentences for the militants. The Strasbourg ruling provoked a fresh outcry from groups such as Spain’s Foundation for the Victims of Terrorism, which said the court had “valued the impunity of terrorists higher than doing justice to the victims”.

The judges in Strasbourg ruled that the Spanish sentencing practice broke several rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. They argued that the doctrine amounted to a retroactive change in the sentence that the convict could not have foreseen at the time of the verdict.

The ruling applies directly only to the Eta prisoner who brought the case, but it will, at the very least, act as a strong precedent for the other convicts. Mr Ruiz-Gallardón said it was now up to Spanish judges to decide how the Strasbourg ruling affected other cases in which the Parot doctrine was applied.

Under Spanish law, courts can hand down extremely long sentences, even running to thousands of years, but the maximum time that can be served is fixed at 30 years. The Parot doctrine was developed by Spain’s constitutional court to ensure that prisoners serving very long prison terms are not freed significantly before the 30-year maximum. It means that benefits accrued during time spent in jail are not deducted from the 30-year maximum but from the actual sentence handed down by the court.

The sentencing practice is named after Henri Parot, an Eta member who was condemned to 4,700 years in prison after being found guilty of 33 murders in the years between 1978 and 1990. Despite his extremely long sentence, he became eligible for release after spending just 20 years in prison, 10 fewer than the maximum allowed under Spain’s criminal code.

The case before the judges in Strasbourg was that of Inés del Río Prada, a member of Eta who received prison sentences totalling 3,000 years for her role in a series of terrorist attacks between 1982 and 1987. In her case, the use of the Parot doctrine extended her jail term by almost nine years – from July 2008 to June 2017. “The applicant . . . served a longer term of imprisonment than she should have served under the Spanish legal system in operation at the time of her conviction,” the court said in a statement.

Strasbourg told Madrid to release Ms del Río Prada “at the earliest possible date”. The government will also have to pay her €30,000 for non-pecuniary damages.

Current Affairs: Spanish wealth gap biggest in Europe, says charity

Spanish wealth gap biggest in Europe, says charity

Top 20% of Spanish society now seven and a half times richer than bottom fifth, with number of millionaires up 13% in year

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THE GUARDIAN

Spain is the most unequal society in Europe, according to a report that finds three million Spaniards now live in conditions of "extreme poverty", and another study that shows the number of millionaires has increased.

A report by the Catholic charity Caritas says more than 6% of Spain's population of 47 million lived on €307 a month or less in 2012, double the proportion in 2008 before Spain was hit by the recession, which has left 26% of its workforce unemployed.

A separate study by Credit Suisse finds that the number of millionaires in Spain rose to 402,000 last year, an increase of 13% on 2011, emphasising the ever-widening gap between rich and poor.

Announcing the findings of the Caritas report at a press conference in Madrid, Sebastian Mora, general secretary of the charity's Spanish arm, warned of "a situation of neglect, injustice and the dispossession of people's most basic rights".

He said that while poverty was widespread in Spain, it mainly affected the most vulnerable. The economic crisis had "produced a weakening of family ties and other safety nets, particularly in the public sector".

The top 20% of Spanish society is now seven and a half times richer than the bottom fifth, which reflects the biggest divide in Europe, says Caritas.

"The report paints a picture of a more fractured, more divided society, where the middle-class is disappearing and a minority has access to wealth, goods and services while the majority sits outside," Mora said.

The governing rightwing People's party has introduced a series of austerity measures to deal with public debt that is nearly 100% of GDP, but many fear that these are hitting the poorest sectors of society disproportionately hard.

Six years ago Spain's economy was heralded as one of Europe's great success stories, and in 2007 it created nearly half the new jobs in the eurozone. But its unemployment rate is now second only to that of Greece, and economists see little light at the end of the tunnel.

This week the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Nils Muižnieks, issued a report warning that "cuts in social, health and educational budgets" had led to a worrying growth of family poverty in Spain. "This has had a particularly negative impact on the enjoyment of human rights by children and persons with disabilities."

This week, the OECD's first global study of adult skills revealed that Spain came bottom for levels of literacy and numeracy in a list of 24 countries, raising concerns about its ability to emerge successfully from the crisis in the near future.

The OECD survey found that one in four Spaniards between 16 and 65 scored the lowest levels of literacy, and one in three the lowest levels of mathematical proficiency.

The Spanish government argues that it has stabilised the economy after years of recession, but economists believe a complete overhaul is necessary, as any recovery remains vulnerable to internal and external changes of fortune.