Sexual Assault
Police said yesterday they have arrested four men suspected of a New Year’s Eve sexual assault.
The Guardia Civil in Alicante said All four suspects are from Ecuador,
They were picked up on New Years Day after a 19-year-old woman was found partially clothed in a basement in Callosa d’Ensarria.
She was drunk and unable to say where she lived, according to police, adding the quartet had spent the evening with her.
Police said one suspect, aged 22, had a record for sexual assault and had been the subject of a complaint by another woman in October.
Spanish media said the four men filmed the assault and drew parallels with the 2016 Pamplona “Wolf pack” case.
The Guardia Civil suspects there may have been ‘similar aggression’s on at least two other occasions and believe ‘more cases will arise’ in the course of their investigation.
The Town Council of Callosa d’En Sarria expressed its ‘strongest condemnation and has offered its ‘support, assistance and protection resources’.
A rally took place at mid day today in the town against macho aggression.
Missing Man
A missing British pensioner is feared dead after his motor boat went up in flames off the coast of Lanzarote yesterday
video from a helicopter showed thick black smoke billowing from the vessel’s hull as it became engulfed in flames.
Emergency services discovered the 68-year-old man’s wallet in the sea near the boat, but have yet to find the man.
The Guardia Civil said the search operation involving police, coastguards and a local authority emergency response unit was continuing.
Migration
The European Union’s border agency says the number of unauthorised border crossings into Europe has hit a five-year low, although migrant entries into Spain via the Mediterranean continue to climb.
Frontex said people crossed the EU’s external borders without authorisation around 150,000 times last year, a 25% drop compared with 2017 and far below the peak of over a million in 2015.
The border and coast guard agency said the drop is due to a massive decrease in the number of people entering Italy, mostly after setting out from Libya and Algeria.
Just over 23,000 unauthorised crossings were noted on that route this year, an 80% drop since last year and the fewest since 2012.
Fight Disruption
Thousands of Ryanair passengers’ flights will be disrupted this week when the airline’s Spanish cabin crew walk out on three days.
The strikes are planned for tomorrow .. the 10 and 13 of this month after the unions failed to reach an agreement with the budget carrier.
The Spanish government has stipulated a minimum level of operations, which means that all domestic flights and 35 per cent of international services must run.
Drug Use
Following on from a report on national drug use , the data has now been broken down by region and shows Valencia as being in second place for cannabis use in the last month, second only to Catalonia
The regionalised data has made it clear that it is a specifically older group of users who are consuming cannabis.
The study shows that, during the last 30 days, one in ten residents consumed the drug, at least once.