Assassination Suspect
An expert marksman has been arrested on suspicion of planning a “lone wolf” attack to assassinate Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
The 63-year-old suspect, named locally as Manuel Murillo Sanchez, was found with an arsenal of weapons, including sniper-style rifles and a submachine gun, at his home.
The private security guard, who has extensive experience with long-range guns, is said to have “spoken of his intention to attack Pedro Sanchez in WhatsApp groups”.
A spokesman for regional police near Barcelona, said: a 63-year-old man has been arrested in Terrassa.
The detainee is said to have decided to target the PM after his government approved a decree in August allowing dictator Francisco Franco to be exhumed from the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum near Madrid.
Kirsty Maxwell
Hopes of a DNA breakthrough in the probe into British newly-wed Kirsty Maxwell’s fatal fall from a balcony in Benidorm have been dashed.
Spanish police have found ‘no foreign DNA’ present on the 27-year-old after analysing samples from under her nails and other body parts.
Mrs Maxwell, of Livingston, West Lothian, died after plunging 100ft from the balcony of a tenth- floor hotel room where five men were staying, after reportedly walking in to their room by mistake.
Mrs Maxwell’s family had hoped tests on samples taken from her body might show up DNA from one of the five men being probed over her death and back their belief ‘something dark’ happened in the holiday flat before she went over the edge.
British Death
A British man has drowned while snorkelling at a remote cove on the Northern Costa Blanca.
The 55-year-old’s body was found late yesterday afternoon after a friend raised the alarm.
He is thought to have vanished during a swim after reaching the cove known locally as Cala dels Testos, at the end of a path which follows a river bed through a canyon towards the sea.
There is no road access to the cove, which can only be accessed by sea or on foot.
It forms part of the town of Benitatxell.
The dead man’s body was recovered by coastguards from nearby Javea.
Civil Guard officers have now launched a routine investigation .. It is not clear if the Briton was on holiday or an expat.
First World War
The King has marked the centenary of the end of the First World War by commemorating the humanitarian work done by his country’s government and his own great-grandfather during the conflict. Felipe VI viewed some of the letters sent to and written by his ancestor, Alfonso XIII, during the Great War as Spain attempted to help thousands of families across Europe who were affected by the conflict.
Between 1914 and 1918, over 200,000 people across the continent wrote to Alfonso, asking the monarch of neutral Spain to help them track down soldiers who had disappeared or who had been taken prisoner. The letters were put on show for the first time yesterday in an exhibition at the Royal Palace in Madrid which was officially opened by the King.
The event runs until March.