Playa Americas

According to the report issued by the National Statistics Institute released today by the Industry, Tourism and Commerce Ministry, the hotel prices in Canarias dropped 5.7% in April.

The prices of the hotels had fallen 3.8% in Madrid and 1.8% in Catalonia, in comparison with the same month of the previous year, being the national average rate 3.1% lower than the previous year. The only region that presented a rising in terms of hotel prices was La Rioja, where prices raised 1.3% while the biggest falls occurred in Extremadura (-5.9% ), Canarias (-5.7%), Murcia (-4.9%) and the Balearic Islands (-4.3%).

Comparing months, national prices raised an average of 3.5%, +2.3% in Madrid and +3.5% in Catalonia. The major raise occurred in Asturias where prices raised +8.4% compared to March, followed by Cantabria and Melilla which had a raising of +7.7% each. On the other hand, only two regions had a negative price evolution. They are Aragon (-4.6%) and the Balearic Islands (-0.6%).

Hotel prices fell in April in all categories, being the ones which had most significant fall five and four gold stars hotels prices (-4.1%), three silver stars hotel prices (-3.8%) and two silver stars hotel prices (-3.5%).

Paralympic athletes from Spain broke this weekend seven Spanish records during the International Swimming Open in Tenerife, held at the ‘Centro de Alto Rendimiento’ (Top Training Center) in the municipality of Adeje. Blind and visual impaired, physical disabled and mental disabled athletes participated in these games together with athletes with brain paralysis.
One of the most remarkable athletes was Julia Castelló from Barcelona, who broke the national record (S6 group) in the 100meters backstroke with a time of 1’35”11, and the 200meters freestyle with a time of 3’34”93.
José Antonio Marí from Valencia, who is a permanent member of the Spanish physically disabled team, broke the national record of the S9 group in 200meters freestyle with a time of 2’27”90, while José Antonio Aráez from Tenerife broke the record of the 50meters butterfly style in the S4 group with a time of 1’00”21.

The Tenerife Open celebrated this year its fourth edition and counted for the first time with the participation of athletes from the “Federación Española de Deportes para Personas con Discapacidad Intelectual – FEDDI” (Spanish Sports Federation for People Mentally Disabled) who were fully included in the national and international Paralympics games.
In fact, the other three records broke were obtained by two swimmers form the FEDDI, Judith García in 100meters backstroke (1’26”47), and Michelle Alonso in 50 and 100meters breaststroke (37”95 and 1’22”95). Before the competitions, the Paralympic swimming team participated in a get-together at the “Programa de Alto Rendimiento Paralímpico – ARPA” (Top Paralympic Training Program) to be ready for the Paralympic Games to be held in Eindhoven (Holland) next August.

The gathering included the participation of medallists such as Enhamed Enhamed from Canarias, winner of four gold medals in the Paralympic Games Pekin 2008, Richard Oribe from San Sebastian, winner of one gold and three silver medals, Jesús Collado from Barcelona, Ricardo Ten form Valencia, who have one gold medal each, and Chano Rodríguez from Pontevedra who has two silver and two bronze medals.

The encounter also counted with the presence of Vicente Gil (two silver medals) and David Levecq (one silver medal) from Valencia, Xavi Torres from Mallorca, Enrique Floriano from Badajóz, and Sarai Gascón from Barcelona, who have one silver medal each. Besides, Pablo Cimadevila from Pontevedra, and Dani Vidal from Castellón (two bronze medals), Sara Carracelas from San Sebastian and Esther Morales and Miguel Luque (one bronze medal) from Barcelona were present as well.

The Paralympic swimming team met the Olympic team at Tenerife and they had the chance to share experiences and receive from the Olympic team advice about their techniques. This summer, the Spanish Paralympic team will face the World Championship, which has the second place among the most important swimming competitions after the summer Paralympic Games. This championship will gather in Holand about 700 blind or visual impaired swimmers apart from metal disabled, physical and intellectual disabled athletes from 55 different countries.

After a four-years break, this weekend returns to Adeje the “Festival de la Cultura Electrónica y las Nuevas Tecnología” (Meeting Approaching Global Music and Art). In its fifth edition, this event will be held at “Centro Magma Artes y Congresos” in the municipality of Adeje, from Saturday afternoon to Sunday’s dawn.

The center of attention among the artists who will participate in this festival will be the well known producer and musician from Chile Luciano, who lives nowadays in Switzerland. He is the head of Cadenza Records, one of the top electronic music record labels of these days at the avant-garde of dancing music.

Among the different activities programmed for this event, the different PC-games competitions have a special interest among the participants. These competitions will include games such as Counter Strike, Call of Duty and Pro Evolution Soccer. Apart from that, there will be workshops on new technologies and software like the “real-time” software designed for 3D manipulation. This workshop will be about the different tools that allow the users of this program to work in real time, and to apply textures to virtual objects. Besides, the workshop will deal with the issue of the necessary spatial distortions to be taken into account when adapting a virtual object to a real one.

The festival will occupy the Magma Arts and Congresses Center and will count with two stages: MAGMA Solar and MAGMA Lunar. The Solar stage will have 10,000 watts sound, mobile lightings, laser, smoke and other special effects providing the perfect environment for the showcase of nine companies and local record labels. From 6 p.m. to 12 a.m., Overall, Velvet, Coulsounds and Lowpitch labels will perform with the music arrangements of Daniel Carreño, Manggelt, Carballo and Luis Groove.

The documentary film “La ruta del sol” (The route of the sun) will be exhibited at the MAGMA Solar stage as well. This film shows the tour the producer Luciano made through Latin America and will be exhibited from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. Luciano Nicolet who is founder member and CEO of the record label Cadenza, will bring to the island under the brand “Luciano & Friends” a selection of the best DJ’s of Europe including Reboot, Mirko Loko, Robert Dietz, Marc Antona, Lee Van Dowski and Michael Cleis, who will perform from 10 p.m.

The music of Mirko Loko, Robert Dietz, Lee Van Dowski and Marc Antona will sound at the MAGMA Lunar stage starting at 22 p.m. and the shows of the DJ’s from Canarias Logannn!, Javier Carballo and Luis Groove will continue till dawn with the presentation of the musicians Michel Cleis, Reboot and Luciano.

Tourists who visit Canarias will be able to bring to their countries a kilo of traditional or coloured (Sal de Palma) potatoes and three types of dressings in a special container that has been introduced today by the agriculture councillor, Pilar Merino.

This idea, promoted by the public entity ‘Gestión del Medio Rural en Canarias’ (Canarias’ Rural Areas Management), allow almost 12 million tourist who visit the archipelago every year to buy and bring with them a characteristic food product from Canarias which is potatoes with dressings in a new, attractive, and easy to carry container that can be easily recognized.
“This promotion is opened to any potatoes producer and it is addressed to anyone who wants to taste Canarias’ potatoes. These potatoes could be purchased in airports’ shops and other stores”, said the agriculture councillor.
Águeda Fumero, manager of the public entity ‘Gestión del Medio Rural de Canarias’ said that “this is a new way to provide opportunities to our farmers and it complements the promotion of wines and cheeses in containers which are already available”

“Potatoes have a huge demand because of their quality, being grown in the archipelago since XVI century, having a fantastic mixture of popular knowledge and high cuisine”, added Fumero. She also said that the potatoes growing in Canarias promotes the protection of the landscape and “we count with a product that has a high demand inside and outside Canarias”, she added.

Each container has one kilo of potatoes of different traditional varieties, as well as 250grams of ‘Fuentecaliente’ salt and the varieties of dressings (red sweet, red hot and green) apart from a recipe that teaches how to prepare them. This envelope is made of cardboard having a colourful label with instructions in three languages (Spanish, German and English), and small holes that allow the vegetables to breath and remain fresh for a month.

The varieties of potatoes included in the container are: black, golden black and ‘colorada de baga’ produced in Tenerife, although other varieties will be included in the future, specially the red ones due to their durability. Nowadays, the production is of 8,000 kilos per month, although some months it is less than that, but the farmers are tying to maintain a high level of production all over the year.

In the first stage, one thousand containers will be distributed and from June they will be available at airports and stores within Canarias islands.

The tourism council of the Canarias government has started the construction works of the last stretch of the Ernesto Sarti Avenue, located in Costa Adeje, southern Tenerife. This projects counts with a budget of 970,000 euros and it has to be finished within a period of 20 months.

This information was provided by the tourism councillor to the Canarias Government, Rita Martín, who signed the variation order of this project together with the manager of the tourist infrastructure department of the Canarias government, Sebastián Ledesma, and the councilman in charge of the tourist area of the municipality of Adeje, Miguel Ángel Santos.
Mrs. Martín said that the public founds invested in these construction works are “in close relationship with the hotel business and other private business development in the municipality”.

“This is the first project under way in the framework of the ‘Estrategia de Mejora de los Espacios Públicos Turísticos’ (Tourist Public Areas Improvement Plan), which is intended to boost tourist areas in Canarias”, said Ledesma. He also pointed out that the public administration of the archipelago is planning to invest more than 40 million euros in the renewal and redesign of tourist areas in the period from year 2009 to year 2013.

About the Ernesto Sarti Avenue, the construction works will include paving, access improvement, water supply renewal, public furniture, street signals, street lighting and green areas redesign. Royal palm trees will be planted in the avenue and the parking spaces will be maintained.

The ‘Sociedad Municipal de Vivienda’ (Council’s Housing Association), a public entity part of Adeje’s Council, will acquire the 51 percent of the shares of the ‘Centro de Desarrollo Turístico Costa Adeje’ (Tourist Development Center of Costa Adeje) after paying one million euros to the company Sánchez Bacallado, which are the owners of these shares, obtaining this way, the entire stock’ package.

This information was confirmed by Gonzalo Delgado, town councillor in charge of the public works department of this municipality, pointing out that this is a delicate operation, because it has been carefully negotiated for a year and considered “an opportunity to improve the management of the town council services, paying special attention to training and employment”, he said.

The acquisition agreement will be signed next week. Nowadays, the Council’s Housing Association holds the 49 percent of the CDTCA shares and the company Sánchez Bacallado SL owns the rest of it. Apart form acquiring the 100 percent of the shares of this centre, the council will also acquire the ‘Centro de Usos Múltiples de Adeje’ (Adeje’s Multi Purpose Center), which is still under construction. The Multi Purposes Centre will be managed by a private company, and it will count with shops, restaurants, offices and other services.
The Tourist Development Centre is valued at 12 million euros, to which it has to be added the 5.7 million euros debt the centre has. On the other hand, the Multi Purposes Centre is valued at 24 million euros, which supposes a total outlay of 30 million euros for the town council.

The town councillor also stated that at the beginning of this operation, two other private companies submitted their proposals for the acquisition of the Tourist Development Centre, but the city council, being owner of part of the stock package, had priority over the shares acquisition.

The Tourist Development Centre holds nowadays the Town Development Department of the municipality, a restaurant, hotel lounges, courses and a conference room, among other services.

‘Turismo de Tenerife’ an entity in charge of the tourist promotion of the island, is promoting local wines in 18 hotels located in the southern and northern areas of Tenerife Island. The initiative that the entity has entrusted to the ‘Fundación Tenerife Rural’ (Rural Tenerife Foundation) will be presented to the tourists in the way of shows and wine tasting of wines from five regions of the island.

The insular councillor of tourism and CEO of ‘Turismo de Tenerife’, José Manuel Bermúdez, stated in a press release that this action is intended to “make our wines known among the visitors showing their quality, and promoting their purchasing and consumption”. Bermúdez also said that “our goal is to promote the inclusion of these and other local products in the menus of the hotels’ restaurants making, this way, our gastronomy and oenology known among the tourists who spend their holydays in our island”.

The initiative will be got under way with the collaboration of the different wineries and ‘Ashotel’ (association of hotel owners), and it will start this very weekend continuing for four months. Each one of the hotels involved in this exhibition will provide to the visitors wine tasting and information in Spanish, English and German about the virtues and quality of these island’s wines, which due to the weather and the volcanic soil have unique characteristics.

During wine tasting, the visitors will also receive a hand fan which has the map of the island with the location of the different wineries printed on its surface, apart from a summary of the island’s wines and information about some tourist points of interest such as ‘La Casa del Vino’, ‘La Despensa’ – web of the foundation ‘Tenrerife Rural’ where visitors may buy traditional food products – or the ‘Rutas de Tenerife Rural’ (Rural Routes of Tenerife), where several tours are offered to enjoy wine culture.

Having a budget of 21,000 euros, this initiative is made in the framework of the ‘Plan de Dinamización del Producto Turístico Tenerife Acoge’ (The Tenerife Welcome Tourist Product Boosting Project). In this project count with the participation of three public administrations: the Council of Tenerife, the Council of Tourism of the Canarias Government, and the Spanish Government, with the objective of creating new tourist products and the boosting of the current ones.

The Council of Adeje and the Iberostar group have agreed to manage together the human resources of the hotels located in the southern part of Tenerife that belong to this group for the hiring, selection and training of the staff.

The major of Adeje, José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga, has signed today an agreement with Javier Muñoz, Canarias Operations Manager of the ‘Empresa Hoteadeje SL’ which is the owner of Iberostar.

The council presented this initiative in a press conference as a way to offer employment opportunities to the inhabitants of this municipality, which is the one that has more hotel beds in Tenerife. The initiative counts with a series of integrated measures that have as central point the training and job placement as a way to facilitate the insertion in the job market of this municipality.

The joint action of these entities will benefit all those people who are currently registered in the data base of the Local Development and Employment department of Adeje, institution that will be in charge of the management of this project.

The agreement has one-year-validity and may be automatically renewed for two years more. The major has highlighted the role of the public entity in this initiative which will have a strong role in the selection, data management and training of the applicants. The agreement provides the Council the faculty to manage the job offers of Iberostar in Tenerife, the individual selection of the personnel, or the support service for the people with disabilities that are looking for a job among others.
The Council has the commitment to make a diagnosis about the educational needs of the applicants in relation with the hotel industry to take the necessary measures to provide this training.

The president of the Canarias Government, Paulino Rivero, has supervised this Wednesday, the work progress of the new ‘Adeje – Santiago del Teide’ highway which involves the closure of the southern part of the ‘Insular Ring’, and will redirect the traffic in the western region of Tenerife. The budget for this project is of 167.8 million euros.

Mr. Rivero was accompanied by the Transport and Public Works councillor, Juan Ramón Hernandez, as well as by the president of the Insular Council of Tenerife, Ricardo Melchior, the sub-delegate of the Tenerife Government, José Antonio Batista, and the majors of Adeje, José Manuel Rodríguez Fraga, of Santiago del Teide, Juan Damián Gorrían, and of Guía de Isora, Pedro Manuel Martín.

The project presents a new route, which is the first stage of the extension of the TS-1 highway to Santiago del Teide. This construction work will provide this part of the island with a high capacity lane that will substitute the old one. Besides, this new highway includes, within the municipality of Guía de Isora, a coastal branch between the towns of Alcalá and Playa de San Juan, just in the point where is projected the future Fonsalía port.

The citizens of Canarias recycled more than 29,000 tons of plastic containers of domestic use, paper, and cardboard in 2009, according to the data provided by the regional environment and land management ministry of the Canarias government and Ecoembes, which are getting under way a new campaign of social awareness about the correct way to separate plastic containers, paper and cardboard at home.

Environmental monitors will travel over 78 Canarias’ municipalities in two eco-friendly vehicles for three months to promote the recycling of household waste. The “Eco-movil 2010” initiative started today in Fuerteventura and El Hierro simultaneously.

The vice-councillor of the environmental department of the Canarias’ government, Cándido Padrón, was present today at the campaign’s presentation in Meridiano Island, while the chief director of environmental quality, Emilio Atiénzar, attended to the campaign’s presentation in Fuerteventura Island. Both of them explained that the awareness about these matters and the spreading of information are the keys the Canarias’ government is intended to transmit to make their citizens understand the importance of their cooperation, with the aim of having a system of waste separation that works properly.
Emilio Atiénzar was accompanied by the president of the insular council, Mario Cabrera, and the major of “Puerto del Rosario”, Marcial Morales, at the campaign’s presentation in Fuerteventura. Meanwhile, Cándido Padrón was in charge of the campaign’s presentation in El Hierro, in a ceremony that counted with the presence of the insular environmental counsellor, Calribel González and the major of Valverde, Agustín Padrón. Both events counted with the presence of Ecoembes’s representatives.
For the next three months, two eco-friendly vehicles or “eco-moviles” displaying the campaign’s logo will visit 78 municipalities to clear up any doubt or question the citizens and tourists may have about waste separation and recycling. Besides, to reinforce the information the environmental monitors will provide, educative material will be distributed including brochures, colour pencils and pencil holders.

The vice-councillor of environment outlined that “the recycling issue is not new for the inhabitants of Canarias. Since the gradual implementation of the waste separation in Canarias in 1999, the growing of the recycled waste hasn’t stopped and nowadays we are one of the Spanish communities that count with the higher number of homes that make an active waste recycling”.
The environmental quality director informed that the citizens of Canarias deposited in the containers placed by the company Ecoembes in the different municipalities an average number of 6.3 kilos of waste in 2009. Atiénzar said that, regarding the cardboard packages and paper selective collected in the blue containers, each citizen deposited an average number of 12.7 kilos. The total of plastic containers, paper and cardboard recycled in Canarias last year summed up 29,030 tons of which 7,737 tons were plastic packages, 18,799 tons were paper and cardboard, and 2,494 tons were metals.
The materials collected from the yellow containers (plastic packages) are transported to the recycling plants located in Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and Salto del Negro in Gran Canaria, where they are classified and send to the recycling plants that turn them into raw material for different products such as textiles (polar fabric), construction materials (pipes and carpets), furniture (benches and poles), new metallic containers and more.

During the event that took place in El Hierro, Cándido Padrón said that it is planned to join all the municipalities under this agreement with Exoembes, in a direct way or through the councils, which already have the province for the selective collecting of wastes. This plan “will allow the quality optimization and the increasing of the selective collecting” and it will have as consequence the placing of more recycling containers in the municipalities of Canarias.
For his part, the chief director of environmental quality referred during the campaign’s presentation in Fuerteventura to the effort made in Canarias during the last years using an important part of the public budget for the investing in waste management facilities

“The goals of Canarias in this matter are to provide the islands with the necessary facilities that allow the proper waste treatment, as well as to promote the improvement in the selective collection of wastes in four mandatory sectors, which are paper and cardboard, plastic packages, glass and organic waste. Besides, to increase the percentage of recycled materials once the selective collection is done”, explained the chief director.