Latin American Herald Tribune - Spain, Mexico Pledge Cooperation Against Organized Crime: "Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Mexican President Felipe Calderon explored on Friday the perspectives for increased bilateral collaboration in a number of fields, with particular attention to cooperating against organized crime.

Juan Carlos and Calderon presided over the traditional lunch that brings Spanish and Mexican leaders together each year on the occasion of the Ibero-American Summit, although this time Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is absent from the Mar del Plata event in order to work out from Madrid the latest economic measures to be taken.

But Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez and Education Minister Angel Gabilondo attended the lunch together with the king, while the Mexican president was accompanied by his foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, and Economy Secretary Bruno Ferrari."

Protests over wages by National Police officers could bring airports and border crossings to a standstill in July with officers threatening to scrupulously follow the rules - checking almost everyone entering or leaving the country, filing charges for all offences and filling in all the relevant paperwork.The protests are due to take place on Wednesdays and Thursdays throughout July in a bid to force the interior ministry to equate officers’ salaries with those of higher-paid regional police forces.

25,000 armed police were used to get traffic moving and restore calm after clashes between protesters and lorry drivers who refused to strike.Authorities promised to provide police escorts to drivers wanting to work in an effort to restore the flow of supplies across the country, after fuel pumps ran dry and supermarket shelves emptied.On Wednesday, a driver working for a non-striking company suffered burns to 25 per cent of his body when his vehicle was set on fire.The incident followed the deaths of two men – one in Spain and another in Portugal – who were run over while manning picket lines.
British tourists reported being targeted. David Copestake, 40, an estate agent with a holiday home on the Costa del Sol, said his car was pelted with stones. "One rock smashed into the windscreen, heading straight for my head," he said.
Despite 6,000 lorries being given armed escorts to deliver food, fuel and other supplies to markets and distribution centres, there were reports that some dairies and farms had ceased production. Some medicines are in short supply.
While most drivers went back to work on Wednesday with a promise of tax relief on fuel, two unions representing about 12 per cent of the nation's owner-drivers refused to back down.In Portugal, drivers called off their strike after they accepted a government package of measures including lower motorway tolls and tax breaks.

Spaniards have borrowed heavily by guaranteeing consumer loans against the value of their homes, which have more than tripled in the last ten years.
Households are feeling poorer since Spanish house price growth fell below the rate of inflation for the first time in a decade during the first quarter.
Expectations Spanish house prices will fall this year have led to a sharp decline in housing demand, especially for second homes, real estate firm CB Richard Ellis said on Thursday.
Spanish consumer borrowing for cars and personal loans fell for the first time in over a decade during the first quarter amid rising unemployment and declining consumer confidence, a financial group said on Thursday.
Credit for car purchases declined up to 10 percent year on year, while personal loans fell around 30 percent during the first three months of the year, according to Spanish credit industry group ASNEF.
"In my 10 years here this is the first time I've seen it, I think it's the first time since the 1992-1995 crisis," ASNEF President Pedro Guijarro told a press conference.
Credit demand is falling as Spaniards are hit by the end of a decade-long property boom and tighter borrowing conditions during money market turmoil.
Spain's government plans to cut its 2008 and 2009 economic growth forecasts to around 2.4 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively, marking the weakest levels since the economy suffered a recession in the early 1990s.
ASNEF warned of a sharp increase in Spain's consumer credit default rate this year after it rose 22 percent to 3.14 percent in 2007.
Spain's overall debt default rate, combining mortgage and corporate credit, is among the lowest in Europe but could triple to around 3 percent over the next two years, banking groups forecast.The property consultancy expected the slowdown to last a further 18 months and for prices to fall.
"That's the amount of time it will take to absorb houses currently on sale," said Eduardo Fernandez-Cuesta, the firm's president in Spain. "The correction in prices has yet to happen."
Years of overbuilding means Spain has around half a million new homes on the market, a Spanish property developer association said on Wednesday.

Spain has become the top consumer of cocaine in continental Europe, according to a recent European Union study on drug use. By a United Nations count, 3% of Spain's adult population consumes cocaine; that's a bigger percentage than the erstwhile leader, the United States, at 2.3%. Around dawn on a Sunday, packs of young people are huddled at stoplights, or ambling down Paseo del Prado.Despite the hour, the day isn't just beginning for them. Like thousands of young Spaniards, they are ending a long night of hard-core partying that very likely included the unbridled snorting of cocaine.At crowded clubs and throbbing bars along Madrid's Gran Via, and on side streets radiating from the Puerta del Sol, the city's heart, a gram of coke is casually sold for 50 euros -- about $79 -- and quickly consumed in restrooms or nearby parked cars."It's easier to get cocaine than to get a library card," said Gustavo Rodriguez, a 31-year-old business student, recalling his nocturnal carousing before he went into rehab.Among younger age groups, the number of Spanish users has doubled, even quadrupled, during the last decade, the statistics indicate.Part of the reason for the dramatic increase is that Spain is the primary transit point for cocaine smuggled into Europe from Latin America. In cargo ships and on airplanes, hidden in machine parts, frozen octopus or just about anything else, tons of cocaine arrive at Spanish and Portuguese ports every month.And you can't be a transit point forever without eventually sampling the goods.It was a similar story a couple of decades ago for the world's top producing countries, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia; for years they boasted of being free of drug addiction in their own populations -- they merely grew and processed the stuff and shipped it onward. But it didn't stay that way.In Spain, the rise in consumption is also linked to a swift transition in Spanish society.

In barely one generation, this nation of 40 million moved from a long, repressive military dictatorship to a dynamic, youthful democracy with (until recently) a vibrant economy.With Spaniards' newfound freedom came a cultural reawakening and fast-paced change, an era called La Movida that also gave way to permissiveness and a breakdown in traditions. And though some of the hedonism of the '80s has evolved into something a little more sophisticated, a fresh crop of young Spaniards won't let go of a firmly held compulsion for frenzied celebration of the weekend."It's a spoiled generation. They've suffered little, matured little and are not well-educated," said Modesto Salgado, who runs one of Spain's main drug rehab programs. "They live for the moment, to enjoy."Salgado says Spain's predominant drug problem in the '80s and early '90s was heroin. Today, cocaine is by far the drug of choice: Nearly two-thirds of the patients in the 26 centers managed by his program, Proyecto Hombre, are cocaine abusers. Proyecto Hombre started the coke program only five years ago; it hadn't seemed necessary before that, Salgado said.At his rehab center in Guadalajara, a bedroom community 35 miles northeast of Madrid, patients are in yearlong residential programs or larger outpatient regimens. Most are in their late 20s and are middle- or upper-class professionals.
On a recent evening, the mostly male clients were standing in front of the new brick building, having a smoke. Their mothers and other relatives were inside attending a special meeting for families; some emerged tearful.Rodriguez, the business student, was there. A tall, strapping man with good looks and an easy smile, Rodriguez said the danger of cocaine is that it sneaks up on you. And, compared with heroin, it's still socially acceptable and, in the minds of many, associated with glamour and success. Plus, it's cheap -- a line costs about as much as two cups of coffee."You think you can live normally, but you don't see what it does to your health, over time," said Rodriguez, who added that he has kicked a 10-year habit. "I couldn't finish anything I started. My parents didn't know where I was or what I was doing. The tragedy is the core of my family life was destroyed."
The overwhelming majority of cocaine users in Spain, and of those who seek rehab, are men, Salgado and other officials said. Women still face more of a stigma than do men when it comes to using drugs and turning to treatment, said Antonio Cuadrado, a therapist at Proyecto Hombre.Police and some government officials question the ranking of Spain as Europe's top consumer. Authorities say they think they are getting a handle on the problem, and the Health Ministry says consumption among the young fell last year for the first time.But no one disputes the prevalence of the drug and the fact that cocaine being shipped through Spain is leaving a trail of dust and dope.Traffickers, peddlers and other purveyors of the powder "are finding a very good market here," said Jose Luis Conde Velazquez, chief of the drugs and organized crime police unit.Yet the government is still figuring out the best way to fight cocaine. Carmen Moya Garcia, an epidemiologist who heads the Health Ministry's National Plan on Drugs, said attention that has been focused on the interdiction of traffickers is finally shifting to include consumption.A four-year action plan launched last year by the government attempts to break the glorifying myths surrounding cocaine with TV and Web campaigns. And nightclubs, bars and other establishments of leisure are being asked to cooperate with authorities in prohibiting drug use on their premises, by posting signs and keeping bathrooms clear.
Moya said authorities have been able to argue to the clubs, with some success, that cooperation won't hurt business.Last summer, in party mecca Ibiza, the government sent a message by shutting down three clubs on the Mediterranean island with such names as Amnesia for a month or more, at the height of the season, as punishment for what police said was flaunting of drugs.Demand for rehab treatment has soared the way consumption has, and programs such as Proyecto Hombre are at capacity. The experts in those places say the crisis is a deeper phenomenon of questioned ideals and changing values, something that cannot be resolved merely by cracking down on clubs and rounding up small-time pushers, known here in slang as camellos."Society has gone from being very rigid to too permissive," said Cuadrado, the therapist. Cocaine abuse "is going to grow," he said. "We are only just beginning to treat this."

The Spanish Civil Guard arrested a total of 51 people and charged a further 20 on Friday in 27 provinces across the country in a swoop against child pornography and the corruption of minors on the internet. Eight of the arrests took place in Madrid, eight more in Barcelona, six in Valencia, four in Alicante, three in Tarragona and Málaga and two in Baleares, Granada, Guipúzcoa and Sevilla among other provinces.
The case came about after a resident of Córdoba came across some of the material and informed the authorities in March last year. It’s been revealed that a high-ranking police officer in the local force in Zaragoza and a staff psychiatric at a hospital in the city are amongst the 67 people who have been arrested this week in three separate operations relating to distribution of child pornography over the Internet. According to information published in the Aragón newspaper, El Diario de Aragón, the two men were arrested on Tuesday, and both their homes were searched.
The paper said the doctor had some 70,000 files on his computer, while the officer is accused of downloading pornographic images of children. Both are married men with children, they said.
It is unclear if the two suspects are connected with the 13 arrests which took place across the country on Tuesday in ‘Operación Bea.’ The swoop came after months of investigation, and began when a woman who was searching for information about babies on the net came across pornographic images.
Twenty of those arrested have been charged with the crimes of corruption of minors and of possession of child pornography.
Some 200 civil guards took part in simultaneous searches in 73 homes in 28 provinces, and several computers, drives, hard discs, DVD’s and CD’s removed. The total number of images recovered in the operation, code named ‘Fabiola’ is thought to be more than a million.
It follows the arrest in Vitoria on Thursday of another three people who face charges of distributing child pornography in a file share program on the net.

Corruption in Marbella: The biggest case of corruption to be uncovered in Spain so far. A police investigation into money laundering and drug trafficking in southern Spain codenamed operation white whale and involving phone tapping overheard conversations between politicians in Marbella which led to a parallel investigation being set up to investigate bribery, corruption, manipulation of public tenders and compensation for illegal building licences. Over 150 police participated in "Operation Malaya" and six months ago over 20 people were arrested, including the then Mayoress and Deputy Mayoress of Marbella. The investigation is still going on, and the profits made by people participating in this massive network of corruption is expected to be millions and millions of euros.

Corruption in Madrid: The authorities of various town halls in the suburbs of Madrid are suspected of accepting commissions for allowing building to be developed on protected land, accepting commissions or being involved in the purchase of cheap land where building is not allowed, then modifying the urban laws so that building becomes legal, and then reselling the land for huge sums of money to property developers. Earlier this week it was revealed that an uncle of the President of the Region of Madrid made an enormous profit on land which was re-catagorised as building land shortly after he bought it a few years ago.

Today El País publishes a conversation held 3 years ago in which a former PP councillor of Tres Cantos, Madrid, in reference to the concession by the Town Hall of a massive property development to a private company is reported as saying "I want my 11 percent of the 30,000 million" (pesetas)"Give me the dough and I'll go". According to el Pais, the ex-PP councillor has acknowleded the declarations but said they were made in the heat of the moment. Meanwhile the same paper today reports that two former mayors of another Madrid suburb, Ciempozuelos, this time from the Socialist party, recently paid 916,000 euros into personal bank accounts in a bank in Andorra. The PSOE party forced the current mayor to resign when the public prosecutor ordered an investigation into possible irregular operations in the urban policies of Ciempozuelos last week and the Socialist party has announced a "Zero-tolerance" policy on urban corruption on all sides.

Corruption in Avila: Earlier this month building on a golf course in Avila was bought to a halt after ecologists protested that the developer - a private company set up by the local and regional administration - was ignoring a court order to stop cutting down trees in a protected area.

This year alone there has been 8,000 missing reports for children.Most are returned within a number of days.Amy Fitzpatrick, Mari Luz Cortés, Jeremy Vargas, Sara Morales, Josúe Monge are part of the 200 children who have remained disappeared with little or no trace as to there whereabouts.Police in Spain are looking for as many as 200 missing children across the mainland and the islands. Among those currently being searched for are Yeremi Vargas, Amy Fitzpatrick, Mari Luz Cortés, Sara Morales, and Juan Pablo Martínez.
The number of 200 is the number of open cases currently to be found in the archives of the National Police, Civil Guard, and the regional police forces La Ertzaintza and Los Mossos. When adults are included there are currently 11,936 people reported missing.
Each year some 8,000 disappearances are reported to the police but most of these turn out to be temporary cases, often of children running away.
The so-called ‘high risk’ cases are those where a crime has taken place and the child was taken against his or her will. These are often cases of kidnap, rape and even murder, police sources told the 20 minutos newspaper.
Police have also noted of late that there are more cases of a custody dispute between divorced parents, and that the numbers show that mixed marriages where one of the partners is foreign, have a greater possibility to end in such an outcome.
As an example of this they say in March last year the police found two brothers aged 8 and 6, who had been kidnapped by their father two years before.
The cases such as Yeremi Vargas or Sara Morales are those which unfortunately are more likely to end badly, and over the past ten years in Spain as many as 15 missing youngsters have been found dead. The last one was 15 year old, Fernanda Fabiola, who vanished in Tenerife in July last year and was found dead a month later. She had been raped by her killer, a Colombian man who has since been arrested.
Gran Canaria is the area of Spain most affected of late with the two high profile cases of Yeremi Vargas and Sara Morales. Just last week a local construction worker Marcos J.R.C, was arrested on the island accused of sexual abuse. He’s now being held in prison on remand.