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News, January 2005More NewsA few more news items and where to find more news about Spain: Personal Debt25 Nov '04. 43% of homes have some debt and the average among them is 22,000 Euros, mostly mortgages. Those least likely to be in debt are precisely the (otherwise) worst off! Low income families and pensioners are most able to survive, apparently, without incurring debt. Only just over 20% of home owners have an outstanding mortgage. 80% of the families surveyed owned their home. Of great alarm is the 8.5% of families who owe three times - or more- their income. Bank of Spain figures based on a survey almost 2 years old of some 5,000 homes. Christmas 2005 will see terrestrial digital TV in Spain with 20 channelsNew Year '05. The service, which will give similar service and interactivity to digital satellite TV, will gradually grow from then and the analogue services will end in 2010. This means everyone will need to replace their sets -or get new digiboxes- within the next five years. The price of the decoder is about 60 Euros at present. It is estimated that currently there are 50 million sets in 12 million homes across Spain. 25% of Spanish homes have access to the InternetAccording to recent official surveys by the National Statistics Institute in December 2002 the number of people with access to the Internet was only 17.4%, but a year later had grown to 24%. By the end of July '03, the number of ADSL lines was 1,343,823 with Madrid and Barcelona way ahead, emphasising the gap between town and country in technological advance. (El Mundo, TVE) A campaign run by the government between September 2004 and spring 2006 aims to improve rural internet access possibilites. In September 2004 still only 25% of homes have access to internet. During 2004 25% of computer sales were laptops, demonstrating the growth in demand for portable computing solutions and in particular for computers equipped with Wifi and other unwired options. Catalonia and Andalusia are experimenting with WiMax, the 35 megabit wifi solution available over a 50km distance. www.elmundo.es has over 5 million unique monthly visitorsEl Mundo, as well as a very popular printed paper, is Spain's most widely read electronic news service and first crossed the 5 million mark in October 2004, with 5.4 million in November. The number is increasing rapidly, although the number did fall to 4.9 million in December. Other papers lag, with dailies specialising in sport having most success: www.marca.com almost reached 3 million and www.as.com is now above a million, with the second general daily www.abc.es close behind it. 'Circulation' stats are the speciality of www.ojd.es which can be read in English. From all the surveys of electronic media, it is clear that they are by far the most read among office workers. Thus the fall in the El Mundo readership during December, which had not only the Christmas holidays, but also a long weekend at the beginning of the month. More info at http://ojdinteractiva.ojd.es/listadomedios.htm Test Tube Tourism23/11/04 Since Spain has one of the easiest legal regimes for artificial, in-vitro insemination processes, many Europeans are visiting Spain in their desperation to become pregnant. 40% of the several thousand cases each year are foreigners, from countries such as Britain. Finally, more news from the churches is always available at the Protestante DigitalThis week on Protestante Digital: (most recent update 14th January)Evangelical Alliance reject government legislation on homosexuality Religion referred to more on TV, but also more negatively |