News, April 2005

More News

A few more news items and where to find more news about Spain:

Personal Debt

25 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 ch ls

New 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 Internet

According 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.

43% of Spanish computer users hit their machine when it fails to work as they would like. Principal problem seems to be the mouse.

www.elmundo.es has over 5 million unique monthly visitors

El 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, reaching 6,289,783 in January. 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. More info at http://ojdinteractiva.ojd.es/listadomedios.htm

April 2005: The printed version of El Mundo has not suffered from its electronic daughter. In March it hit 1.387.000 copies sold daily, an increase of 5.6%, strengthening its posistion as Spain's nº2 daily newspaper. Nevertheless, this is still way behind El País, which sells over two million copies. The digital version of El País is, sadly, only available beyond the 'cover' by subscription. Yet neither of these papers sells as many as Marca, the sports daily, with over 2.5 million copies.

Old News archive

Past news is not all forgotten by P4S! Such items as can be found on the news pages at the end of every month are being filed in our archive.
For more information on old news:http://www.prayforspain.com/archive/index25.html
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Law Online

23 January '04 The official gazette of Spanish law has just opened an online service of all Spanish law since 1968, including regional and EU legislation (all in Spanish/ regional languages): http://www.boe.es/g/es/iberlex/

Finally, more news from the churches is always available at the Protestante Digital and Protestantes sites:

This week on Protestante Digital: (most recent update 29th April)

Evangelical Alliance leader says Rome must drop exclusivity claim
Socialist Party aims to heal conflict over church-state relations
Saudi Arabia making most of double standards on religious freedom
Some are more equal than others in Zapatero’s Spain