SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Wednesday September 29 2010 TENS of thousands of Canarians joined Wednesday's national general strike with mass demonstrations in Tenerife and Gran Canaria. by James Tweedie More than 10,000 workers and pensioners marched through Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz in protest at public-sector wage cuts and an occupational pensions freeze, plans to raise the retirement age to 67 and the new labour reform law which allows employers to lay off staff more easily and cheaply. The main demonstration was organised jointly by the CCOO and UGT, Spain's two biggest trade unions, although the anarchist CNT and regional INSUCAN unions, United Left (IU) party and Assembly For Tenerife campaigning coalition were present in numbers. One supermarket on the march route that had remained open closed its doors in response to chants of “come on, come on, let's close it down!” from protesters. A few hundred also attended an early static protest in Plaza Weyler, while the C...

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Thursday September 23 2010 Activists launched a petition against the government's new labour reform act in Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz on Thursday. By James Tweedie Campaigners gathered in front of the famous Flower Clock in García Sanabria park for the press conference to launch the Citizen's Manifesto, backed by a wide range of trade unions, residents' associations and the United Left party. A hand-painted banner read: “No To The Labour Reform – General Strike!” Spain's Socialist Party government faces a national general strike over the legislation on Wednesday September 29, coinciding with similar actions against EU-imposed austerity measures in other European countries. The labour reform law, passed by parliament on September 9, makes it easier for employers to make staff redundant or to sack them for absenteeism. Under the legislation statutory redundancy pay has been reduced from 45 days' wages per year of service to 33 days, or...

Agresión, Oi! Se Arma, Veneno Crew, Alea Jacta VII Jornadas Antiracistas, Sala La Perla, La Laguna, Saturday September 11 2010 by James Tweedie Tonight is about as eclectic as can be. About 200 assorted Punks, Metalheads, Hip-Hoppers and Skinheads (not of the neo-Nazi variety) are rubbing shoulders within the Aztec temple décor of the 'Pearl Room', a club inside a pirate-themed restaurant inside a shopping centre next to one of Tenerife's two motorways. The occasion is the 7 th Anti-Racist Day, organised by the Frente Blanquiazul (Blue-and-White Front), an anti-fascist organisation centred around the island's Club Deportivo Tenerife football team which celebrates its 20 th anniversary this year. Tonight's concert follows a football tournament and lunch earlier in the day. As the banner along one wall reads: “The terraces unite, racism divides.” Although varied in musical taste, the crowd is 99 per cent white. Still, you want the ethnic majority on your side again...

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Wednesday August 18 2010 A CANARIAN couple began an “indefinite” hunger strike outside Tenerife's Palace of Justice on Wednesday in a property dispute. by JAMES TWEEDIE Husband and wife José María Fernández Herrero and Esmerelda Delgado (pictured) from the island of El Hierro are protesting against a court ruling in March which deprived them of 350 square metres of the land on which their home is built. The couple set up camp outside the court building on in Avenida Tres de Mayo in the provincial capital with nothing but sleeping bags, folding chairs and a banner on Tuesday August 17. They announced their hunger strike, during which they will eat nothing and drink only water, at a press conference the next day. Their banner read: “Against judicial defenselessness in El Hierro.” The couple accuse lawyer Reyes Margarita Fernández Qunitero – a substitute judge who has nevertheless been in office for over four years, and who presided over the court case – of ru...

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Saturday July 24 2010 HUNDREDS turned out on Saturday for the annual re-enactment of the defence of Tenerife's capital from an invading British fleet. by JAMES TWEEDIE The event commemorates the failed attempt on July 25 1897 by British forces led by Admiral Horatio Nelson to capture the Canary islands from Spain. Nelson lost his right arm to a Spanish cannon while leading the landings at the port of Santa Cruz. The force of 1,000 British soldiers was defeated by the port's garrison under general Antonio Gutiérrez, suffering several hundred casualties, and withdrew under a truce. Ironically, Britain later came to Spain and Portugal's aid during the Peninsular War or Spanish War of Independence after those nations were conquered by France during the Napoleonic Wars. Re-enactors from Spain and Britain played the roles of the attackers and defenders in mock battles around the port-side San Juan castle at noon and later that night in Calle la Noria an...

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Saturday July 10 2010 HUNDREDS marched through Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz on Saturday in support of Western Sahara's struggle for national liberation. by JAMES TWEEDIE The demonstration, organised by the Tenerife Platform in Support of the Referendum, called on the kingdom of Morocco to honour its pledge to hold a vote on the independence of the north-west African nation less than 100 miles from the Canaries. Protesters also demanded the release of Sahrawi political prisoners in Moroccan jails, a moratorium on arms sales to the kingdom and a halt to fishing in Sahrawi waters by Spanish trawler fleets – a concession negotiated by the current Socialist Workers' Party government of prime minister José Luis Zapatero. Members of Sahrawi national liberation movement POLISARIO Front were joined by trade unionists the United Left (IU) party, the Canarian Committee for Solidarity with the Peoples (CCSP) and campaign umbrella group Assembly for Tenerife (A...

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Wednesday July 7 2010 A MONSTER pothole in Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz remains unrepaired more than five months after it appeared. by JAMES TWEEDIE The huge sink-hole in a residential street in the city's Conservatorio neighbourhood measures about six metres by three metres (20 by 10 feet) across and three metres (10 feet) deep. It has lain open since the heavy rain storm of February 1 2010 which caused severe flooding and property damage across the island. Broken pipes and torn electric cables jut and trail from the sides of the yawning pit, where rubbish has been dumped and plants have taken root. Santa Cruz council has placed safety barriers around the crumbling edges of the hole, but nothing more. A local woman said it was an “embarrassment” that the council had failed to fill in and resurface the hole and others in the city's streets almost half a year since the storm.