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Bidder offers just €10,000 for showpiece in Spanish bankruptcy auction. A Chinese company that was the only bidder for one of Spain's "ghost airports" wants to revive the site as a cargo hub for the Asian market. Ciudad Real airport, one of the most notorious emblems of Spain's economic crash, cost €1 billion (HK$8.4 billion) to build and was on sale at a knockdown price of €40 million. Tzaneen International was the sole bidder in the bankruptcy auction, however, and it offered just €10,000. The facilities of the deserted site, 160km south of Madrid, include a runway long enough to...

The United States is now the world’s second largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico, according to a new study published by the prestigious Instituto Cervantes. The report says there are 41 million native Spanish speakers in the US plus a further 11.6 million who are bilingual, mainly the children of Spanish-speaking immigrants. This puts the US ahead of Colombia (48 million) and Spain (46 million) and second only to Mexico (121 million). Among the sources cited in the report is the US Census Office which estimates that the US will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, making it the biggest...

[The following are just excerpts from the first 5 sections of an extensive very revealing multifaceted 2014 Pew Research survey. My focus is mainly on the Protestant and Catholic views. Complete Report PDF] Religion in Latin AmericaWidespread Change in a Historically Catholic RegionLatin America is home to more than 425 million Catholics – nearly 40% of the world’s total Catholic population – and the Roman Catholic Church now has a Latin American pope for the first time in its history. Yet identification with Catholicism has declined throughout the region, according to a major new Pew Research Center survey that...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- The Portland Trail Blazers had a laminated card in their locker room at the FedExForum on Sunday that included the phrase "We don't lose to Spanish players." The Memphis Grizzlies, the Trail Blazers' opponent in their Western Conference first-round series, feature one of the NBA's most prominent Spanish players, All-Star center Marc Gasol.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said he believes that President Barack Obama’s first executive amnesty for so-called DREAMers—the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)—is “important” and he won’t reverse it himself if elected president. He delivered these remarks in a Spanish-language interview he gave to Univision’s Jorge Ramos. “I believe DACA is important. It can’t be terminated from one moment to the next, because there are already people benefiting from it,” Rubio said in Spanish on Ramos’s television program, according to an English translation provided by the media service Grabien. “But yes, it is going to...

Sensing vulnerability in the GOP’s control over state government after four rocky months under the Ducey administration, Arizona Democrats are wasting no time in trying to crank up voter turnout for 2016. And if Andy Dresden, D-Casa Grande get his way, that aggressive posture will swim in waters never before tested in Arizona, or any other state for that matter. “I am proposing a bill to make Spanish the official language of the Great State of Arizona,” said Dresden, who admitted he, himself, ‘even in a Taco Bell drive-thru,’ does not speak Spanish, “There’s a reason America has never had...

Ted Cruz won’t sit around and wait, because waiting is a loser’s game. Cruz, the first-term Republican senator from Texas, officially announced his candidacy for president of the United States early Monday morning. While there are many fascinating aspects to Cruz’s candidacy announcement—his climate change denials, his political grandstanding that led to a government shutdown— there is one question that immediately arises in my mind: What will he, a Cuban-American, do to speak directly to Latino voters over the next several months? Cruz has been dismissed in the past for not being “Latino enough.” And although he doesn’t speak fluent...

It was one of the most searing paintings of the modernist era: Pablo Picasso's scream of a masterpiece inspired by the fascist bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, a horror that would prove but a prelude to the Second World War that began a couple of years later. The same evil empires that conspired to crush republican Spain in the 1930s -- Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia -- would unite again to invade Poland at the end of that decade, and set off worldwide calamity. Spain was only an early victim. While the West continued to dither,...

A judge in Burgos has called for the arrest of exorcist, Jesús Hernández Sahagún, along with the girl’s priest after she went through 13 exorcisms while still a minor. Sahagún, the official exorcist of Valladolid, is facing charges of gender violence, causing injury and mistreatment according to local newspaper, Diario de Burgos, and has been asked to make a statement on the events. The events date back to 2012, when the girl began to suffer from anorexia. According to El País, her religious parents became convinced she was possessed by the devil and decided to have their child exorcised. She...

WASHINGTON – A plan that would dedicate two public high schools in suburban Washington to immigrants and second-generation students struggling with English is pitting black and Hispanic communities -– usually allies -- against one another. The Prince George’s County, Md., chapter of the NAACP is strongly opposing the plan -- which would take effect next school year, and cover about 800 students having English language difficulties -- claiming it will pull resources from other students and unfairly redistribute them to Hispanic students. Some critics go so far as to compare the plan to segregation. “It’s a slap in the face,”...

Based on House Republican documents reviewed by Breitbart News, pro-amnesty Republican freshman Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida will be delivering the Republican’s Spanish-language address in response to Obama’s State of the Union speech. Curbelo recently made waves with a January 18 interview in The Hill, which focused on his strong dissent from the basic Republican position on immigration and all but stated his support for Obama’s executive amnesty.... The Florida Republican is a vocal supporter of actions on immigration reform that many in the GOP have rejected, including a Senate-passed bill that House Republican leaders have refused to bring up...

The Partnership for a New American Economy today launched a new ad campaign calling on Congress to act on immigration reform this year. (SNIP) The ad will premiere tonight at the PNAE, FWD.us, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce event, “#iCodeImmigration: Accelerating Immigration Reform,” in Washington DC, featuring Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL-25) and Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC-5).

[This is part of Catholic Analysis' special series on Pope Alexander VI. This part, the seventh, touches on his closeness with his native country. Read the sixth part.] Br. J.B. Darcy points out some necessary background information: "For centuries, Spain had been almost completely overridden by the Moors. The Spaniards had been trying to take back their country from the Moors for almost 800 years. By the middle of the 15th century, this reconquest was almost complete, but Spain was still a hodgepodge of competing principalities and, because of its constant state of warfare, still a very backward country." [1]...

A Spanish judge has ordered a father to pay his 29-year-old daughter €500 ($630) a month in financial assistance, citing the difficulties under 30s have in finding work because of the country's crisis. A man who has been been paying child support to his daughter for 24 years will have to do so for a little longer after a judge in southern Spain's Cádiz province ruled he would have to continue to support her until she completed her studies. The man who separated from the woman's mother nearly a quarter of a century ago had gone to court asking that...

A great many Republican House and Senate candidates may be staying away from talking immigration, or immigration reform this cycle, but not Jeb Bush. A funny thing happened on Jeb's recent visit to Colorado to stump for Republican Cory Gardner in his race against Democrat Mark Udall.

New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and Milady Baez, the chief for “English-language learners,” are looking to increase dual-language programs, in which students receive instruction in both English and a second language. This is bad news for the kids and for New York City. I know from personal experience. Start with the big picture: Multilingualism in a person is a great asset — but a society with no common language is cursed. This holds double for New York, the ultimate city of immigrants. Without English holding it together, New York would soon cease to work.

TORRANCE, Calif. (AP) — A pet parrot that spoke with a British accent when it disappeared from its home four years ago has been reunited with its owner — and the bird now speaks Spanish.

A Spanish nurse being treated for ebola has said she did not tell doctors she had been in contact with the virus and only found out she had the disease after reading the news online. The 40-year-old told Spanish TV station Cuatro she did not consider she might have ebola until the last moment. She said: "I found out on my mobile phone. I felt something was up because to begin with the doctors and nurses in Alcorcon were coming in and out every hour and then they start to come in less often. "Then I was listening to them...

The moderator gave New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez the nod to start her opening statement. She smiled, then looked at the camera. "Welcome. And thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to the Hispanic people of my community," Martinez said in Spanish. It marked Martinez's entry in an emerging trend as Republicans and Democrats around the U.S. court Hispanic voters. From California to Texas, colleges and Spanish-language networks are hosting similar Spanish debates regardless of candidates' fluency amid the growing influence of Latinos as swing voters in key races.

A Spanish nurse who treated an Ebola victim in Madrid is thought to be the first person to have contracted the virus outside Africa, health officials say. The nurse tested positive for Ebola in initial tests and doctors are awaiting final results, according to reports. She was part of the team that treated Spanish priest Manuel Garcia Viejo, who died of Ebola on 25 September.