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Miguel Francisco Montes Neiro has the dubious honour of being the longest serving prisoner in Spain; 35 years ago he was sentenced to life for robbery and weapons charges. The Cabinet ratified the decision made towards the end of last year by the then socialist government to give him parole and he will soon be released if he does not commit any more crimes. Montes is now 61 years old, meaning that he has spent more than half his life behind bars.

Las Vegas comes to Spain
Esperanza Aguirre, the President of the Madrid Community, explained last week that her team was looking at ways and means of creating a ‘tax haven’ to accommodate the plans of US gambling boss Sheldon Adelson to build a huge casino complex in the region. Sheldon’s ‘Euro Vegas’ project, which envisages twelve resorts with 36,000 gambling rooms, six casinos, nine theatres and three golf courses would involve an investment of more than 18 billion euros from now until 2022 and would create more than 250,000 jobs. However, in turn, the entrepreneur wants the land to be provided for free, generous tax exemptions and for the Spanish smoking ban to be waived throughout the development. The jury is still out on the matter.

Gürtel Case
The ex President of the Valencia Community, Francisco Camps, and his co-defendant Ricardo Costa, who had been implicated in a case of corruption, were found not guilty by the jury, by a majority of five to four, after three days of deliberation. Camps and Costa were accused of receiving gifts from the Gürtel network, a consortium of businessmen who bribed Popular Party officials in Valencia, Castilla/La Mancha and Madrid in return for public contracts worth millions of euros. Francisco Correa, the jailed ringleader of Gürtel, gave evidence in the trial against Camps and Costa. The main evidence in the case was that of custom-made suits that anti-corruption prosecutors claimed had been given to Camps. The former regional premier always maintained that he had paid for the suits, despite there being no record of money changing hands.
In delivering its verdict, the jury said that it had reached the conclusion that neither Camps nor Costa received gifts in an official capacity because of their positions, and that it had not been proved that the suits were paid for by members of the Gürtel ring.
The foreman said that there was “no accreditation that Camps did not pay for the clothes”. The testimony of Isabel Jordán (who was heard on tape in the court to say that she had seen an account for 30,000€ in Camps’ name on the files) and of José Tomás, the tailor at the centre of the case, did not sway all the jurors.
However the Valencia PP party is still not out of the woods in the Gürtel case, as the High Court is still investigating a wide range of crimes, including illegal party financing, bribery and corruption, in which Camps’ former deputy, Vicente Rambla, Costa and several other PP members are implicated. The Gürtel case broke in 2009 when High Court Judge Baltasar Garzón blew the lid on the network and anti-corruption investigators implicated Camps. However, bizarrely, Garzón is currently on trial in the Supreme Court for the use of devices to monitor conversations between jailed Gürtel suspects and their lawyers.

Tragedy
At five o’clock in the morning a crowd of students from the University of Vigo, in the north of Spain, had been celebrating and decided to continue the party on the promenade of Orzán in A Coruña. One of the group, a man from Bratislava, lost his footing and was swept out to sea, whilst his shocked companions called the emergency services to help rescue him. The officers formed a human chain to reach the stricken man but unfortunately a freak wave swamped them and three of the officers disappeared in the swell. During the morning the dead body of one of the officers was found whilst one member of the local rescue party was discovered with signs of hypothermia and treated in hospital.