Madeira News Blog

Oh dear! Anyone who doesn’t like football isn’t going to enjoy today’s news blog much. It nearly all revolves around an interview with the president of Nacional, Rui Alves, and with about 70% of the Diário front page, I guess it has a high profile because of tomorrow’s huge game here with Werder Bremen in the Europa League.

(16th September). Today’s main news headline : ‘Ambitious Nacional – The alvinegro sporting city will have a central photovoltaic system, road connection direct to the Caminho dos Pretos, a rugby pitch and athletics track’. Alvinegro is the club nickname for CD Nacional da Madeira. Alves says he is optimistic about tomorrows game. The club is approaching an average of 3 thousand supporters for its games, and has a growing membership list. The club is looking at some changes in the stadium complex, including solar power, access changes, and also acquiring nearby land to host an rugby pitch and athletics track.

That headline then has 3 more sub headlines:
- ‘In An Interview With The Diário, Rui Alves Believes That A Victory Over Werder Bremen Is Going To Confuse European Opponents’.
- ‘Race For The Presidency Of The League Of Clubs Continues In The Plans Of Rui Alves’.
- ‘Players Of Nacional Make The Set In The ‘Powerade’ Awards’. The players won plenty of awards for their achievements last season.
But as I suspect this is of little interest to most, I will move on.

‘Ronaldo, Happy For His Father, Sent Message And Scored Two Goals In Zurich’. His father was posthumously awarded for his contribution to sport, at the ‘Powerade’ Awards’ yesterday. CR737 then went on to score two of the five goals for his new team, Real Madrid, in the champions league victory last night.

‘Car Parks In The Centre ‘Summon’ Drivers – In the opinion of the environmental agency, Quercus, and drivers, the existence of accessible and diverse parking in Funchal feeds and fattens the traffic indulgence’. A vice president of Funchal Council says that they are developing a project, with the bus company Horários do Funchal, for a ‘park and ride’ scheme, where one drives to the outskirts of the city, parks ones car, and then catches a very frequent bus service from the car park to the city centre. The Funchal central traffic problem is getting steadily worse, just because parking facilities exist, and it also it still being possible to park without paying. "Paying to park is very cheap, and it shouldn’t be", says the president of the Madeira branch of Quercus. He believes that the comfort and speed of a car journey should be challenged by better public transport, and that there should be bus lanes on the main routes to improve public transport travel times. Around 47 thousand vehicles are believed to enter Funchal daily.

‘Armed Masked Robbers Raid Cash Desk’. They struck twice yesterday, firstly at the Hotel Funchal Design (Rua da Alegria), where they surprised the receptionist at 4.30 am. The two robbers had a knife, and forced the receptionist to hand over €57 from the cash till. Then sometime after 11 am, masked men appeared at Elos cash and carry in Viveiros, and forced checkout staff to hand over "a significant sum". They then fled on foot, chased by shop staff, but managed to lose their pursuers in the street labyrinths of Viveiros.

‘Elderly With Keys Around The neck – The robberies in the top of Ribeira Brava give rise to appeal : "The police must have compassion for the people". The call comes from ‘up top’, from the people in São João. "We asked the police to have compassion for the people". Celina Gonçalves, 75, lives alone in Lombo da Levada, and this Summer has been robbed three times. She is not the only one. The ‘nightmare’ started late in July when her house was freshly painted and wide open, and two individuals tried separately to steal the €400 she had set aside to pay the decorator, the second attempt was successful. She had been duped, so she she didn’t report the matter to the police or tell her family. Not long after, €300 she had set aside for another job that needed doing in her house, and after that another €200, were all stolen. She now has lock on every door, and wears the keys on a cord around her neck. Another story along the same lines follows, and the victim aged 67, reported to the Ribeira Brava police an attempt to rob her home, and was concerned that the response was not compassionate towards her. Even the church of São João has been a victim, with the donations from a mass and a box of candles stolen. They say "they only don’t take [steal] more because the people don’t have".

‘Eleven In The Final Of ‘Funchal A Cantar – Vânia Fernandes will be the patron on Saturday in the final, that will include fireworks’. The final of the singing competition will be held in the Praça do Município (town hall square) at 8 pm, and promises to be an unforgettable event, with a total of 65 artists involved. The 11 individual finalists were whittled down from the 30 in the preliminary round, held on Monday night.

‘Four New Cases Of H1N1 On Madeira – 21 suspected cases were investigated by the laboratory in the last week’. The Institute for Health Administration IASAÚDE confirmed 4 new case of Gripe A swine flu, taking the total to 39 since 12th July. One case came from Canada, the other three were secondary infections. On a related theme, vaccines for seasonal flu were starting to be delivered to pharmacies yesterday afternoon. Medical prescriptions for these vaccines are valid until 31st December.

‘Man Aged 29 Caught Selling Drugs In Night Spot (club or bar?) – 120 doses of cocaine and 600 Euros seized’. He was caught in the act by police with the drugs, and money presumed to be the takings from the drugs sold. In Funchal a police operation resulted in the seizure of hashish sufficient for 2,400 fixes.

‘Linha Saúde 24 Strengthened – 400 nurses with the capacity to answer 15 thousand calls a day’. Currently the health service hotline is taking 4,500 calls a day, 1,000 of those being specific to Gripe A concerns, but if necessary can deal with up to 15,000 enquiries daily. The centre is run by a private company, and should they fail to deal with 15% or more of the enquiries, they will be penalised, as they have already been 3 times for failing to meet half-yearly performance targets, since it was set up in 2007. The short term objective is to recruit 200 more nurses, to raise the call answering capacity to 20,000 per day, and then longer term, to cope with new cases of Gripe A swine flu, 800 to 900 nurses will be required.

(5th August). Today’s main news headline : ‘Porto Santo Alert To The Madeira Market – José António Castro, president of ACIPS, says that regional tourism is decisive for the island and he no longer believes in the new hotel of Ronaldo’. The president of the commercial association of Porto Santo says that the hotels should learn to adapt to market conditions in times of crisis, and start to sell packages inside the regional market, to those Madeirans that represent over 80% of the tourism that visits the island, recognising the it is a "pretty complicated" situation, particularly due to air transport, and particularly the cost. He believes that Porto Santo is capable of marketing itself on its strengths, highlighting safe conditions as a major factor. "We have to sell using the safety factor, with the potential to be an ecological island, with clean spaces and unpolluted seas, such as the paths and walking tracks" he said, adding "Nethertheless we’re still a little known destination in the European markets, even with the good work of the Association for the Promotion of Madeira. But we feel that Porto Santo lives essentially from the Madeirans". He also talks about the proposed 7 star hotel which would have footballer Cristiano Ronaldo as a partner and promoter, and believes that the project will not go ahead. He says so much time has now passed since it was announced, and that as CR7 no longer exists, the idea of a 7 star hotel (in line with the player’s shirt number) disappeared when the player left Manchester United.

‘Sand Constructions In Porto Santo And In Funchal – Panda goes to Porto Santo for the 52nd competition promoted by the Diário de Notícias’. Last year Funchal was selected as one of the locations for the preliminaries of the competition ‘Contruções na Areia’, and does the same this year on Saturday (starts 11am). The competition takes place on 18 beaches around Portugal. Also on Porto Santo on 15th August (3.30pm Praia da Fontinha), the event will be filmed and shown by the children’s TV channel ‘Panda’, and will be attended by the TV star, the big cuddly Panda himself. The competition is open to children aged between 6 and 14 who own a plastic bucket.

‘Vinho Seco Of Porto Santo Banished From The Downtown Street Sellers’. For some reason this was in the ‘economy section’ of the Diário, which seems to have been taken over by Porto Santo stories today. I have explained about ‘vinho seco’ before, but just in case anyone missed it, it is a local dry red wine made from low quality grapes, and is a main tipple of the working class and poor, as it sells for €1 or less a litre. Most visitors to Madeira would be unlikely to come across it. It is also believed to contain toxins, and is the root to much of the drunkenness and alcoholism on Madeira. Anyway, back to the story. Fruit sellers working from street stands in Vila Baleira on Porto Santo have been prohibited from displaying or selling Vinho Seco, by the council, a source of annoyance for some, as the wine "is much appreciated by the Porto-Santenses and tourists". The licensed sellers are now deemed to have inadequate hygiene conditions to serve the wine in glasses. The bars and tascas are unaffected. The ruling has cheesed off producers and sellers, as there was already insufficient demand to sell all the wine produced. The Diário found that it was still possible to get the tipple ‘under the counter’, or buy a bottle disguised as something else. Sounds like another politically correct thingy to me … lacking hygiene indeed … I would use this stuff to clean my lavatory if I ever ran out of disinfectant, and its probably cheaper, and certainly smells better

The main photo today shows a traffic queue on the via rápida at the start of roadworks  : ‘Vialitoral Reduces Confusion In Boa Nova – The persistent critics of the chaos caused by maintenance works are going to stop: the management company accelerated the works in order to ease the traffic until Saturday’. The job was targeted to be done in record time at the junction at Boa Nova, after a storm of criticism from unhappy drivers along that route, after long traffic queues. The company recognised and regretted the inconvenience caused by the essential work, and the change in plan enabled the work to be completed at midnight last night, leaving the two lanes open and flowing for today’s travellers. Further work will be undertaken on expansion joints Saturday and Sunday, but of course there will be much less traffic then, and further work planned for next week will also cause less hindrance.

‘Police Already Receive One Debt That They Complained About – The ‘ungrateful’ weekend was highlighted in the Diário. The government didn’t like it. But the debt of P. Cruz was paid yesterday morning to the police officers’. President Jardim made an appeal, and the president of the Casa do Povo (House of the People) in Machico responded with a cheque for €742, overdue by a year for the policing provided for their Grape Festival.  Alberto João Jardim denied a lack of recognition for the police that had worked long hours during the hot weekend for the royal visit and the rally, saying that he had sent thanks in writing to the Regional Commander of the PSP (police). The union official didn’t withdraw his accusation of ingratitude though. Perhaps it is the case that for special events like festas and the rally, police are paid directly through the organisers of the event … sounds strange though?

Three more ‘forest’ fires reported yesterday. One in Santo da Serra was extinguished by Santa Cruz firemen, who after returning to base were then called to another high up in Gaula. The other was in Lombada, Ponta do Sol, and nearly burnt down an electricity post.

In football : ‘Ex-Nacional Player Alonso Signs For Marítimo’.

Anyone watch the Sporting v Twente champion league qualifier last night? It looked all over for Sporting Lisbon until 90+5 minutes, in a 95 minute game, when the Sporting goalkeeper came upfield in desperation for a final corner to be taken … and scored with his shoulder, with a couple of deflections along the way! Amazing. I remember Jimmy Glass from many years ago doing the same thing.

The board of the Health Service of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (SESARAM) is promoting first aid training for people aged between 16 and 25. The initiative aims to provide young people with useful skills that could help save a life.

‘Week Of Youth Starts Today – Art, music, astronomy, and plenty of social life are the high points of the initiative’. The 2009 version, promoted by the regional secretary of human resources, runs until 12th August. It also includes a hip hop contest on Saturday. A contest involving trendy beer ingredients, that should be worth a visit!

3 months after the first case showed in Portugal, there are now 342 367 registered and confirmed cases of Gripe A, or H1N1 swine flu, with the majority not needing to be hospitalised and quickly returning to normal life. No one has died. I have not heard of any new cases on Madeira for getting on two weeks now, so I reckon we must be totally clear for the moment.

(2nd August). The last of today’s headline stories : ‘Bernardo Trindade Pulls Out His Election Agenda Today – Meeting with ex-members of parliament in São Bento; Luísa Clode Araújo is chosen as the representative’. Trindade, currently Portugal’s minister for tourism, and a Madeiran, is adding the final touches to his campaign team. He is ‘top of the list’ for the socialist party to represent Madeira, and in truth is the only one likely to succeed after the 3 socialists that were elected last time.

The political parties will this week begin delivering their lists of candidates for the local and national elections to the governing tribunal. The lists must be all in by the 17th August for both elections.

‘Tourists Stir Little On Porto Santo – There are hotels on the island with good occupation, but others are lower than last year’. This weekend has been good, and next week has higher bookings than expected, but there are complaints about the loss of business since 2008 in some quarters, especially those that are less than a third booked. After the episode with the Italian tourists, the island is being (re)discovered by Venezuelan emigrants and many French who are new this year, and also there has been an increase in the number of Spanish visitors, and those using the new charter flights from Lisbon and Porto. The Torre Praia, Aparthotel Luamar, and the Praia Dourada all have reservations of about 90%, but they all belong to the same group, and offer packages tied in with the ferry company Porto Santo Line. The Hotel Quinta do Serrado on the north coast of the island has bookings at just 30% of occupancy this week.

‘A Difficult May For Regional Hotels – Hotel prices on Madeira dropped around 11.22% during the month’. All the indicators for the month showed varying negatives, compared to May 2008. The summary of market indicators was released by TTT Hotel Monitor of the Association of Hotels of Portugal (AHP). In percentage terms, the average price per room available fell 11.22%, the occupancy rate per room showed a negative of 4.71% and the average price per room sold also registered a decrease of 6.83%. In Portugal as a whole, the May to May comparison showed a fall of 11.76% in occupancy, and a fall of 17.52% in the average revenue per room.

‘Gripe A Attacks Cruise Ship That Visits Madeira – The ship has a visit scheduled for Funchal on 2nd December’. The French authorities lifted a quarantine yesterday afternoon due to swine flu (H1N1) for the 5,000 people who were on board the cruise ship "Voyager of the Seas" that docked in Marseilles. 3,600 passengers were allowed off the ship after Gripe A tests, but another 146 people (66 passengers, and 80 crew) who were infected, or had had contact with the infected, were kept on board.

‘Madeira Promotes Itself In The North Of Europe – Action that will support the creations of new flight routes of SATA to Madeira and that will inform people about the region’. Campaigns addressed at travel agents and tour operators, in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) and Finland, will be held next month. The actions are being planned under the guidance of the Association for the Promotion of Madeira, with the support of regional hotels and travel agents, and is in the form of a ‘road show’, in the cities of Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen. SATA (the Azores based airline) has already set up new flights from Stockholm and Copenhagen, and it is hoped that the road shows will stimulate new initiatives. The four countries are perceived to be amongst those less affected by the crisis in tourism terms.