Crisis claims another victim as famous Can Fabes restaurant to close it's doors

A restaurant close to Barcelona, famed for elevating Catalan cuisine to new heights, will be closing down, two years after losing the founding chef and a coveted third Michelin star.

El Racó de Can Fabes is a restaurant located in Sant Celoni in the Montseny hills north of Barcelona, Spain, founded by chef Santi Santamaria.

Rooted in local tradition, Santamaria's gastronomic offerings elevated Catalan cuisine to the pinnacle of gastronomy and it was one of the first Spanish restaurants to be awarded a Michelin star. The restaurant has been rated with three Michelin stars each year since 1994.

However one star was lost in November 2011, just nine months after the death of the founder, Santamaria of a heart attack at the age of 53 in the kitchen of a restaurant he had just opened in Singapore.

Regina Santamaria, the founder's daughter, took over the restaurant and hired a new chef, Xavier Pellicer, who made changes to the menu and at the beginning of 2013, Pellicer left the restaurant.

Now it seems the restaurant has to give up and close down. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Santamaria family, who founded Can Fabes in 1981, said the restaurant is the latest victim of Spain's stinging economic crisis.

"In these difficult times for restaurants in our country, Can Fabes does not have the necessary economic viability to pursue a project based on excellence," the statement read.

"We have decided to put an end to one of the brightest chapters in Catalan and European cuisine of the past 25 years," it added.

According to Miss Santamaria, the decision to close the restaurant was "very hard and very sad".

"We cannot carry on, we have tried to save it by every means possible, but it hasn't worked. Now our goal is to end this chapter with our head held high." 

The restaurant will serve its last meals on August 31, 2013.

At present, there are seven Michelin three-star restaurants and 19 two-star eateries in Spain, including Can Fabes.

The top spot was taken this year by another Catalan restaurant, El Celler de Can Roca, recently voted the best restaurant in the world in the 2013 World's 50 Best list, released by Restaurant magazine. 

Video: Santi Santamaria speaks about his cuisine: (Catalan with English sub-titles) 

 
To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354705

Artist of 'Always Franco' fame found not guilty

Artist Eugenio Merino stole the limelight at the ARCO modern art fair in Madrid last year with a satirical piece of art depicting Francisco Franco in full uniform, inside a Coca-Cola fridge. Then he got sued for his trouble.

The piece of art consists of a wax model of Franco in full military gear, frozen inside the fridge.

However, once the the Franco Foundation, an organization devoted to perpetuating the memory of the “Generalísimo”, as he is known, got wind of the artwork, they immediately filed suit against the sculptor for dishonoring the former dictator.

According to the artist, the idea behind his sculpture was to show how Francisco Franco was "frozen in the Spanish people's minds." He had no intention of mocking the former nationalist leader.

Last Thursday the foundation, which is headed up by Franco's daughter, told the Regional High Court of Madrid that they would be asking Merino to pay €18,000 in damages for the insult. However, in return, the public prosecutor asked for the charges to be dropped.

On Wednesday the judge found Merino not guilty saying that the work "Always Franco" is "a work of art that causes surprise, by the unusual location of the historical character" but that it "could not undermine the honor and the dignity of the claimant Foundation, as it does not exceed our current culture-specific social applications."

Merino explained to the national daily El País that he was merely attempting to show how Franco was frozen into the minds of Spaniards. “The bigger a deal they make of this, the more people support me,” Merino told the media on leaving the court and referring to the Franco Foundation’s insistence on pursuing the case.

“They’ve already buggered me and got what they wanted: publicity.”

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, to give him his full name, ruled Spain with an iron fist from 1936 until his death in 1975. The last official statue to the former dictator was pulled down in 2008. However, he does have a tomb in the monument of Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, near Madrid. And for now, artistic expression wins the day.

To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354674

Stolen Picasso, other art burned to crisp by thief's mother

The artwork was painted by Picasso in 1971, just two years before he died at the age of 91. It was stolen in October last year from a Dutch art gallery and the remains have now possibly surfaced, after the work was burned literally to a crisp.

Known as "El Loco (cabeza de arlequín)", or "The Madman (harlequin head)", the painting has allegedly been burned in an oven by the mother of one of the thieves. 

 

Continuing with investigations of the theft from the art gallery in the Netherlands, investigators in Romania found "small fragments of painting primer, the remains of canvas and paint", as well as some copper and steel nails that pre-dated the 20th century inside the oven of a woman, whose son, Radu Dogaru, was among the accused in the theft.

 

The forensic investigator, Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, cannot say for sure that the burnt remains are from the stolen paintings, but he did say that if this were proved to be the case, it would be "a crime against humanity."

Dogaru's son was charged with stealing artworks by Picasso, Monet, Matisse and other renowned artists. Reportedly the art was worth between €100 million and €200 million. 

 

Olga Dogaru, the thief's mother, admitted last week to burning the paintings to “destroy evidence” and prevent police from being able to blame her son for the theft. Dogaru apparently also claimed to have hidden the artwork in an abandoned house and also a cemetery in the Romanian village of Carcaliu, but she says she dug them up and then incinerated them once police started searching the village.

 

She told Romanian Mediafax news agency, "I placed the suitcase containing the paintings in the stove.”

 

Six Romanians, including Dogaru's son, Radu have been charged in what is the biggest art theft yet in the Netherlands, for stealing 20 works from Amsterdam's Van Gogh museum in 1991.

 

Besides the Picasso, other paintings in the heist included Monet's 1901 "Waterloo Bridge, London and Charing Cross Bridge, London"; Matisse's 1919 "Reading Girl in White and Yellow"; Paul Gauguin's 1898 "Girl in Front of Open Window"; Meyer de Haan's "Self-Portrait, around 1890"; and Lucian Freud's 2002 work "Woman With Eyes Closed."

 

Dogaru told the media that the thieves struggled to find a buyer after a Romanian fashion designer and the Russian mafia turned down the paintings.

Oberlander-Tarnoveanu said that forensic specialists have been analyzing the ashes since March and hope to submit their findings to prosecutors next week. 

 

The Picasso painting, while not one of his most famous works, is one of a series of paintings of harlequins the Málaga artist painted during his lifetime. It is thought that he was influenced in these works by a close relationship with circus people during his time in France as a young man.

 

The paintings were owned by the private Triton Foundation, a collection of avant-garde art compiled by multimillionaire Willem Cordia. Cordia was an investor and businessman who died in 2011 and was survived by his wife, Marijke Cordia-Van der Laan.

To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354653

83-year-old bullfighter drops trousers for the press, shocks Spain

Jaime Ostos, 83, was the victim of a horrific goring in the bullring 50 years ago. However, he shocked readers of Spain's "La Gaceta" newspaper on Wednesday, by removing his trousers to display the damage to his groin.

He even, apparently, told the journalist and photographer to “Shoot as many as you want.” 

 

While the media in Spain has been totally involved in the corruption scandal involving Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy and the court case of former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas, implicating said Rajoy, this business daily newspaper decided to go for a different shock value, with Ostos featured as the biggest news story.

 

While preferring not to show the full image in this article, it can be viewed here by anyone wishing to see the famous fifty-year-old injury.

 

From that image, you can see that Ostos really took over the front page, trousers down, baring his scar and just managing to hide his genitalia, while PM Rajoy and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, Secretary General of PSOE (the opposition party), take very much second place with a small feature at the bottom. The blurred out and cropped image below will give you the general idea: 

 

The headline of the story in "La Gaceta" was the rather ominous, “Doctors preferred to sign my death certificate rather than get blood on their hands." 

 

There have been reactions of humor, irony and outrage at the newspaper's choice for a front page feature, which celebrated the anniversary of the famous bullfighter's nasty injury.

To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354612

Video game inspires 19-year-old to kill his millionaire dad

After suffering "constant humiliation" from the treatment of his father, the 19-year-old son ended the 57-year-old man's life using a spiked bat, similar to that used in a video game he had been playing.

Last Friday, after confessing to the cold-blooded murder of 57-year-old Andreu Coll Bennássar, Andreu Coll Tur together with his friend and accomplice, 20-year-old Francisco Abas Rodriguez, have been remanded in custody by a Spanish judge on Mallorca, without bail.

According to El Mundo, the murder of Andreu Coll senior took place on the night of June 29 in the small Mallorcan municipality of Alaró.

Coll junior and Abas admitted to having first drugged Coll senior, before bludgeoning him to death with a medieval-style spiked bat, a hammer, a vase and a music speaker.

Reportedly they first cleaned up the blood and fingerprints with bleach, and then drove in the victim's Land Rover to nearby Bunyola to get rid of the body.

They had wanted to make the attack look like a robbery, and had removed Coll senior's rings and Rolex watch before dumping the body.

The two men attended the victim's funeral as normal. However, the Civil Guard arrested them soon after, as infrared tests showed them to be the real killers. 

The two young men had met online a year and a half earlier, while playing the video game "Call of Duty." 

The lawyer for Abas said that his client fell in love with Coll junior, after they spent time together in Mallorca and Zaragoza. He said that his client "regretted taking part in the murder but had done it for love." 

Both men were obsessed with violent video games and spent up to 12 hours a day playing them. Police believe that the spiked bat used by the men in the murder was based on a similar weapon seen in the video game "Dead Rising 2." 

While Coll junior had told the judge that he murdered his father due to his constant humiliation, he is also heir to a €50 million fortune. Spanish media is speculating that money may also have been a motive in the murder. 

A nondisclosure order has been dictated by the Regional High Court in the Balearic Islands while the trial continues. According to the Majorca Daily Bulletin, the two young men are both on suicide watch and in separate cells.

To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354582

Teenage prank turns into 'kidnapping' scare

When a teenage girl decided to play a prank on her father, things went terribly wrong, as a Spanish police officer stopped his vehicle and pulled a gun on him. However, it could have been much, much worse.

A 13-year-old girl in Valencia, Spain decided to play a silly and childish joke on her dad. She held up a sign in the car, while they were driving along, which read: "Help. I'm being kidnapped."

 

Her father had no idea what she was doing, but when an off-duty Spanish Civil Guard officer got a glimpse of the sign he did not hesitate in his attempts to "rescue" the poor girl.

 

He swerved his car so as to block and force the alleged kidnapper's vehicle to stop. The officer then jumped out of the vehicle and pointed a gun at the girl's father's head, ordering him out of the vehicle, with hands on head.

 

The shocked father obeyed, all the time assuring the officer that he was the father of the girl.

 

It didn't take too long for the teenager to admit to the joke. However, the off-duty officer had already alerted the authorities to what he thought was a serious incident, which then drew a large deployment of police officers to the scene.

 

Once it had been established that they were, indeed, father and daughter, they were both allowed to leave the scene with no charge.

 

However, its pretty certain the teenage prankster will have quite a bit of explaining to do.

 

This isn't the only time that a faked kidnapping has gone wrong in Spain, as Digital Journal reported recently on a stag night prank that ended up in the Madrid headlines as an armed kidnapping.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354540

UK's 'coke king' busted on the Costa Blanca, Spain

Benidorm - Britain's criminals might just start thinking twice about moving to Spain to continue plying their "trade," as Spanish police have arrested a notorious UK drug dealer and "coke king," Brian Charrington, and several accomplices.

On Monday, Spanish National Police arrested Charrington, who is suspected of running an international trafficking racket involving cocaine from Venezuela.

Overall, police arrested 13 people in both Spain and Venezuela, including Charrington, who police describe as "one of the 10 criminals most investigated by European police and leader of an international drug-trafficking organization."

According to a statement, officers seized 220 kilos (485 pounds) of cocaine from an apartment in L'Albir, close to Benidorm on the Costa Blanca, and also impounded property and bank accounts worth more than €5 million ($6.5 million).

The organization used a group of drug mules to fly cocaine into Spain using commercial flights, and officers intercepted at Barajas Airport, Madrid a man carrying five kilos of cocaine in eight packages distributed across specially adapted underwear, pictured above.
 The Daily Mirror reports that the arrests have also smashed a further plot to smuggle tons of cocaine into Europe via "an armada of yachts."

57-year-old Charrington, who has his own Wikipedia page, used to operate in the North East of England during the 1980's. He rose to fame as a major drug baron in 1992, when a raid at his Middlesbrough home unearthed almost €2.3 million in cash, which was all allegedly linked to drug dealing. While arrested in 1992, he was never formally charged, due to faulty police procedures.

It seems he moved to the sunny Costa Blanca to avoid any further UK problems only to finally meet up with the Spanish National Police.

This news comes shortly after the arrest of yet another notorious UK criminal, Mark Alan Lilley, a convicted drug trafficker who had been on the run for 13 years. As Digital Journal reported, the man was caught by Spanish police in his villa in southern Spain, hiding away in his safe room.

To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/354498