Saturday, February 16th, 2008
The Costa del Sol has many outlets for artists of all kinds and from many different nationalities and cultures. Apart from the many art galleries, large and small dotted about the Costa del Sol there are art cafes in abundance where artists can display their work and sell them to anyone interested in buying them. Many hotels on the Costa del Sol also display and sell local artists work.
So its always a pleasure to hear about a British contemporary artist bringing an exhibition of his work to the Costa del Sol.
The CAC Contemporary Arts Centre in the Costa Del Sol’s capital, Malaga is showing a selection of the work of Jason Martin, an young up and coming British artist. The exhibition, which is called Nomad, consists of different coloured oils painted on aluminium. This gives an incredible effect of contours and reflected light as the clientèle moves around the art gallery.
Jason acknowledges the influence on his work of Casper David Friedrich, a German painter who was one of the first painters to explore the link between light and texture.
Jason Martin was born in the Channel Islands in 1970 and now lives and works in London. He first became known at the famous 1997 “Sensation” exhibition, where his work was displayed alongside the Chapman brothers, Damien Hurst and Sarah Lucas.
Martin’s Costa del Sol exhibition can be viewed at the CAC in Malaga until 6th of April. The gallery is open from Tuesday to Sunday between 10am to 8pm and admission is free.
PS: Costa Del Sol
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008
The Costa Del Sol has in recent years seen one of the biggest property building and buying booms in Europe, but the local residents can now breathe a sigh of relief as it looks like that particular bubble has burst.
The Costa del Sol Association of Constructors and Promoters reported to the FITUR tourism fair which was held in Madrid last week, that overall sales of tourist property in the province of Malaga actually fell by around 50% last year to an historic low of 540 million euros.
As a result of this huge decrease in sales, in barely two years Malaga province has dropped from leading the real estate sector to the last place. That now puts it firmly behind Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, the Balearics, the Canary Islands, Cadiz and Huelva.
In the same time period, sales in the province of Murcia increased by 125%.
The president of the Association, José Prado, told reporters there were many factors in play. The main one of these was surely recently highlighted corruption in Marbella, which has unfortunately generated a climate of distrust among purchasers, especially foreigners. He said, “If even today they are still talking about knocking down homes which obtained their construction licence, have their mortgage, and are registered at the notary, how would anybody dare buy a house?”
José Prado also criticised what he referred to as the enormous legal vacuum across the province, “Currently there is not a single new PGOU Urban Plan approved anywhere in the province, not even in its initial phase. Even if they were started now they would not be definitive for two or three years, and by that time we would be in crisis because of a lack of designated building land”.
In Malaga province, the number of new homes completed has dropped from 41,740 in 2005 to 29,450 in 2007. The fall was sharpest in Torremolinos (74%), then Estepona (73%), Vélez Malaga (44%), Fuengirola (44%), Mijas (31%) and Nerja (30%).
Bad news for the tourist industry was also announced at the FITUR fair last Friday. The main tour operators will have 20% fewer seats allocated on package deals from Britain to Spain this year.
This is a direct result of the increasing success of low cost carriers and independent travel. To add to an expected drop in tourist numbers, two of the four main travel companies in the package holiday market have merged. These companies insist that the reduction simply means an end to the old policy of excess offer and the number of travellers they attract will not fall by the same amount.
Last year, Thomas Cook merged with MyTravel and TUI merged with First Choice creating two much larger companies. Between them, they brought around 400,000 Britons to Spain in 2007.
PS: Costa Del Sol
Posted in Costa Del Sol Real Estate | 2 Comments »
Picture by G J Allen
