Jaunted

Airline Bankruptcies / Spanair / Air Comet / Spanish Travel / Airline Industry / Airline News / Travel News / → All Tags

Spanair Shuts Down, Airline Industry Poised for Even Worse in 2012

The San Francisco Chronicle wants you to know that everything is alright with the airline industry. U.S.-based airlines are turning profits, and US Airways' President even says there's zero evidence of "macroeconomic weakness" to be found.

That will be news to Spanair,, which collapsed so fast on Friday that it left 20,000 travelers stranded with no return flights home (the good press they got from giving passengers Christmas presents failed to stem the tide of millions and millions in losses). Spanair's shuttering follows the closing of Spain's Air Comet, whose flight attendants subsequently had to do nude photo shoots just to draw attention to the €7 million in unpaid wages they were owed.

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Theme Parks / Roller Coasters / Spain Travel / Amusement Parks / Paramount Park / → All Tags

Paramount Park Murcia Might Be the World's Next Great Theme Park

Theme park junkies might need to cross the Atlantic to get their next fix in the future, as the newly announced Paramount Park in Spain might just be the next big thing. The corporate wallets are open wide, as organizers and officials are thinking about spending around $1.5 billion to get the new place up and running just outside Murcia along the country’s coast.

There’s a lot of stuff still on the drawing board, as bulldozers and backhoes probably won’t start rolling around until 2012 at the earliest. However, if all goes well it could be welcoming tourists from around the globe in 2015, as it looks to compete with Disneyland Paris as the amusement park hotspot in Europe.

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Bicycling / Biking / Hertz / Bike Sharing / Green Travel / Spain Travel / → All Tags

Spain Gets All the Cool Stuff, Like Hertz's Rental Electric Bicycles

This seems crazy, but leave it to Hertz to figure out more ways to rent things that move to travelers when they just don't need cars. We're talking about electric bicycles, which have now entered Hertz's rental fleets in London and—the newest—all over Spain, including Granada, Almería, Alicante, Valencia, Pontevedra, Álava and Barcelona. Even the islands of Mallorca and Formentera haven't been left out; Hertz has brought their nine different types of Swiss Flyer electric bikes off the mainland.

We'd probably most likely use these on an island; it's already on our to-do list now for Palma.

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Celeb Travel / Halle Berry / Spain Travel / → All Tags

Halle Berry Spends This Final Bit of Summer in Spain

Now that summer is over most of Hollywood is getting back to work, but somehow Halle Berry has found a way to squeeze one more week out of the season.

Halle, her boyfriend Olivier Martinez and her daughter Nahla, were spotted strolling through the streets of Palma, Majorca, Spain yesterday where they are currently on vacation. Earlier in the day, Halle also took Nahla to Palma's outdoor market where they made a few purchases before a scenic train ride.

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Celeb Travel / Spain Travel / Summer Travel / Javier Bardem / Eva Longoria / Penelope Cruz / → All Tags

Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz Join the Tourist Crush in Roses, Spain

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem were spotted with seven-month-old son Leo enjoying a day off in Roses, Costa Brava, Spain where they took a stroll through town before stopping for lunch.

The hot couple was joined by Penelope's brother Eduardo and his girlfriend, Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria. Though Cruz and Longoria have only been dating for a few months, she seemed to fit right in with the family. Over the weekend, Eva brought Eduardo to one of her favorite haunts too, her L.A. restaurant Beso, before they headed off to Spain.

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Airline Fees / Ryanair / Airlines / Airline News / LCCs / Travel Fees / Lawsuits / → All Tags

Spain Isn't Cool with Ryanair's BYO Boarding Pass Policy

Even if you’re not obsessed with all things travel like we are, you’re probably somewhat familiar with Ryanair and all the fees, tricks, and traps they use to generate more revenue. Just one of the things that you need to do before heading to the airport is print out your boarding pass, because if you need to do it at the airport you’re going to be charged for it...some 40 Euros ($53) for the pleasure, actually.

Spain isn’t too cool with this fee, as a judge in the country has ruled that Ryanair can’t charge passengers who need to print their boarding pass at the airport. A Spanish lawyer brought up the lawsuit, as he himself was hit with the fee for needing to print out his boarding materials at the airport.

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A Heartwarming Viral Video: Spanair Surprises Its Christmas Eve Passengers with Gifts

What airline gets the award for having the biggest hearts this last holiday season? Spain's Spanair for sure, since they pulled off a heartwarming stunt for a planeful of their passengers and also managed to create a lovely, viral-worthy video to accompany it.

You see, there was a Spanair flight flying from Madrid to Las Palmas overnight on Christmas Eve, and the airline thought they'd be cute and gift each and every of the plane's 190 passengers with their own Christmas present at baggage claim, complete with their names written right on the gift-wrapped boxes. Watch the video this way...

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Smoking Bans / Travel Health / Worldwide-Smoking-Bans-Map / Spain Travel / → All Tags

The New Year Brings a Smoking Ban to Spain

Warning to smokers: Don't light up in public places when traveling through Spain anymore. Yesterday the country enacted a ban on smoking in enclosed public spots, including restaurants and bars. So you won't get a chance to partake in the old smoky tapas bar tradition during your visit.

If you get caught puffing away, it will cost you; a first-time offense carries a $40 fine, and repeat offenders will have to cough up as much as $134,000 after the third strike. However, enclosed spots aren't the only places where where your pack of cigs and lighter are prohibited. You also can get slapped with a fine for smoking in some outdoor areas as well, including playgrounds and near hospitals.

This is a big change for the formerly haze-filled country, which was one of the few last remaining Western European nations to allow smoking in public places. Plus, according to the Christian Science Monitor, government officials estimate that 35 percent of residents above 16 are regular smokers.

[Photo: xornalcerto]

Celeb Travel / Leonarod DiCaprio / Bar Refaeli / Ibiza Travel / → All Tags

Leonardo DiCaprio and Bar Refaeli Give A Nod To Titanic While Doing Yoga in Ibiza

After lunching at Le Stresa and attending a private party celebrating Tag Heuer’s 150th anniversary in Paris last week, Leonardo DiCaprio and his girlfriend, model Bar Refaeli, have once again joined their good friends, Naomi Campbell and Vladimir Doronin, on vacation.

This time, the foursome is soaking up the sun in Ibiza, Spain. Leo and Bar spent most of the weekend swimming and sunbathing on the beach. The couple was also spotted doing yoga, which included a reenactment of Leo's famous Titanic pose, and playing backgammon on the patio of their luxurious vacation home.

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Religious Travel / Holy Travel / Spain Travel / Spain / Israel Travel / Israel / Europe Travel / Europe / → All Tags

Christian Theme Park to Open in Spain, Complete with 'Live Resurrections'

Europeans are fond of complaining that American imports are ruining their culture, and usually we're like "shut up, we need our Chipotle." In this very specific case, though, they might have a point. Europe's first Christian theme park—modeled after the ones in the American South and South America—is now set to open in Mallorca, Spain. Inexplicably.

We of course usually recommend a different religious travel solution. If if you want to see what the Holy Land looks like, our reasoning goes, you should actually take a trip to the Holy Land and see it. From the United States that might be prohibitive with the cost, but a flight from Spain to Israel on one of Europe's billion LCC's is fairly affordable. When you factor in the Euro/Shekel exchange rate you're almost saving money. We understand there are pluses and minuses—in Israel you can only walk on the "Jesus trail" while in religious theme parks you can actually meet Jesus—but we kind of prefer our way. Even if there are no "live resurrections," as this theme park promises.

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Medical Tourism / Medical Travel / Spain Travel / Travel News / Health Travel / → All Tags

Spain Emerges as a Hot Spot for Babymaking Tourism

India has been known as a place to go for overseas fertility treatments, but it looks like Spain is emerging as the center for fertility tourism for its excellent clinics and its policies that favor egg donors.

A high percentage of British couples, in particular, are heading to the country for help getting pregnant. The UK's up-to-two-year wait for donated eggs is frustrating many British couples, so they are opting to try their luck in Spain. Donors aren't as plentiful in the U.K. because they cannot receive payment, only about $86 a day, with a max of $388, for loss of earnings and some out-of-pocket costs, like food and travel. In Spain, donors all receive $1,142 for their services.

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Celeb Travel / Barcelona Travel / Shakira / Crime / → All Tags

Shakira Gets Fined for Shaking Her Hips in Barcelona's Famed Fountain

Shakira's hips might not lie, but it turns out they're still pretty offensive, at least to the authorities in Barcelona.

The Colombian pop star had a great time dancing with fans in Barcelona's famous Pla de Palau fountain last week during a break from filming the video for her next single, Loca. Later, she got onto the back of a motorcycle sans helmet and (literally) rode off into the sunset. Reportedly, the footage was to be used in a promo for the song and video.

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