Creator
Sinikka Tarvainen
Poverty time bomb ticks in Morocco
Anger over poverty is simmering in Morocco, where popular protests against the high cost of living and unemployment occur regularly.
How the Mediterranean is turning into a barren sea
For millennia, the Mediterranean has fed its coastal peoples with abundant fish, but now it threatens to become a barren sea. Overfishing is taking a heavy toll on fish stocks,…
Madrid’s full-bodied models spark controversy
When Madrid banned extremely thin models from the country’s top fashion show that began this week, it was the kind of measure that European society seemed somehow to be waiting…
Oil companies look to Spain for black gold
As Europe seeks to reduce dependence on the unstable Middle East’s oil reserves, it is not only looking to continents such as Africa or Latin America, but also to its own soil to…
Stone-age Basque language remains a mystery
No frontier marks the entrance to Spain’s Basque region, but the traveller passing by quaint villages on green hillsides has a clear sense of entering a distinct territory. It is…
Sahara crosses into Portugal and Spain
Rivers run low, crops wither, livestock starve to death and wildfires rage on the Iberian peninsula in the grip of a devastating drought that makes it look like the Sahara is…
Revealed: The new scramble for Africa
A new ”scramble for Africa” is taking place among the world’s big powers, who are tapping into the continent for its oil and diamonds. While sub-Saharan Africa is the object of…
Scientists amazed by crocodiles in Sahara
Crocodiles living in the Sahara sounds like fiction, but Spanish scientists are investigating such a group in southern Mauritania. The reptiles are regarded as the last remains…
Islanders don’t just whistle while they work
It is indisputably one of the world’s more original languages. For more than half a millennium, the inhabitants of the Spanish Canary Island of La Gomera have communicated over…
Maria Gomez and the faces of Belmez
One day in 1971, when Spanish farmer Miguel Pereira Gomez came home from the fields, he noticed something strange on the floor of the family house. ”It is a face,” his mother…
Mauritania: The place where people still keep slaves
”I trust that God almighty will free my wife from the yoke of slavery,” says Cheikhna Ould Beilil, a middle-aged Mauritanian man, fighting back the tears. Ould Beilil’s story…
Famous white gorilla goes to jungle in the sky
Copito de Nieve (Snowflake), the world’s only known white gorilla, died on Monday in the Barcelona zoo. The albino gorilla, which was estimated to be about 40 years old, suffered…