HOLA!

It’s not often in this day and age of political correctness to see a large group of people being totally racist. Unless you live in Spain. According to the Guardian:
Spain’s Olympic basketball teams have risked upsetting their Chinese hosts by posing for a pre-Games advert making slit-eyed gestures.

The advert for a courier company, which is an official sponsor of the Spanish Basketball Federation, occupied a full page in the sports daily Marca, the country’s best-selling newspaper.

I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that they’re doing the slant-eye move (which is popular only among third graders) or the fact that they are completely oblivious to the fact that it’s offensive to over a billion people. Spain is kind of like the world’s grandpa. When everyone gets together, he still tells really uncomfortable jokes that usually involve some racial slur. And when your mom tells him to stop his only response is, “What’d I say? What? So the Nippers are good at math. It’s a compliment. I didn’t say nothin’ bad. Pass the mashed potatoes.”

British couple's Costa dream home is demolished

In the "this would really suck department", A British couple living in Spain have become the first expatriates to see their home demolished in a move that threatens thousands of properties built on the Costas.
Helen and Leonard Prior sold their home in Berkshire and spent £570,000 turning an area of barren scrubland into a villa with heated swimming pool and landscaped gardens. They named it "Tranquilidad" in expectation of how they would spend their retirement. But yesterday, a demolition ball turned their home of the past four years to rubble.

Last November Spain's socialist government vowed to pull down all illegally built property on 480 miles of Mediterranean coastline. STORY

Does it get any better than this?

Girls chasing balls!
Showing off her ever-ready ball skills, this catwalk beauty was just one of a team of trained adult models appearing at the Madrid Masters Tennis Tourney in Spain. MORE PICTURES

Belgium Leads the Pack in Housing Price Rise

Forget the sunny climes of Spain and Portugal. The European country that experienced the biggest leap in housing prices in the last year was Belgium, according to a new report by Halifax, the U.K. banking and insurance company.
Belgium showed an 18 percent increase in prices, compared to a 15 percent for France and a 14 percent increase for Spain, the study found. (And it’s worth noting that Halifax showed a larger growth spurt for Spain than other studies.)
Over the last five years, Spain led the way with a 100 percent increase in prices, but the U.K. was not far behind with a whopping 90 percent jump, followed by France at 73 percent and Ireland at 71 percent.
Germany was the only country to show a decline in prices in the last five years.

According the report—which can be found here—Ireland boasts the highest average price in the Eurozone–£209,300 (€309,800)—followed by the Netherlands with an average of £190,900 (€282,500). The average in the U.K. was £187,100 (€276,900), compared to £150,200 (€222,300) in Spain.