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MYSTERY surrounds the tragic death of a “perfectly normal” family of four found dead at their apartment block in Los Olivos, Adeje, last Friday evening – the day after Valentine’s Day. The father was found with slashed wrists in a pool of blood outside the Vesuvius apartment block where they lived..... read more

AFTER more than a year of ear-splitting noise and dust the new beach at Playa de San Juan is planned to . .. ...read more

 

amara González Lopez, was crowned Adult Carnival Queen in the Los Gigantes Plaza last Thursday. ......more

WAVES of sadness swept Los Gigantes this week as news broke of the death of Clifford Morgan, widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of the west coast village. He was 91. . .....more

PARTIDO Popular leader, Mariano Rajoy, managed to upset almost everybody with a tirade against immigrants ahead of the March 9 national elections. At a Barcelona conference on immigration. . . . . ..more.

MYSTERY surrounds the tragic death of a “perfectly normal” family of four found dead at their apartment block in Los Olivos, Adeje, last Friday evening – the day after Valentine’s Day.
The father was found with slashed wrists in a pool of blood outside the Vesuvius apartment block where they lived.
The mother and her two children were discovered lying dead under a sheet on the apartment balcony. All three had been brutally stabbed to death.
Later examination of the bodies revealed that the three murder victims had been lying dead for at least 24 hours before they were discovered.
Initial enquiries by the Guardia Civil suggested the man stabbed his partner and the two children and then, some time later, tried to end his own life by slitting his wrists but in desperation at the time it was taking to die, threw himself from the roof.
What the Guardia have not been able to establish is a motive for the crime and the tragedy that overtook a seemingly, normal loving family.
As shocked neighbours gathered at the scene, describing the couple as “perfectly normal, conventional people” the Guardia Civil confirmed that there was no known background of mistreatment or violent behaviour within the family and no complaints on their files.
Pascuale Marino Cerrato, a 49-year-old Italian, was described as a quiet man who sold kitchen furniture in Adeje.
After Friday’s discovery of his broken and naked body, covered only by a bathrobe, police had to smash in the door of his apartment to gain access.
Inside they found the bodies of his partner, 43-year-old Belgian Sophie Ivonne de Roeck and their two children, a boy and a girl aged four and seven.
Neighbours who met Sophie coming and going from the family home described her as a quiet woman who worked as a telephone operator at the Ocean Palace Hotel in Costa Adeje.
The family owned a dalmatian dog that had been seen loose on the streets since the morning but nobody suspected there was anything amiss.
A neighbour who witnessed part of the tragic events confirmed that Pascuale threw himself from the roof after slitting his wrists.
The bodies of the family were removed at around 1.30am on Saturday and taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in La Laguna for autopsy. Police continued this week to try to gather evidence in the family home and the surrounding area, in an attempt to reconstruct the tragic events of last Friday.
The judge in charge of the case has ordered it sub judice until all avenues of enquiry have been exhausted in what has become one of the most tragic events in the history of south Tenerife.
Adeje Council convened an extraordinary meeting on Monday to consider its reaction to the tragedy.
The following day a large black bow was hung from a balcony of the town hall in memory of the family and a stage was erected in front of the town hall for a memorial service.
Shocked neighbours continued to gather throughout the weekend outside the apartment block where the family’s blue Citroen car is still parked. In the back were two children’s bikes and a sticker saying Baby on Board.
None of the neighbours could come up with any answer to the riddle of why such a perfectly normal, seemingly loving family could have come to such a tragic end.
Mothers picked their children up from school every day this week and children in the area were offered counselling.
Relatives of both parents have arrived in Tenerife from Belgium and Italy.

 

AFTER more than a year of ear-splitting noise and dust the new beach at Playa de San Juan is planned to open for use next month, according to Guia de Isora Council.
Work on the €3 million project, which is being financed by central government, is expected to be completed on schedule.
Construction company Acciona said all that remained was to spread sand on the beach and finish the changing rooms.
Heavy machinery has been at work on the site for months, grubbing up rocks from beneath the sea and grinding them into soft black sand to create the enlarged beach.
The council has made the San Juan beach one of its flagship projects and a spokesman predicted the vastly improved area would prove a popular draw with locals and tourists.

 

Santiago del Teide requires a minimum investment of €50 million over the next 10 years to revive its tourist industry, according to the socialist PSOE.
The statement came as the PSOE rubbished recent announcements from the island government about works planned to improve the tourist infrastructure in Santiago del Teide.
Socialist Cabildo councillor, Ricardo Guerrero, and local spokesman Inocencio Doble said there were no works planned in the Santiago tourist areas.
They accused the Cabildo’s tourism councillor, José Manuel Bermúdez, of putting up a smokescreen for the upcoming national election with his recent announcements of new work.
None of it had been passed or even allowed for in this year’s budget, they said.
Guerrero said: “The only concrete measure undertaken is the inclusion of Santiago in the Tourist Space Regeneration Convention.”
He said the representative, decision-making bodies in the Cabildo had not even heard of the works announced by Bermùdez.
“They have not yet been passed by either the tourism committee or the council,” he said. “There has not even been an intervention report issued, which is needed to guarantee funding will be available to carry out the work.
“The announcement by the Cabildo is no more than smoke that Sr Bermúdez is generating for the forthcoming elections.”
Guerrero deplored “the habit” the Tenerife Cabildo has of announcing studies and projects that are not even close to becoming a reality, in order to appear to be doing something.
He said: “The head of tourism is very fond of announcing prospective projects. It is one thing to announce proposals for the future but quite another to announce plans that haven’t even been agreed.”
Inocencio Doble, the Santiago del Teide PSOE councillor, rubbished the plans, whether they are eventually approved or not.
“An area like Santiago with around 10,000 tourist beds needs €50 million spent on refurbishment over the next 10-12 years to bring it up to scratch,” he said, “and mayor Gorrín should be out knocking on doors to get the money.”

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Carnival has seen many characters over the years with its way of bringing out the extrovert in all of us.
But few can match Alison Hodgson, known affectionately by her many friends in Los Gigantes as Mad Ali from her days of racing around on her moped Red Flash.
Dressing up for Carnival began for Alison as far back as 1984. Then, as a tourist, she caused a rumpus at Tenerife airport when she and daughter Georgia arrived with 36 costumes in big packing cases from their shop, The Dressing Up Box in Cambridgeshire.
“We knew the Guardia Civil would have a fit,” said Ali, “so we came armed with tape and scissors to re-pack the boxes.”
Since then Ali has continued making costumes that have become ever bigger and more elaborate. And she has been well rewarded for her efforts, winning a record 17 trophies for her costumes over the years.
This year, her final fling at Carnival, brought a special prize when she received a ‘lifetime award’ for all her spectacular efforts over more than 20 years.
She took to the stage in a stunning gown to the defiant strains if I Am What I Am, from the La Cage aux Folles hit show, to receive the award from Santiago del Teide mayor Juan Damian Gorrín.
But what the mayor and the crowd didn’t know was that it was touch and go right up to the last moment as to whether Ali would take to the stage at all.
She only recently recovered from a six-year battle with diabetic neuropathy, a debilitating and excruciatingly painful condition that left her unable to get about at all, let alone manage to carry those massively heavy costumes.
It was only after going through a long and determined fitness programme that Ali fought her way back to mobility.
As this year’s Carnival drew near Ali heard that she was up for her special award and got local prize-winning costume designer, Goyo Linares, to create a new Carnival Queen costume especially for the occasion.
But even she doubted whether she would manage to carry off her comeback and she had to up her gym work from three to five sessions a week to build her strength.
All that work paid off. Not only did Ali manage to wear her costume on stage for the award, but she also had to don it again for Sunday’s Carnival Parade, from the Fisherwoman’s roundabout at Puerto de Santiago, down into Los Gigantes.
“I’ve always made my own costumes,” said Ali, “but I have always dreamed of having a real Carnival Queen costume made especially for me. This was really worth all that effort.”
Throughout all those years of Carnival Ali was accompanied by her long-time partner, Bert Harrison, until his sudden and unexpected death last year
The two of them could often be seen dressed up as sisters on Sardine Night, wailing with the rest of the widows, although Bert’s beard tended to be a dead giveaway.
“It was such a shame that Bert couldn’t be with me this year,” said Ali. “He was such a help in so many ways. I’ll never forget him dashing backwards and forwards, plugging the lights on my costumes into power sockets in the shops that we passed on the Carnival route.”
Dressing up obviously runs in the family because following Alison’s float in Sunday’s parade was daughter Georgia.
She was the popular winner of the best costume prize in Saturday’s fancy-dress ball with her delightful version of Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians, which, in keeping with the theme of this year’s Carnival, Georgia renamed Cruella Seville.
But Ali said, although having her dream of wearing a professionally made Carnival Queen costume was wonderful, the real joy of Carnival for her was making her own fancy dress.
“We never spent a lot of money on costumes,” said Ali. “It was more about using your imagination, as Georgia proved this year. Sometimes we used an old pair of curtains and in those days maybe spent as little as 100 pesetas.
“The main thing is to make the effort and take part and I hope the next generation carries on.
“As for me, I’m retiring – unless they decide to have a pensioners’ contest. But at 58 I’ve a couple of years yet before I’ll be eligible to take part.”

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Tamara González Lopez, was crowned Adult Carnival Queen in the Los Gigantes Plaza last Thursday.
Tamara, sponsored by Verde’s Bazaar, wore a costume designed by Carlos González Álvarez and was crowned by last year’s Carnival Queen, Yulimar Évora Perez, accompanied by the mayor of Santiago del Teide, Juan Gorrin.
First maid of honour was Luz Yanira Gorrín Pérez, sponsored by Flipper Uno, second maid of honour was Cloe Ferrer, sponsored by Entemanser, and third maid of honour went to Naomi Socas, sponsored by estate agent Paul Ruane.
The Junior Carnival Queen title was won by 11-year-old Paige Butt, in a costume designed by Goyo Linares and sponsored by her parents, John and Tracy of CK’s Bistro, Los Gigantes.
Tina León, Stephen McKenna and Marcelo Kauffman presented the event, which included performances from the Genaro Arteago Ballet and the Murga troupe, Triqui- Traques.

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WAVES of sadness swept Los Gigantes this week as news broke of the death of Clifford Morgan, widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of the west coast village. He was 91.
As one of the earliest foreign settlers in the growing resort he was largely responsible for its development as a tight-knit, friendly little community of mostly British and Germans.
He was president of the residents’ association when the mayor of Santiago del Teide, unprepared and under-resourced for the sudden influx of foreigners with high expectations of their new home, delegated authority to them to develop key municipal services out of their own pockets.
For his leadership during this time Clifford was to be honoured by the mayor on his 80th birthday with a key to the municipality.
But it was not just for this work that Clifford was revered in his adopted home. A man of great intellect and vigour he was recognised as a man who accepted challenge and lived life to the full.
A wit and great raconteur at the house parties he loved to throw, he had plenty to talk about and a great fund of knowledge to back it.
It made it all the sadder, then, that his bright, inquiring and outgoing mind was dimmed in his last 10 year or so with the development of Alzheimer’ disease.
Not that he allowed that to slow him up. Physically fitter than many 20 years younger, he loved to walk and thoroughly enjoyed his 91st birthday party in a local pub in November before a sudden decline led to his peaceful death in the Southerndowne nursing home, Pembrokeshire, last Friday..
There he had spent the last 16 months of his life enjoying the view over the Bristol Channel and the rolling Welsh hills, plus outings to Ogmore beach for ice cream and the local pub for family meals. And perhaps there he was also able and happy to reflect on his active life.
Born in Haverfordwest, he was the eldest of four children of a publican and a cockney mother, the daughter of a watchmaker who also made the leather suitcases in the Queen’s dolls house library in Windsor Castle.
A bright child at Haverfordwest Grammar School, he favoured science over the school’s tradition of classical studies and won a scholarship to read physics at Keble College Oxford.
After graduation he stayed on at Keble to do a doctorate in atomic fusion and studied under Linderman. During this time he was invited to attend Niels Bohr’s famous lecture on the splitting of the uranium atom, which paved the way towards an understanding of nuclear fission.
Although exempted by his research work from war service, he put his studies on hold at the outbreak of war in 1939, taking a second lieutenant’s commission to follow his interest in radio with the Royal Signals Corp.
Clifford’s army service took him to West Africa where, running communications at an important naval staging post in Sierra Leone, he was promoted to acting lieutenant colonel.
He was also involved in electronic deception in the run-up to D-Day in 1944 and recalled with glee how his fake encrypted signals fooled the Germans into believing that decoy tanks on the English coast were real. The Germans were so convinced by the ploy that his radio unit came under fierce shellfire and was almost wiped out, along with the dummy tanks.
Clifford married Rosemary May during the Battle of the Bulge in January, 1945, and was posted to The Hague in Holland for a year as an adviser to the Dutch army, naturally learning to speak Dutch.
He attended the Royal Military College of Science in Swindon before a four-year posting as assistant military attaché to the British Embassy in Paris, finally rejoining his regiment in the British Army of the Rhine.
With, by then, two daughters and twin boys to support Clifford moved back to the UK where he worked for EMI in the early, exciting days of TV. He was heavily involved in the installation of the first television broadcasting equipment in northern Nigeria in the early ’60s.
Clifford’s work took him to Halifax, Nova Scotia, reorganising a company EMI had taken over and back to the UK to set up a factory in an economically depressed area of Fife, Scotland. His first workers were unemployed miners who were touchingly grateful for the opportunity to work above ground and became extremely loyal employees.
Though devoted to his job he paid the price when the long hours he spent at work contributed to the break-up of his marriage and divorce in 1975.
Within months of the separation Clifford met attractive divorcee, Tricia Ferrier, who had three young sons from her previous marriage. They had a whirlwind romance and married when Clifford was 60 and Tricia 36.
Soon after their meeting Tricia selected a holiday in the then hardly known Los Gigantes and they fell in love with the place.
What Tricia didn’t know was that he secretly bought a flat there on that first trip as a surprise and when he retired in 1981 they bought a house in Los Gigantes and went to live there full time.
With his customary zeal for new experiences Clifford became a partner in a restaurant and his fluency in Spanish, French and German enabled him to help other residents out of many a difficulty. It laid the basis of his work for the residents’ association in developing the village.
In 1991 Tricia died of cancer after Clifford had nursed her for more than a year. He managed to readjust to life as a widower and had many friends in Los Gigantes, forming an especially close bond with neighbour Doris Dendy, with whom he was instrumental in starting the Friends of the Animals, raising funds and caring for stray dogs and feral cats in the area.
Clifford was well known in the community as he walked his boxer dogs regularly, first Chiata and then Becky. He was a prime mover in the Lions and even led a group of deaf children from Tenerife on a holiday to England when he was over 80.
He was instrumental in obtaining permission for the Anglican Church to use the newly built Catholic church in Los Gigantes for Anglican services and particularly loved singing all the hymns he remembered from his days as a choirboy in Pembrokeshire.
Sadly, Clifford started gradually forgetting things in his early 80s but managed to continue living alone in Los Gigantes, as was his wish, until about four years ago with help of neighbours.
His daughter, Jane, then took him to live with her, together with his beloved boxer, Becky, who sadly died of a bowel problem two years ago. Alzheimer’s was diagnosed in 2003.
Though absent for several years from the village he did so much to improve Clifford is still fondly remembered by many and some hope to attend his cremation on Monday at St Mary’s Church, Old Port Road, Wenvoe, near Cardiff, after which his ashes will be returned to his birthplace, Haverfordwest.
Those who cannot make it will be heartened to know that a memorial service is being planned in Los Gigantes for some time in April.
Donations, if desired, should be made to the Alzheimer’s Society, Devon House, 58 St Katharine's Way, London E1W 1JX.

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PARTIDO Popular leader, Mariano Rajoy, managed to upset almost everybody with a tirade against immigrants ahead of the March 9 national elections.
At a Barcelona conference on immigration he promised tough laws affecting all immigrants from outside the EU if his party came to power.
He said all immigrants who applied to stay in the country for more than a year should be made to learn Spanish and respect Spanish customs.
The party would oblige Muslim girls to take part in school sports classes and the Muslim headscarf would be banned in state schools.
Muslim women would not have the right to examination by a female doctor and they would be made to take off their headscarves for identification photographs.
They would be kicked out of the country if they failed to find work within a “reasonable” time.
In return, said Rajoy, immigrants would enjoy the same rights as Spaniards. But any immigrant committing a crime would be thrown out of the country.
The PP leader said he hoped to reach agreement with other EU members, barring them from re-entry to any other EU country.
“We will close the doors to those who fail to respect the law, “ he said, “and no one will be able to enter Spain illegally.”
Rajoy promised there would never be another amnesty for illegal immigrants.
He also mentioned a new state agency for immigration and employment, which would be charged with supervising the selection, training and employment of foreign workers, in response to the true needs of Spanish companies.
Rajoy’s comments infuriated the governing socialists, the far left, regionalist parties and immigrant associations.
And PP representative Miguel Arias Canete added fuel to the flames by describing immigrants as a “low-quality” work force, saying immigrant waiters could not match Spanish ones.
He said the collapse in the country’s health service was down to immigrants discovering how good it was. Canete then accused Ecuadorian women of being health tourists, using hospital emergency services to have examinations such as mammograms.
“Someone in Ecuador has to pay the equivalent of nine months wages to have a mammogram,” he said, “so they come to Spain and have it done on the cheap in 15 minutes.”
Prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero apologised to immigrant women for the comments, describing the PP outburst as discriminatory and unconstitutional.
Zapatero said: “What he fails to mention is that she does the hardest jobs that Spaniards don’t want to do.
“I apologise to all women, wherever they come from, in the name of the Spanish people.”
According to some commentators, the PP is trying to gain support among working-class people living alongside immigrant families in low-income areas, traditionally a stronghold of socialist voters.
Spain has about five million immigrants, more than twice as many as four years ago when the socialists came to power.
They make up around 11 per cent of the population, including more than a million Muslims.
Fortunately, Spain has seen very few signs of hostility against foreigners, even after the Madrid train bombing carried out by Islamic extremists in 2004, killing 191.

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Retailers, restaurateurs and other businesses in Tenerife’s capital, Santa Cruz say they want to open on Sundays.
Business leaders say they want to see the city centre become more tourist-friendly, with particularly cruise ship passengers able to shop seven days a week.
However, mindful of the extra initial cost to them, they have included the notion of financial support in the first year in a package of proposed measures put to the Canarian government.
Business leaders say not everyone is convinced of the advantages of Sunday opening but everyone is agreed that something should be done to increase trade.
A government spokesman said it had received no official application for such a move and, in any case, such a request would have to come through the Santa Cruz Council.
Business leaders are acutely aware that on some Sundays up to 8,000 cruise ship passengers are in the city with nothing to do, although many of the city’s restaurants are open.
This means that many of them spend their money elsewhere and Santa Cruz loses out, even though it is the initial port of call.
A spokesman said: “We must adapt to the demands of the marketplace. One compromise may be to open for business on Sundays during the cruise season and close the rest of the year.”
Central zone businessmen and the Federation of Restaurateurs and Leisure Businesses (OICO) said: “We have other plans in hand and have proposed to the ayuntamiento the creation of a tourist bus that would pass through the commercial district as well as showing the sights of the city.”
Other areas like Candelaria, Los Cristianos and Las Americas have been granted Sunday opening after being classed as a zone of touristic interest under the terms of a 1994 decree.
Business leaders in Santa Cruz say that although no official request has been made, they have had informal meetings with the city council and the Canarian government and both have indicated that the idea would be favourably received.
A spokesman said: “We believe that if business is going badly, we can’t just wait around with our arms folded hoping for things to change.” More News Stories

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