Tag: spain

Mysterious Ancient Language Revealed on Bronze Hand From 2,100 Years Ago

Abronze hand from 2,100 years ago has revealed rare evidence of a mysterious ancient language, with researchers determining that the inscription is the oldest and longest example of Vasconic to date.

A team of researchers analyzed the artifact, found at the site of an Iron Age hillfort known as Irulegi in Navarre, northern Spain, for a newly published study in the journal Antiquity—and also suggested the words written on it could be linked to modern-day Basque.

Vasconic was spoken by a pre-Roman people known as the Vascones, who once inhabited the western Pyrenees in an area that corresponds primarily with modern-day Navarre, as well as parts of the Spanish regions of La Rioja and Aragon. And as one of only a few known examples of it, the inscription offers fascinating insights into one of Europe’s least understood ancient languages.

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Scientists Just Found Human Evolution’s Missing Link in Europe 

Recent fossil evidence challenges the prevailing narrative of human evolution, shifting the focus from Africa to Europe’s westernmost reaches. Conventional beliefs, rooted in the Out of Africa theory, face scrutiny as scientists suggest our last common ancestor may have resided in Europe over two million years ago. The study challenges established timelines linking Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo sapiens to a single ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis. The Pit of Bones in Spain, also known as Atapuerca, houses fossils dating back 800,000 years, adds complexity. Genetic analysis hints at an unknown hominin species, a potential missing link connecting Neanderthals and Denisovans.

This discovery prompts a reevaluation of the human evolutionary tree, emphasizing the enigmatic genetic makeup of these fossils. The implications extend beyond challenging preconceptions; they underscore the intricacy of unraveling our evolutionary history. The fossils, with their mysterious genetic traits, defy easy classification, leaving scientists grappling with questions that may reshape our understanding of the common ancestry shared by Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

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Spain considers banning smoking and vaping on ALL beaches

Spain is considering banning smoking on all beaches as it presses ahead with tough new measures.

The Spanish Ministry of Health has confirmed a new crackdown on both smoking and vaping and says people’s health has to be protected.

One of its new priorities is to resurrect the anti-smoking plan which will include extending smoke-free spaces to terraces, beaches and cars in the presence of minors and pregnant women.

‘We must look at the law again because we cannot turn our backs on the only measure that can give the population more years of life and a better quality of life, which is to reduce smoking,’ said Health Minister Mónica García.

The Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking 2021-2025 was finalised a year and a half ago but has not yet seen the light of day.

The Ministry of Health says it wants to ‘remove it from the drawer’ and expand the ban on tobacco consumption to more areas.

‘The first steps are to get it out of the box,’ said Monica García. ‘We will have to look at each of the cases and each of the assumptions.

‘What we plan to is study what that plan is going to be, if it needs to be expanded, if it needs to be modified, but we do have a firm commitment to those recommendations.’

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Spanish cops arrest British woman and her partner over assassination attempt on politician who was shot in the face in Madrid in attack blamed on Iran

A British woman and her partner have been arrested by police investigating an assassination attempt on veteran Spanish politician Alejo Vidal-Quadras in Madrid.

The couple were arrested in the town of Lanjaron, the gateway to the picture-postcard Alpujarras region, this morning after another man was arrested in the Costa Del Sol. 

Mr Vidal-Quadras cheated death after being shot in the face in broad daylight on a central street in the Spanish capital on November 9.

The victim, former regional leader of the right-wing Popular Party in Catalonia before breaking away to help form the far-right Vox party, told police from his hospital bed he blamed Iran for the shooting because of his ties with the country’s opposition.

Police sources said this afternoon they were working on the theory that the partner of the Brit had hired a paid assassin to murder Vidal-Quadras. 

They are said to be closing in on a North African hitman allegedly paid to carry out the crime, Granada-based newspaper Ideal reported. It has not been made clear if investigators believe the unnamed British woman knew about her partner’s suspected involvement. 

The other arrest is understood to have taken place in the Costa del Sol resort of Fuengirola.

Detectives suspect he organised the assassination attempt at the ‘request of other people’, Ideal claimed citing sources close to the ongoing investigation. 

A police source confirmed this morning the British woman was one of the three people arrested. They said: ‘Her possible participation in the crime is being investigated. She is the partner of one of the other two detainees.’ 

A Spanish National Police spokesman said this afternoon: ‘All three people held earlier today remain in custody. There is nothing more we can say at this time.’

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Spanish court rules software mogul John McAfee’s death was suicide

A Spanish court has ruled John McAfee died by suicide, a court document seen by Reuters showed on Friday, bringing to a close a probe about the death of the software entrepreneur.

McAfee, who launched the world’s first commercial anti-virus software in 1987, was found dead, aged 75, on June 23, 2021, in his prison cell a few hours after Spain’s high court authorized his extradition to the United States on tax evasion charges.

The British-American tech mogul had been in the Barcelona-area Brians 2 jail for eight months following his arrest after years on the run from U.S. authorities.

Although the autopsy had already determined he died by suicide, his family had filed an appeal asking for a more in-depth investigation into his death.

His body has been in a Barcelona morgue, waiting for the court process to be resolved.

“There is not a single element of suspicion, of a charge against a third party, of criminal behavior,” said the ruling, dated July 24 but released on Friday.

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Manipulated Human Remains Found at Cave Site in Spain

The Iberian Peninsula witnessed a particular form of human burials in caves, which were later manipulated and modified, over thousands of years! In the southern Iberian Peninsula, this practice became common around the 4th millennium BC, though the cultural connotations for manipulating the dead are still not fully understood. A new study zeroed in on the manipulated human remains of 12 individuals from a cave called Cueva de los Marmoles, in southern Spain.

Cueva de los Marmoles: Dating and Understanding Contemporaneous Finds

Radiocarbon dating has pinpointed the burials within a fairly wide timeframe spanning from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BC. The research team meticulously recorded deliberate post-mortem alterations to the skeletal remains, which included evidence of fractures and abrasions, possibly indicating attempts to extract marrow and other tissues.

Among these modified human remains, a single tibia showed signs of adaptation for use as a tool, while an intriguing cranium appeared to have been fashioned into a ” skull cup ,” suggesting potential adaptations for dietary or practical purposes.

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Huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones discovered in Spain

A huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones has been discovered in southern Spain that could be one of the largest in Europe, archaeologists have said.

The stones were discovered on a plot of land in Huelva, a province flanking the southernmost part of Spain’s border with Portugal, near the Guadiana River.

Spanning about 600 hectares (1,500 acres), the land had been earmarked for an avocado plantation. Before granting the permit the regional authorities requested a survey in light of the site’s possible archaeological significance. The survey revealed the presence of the stones.

“This is the biggest and most diverse collection of standing stones grouped together in the Iberian peninsula,” said José Antonio Linares, a researcher at Huelva University and one of the project’s three directors. It was probable that the oldest standing stones at the La Torre-La Janera site were erected during the second half of the sixth or fifth millennium BC, he said. “It is a major megalithic site in Europe.”

At the site they found a large number of various types of megaliths, including standing stones, dolmens, mounds, coffin-like stone boxes called cists, and enclosures.

“Standing stones were the most common finding, with 526 of them still standing or lying on the ground,” said the researchers in an article published in Trabajos de Prehistoria, a prehistoric archaeology journal. The height of the stones was between one and three metres.

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Spain Admits Spraying Deadly Chemtrails as Part of Secret UN Program: One Month after March 2020 Covid-19 Lockdown

The Spanish government ordered [April 16, 2020, a month after March 2020 lockdown] the military to quietly spray lethal chemtrails on its citizens with UN authorization under the cover of the “state of emergency for the management of the health crisis situation caused by Covid-19.“

The chemtrail program, which involves the spraying of biocides on the population, was authorized by Royal Decree, was quietly acknowledged by the government on April 16 2020, just one month after the World Health Organization announced that Covid-19 was a pandemic.

Order SND/351/2020 published by the Spanish government in the Official State Gazette read as follows:

Order SND/351/2020, of April 16th, which authorizes the Armed Forces and Units and Military Emergency Units to use biocide chemicals authorized by the Ministry of Health for disinfection in order to deal with the Covid 19 Health Crisis.

Royal Decree 463/2020, of March 14th, hereby declares a state of emergency for the management of the health crisis situation caused by COVID-19, which includes a series of measures aimed at protecting the welfare, health and safety of citizens and the containment of the progression of the disease and strengthen the public health system.

Health Minister Salvador Illa Roca was also granted extra powers to “dictate” orders to the military during the “health emergency.”

Specifically, in accordance with the provisions of article 4.3 of Royal Decree 463/2020, of March 14th, the Minister of Health is empowered to dictate the orders, resolutions, provisions and interpretive instructions that, within their scope of action as a delegated authority, are necessary to guarantee the provision of all services, ordinary or extraordinary, in order to protect of people, goods and places, through the adoption of any of the measures provided for in article eleven of Organic Law 4/1981, of June 1, of the states of alarm, exception and site.

For the effective fulfillment of these measures, the competent authorities’ delegates may require the action of the Armed Forces, in accordance with the provided for in article 15.3 of Organic Law 5/2005, of November 17, of the National defense.

The Ministry of Health acknowledged it had been evaluating the virucidal capacity of the chemical disinfectants.

The Ministry of Health has been publishing and updating the list of biocides to be used against the new coronavirus, authorized and registered in Spain according to the UNE-EN 14476 standard, which evaluates the virucidal capacity of antiseptics and chemical disinfectants. In particular, due to their special effectiveness, some biocides are established in main group 1 of article 1.1 of Royal Decree 830/2010, of June 25, which establishes the regulations governing training for carry out treatments with biocides.

The Spanish government order explicitly calls for the use of “aerial media” and “aerial disinfection techniques” in order to reach “all surfaces” quickly via techniques of nebulization, thermo nebulization and micro nebulization.

Among the most effective disinfection techniques are the use of aerial media, then through them, with techniques of nebulization, thermo nebulization and micro nebulization, all surfaces are reached quickly, avoiding depending on manual application, which is slower, and sometimes does not reach all surfaces because there are obstacles that prevent reaching them.

The CBRN defense units of the Armed Forces and the Military Unit of Emergencies (UME) have personal means, materials, procedures and the sufficient training to carry out aerial disinfection, since they are operations that they execute regularly, with the exception that instead of using biocidal products do it with other decontaminating chemicals. It is therefore that, in view of the foregoing and the effect of improving and streamlining the operations of disinfection of all types of facilities that the Armed Forces personnel come to carrying out, it is considered appropriate to authorize, exceptionally and for the duration of the state of alarm, the CBRN Defense Units of the Armed Forces and the UME, the use of disinfectants and biocides from main group 1 described in article 1.1 of Royal Decree 830/2010, of June 25, which establishes the regulations.

It’s not the first time the Spanish government has been embroiled in a chemtrail scandal.

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One Year After His Death, John McAfee’s Corpse is Still Being Held by Gov’t, Fueling Claims of a “Cover Up”

It has been an entire year since John McAfee died — allegedly by suicide — in a Spanish prison and since that day, authorities have refused to release his body.

Since his death last June, the internet has abounded with conspiracy theories over how John McAfee died. Adding fuel to the conspiracy fire was the fact that the Spanish government — who was holding him on charges of tax evasion to be extradited to the United States — has held his body and refused to allow the family to see it. 

After suspiciously holding his body for 7 months, in February a Spanish court ruled that McAfee took his own life. This ruling by the judge confirmed the findings of the original autopsy which declared his death a suicide.

As she did with the original ruling, McAfee’s widow, Janice McAfee, has appealed the ruling, insisting her husband was murdered.

Joy Athanasiou, a lawyer for McAfee’s daughter – identified only as Jen – told the financial news site MarketWatch that Janice immediately appealed the decision to a higher court at the time, though she noted that there was no timetable yet on when the higher court would rule on the appeal.

“At this point, we don’t really know much aside from the ruling. It’s been a long, strange process,” Athanasiou told MarketWatch.

Adding credence to Janice’s claims is the fact that McAfee himself said he was “content” in jail and had no plans to kill himself “like Epstein.”

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Judge suggests CIA may have illegally recorded Assange conversations, challenging extradition demands

Spanish media is reporting that a court order issued by Spanish High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz indicates that content of communications between Julian Assange and his lawyers may have been illegally recorded during the time he spent at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The order that the newspaper El Pais has seen names Spain’s Under Cover (UC) Global security company as handing over the information to CIA agents. That would have revealed the defense strategy of Assange, a whistleblower and journalist whom the US wants extradited from the UK on espionage charges, a request that has been granted and will be decided on within the next two months by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel.

If put on trial and found guilty in the US, Assange could be sentenced to 175 years in prison for revealing damning US military operations during the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and publishing it on the WikiLeaks website.

The Spanish court order is procedural in nature, sent by Jusge Pedraz to the UK as an explanation as to why the country’s authorities should allow him to take testimonies from Assange’s doctors and UK lawyers – one of whom is well known solicitor and human rights activist Gareth Peirce – who were the subject of spying at the embassy.

Legal sources have told El Pais that the extradition request could fall through for violating the right of defense if there is proof that US intelligence agencies managed to learn about Assange’s defense by illegally spying on his legal representatives and doctors. Spain gaining access to these individuals for the sake of obtaining witness testimonies would leave the British justice system “in an embarrassing situation,” some believe.

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