The Four Seasons Hotel (pictured left) near Madrid’s Puerta del Sol on Nov. 17, 2020. Kollmeyer/MarketWatch For 41 years, families in the Spanish capital of Madrid have kicked off the Christmas holidays by gathering behind the big El Corte Inglés department store to watch giant, singing puppets. The store’s “Cortylandia” …
Read More »Dispatches from a Pandemic: Spain virologists say the country’s second virus wave holds a valuable lesson for the rest of the world
MADRID — Just days away from the start of a new school year, Spain’s capital city rolled out fresh restrictions on Monday to cope with what’s becoming a relentless second wave of cases. But those measures — strict controls on the distance between seats rather than tables in food-service settings, …
Read More »Europe Markets: Gold rallies to record and euro tops $1.17 while European travel stocks slump on Spain quarantine
Passengers wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, arrive at Heathrow airport, west London, on July 10, 2020. daniel leal-olivas/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Gold surged to a record and the dollar weakened Monday while European travel stocks slumped. As U.S. lawmakers debate another round of stimulus and …
Read More »Dispatches from a Pandemic: As Spain welcomes back tourists, this tiny island finds ‘hearts divided’ with hope and anxiety
On the tiny Balearic island of Formentera, sometimes called Ibiza’s sister island, Raquel Calafat has been working hard to get the hotel that her great-grandfather established in the 1950s ready to greet tourists, who have been eerily absent for months. Calafat speaks of “corazones divididos” — hearts divided — to …
Read More »As France and Spain unveil lockdown easing plans, here’s a look at what steps European countries have taken
Europe is taking more cautious steps toward reopening their shuttered, and battered, economies as data show the growth in coronavirus cases has ebbed. So far the tentative steps taken haven’t led to a resurgence of the virus — one of the big fears. The latest data show new cases of …
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