It is the highest increase in the last 30 years: the minimum wage in Spain will go from €665 to €707 next year.
The 8% increase will add €52 to Spanish pay packets for those on the State agreed minimum and has been agreed by the Socialist Pary and the People’s Party - the only criticism coming from Podemos which wanted to see an even higher increase.
The Regional Health Administration of the Algarve is formally to propose to the Health Minister that the Algarve's two main hospitals, merged into a single management unit in 2013, should be split up and again managed independently.
The Hospital Centre of the Algarve management body was set up to run the main Faro and Portimão hospitals but has been fraught with difficulties under the presidency of Dr Pedro Nunes whose three year tenure was scarred with conflict, labour disputes and ill will and he struggled to impose proposed change on an unwilling workforce.
The Algarve’s Food Bank volunteers aim to collect 150 tons of food donated from shoppers at 140 supermarkets across the Algarve this weekend, December 3rd and 4th.
The Food Bank has a depot in Portimão and Faro manned by volunteers from which the donated food is then distributed to 90 partner institutions for delivery to the region’s poorest citizens, most of them elderly and alone.
The Bank of England has responded to pressure over production techniques of the country’s new £5 note which entered in effect in September.
The new fivers are made from polymer plastic which has animal fat as an ingredient.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has vowed to improve after it failed the Bank of England’s stress test.
The Bank in its third annual test found that RBS could struggle to meet its responsibilities in the case of a future financial crisis or recession.
From December 1st, all transfers equal to or greater than €15,000 to an offshore account will be reported by the bank to the Bank of Portugal.
This rule results from notice No. 8/2016 from of the banking supervisor resulting from existing legislation under the Legal Regime of Credit Institutions and Financial Companies (RGICSF).
Paulo Macedo may be the next president of Caixa Geral de Depósitos. The former health minister, between June 2011 and October 2015, in the Pedro Passos Coelho government is likely to be appointed the new president of Caixa Geral on Friday December 2nd.
Macedo has been invited by the Government to take on the top job at Caixa Geral after the departure of António Domingues who, along with members of his board, refused to submit tax and asset statements as is normal for those in significant positions in State-run companies.
The importer of the first shipment of Italian garbage due to be buried in a Portuguese landfill site near Setúbal is owned by a former member of the Passos Coelho Government.
For the former Secretary of State for the Environment, Dr Pedro Afonso de Paulo, the wait is over as his company has been shown to have imported not domestic household rubbish, but a mixture of detritus that is too toxic to be buried and must be incinerated.
