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Updated 15 September: The PSOE has announced that it has provisionally suspended the membership of former mayor Mena and initiated disciplinary proceedings against him. The move seems clearly to be an investigatory precursor to full expulsion from the Party for the Socialist who was the leader of the governing body of the council. Arona seems beset by these sorts of crises, regardless of party. Previously, the PSOE took over after years of control by the nationalist CC, a party that was locally beset by accusations of grift, with court cases for corruption and embezzlement, as well as illegal granting of planning consents, seeing jail sentences handedREAD MORE

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14 September:  HERE & HERE – school’s back, so is Brexit, and covid’s still here but in the future we mightn’t be because as a species we might be on Mars … & a Spanish-made device for the Mars Rover was tested on Teide last week! And local star Agoney, of course … We have to put CanaryCast on hold for a couple of weeks for practical reasons. Clio will explain as soon as possible, but just as soon as we can, we’ll be back. Just keep watching this website or the Adeje Town Hall page on Facebook or the FOCUS Group Facebook group: we’llREAD MORE

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The UK Government currently advises British nationals against all but essential travel to the whole of Spain. Anyone who travels to Tenerife despite this advice may find their insurance invalid, and Government assistance in the case of even non-Covid-related problems minimized if not not-existent. Everyone who returns from any part of Spain must also quarantine for a fortnight on arrival back in the UK. Please see HERE for more information on this situation. Spain has lifted its state of emergency but various parts of the country have local lockdowns. Elsewhere, including the Canaries, we’re in a stage known as the New Normal, likely to lastREAD MORE

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Photo: IGN. The Spanish National Geographic Institute has announced that it has taken part this last week in a test of the MEDA device – the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer – an instrument that will be on board NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover which will analyse dust, weather, and morphology on the red planet. IGN says that the device has been developed entirely by the Spanish National Technical Aerospace Institute along with academic researchers, all of whom also attended the tests. These took place in the Teide caldera where testers also set up a temporary recording installation which will check over the next fortnight thatREAD MORE

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Graphic: Aemet. Aemet is forecasting a somewhat wet and windy spell before normality resumes at some point next week. Apparently the Azores depression to the north west is meeting Tropical Storm Paulette forming to the south, and the meeting point is directly over the Canaries. In fact the meeting point is directly over Tenerife! This should lower temperatures and increase winds, indeed winds could become very strong the higher up ones goes, with gusts widely and easily exceeding 100km/h. The system might also give rise to some rain overnight tonight, especially at altitude … could we see the first snows of “winter” tomorrow morning? OneREAD MORE

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Updated 12 September: I still have no answer from Sanidad about this policy, and THIS remains the only information from the Canarian Government. I have no more information and this is now one of the top handful of queries in my mailbag. In my opinion, now, the whole thing is little more than window dressing to try to reassure visitors that the Canaries will have them covered if they test positive here, but at least we have direct confirmation from AXA that the policy exists – see the 12 August update below. Visitors will need to contact AXA themselves for any information beyond this, and makeREAD MORE