On Friday afternoon, April 4th, a fire at a residence on Avenida del Mediterráneo resulted in the transfer of a 73-year-old resident and a 43-year-old local police officer from Benidorm to the Marina Baixa Hospital in La Vila Joiosa.

Yesterday, Saturday April 5th, the Emergency Information and Coordination Centre (CICU) reported that a SAMU unit and a Basic Life Support (BLS) unit responded to the fire site at approximately 7 p.m. The two individuals who sustained inhalation injuries were subsequently taken to hospital.

Iratxe Sorzábal, a former commander of the ETA, has been acquitted by the National Court of the charge of placing an explosive device at the Alicante-Elche airport. Tedax deactivated the device, and the prosecution requested a six-year penitentiary sentence for the unsuccessful attack.

The primary piece of evidence was a handwritten letter that the Public Prosecutor’s Office attributes to Iratxe Sorzábal. The letter acknowledges the facts. The sentence states that the authorities issued a handwriting expert report that analysed several documents discovered in France, including the “kantada” that was attributed to the defendant. The Chamber further states that “this handwriting expert report, dated May 20, 2008, was ratified in the investigation phase before the Court; however, the Public Prosecutor’s Office did not propose it as evidence subsequently.” Consequently, the court emphasises that this discrepancy was the result of the absence of substantiation for a critical piece of information, namely the authorship report.

The court stated that it cannot be regarded as evidence against the defendant because it was not brought to trial and has not been subjected to a contradiction between the parties.

The court also considered the fact that Iratxe Sorzábal’s defence had explicitly challenged the report, claiming that she did not recognise the document as her own and had not written it.

The court also underscores that the authors of the police intelligence report, which analysed the existence and components of ETA’s Ibarla commando, its activities, and the details of the assaults it committed, were not proposed to testify at the trial. The existence and components of ETA’s Ibarla commando were analysed in this report, which was compared to documents discovered in France.

The ruling cautions that the report could have provided insight into the potential authorship of the explosives placed at the Alicante airport, in contrast to the defendant’s denial of any involvement.

Iratxe Sorzábal, who served her initial sentence in France in the late 1990s for her involvement with ETA, was extradited to Spain in 2001. Despite her efforts to avert the extradition through a hunger strike, which she defended by citing the potential for mistreatment by Spanish law enforcement, she was extradited.

Following her release in September 2001, she re-entered ETA and was apprehended in 2015 in France, this time in the company of erstwhile ETA leader David Pla.

For the first time in Spain, she was sentenced to 24 and a half years in prison in 2022 for a double assault that occurred in November 1996 in Gijón, targeting the Palace of Justice and a pharmacy.

The National Court reopened the investigation into the 1996 murder of Montxo Doral, a non-commissioned officer of Ertzaintza. The Basque Autonomous Police have attributed the crime to a commando unit under the command of Sorzabal.

In June 2006, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced her in absence to three years in prison for her membership in ETA’s political apparatus. She was again sentenced in her absence in 2013 at the trial in which her daughter’s father, former ETA leader Mikel Carrera Sarobe Ata, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two Guardia Civil officers in Capbreton in 2007.

In the ongoing rehabilitation project, the Calle Cervantes bridge over the Rio Amadorio will be widened by one metre in excess of the original plan. The bridge restoration project, which was initiated in November 2024 and was draughted in 2021, initially concentrated on the correction of damage caused by the passage of time, including water leaks and humidity in the structure. The local government has made the decision to incorporate significant technical and functional modifications in order to ensure the long-term durability of the infrastructure and substantially improve accessibility and mobility on the bridge, as explained by the councillor for urban planning, Pedro Ramis. Specifically, the works have revealed deficiencies in past expansions.

Between 1840 and 1878, this infrastructure was constructed. The board was subsequently expanded in the 1950s, and the modifications were implemented to organise the pavements and lights. Ramis elucidates that ‘until the pavement of one of the sidewalks was raised, it was discovered that a fundamental component of the board that was the subject of expansion in the 1950s was inadequately executed. This was due to the fact that the load distribution slab, which was intended to anchor both the railing and the lights, had not been completed. Consequently, a much more ambitious action was necessary, not merely a restoration, but a structural one, to guarantee the stability of this fun

The project will be modified to include the construction of a new concrete slab, which will enhance the bridge’s total width and allow for the creation of pavements that are approximately two metres wide. Similarly, the railing and luminaires will be replaced with more contemporary and lightweight components, which will also contribute to the expansion of the functional width.

At present, efforts are being made to finalise the project’s specifics, assess the cost, and predict the duration of execution for these modifications. The local government’s objective is to minimise the inconvenience to citizens by completing the works in the minimum possible time. This bridge is a critical component of the municipality’s mobility infrastructure, as it facilitates both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. It links the Plaça de la Generalitat to Carrer Cervantes.