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SUR in English
Malaga
Friday, 4 October 2024
The first edition of SUR in English rolled off the press at the SUR offices in Malaga on 20 July 1984. This year, therefore marks an important anniversary that gives this newspaper the opportunity to celebrate as well as look back at the last four decades on the Costa del Sol.
The first important event on the agenda for the anniversary, which will stretch into next year, is the gala evening to be held this Monday evening (8 October) at the Hotel Don Pepe Gran Meliá in Marbella.
The gala to celebrate the international diversity of the Costa del Sol will be streamed live on www.surinenglish.com from 8pm.
The evening will give the newspaper the opportunity not just to celebrate its own history but also to offer recognition to other organisations that have, like SUR in English, been important pioneers in the international community in the south of Spain.
Of course there are too many of these to mention, but four organisations that share SUR in English's aim to link the different communities on the Costa del Sol have been selected: the Mijas Foreign Residents Department, Panorama, the Malaga English Cemetery Foundation and the British Chamber of Commerce in Spain.
SUR in English was born out of a need to provide information to the growing numbers of people from other mainly northern European countries who had started to buy property and move to the south of Spain, as well as coming on holiday.
Updated, reliable information in English was a necessity that was noted, not just by the directors at SUR, but also by local town halls, receiving more and more enquiries from residents who did not speak Spanish. The pioneers in this sense were in Mijas where the Costa del Sol's first foreign residents department was opened in 1985, just a year after the birth of SUR in English.
At the helm of the service was Danish resident Anette Skou, now retired, who over the years helped thousands of residents deal with paperwork and issues with the town hall and other authorities.
Foreigners began buying homes in Spain much before the eighties. In fact it was as far back as 1970 that Panorama became the first international real estate agency in Marbella. Christopher Clover, the son of an American real estate business owner, arrived to head the office in 1973, at a time when the Marbella jetset was in its heyday.
Of course companies in Spain have been doing business with firms around the world for centuries. The British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) in Spain was founded back in 1908 in Barcelona as a network of support for firms doing business between Spain and the UK. The BCC in Spain now has branches in Madrid, Barcelona and Andalucía with a large number of businesses on the Costa del Sol active in a wide range of events organised by Andalucía Regional Vice-President Derek A. Langley. They cover all sectors with a common goal: to link Spain and the UK through business.
Finally, special recognition also goes to the foundation formed to take care of the historical English Cemetery in Malaga city. The non-profit organisation, whose president is former British consul Bruce McIntyre, works to maintain and restore this first non-Catholic cemetery on the Spanish mainland .
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