A NEW tourist hub would soon transform a Spanish city – and it would be similar to one in London.

Three Chimneys in Barcelona was a thermal power station built in the 1970s, although was met with a lot of opposition at the time.

4

4

Advertisement

It then closed in 2011, with plans to tear it down.

But now loved by locals – and dubbed the “the Sagrada Familia of the workmen” – it could become a whole new hotspot.

However, it is set to be converted into a destination for both tourists and locals, to reduce overtourism in the city centre of Barcelona.

Just four miles away, the brutalist structure could become a “digital media and audio-visual hub,” the Times reports.

New homes, extended promenades, more green areas and new bike lanes and public transport are all part of the major plans.

The redevelopment hopes to be completed by 2029.

More is to be revealed about what else could be included as well as how much it would cost, although it is expected to be millions.

This could encourage tourists to explore parts outside of the city centre, which welcomes million of tourists a year.

The mayor of Barcelona Jaume Collboni said the transformation as a “a vestige of the industrial past that becomes a window of opportunity”.

Barcelona city hall’s innovation directer added Eva Soria added that they want to “make the outskirts more visible”.

Tourists can’t currently visit Three Chimneys apart from during certain days of the year.

For example, it has opened to the public for the Manifesta 15 art event, running until November 24.

The outdoor area is also popular with skateboarders, who use the Three Chimneys gardens.

The conversion of the power plant could be similar to Battersea Power Station in London.

Once a working power station between the 1930s and 1980s, it reopened in 2022 following a massive £9billion renovation.

It was even named one of the must visit spots by Nat Geo earlier this year.

Free to visit, inside are 80 shops and restaurants, Lift 109 attraction and Art’otel, with a rooftop pool.

4

The Sun’s Head of Travel Caroline McGuire recently visited, and said: “I generally avoid shopping centres entirely when with my 5 year old.

“But I’m surprised at how Battersea Power Station has become a regular family visit during school holidays.

“During autumn half term, my son and I enjoyed the free ‘brick’ soft play, spending more than an hour building a brick house.

“And we also designed a telephone box out of cardboard for £3 that is still on his chest of drawers at home.”

Sun Travel visit Barcelona

The Sun’s Assistant Travel Editor Sophie Swietochowski recently visited Barcelona.

“You can’t go to Barcelona without admiring some of architect Antoni Gaudi’s impressive works.

Advertisement

“There is the Sagrada Familia church, Park Guell and Casa Batllo all within a few kilometres of each other.

“I chose to explore Gaudi’s Casa Mila this time, with a behind-the-scenes Sunrise Guided Tour with GetYourGuide (£33.63pp).

“You also can’t leave Barcelona without drinking sangria, so head to bar Bubita, down a side road behind the Picasso museum.

“It serves the stuff in a huge variety of flavours, including limoncello and basil, and lime, orange and mint.”

Advertisement

In other Barcelona news, the city has revealed plans to double the entry fee for the famous Park Guell attraction, but only for tourists.

Otherwise here is a different Spanish city which is set to be big in 2025.

4

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The UK’s far-right movement is more synonymous with the thuggery and violence of this summer’s anti-immigration riots than with dinner meetings. And it is more readily associated with incendiary personalities such as Tommy Robinson than with softly-spoken men who publish articles and give PowerPoint presentations. But where some wear their intolerance openly, others are pushing an extreme rightwing agenda in a more discreet, insidious manner by influencing powerful people to help finance, disseminate and normalise racialist “research”.

The urgent and unsettling Channel 4 documentary Undercover: Exposing the Far Right revolves around an investigation by anti-racism advocacy group Hope Not Hate into an international organisation with UK ties that promotes racial, eugenics-based theories. It follows a year-long infiltration during which journalist Harry Shukman was able to meet leaders of the so-called Human Diversity Foundation, which has both media and “race science” branches, by posing as a potential investor.

Through contact with senior figure Matthew Frost (an ex-private school teacher), Shukman discovers that the HDF has received more than $1mn in funding from an American tech entrepreneur called Andrew Conru. It has also, Shukman learns, made inroads into the political arena, having allegedly established ties with Erik Ahrens, a German activist connected to the rising rightwing Alternative-für-Deutschland (AfD) party.

In response to the investigation a spokesperson for Conru says that he “unequivocally rejects racism” and has “cut ties with the HDF” and ceased his funding. Ahrens says he was “never employed by HDF”. And Frost alleges that there are “numerous misrepresentations of both [his] actions and intentions” in the film and that he is “not politically aligned with any far-right ideology” and does not hold such views.

There’s a touch of old-school spycraft about how Shukman and his colleague Patrik Hermansson obtain information about the inner-workings of the HDF without raising suspicions. But what’s most striking in the footage of conversations with Frost and Ahrens is the casualness with which abhorrent ideas such as the correlation between race and IQ are mentioned, or how Ahrens refers to the SS when discussing creating a team of activists.

In addition to the HDF probe, the film provides an insight into Hope Not Hate’s own operations as it monitors agitators such Robinson and gathers intelligence about potential threats to minority communities, politicians and itself. We hear from CEO Nick Lowles and director of research Joe Mulhall about the harassment and intimidation that they have been subjected to by Robinson’s followers. What’s also clear is the emotional toll the job takes on them.

The film attempts to explain how alt-right organisations — often led by wealthy, well-educated individuals — exploit real socio-economic problems and political disenchantment to push their warped worldview. And while this analysis is a little cursory, especially when it comes to how everyday, institutional racism, sexism, homophobia can metastasise into extremism, it leaves us with a strong sense of where fringe radical movements can lead. Walking around a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw — not far from where he’s come undercover to attend a Polish nationalist convention — Shukman provides a sobering reminder. “This stuff never goes away. The symbols and flags might alter somewhat, [but] the meaning behind them doesn’t”.

★★★★☆

On Channel 4 at 10pm on October 21 and streaming online

SAN Miguel has taken the crown as Britain’s favourite pint.

Thanks to its 61 per cent “popularity score”, the Spanish lager pipped Guinness to the top spot.

1

Brewed by American company AB InBev, it’s also the largest selling beer in the Philippines and Hong Kong and is loved by Brits.

The traditional Irish ‘Black Stuff’ has surged in popularity in recent years but only managed 53 per cent.

Kopparberg ranked joint-third (51 per cent) along with Thatchers Gold and Strongbow.

They were followed by Bulmers and Magners at 50 per cent.

Millenials rated Kopparberg number one followed by Corona and Birra Moretti.

Meanwhile San Miguel was the best for Generation X, as well as baby boomers.

The favourability score was defined by the per cent of people who have a positive opinion of a beer brand.

The data comes from YouGov’s ratings collection which claims to be the “boldest” attempt to show what Brits really think.

The survey asked people to share their opinions on 164 well-known brands between July and September.

SlotsWise also used the YouGov ratings alongside Google trends data.

They found Corona is the trendiest beer with it being the most searched in the UK over the past 12 months.

Best served with a lime, it has become synonymous with the British summer.

It’s hugely popular ‘very golden moment’ campaign during the Paris Olympics would have helped it’s high trend score.

It comes as Carling lost its crown as Britain’s best-selling draught beer.

Punters splashed out £246.7million on Italian-style Birra Moretti in the last quarter.

This pumped up sales 9.6 per cent compared with the same three-month period last year.

Owners Heineken, which snapped up the Italian firm in 1996, put the increase down to pubgoers opting for more premium pints despite an overall dip in beer drinking.

It was also boosted by a multimillion-pound, nationwide marketing campaign for the launch of unfiltered Birra Moretti Sale Di Mare.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations

Latin America is learning the hard way. Organised crime in the region has been bad since the 1980s; but “reorganised crime” is proving far worse.

Ecuador’s gang war meltdown; Mexican mafias’ colonisation of avocado farms; hitmen prowling the once peaceful streets of Chile. These are a few recent developments that have made organised crime the unavoidable question of the moment in Latin America.

But these are just the symptoms. The underlying disease: a reorganisation of the region’s criminal economies, now over a decade in the making. One that is testing democracy’s capacity to respond — and survive. 

Three market disruptions jump-started reorganisation in the 2010s. First, cocaine production nearly tripled from 2014 to 2022, as coca eradication efforts in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia stalled and cultivation expanded. Meanwhile, demand for cocaine, long dominated by the US, became more global, spreading to Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific. 

This had two major consequences: a rewiring of drug trafficking routes and huge windfalls. Brazil’s crime syndicate First Capital Command (PCC) made an estimated $40mn just over a decade ago. Now, since building a transcontinental pipeline to supply increased demand, it makes north of $1bn annually from cocaine alone.

Second, soaring gold prices triggered a criminal gold rush. Organised crime groups took over areas where wildcat gold miners operated, equipping and taxing them, and enabling a boom in output. In 2022, Latin America’s illegal mines accounted for over 11 per cent of global gold production (up from 6 per cent a decade earlier), out-earning cocaine in Colombia and Peru.

Last, during the 2010s, millions of Latin Americans (Venezuelans in particular) fled the dismal conditions created by mafias and mafia states. But these very crime groups made their flight into an industry, systematically taxing coyotes that ferry migrants and refugees (as well as kidnapping and ransoming migrants passing through Mexico), and reaping billions in profit annually.

Barring any sudden and unlikely ebbs in demand for the region’s illicit goods and services, reorganised crime is here to stay. And everyone should be worried, including Europe and the US. 

Reorganised crime threatens democracy — no small thing, given that Latin America remains the most democratic region in the global south. While mafias don’t seek to overthrow the government, they seed “parallel powers” — networks of corrupt politicians, judicial officials, and bureaucrats — that disable the state’s law enforcement capacities. Such powers are now surfacing in once unaffected countries and consolidating elsewhere, undermining democracy in Mexico, Honduras and Peru.

Latin America’s democracies lack a blueprint for combating transnational crime. While some see El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang crackdown as a model, this is a deceptive siren song — El Salvador’s mafias were poorer and weaker than those elsewhere, and the country is now an authoritarian police state.

The difficult truth: reorganised crime is in all likelihood too global a phenomenon for any one country alone to make an appreciable dent. The US and Europe should quit relegating Latin America to the back burner and prioritise partnering with regional governments to reduce the profitability and power of reorganised crime: consider the record number of fentanyl deaths, the overwhelmed US immigration system and the consequent nativist backlash.

The biggest risk is assuming that the cost of organised crime in Latin America can be contained. Left to its own devices, and subject to pure market forces, crime will keep innovating. And it will keep reorganising. 

A MARRIED couple has revealed they discovered their £1 million jackpot lottery win from a message they were sent completely out of the blue.

Bill and Cath Mullarkey received the life changing news after returning to their Coventry home from a holiday in St Lucia.

7

7

Advertisement

The 2017 National Lottery win has since allowed them to build a home and restaurant on the Caribbean island.

Bill, 64, and Cath, 63, decided to pursue their dream after the shock draw.

Mr Mullarkey said: “We feel so blessed. It has changed our life and the lives of other people that we’ve helped as well.”

The couple played the National Lottery “many, many times” and dreamed of owning a restaurant on St Lucia, where they first met and holidayed frequently, after returning to the UK and working in corporate catering.

Advertisement

Returning from a trip in 2017, the couple were shocked to receive a message telling them that they had won £1 million in the National Lottery.

The couple added: “I thought it must be something like, ‘this could be you if you play tonight.

“[Instead it read] congratulations, you’re the proud winner of the EuroMillions, £1 million’ and that was it.

“It was life-changing, but it took time to sink in. Even for a day or two, it was surreal. I’m thinking maybe we’ll get a call back saying it’s a mistake, but no.

Advertisement

“When you see it’s all signed, sealed, delivered and then that’s reality when you see your bank account with zeros, wow.

“We always thought of having our own place and ideally open our own little restaurant. We never thought it would happen but we dreamed and then that was the priority, that and help family members.

My husband and I won $500k from $5 lottery scratch-off on same day we got an eviction notice – but we still lost it all

“We had got to that age in life where we thought it’d never be possible or we would be fortunate enough to think, ‘where do we really want to settle down’, and for me, it was a no brainer.”

The couple had bought a plot of land a few minutes from the beach before winning the EuroMillions and, now they they were £1 million richer, they knew this was their chance.

Advertisement

They set to work building their house with mountain views, a swimming pool and a restaurant on the ground floor called Brigands Hideaway, which serves St Lucian food and opened last November.

7

7

“It’s doing quite well, and it’s nice working for ourselves, and Cath is very good with the local food, and it’s going down well with both locals and tourists,” Mr Mullarkey said.

Advertisement

“There is so much fresh produce here and we get on well with the local suppliers and farmers, and Cath’s brothers are fishermen so we get fresh fish.”

Mr Mullarkey admitted the couple do miss “beautiful” Coventry but that their lives have been changed for the better by winning the National Lottery.

“We were happy before, but we are even happier now, knowing that we have this. I’m grateful every day of my life and so is Cath, for the change that it’s managed to bring us.

“What we’re doing now is for ourselves and living our dream, doing our thing, which we dreamt of, but never thought would be possible, so it has changed our life for the better.”

Advertisement

7

7

How to enter the National Lottery?

SOME may find they are inspired to enter the lottery after hearing about the couple’s incredible win. Here’s how you can get involved

Advertisement

All you need to do is pick six numbers between one and 59. If you’re unsure you can always opt for a Lucky Dip which randomly selects your numbers.

You can play up to seven lines on each play slip and buy up to ten slips at one time.

Then you need to decide whether you want to play on Wednesday or Saturday.

If you’re undecided you could choose to play both and then all that’s left to choose if the number of weeks you’d like to play.

Advertisement