The Brits are helping to pump up Spain’s property market.

Purchases of property by foreigners accounted for 13% of all sales in the first half of 2015.

The ruling coalition will win today’s general election but without an absolute majority.

The first counts are in and the projections give a clear victory to the Pedro Passos Coelho/ Paulo Portas (PSD/CDS-PP) coalition in Sunday’s 2015 election.

France is to introduce “virtual driving licences” for foreign drivers in an effort to cut down on road deaths.

It will also start a register of foreign drivers who have failed to pay traffic fines.

Today’s the day that Portugal’s electorate decides a. whether to vote and b. which party to vote for.

The question is whether Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, who oversaw the bailout programme that averted the country's bankruptcy while imposing stiff austerity measures, will retain his position or hand over the reins of power to António Costa, the Socialist party leader.

Political parties in Spain have been urged to pledge to investigate cases of people who ‘disappeared’ during the 1939-1975 period of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.

The Platform for a Truth Commission launched the campaign in the hope of establishing the facts surrounding the unsolved crimes of the 1936 to 1939 civil war and the dictatorship which followed.

When the Spanish property bubble burst, it swept away thousands of jobs, many of them fill by school drop-outs who had only to be willing to work to get a well-paid job in construction.

Spain’s benefit system had then to absorb thousands of young and unskilled people who also had little education.

Sharp-eyed service station staff were suspicious of three men acting strangely, so called the police in the early hours of Saturday morning.

At 05:00 the men were observed by members of staff at the Via do Infante services at Loulé to be conducting some sort of deal.

One of Faro's youth hostals had to be evacuated on Friday as flames destroyed a room where a French guest was developing his unconventional cooking skills.

Twenty guests ended up on the street while firefighters from seven vehicles doused the fire in his room and broke down doors in other areas to check the fire had not spread.