Leading carrier Delta Air Lines is set to bring the Costa del Sol into touching distance for another wave of tourists and property seekers, with new flight routes linking New York City and Malaga.

Starting next summer, Delta will offer travellers three flights a week from New York City’s JFK to Malaga’s Pablo Picasso International Airport, right in the heart of the sun-drenched Costa del Sol.

Part of an overall expansion in transatlantic services from the airline, the flight route will link two great cities and keep the Costa del Sol – one of Europe’s top holiday venues – buzzing with new interest.

Javier Pinanes, director of the Spanish tourist office in New York, told TravelVideo.TV: “Malaga is the gateway to Andalusia, one of Spain’s most popular destinations for Americans. With Delta’s new service, they will now be able to travel there faster and more conveniently.”

The region is also a well-established favourite with British property seekers, whose desire to discover, enjoy and even settle in the area has been facilitated by frequent flights between cities like Malaga and UK destinations.

Malaga is not only a base for enjoying sunny beaches along the coast, but is also a stone’s throw from beautiful historic cities like Granada, with its hill-top Moorish palace, the legendary Alhambra.

EasyJet has completed the acquisition of GB Airways, a budget provider of flights to Spain and elsewhere, for a total of £103.5 million.

Announcing the acquisition as part of its expansion strategy, EasyJet will be able to consolidate and strengthen its European flight routes, gaining an even bigger base at Gatwick airport thanks to the GB Airways slots.

The budget carrier acquired by EasyJet is currently a British Airways (BA) operated provider, flying 34 routes from Gatwick and Heathrow airports, and six from Manchester.

Some GB Airways routes will continue to be operated under the BA brand until March 2008, but in losing flights to EasyJet, BA plans its own routes to continue serving Spain, Portugal and elsewhere.

Planning to continue running from Heathrow and Gatwick, BA is looking to serve the Costa del Sol resort Malaga from both London airports, as well as other Iberian locations like Faro, Gibraltar and Ibiza.

Meanwhile EasyJet highlighted the benefits it would draw from the acquisition: “By winter 2008/09 GB Airways will be fully consolidated into the EasyJet business model, releasing cost savings.”

Spain has been hailed as a great property location thanks to its accessible and easy processes for buying a house.

Real estate specialist Propertyshowrooms.com said that buying in Iberia was very easy – and allowed access to a country with the most modern and comfortable of amenities.

Nicky Segal of Propertyshowrooms.com, said: “Spain is still fantastic for accessibility. Interest rates are probably the lowest around and mortgages are very easy to obtain, so finance is not a problem.

“On some developments you can sometimes get 100 per cent finance,” she added, highlighting that all of these advantages were within a stone’s throw, with the country “very easy to get to”.

Halifax recently claimed that Spanish property prices had increased by as much as 100 per cent over the last five years – making it the fastest grower in Europe – with the facility of mortgage procedures bringing in more and more overseas buyers.

Ms Segal highlighted the attractions of the lifestyle for those who took out mortgages and set up a new life in the country: “Spain is a great area, there’s nothing that you can’t get, there’s loads of facilities, loads of amenities – it’s great for old and young alike.”

A regional commission serving Spain’s Costa del Sol recently paid a trip to London to visit its underground system, in preparation for a new metro network in the region.

Using the London Underground as a blueprint for success may sound odd to disgruntled commuters in the capital – especially in light of recent strikes – but the Andalusian Infrastructure Commission hopes to take some lessons back.

Looking to serve Costa del Sol hub Malaga and also to develop urban transport in Granada and Seville, London will provide a useful example of how to run metro transport for large numbers of people.

The strains on the London system will perhaps be the best lesson of all – despite strikes and cancellations, the tube serves millions of people and gets the majority to work on time, an achievement valued highly by the visiting Spaniards.

Looking beyond the mere functioning of the tube network, the Andalusian commission is hoping to bring back insights into the workings of the congestion charge, with 80 per cent of workers in Andalusian cities using the car at present.

Cities in the South of Spain are not only industrial hubs but are also big tourist and overseas property locations, making good transport links an increasingly important issue.

A Spanish bank has revealed positive figures for mortgage lending and net profit, providing another rebuff to cynics about the country’s property market.

Mortgage lending at Catalan-based Banco Sabadell was up 18.6 percent – a figure claimed by the bank to be totally in line with the market for property financing.

The bank’s mortgage lending makes up over 20 per cent of its loans portfolio, with Banco Sabadell asserting the high quality of its mortgage standings.

On the strength of its robust lending, the bank saw its nine-month net profits rise above €600 million (£418 million) beating analyst forecasts and sending out a strong message about the health of the financial and property markets.

Forbes.com reported the comments of bank chairman Jose Oliu, who read the positive property lending figures at Sabadell as evidence that “the Spanish financial system can more than weather the crisis sparked by the US subprime loans performance”.

Prices in Spanish property have risen at rapid rates over recent years, with interest from overseas buyers keeping values afloat even at difficult times.

One of the advantages of investing in property in Spain, or taking an extended break in the country, is for many the opening up of further travel opportunities in Mediterranean climes.

At the gateway of the Mediterranean and at the southern border of the European continent, destinations across Spain offer a great springboard for further travel, with Morocco hailed by the Sunday Times as a destination now in easy reach.

While cautioning that travellers can be stung by high costs on direct flights between the south of Spain and destinations like Casablanca, the Times suggested the savvy use of budget flight routes departing from other Spanish destinations.

Travel expert at the newspaper, Richard Green, advised travellers looking for as two-part trip divided between Spain and Morroco to look to Easyjet and Ryanair routes from east coast Spanish airports to the heart of bustling and historical city Marrakech.

Encouraging the use of flights from Gerona and Barcelona, Mr Green said: "With these connections, you could fly to Gerona (for the Costa Blanca), or to Barcelona or Madrid, then book a one-way flight to get you down to Marrakech (from about £55)."

He added that subsequently heading back home on a further one-way fare could mean a fantastic two-part holiday at a very affordable price: "All three flights, including taxes and fees, could be yours for less than £150."

Rumours have continued to circulate around the sale of Spanish flag-bearing airline Iberia, with Lufthansa now claimed by many to be preparing a takeover.

Spanish newspapers Expansion and Cinco Dias both reported that the German air giant was ready to make a bid for Iberia valued at around €3 per share, but Lufthansa has strongly denied the claim.

Lufthansa executives were reported as expressing interest in the €3 share price, sparking rumours of an imminent takeover, but subsequently the company has poured water on the idea.

Agence France-Presse reported the comments of a spokesperson for the German airline, who was categorical in refuting the claim: “This is not true. We deny it”.

The sale of Iberia has raised many an interested bidder, with the airline currently one of the leading providers of flights between Spain and the UK, as well as other destinations.

Lufthansa, among other potential bidders, has indicated that British Airways – currently a ten per cent shareholder in Iberia – needs to be the first one to act.

Shares in Iberia fell slightly at the end of last week, after Lufthansa punctured the rumours claiming it was ready to make a bid for the Spanish giant.

Top Spanish coastal resort the Costa Blanca has been chosen as the filming location for a lavish TV production of an Ernest Hemingway novel.

Garden Of Eden, a Hemingway tale set on the French Cote d’Azur in the 1920s, is being filmed in the equally Mediterannean setting of Costa Blanca towns Altea, Alicante and Alcoy.

Luckily for the region, Torrevieja’s local yacht school was able to provide vintage Vela Latina triangular-sailed fishing boats – part of the 1920s setting – which were key in dictating the Garden Of Eden team’s choice of southern Spain.

The English, Spanish, Italian and Polish co-production features an American writer honeymooning on the coast when a sultry Italian upsets the marital calm – with Mena Suvari leading the bill of Hollywood names gracing the Costa Blanca for the duration of filming.

Suvari paid tribute to the region and the Spanish experience in a web blog: “I am in Spain working on Garden Of Eden and we are in our rehearsal period and just having the best time. Everyone is so lovely and Spain is just exquisite.”

Travellers to Spain were numerous and not unwilling to spend during their trips, according to September hotel occupancy figures.

Calculating the fullness of hotels across the country and categorising them by levels of luxury, the National Statistics Institute figures showed a 2.7 per cent interannual rise on hotel occupancy last September.

The increase was largely fuelled by new influxes of foreign visitors, with a 4.6 per cent increase in overseas visitors proving the eternal attraction of Spain, even as steamy summer temperatures abate.

Both Spanish and overseas holidaymakers frequenting Iberian hotels opted for more up-market accommodation, with three and four-star establishments hosting more than a million home and foreign tourists each.

Meanwhile, nearly half a million tourists overall were welcomed into luxury five-star hotels, bringing their generous spending habits into the Spanish economy this September.

Aragon was the province experiencing the highest increase in hotel occupancy on last year’s figures, while Andalucia – containing sea-side favourite resorts like the Costa del Sol – remained the third most popular of Spain’s 17 provinces.

industry.

The booming region was reported by Spanish news site Terra to be the leading grower in job creation among regions which are experiencing similarly rapid increases in population as housing is developed and more people are attracted to it.

Also known as the Costa Azahar, the area has welcomed as many as 75,000 new inhabitants this year, according to Terra, bringing its yearly population growth to a booming 15.4 per cent.

But while other areas like Guadalajara, Alicante and Tarragon have also grown in population since 2001, the Castellon area was leading the way in job creation, boasting the lowest unemployment rate of the growing regions.

Terra claimed that despite the huge population growth – the majority of which was coming from foreign nationals like Britons setting up in the region – unemployment remained at around half the national average.

Using 2006 figures from bank La Caixa, unemployment in the region was claimed to be as low as 2.7 per cent, making Castellon one of Spain’s most booming locations.