Entitled "Cock and Bull," this showpiece by British artist Damien Hirst towers above diners at Tramshed, which only serves chicken and steak.

DAMIEN HIRSTEntitled "Cock and Bull," this showpiece by British artist Damien Hirst towers above diners at Tramshed, which only serves chicken and steak.Internationally renowned British artist Damien Hirst has created an art piece for a London restaurant in which a whole...

Edward Burtynsky Photographs Farming in Monegros Spain

© Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Flowers, London Dryland Farming #13, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain, 2010Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is having a London moment. Not only are his familiar works on the oil crisis on view but he is also exhibiting a...

Strawberry farms suck Spain dry

"If the Doñana park were a patient, it would be on the point of entering the intensive care unit," is how Eva Hernandez, the World Wildlife Fund's water expert in Spain, graphically describes the current state of western Europe's most important wetland. And one of the culprits for its critical condition just happens to be that delicious red fruit that comes in punnets and which, as the British rediscover every May or June, goes so very nicely with...

Bank bail-out won't end Spain's property nightmare

The Spanish predicament is, as was the case in the US with the subprime mortgage collapse that fuelled the 2008/9 financial crisis, property-led. Recent data from the Knight Frank Global House Price index shows that Spanish residential properties fell by 7.3pc in the year to the end of March. Official Spanish data state that prices are down 20pc from the peak, but those figures are based on bank valuations, rather than actual sales. Anecdotal evidence...

Spain's Bankia investors to start compensation claim

A group of small shareholders in Spain's bailed-out Bankia will add to a growing flurry of legal claims against the bank with a civil claim next week, as they seek compensation for investments that have been all but wiped out. Bankia, at the heart of a banking crisis that looks set to push Spain to ask for a bailout, has asked for a 19 billion euro (15.5 billion pounds) state resc...

Spain became the fourth and largest country to ask Europe to rescue its failing banks, a bailout of up to €100 billion ($125 billion)

Spain became the fourth and largest country to ask Europe to rescue its failing banks, a bailout of up to €100 billion ($125 billion) that leaders hoped would stabilize a financial crisis that threatens to break apart the 17-country eurozone. The rescue offer follows growing pressure from international investors and the Obama administration and comes a week before elections in Greece, whose voters could decide whether the country leaves the euro....

Bank of England meets amid talk of £50bn stimulus

Bank of England policymakers meet today to decide whether to change interest rates or to pump in more money into the ailing economy, with leading economist saying they may opt to inject a further £50bn of stimul...

Europe is on the verge of financial chaos.

Global capital markets, now the most powerful force on earth, are rapidly losing confidence in the financial coherence of the 17-nation euro zone. A market implosion there, like that triggered by Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, may not be far off. Not only would that dismantle the euro zone, but it could also usher in another global economic slump: in effect, a second leg of the Great Recession, analogous to that of 1937. This risk is evident...

Spain is warning that Europe's single currency will unravel

Spain is warning that Europe's single currency will unravel unless its leaders decide within weeks to centralise budget and tax policies in the eurozone and agree on a strategy to pool responsibility for failing banks. As Spain's prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, came under mounting international pressure to accept the eurozone's fourth national bailout in two years, the government in Madrid angrily rejected the demands, insisting that it did not need...