Six people in Catalunya are now confirmed to be infected with swine flu, including one man who, unlike the others, has not recently travelled to Mexico where the outbreak originated. As the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised its alert level to five (of six) regarding the threat of a swine flu pandemic, the Catalan Health Department announced that Spain has seen the first indirect transmission of the illness in Europe. The man affected is the boyfriend of someone who had travelled to Mexico and is also infected—tests are being done on the close friends and family on everyone suspected of contracting swine flu.

Members of the okupa (squatter) group Coordinadora de Asambleas de Jóvenes de la Izquierda Independentista today took action against the planned eviction of squatters from a house in the Les Corts neighbourhood (article in Castilian).The police took action at 7am to shut the street of Entença across which the squatters had run a cable and to which some of them had attached themselves.

For the second consecutive month, inflation in Spain was negative: in April, it was -0.1 percent, the same as in March; together they are the only two months that the country has seen negative inflation in the past 47 years (article in Castilian). The figure, provisional until the definitive amount is released on May 13th, is thought to be a result of the falling price of petrol. However, despite the negative inflation, the Bank of Spain has insisted that the possibility of deflation here remains remote.