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The Mar Menor, a coastal lagoon located in the southeast of Spain, is one of the largest lagoons on the Mediterranean coastline. This singular area is subject to a wide range of uses, including large tourist resorts and intensive agriculture. The importance of the lagoon and its salt marshes in terms of biodiversity has been recognised in numerous international protection programmes. The distinctive environment of the lagoon has long been attractive for visitors. A surge in tourist activities has taken place in the area since the early 1960s, characterised by intense urban development along the lagoon’s perimeter to accommodate the growing seasonal population. This phenomenon has particularly affected La Manga, a sandy bar that is 20 km in length. La Manga acts as a barrier between the lagoon and the Mediterranean Sea, crossed by fimore or less functional channels called ‘golas’. The urbanization process has changed the water fl ow system between the inside and seawater through the channels. The changes have affected coastal dynamics, the longitudinal profi le of the coast and the lagoon’s ecosystem. The coastal lagoon is also highly threatened by other pollution variables derived from agricultural lands. The water derived from the Tajo-Segura transfer generated a profound land transformation of the adjacent agricultural areas, which changed from extensive dry crop farming to intensively irrigated crops, disturbing the lagoon dramatically. This paper analyses both land transformations around the coastal perimeter of the Mar Menor during the last 50 years and shows the environmental impact with its consequences on the ecosystem. Although numerous biological studies have been carried out in the Mar Menor, a better understanding of the consequences of land transformation in the perimeter of the lagoon is still necessary to understand the lagoon’s situation. The results of territorial management in the Mar Menor lagoon need to be addressed in order to develop successful strategies in the area to protect this valuable ecosystem and its services.

Spain is a country with a large high-speed rail network (HSR or AVE by its initials in Spanish). Most of this railway network was built between 2000 and 2007. Network deployment involves addressing many issues, particularly station localization. The traditional railway network in Spain has a different track gauge to that in the rest of Europe so historical stations do not always serve the high-speed network. In 2000, the first proposal for the railway network of Valencia was published. The authors research team realized two studies on the metropolitan railway network and better station localization in 2002 and 2006. In particular, these studies proposed an intermodal station in an airport to integrate travel flights and travel high-speed train. Between 2008 and 2010, a new provisional high-speed railway station in Valencia was built: Joaquin Sorolla Station. This paper analyses the initial proposal, the actual situation and trends after 2006 on airport–railway station relations in other cities, such as Madrid or Barcelona.

The urbanization process that shapes the present Mediterranean coast started with the mass tourism that encouraged the Centres and Areas of National Tourist Interest law in 1962, as a strategic national investment. 50 years after its implementation, it is necessary to conduct a retrospective analysis of the results, assessing to what extent have the stated goals in the 1960s been met. The evolution of the macroeconomic, political and legal parameters show certain deviations from initial forecasts of many large urban plans carried out in coastal places created from scratch. The case of La Manga del Mar Menor on the Murcia coast a target for 250,000 holidaymakers which came from a desert dune in the 1960s, is certainly an example; poorly documented while enlightening, of the results that have been achieved. The study of real social and economic performance as a tourism product against territorial and landscape impacts, the problem of governance in the context of urban planning and the ability of private property to develop its own sustainable projects in the long run has been approached with the detail and objectivity that allows a comprehensive case study contrasted by the facts. All these elements will be distributed to either side of the balance, in order to evaluate the validity of a coastal development model, that after five decades we can now begin to postulate with enough research perspective.

The extraordinary urban development that has occurred in Spain in the period of 1997–2007 allows us to analyze directly the generated environmental problems. In this period, between 300,000 and 900,000 houses were built in Spain each year and many of them were built on the Mediterranean coast. In many areas of new urban development, houses are unsold because there is no market and many areas are completely urbanized but not built on. So this reality is a great laboratory where we can directly check the environmental consequences of unjustified urban developments. There is legislation for the prevention of the environmental impacts of urbanization in Spain. This legislation has failed to avoid unnecessary urban development although it has produced clear environmental impacts. The F. Eiximenis research group analyzed select cases on the Valencian coast (between Sagunto and Cullera) for assessing the environmental effects of these urban developments, particularly concerning the transformation of the soil’s environmental value, the consumption of resources and the emissions. The land transformation has been analysed by CORINE data, digital images and direct observation. This paper explains the situation produced and the main findings of the research.

The European Union (EU) promoted some important changes with the Directives to implement the Aarhus Convention and the Strategic Environmental Assessment. Spain developed the Directives with some Acts in 2006 and incorporated the sustainable development principle in land regulation, land planning, land activity, land transformation and land use with Acts in 2007. However, in Spain, for environmental matters, the central laws regulate only a general framework and rules for central plans and programmes. The autonomous communities must approve any complementary laws with a detailed application, especially in urban planning matters. In this moment the Autonomous Community of Valencia (ACV) does not have any special regulation for strategic environmental assessment of urban planning, but, at the same time, the ACV publishes some acts for urban planning and approves guidelines concerning sustainability, citizens’ quality of life and land planning. It is obliged to apply these guidelines to urban planning. The new proceedings and documents that these new Laws require one to elaborate the Urban Plan are not foreseen in ACV legislation. All these matters generate a situation of juridical insecurity. Anyway the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) have a special methodological relation. Paradoxically, urban plans in the ACV have been subject to EIA since 1999. There is therefore, a great experience on this matter with a type of environmental

The last real estate cycle in Spain is a paradigmatic example of non sustainable development. The extraordinary urban development in the 1997-2007 period produced an extraordinary economic growth based on land speculation and housing. The end of the cycle generates a very severe economic crisis, one that is the most serious economic crisis in a long time. This process has economic, social and environmental repercussions; from the economic point of view Spain has a temporally increased its GDP. The real estate activity has generated houses, and land able to be developed, but without use and without a market. From the social point of view, the Spanish people have changed their system of moral value. It takes as an ideal rapid enrichment without effort and without producing useful goods and services, and from the environmental point of view, on building over an extensive area without use. It is an irreversible process of rural land transformation. All land conversion is carried out by urban planning; the landscape changes and “urban sprawl” increases.

The Valencian Community is located in the Spanish Mediterranean area. At present the whole Spanish Mediterranean is living through a process greatly accelerated by urban development. This process is generated, fundamentally, by the demand for housing by the population of Europe’s central and northern areas in a situation of global economy. These processes suppose an irreversible transformation of the territory which is not always justified. The dysfunctions produced in these processes forced the regional Valencian government to reform, in depth, all the legislation in matters dictating new laws: Soil for non urbanize Law of 2004, Law of regional planning and protection of the landscape of 2004 and Urban development Valencian Law of 2005. This legislative wide and extensive set introduces in to urban development planning the whole set of procedures orientated to the environmental sustainability. The regulation establishes novel measurements as, amongst others, the indicators of sustainability, the quotas of sustainability to pay when the sustainability limits are exceeded, the Fund of Territorial Equity, the programs and projects for the sustainability and the quality of life, the transfer to the administration of an equal surface magnitude of natural reserve as that of any new urbanization, and the obligation of landscape studies. In spite of all this it continues without approaching an administrative reform that generates a system of management that really guarantees the protection of the natural resources in the short and long term. The present text analyzes the innovative elements that interfere for the sustainability of the urban development planning and it also indicates the still not solved aspects.

A correlational study of the reliability of acoustic voice parameters was made of 148 healthy adults. Acoustic analysis was performed with MDVP-Multi-Dimensional Voice Program implemented in a CSL-Computerized Speech Lab of Kay Elemetrics. A set of 29 voice parameters were obtained from two samples of sustained vowel /a/ recorded from each subject. General results separated by sex are showed and the test-retest reliability in each pair of measures was calculated. Data show a high intra-subject stability of Frequency Fundamental parameters; acceptable stability in parameters of Frequency and Amplitude Perturbation, Noise, Subharmonics and Voice irregularities; and a very low consistency in Tremor parameters. Parameters related with shimmer were more reliable than parameters related with jitter. According to results several conclusions are reported.

The Work is a study of quality voice in laryngectomy patients with speech prosthetic supports. We have studied the quality voice objective and subjective. We explain the results.