Spanish Advantages: Submarine and Commercial Travel Piracy (by U.S.)

Here are two situations involving Spain in which you must draw your own conclusions. Personally, the U.S. price overcharges fit own my travel observations and are not surprising. Nevertheless, perhaps this information will be useful to you, so here goes:

1) Published September 30, 2007 When the Best Deals Don’t End in .Com
Jorge Cuadros, from Alexandria, Va., turned to the Internet to book a rental car. On Hertz.com, Mr. Cuadros was quoted a price of 626.12 euros for an automatic Mercedes for five days in October. At $1.42 to the euro, that amounted to about $890. He had stumbled upon a little-known trick that many online travel companies would rather keep quiet. Out of curiosity, Mr. Cuadros switched to his native Spanish tongue and checked Hertz’s Spanish Web site, www.hertz.es, where the same car was offered for 263.92 euros — about 58 percent less. He had stumbled upon a little-known trick that many online travel companies would rather keep quiet.

“It seems that the car rental companies are in some cases even charging twice the price to residents of the U.S. than to Europeans,” said Mr. Cuadros. ... Some of the best travel deals on the Web these days don’t end in .com but can be found on a travel company’s foreign offshoot, which usually ends with the country’s domain name, like .fr (France), and .de (Germany). Though the travel companies don’t advertise it, they often charge different prices based on the country of origin. Read the full article for related airfare bargains.

2) Would a rogue, submarine from Spain chase a sailboat all the way back to Norfolk, VA and blow her up?

A 42-foot sailboat exploded late Wednesday afternoon at a marina in Ocean View, sending debris 40 feet into the air, demolishing the boat and leaving a man seriously wounded.

The answer is in the details. Here are the news articles accompanying the top and bottom photos. Did you find the correct answer? (Hint: Remember the basics of journalism: the 5 Ws, as in the title of 1). What is wrong with the photo suggestion? HINT: Norfolk is 3506.4 nautical miles from Alicante, Spain.