Glave has made significant progress this season, breaking the 10-second barrier for the first time in legal conditions to win his first British title in June.
He has run sub-10 on six separate occasions, in all conditions, this season – including when he defeated the in-form Jacobs, a surprise Olympic champion five years ago, on his home turf in Italy.
That confidence was evident as Glave dominated his semi-final earlier in the evening, and he executed to perfection when it mattered most.
A talented junior, Glave was the fastest 17-year-old in the world in 2017 after he recorded a time of 10.21.
His progress has been disrupted by injury setbacks since, including a fracture in his back.
But, able to remain consistent with his training this year, Glave captured the gold medal he believed he was capable of winning two years ago.
The foundations of Glave’s recent progress has come from a focus on sharpening the first 40 metres of his race.
After hitting the front by the 30-metre mark, he never looked back – and continued running far beyond the finish line in celebration.
Hunt could have as many as three opportunities to add to her tally this week, as se competes in the 200m and both the women’s and mixed 4x100m relay events.
Typically not the quickest off the blocks at almost six-foot tall, Hunt was seventh in the eight-athlete final after the first 10m.
But she held her form superbly to overhaul her rivals and end her wait for gold, just two years after finishing seventh in the previous European final in Rome.
“I just had such a magical feeling,” Hunt said.
“I’ve won English Schools here, raced here as a 13, 14-year-old. I just had a feeling that this was going to be my night.
“My first gold. I think it was definitely time for an upgrade, and I’m now kind of fully established.”
British record holder Asher-Smith lined up in Birmingham as the defending champion – but the 30-year-old could not force her way into medal contention.
Asher-Smith, bidding to win a historic seventh gold and become the joint-most successful athlete in the history of the championships, finished fifth in 11.10, as Poland’s Ewa Swoboda (11.02) and Belgian Delphine Nkansa (11.06) completed the podium.
Like Hunt, Asher-Smith will have further opportunities to draw level with Croatian discus thrower Sandra Elkasevic and Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who earlier won a superb 5,000m gold on his comeback from injury.
Both will return to action on Wednesday, when attention turns to the women’s 200m medals before the weekend’s relays.
De Zerbi could not have been clearer.
The Spurs manager had just kept his side up on the final day, following a 1-0 win against Everton, but this was not a time for celebration.
He was already looking ahead to the summer to ensure the club were never in this situation again.
“My target is to start the pre-season with the team I have in my dream,” he said in his final news conference last season.
That dream is quickly becoming a reality for the Italian following an aggressive start to the window from Spurs.
Defenders Andy Robertson and Marcos Senesi have arrived on free transfers and the club could end up spending a combined £237m on centre-back Jan Paul van Hecke and midfielders Fernandes and Tonali.
Spurs may have finished in 17th in back-to-back seasons, but the club are feeling the benefit of strong off-the-field revenues as they look to bounce back.
Newcastle, by contrast, have effectively needed to trade to reinvest.
The sight of Alexander Isak, Anthony Gordon and Tonali all leaving the club in the space of less than a year is sobering.
So the spotlight will very much now be on incomings.
After missing out on forward Victor Munoz, who joined Liverpool, Newcastle need reinforcements.
The club have only signed 20-year-old goalkeeper Ewen Jaouen, who will likely start the season as a deputy, having never played top-flight football before.
There is little margin for error with pre-season right around the corner.
More to follow.
Spain is redoubling its efforts to push its tourist appeal beyond the familiar “sun and sand and coast” model as it prepares for another record-breaking year in which the number of foreign visitors could reach 100 million for the first time, the country’s tourism minister has said.
Speaking to the Guardian, Jordi Hereu rejected suggestions that Spain was now saturated with tourists but said it had become clear that the “old formulas no longer work”, especially amid growing concerns about overtourism and the effects of the climate emergency.
Hereu, the minister of industry and tourism, said the steady growth in tourist numbers – which could be further boosted this summer by uncertainty over Middle Eastern destinations after the US and Israel’s war on Iran – could be managed sustainably and responsibly.
Last year, the number of foreign tourists rose by 3.2% to 96.8 million, while the value of their spending grew by 6.8% to hit €134bn (£116bn). Figures from the first quarter of this year show tourist numbers up by 3.4% and revenue up by 6.7%.
“With that growth, we could reach 100 million,” Hereu said. “But I’d like to point out that that doesn’t worry us or obsess us … [We favour] what I call calm growth – in other words, growth that can be easily managed. And this year, despite what’s happening and the demand diversion effect, I think that in general, for the moment, our forecast is for moderate growth.”
While tourism has long been a pillar of the Spanish economy, making up more than 12% of its GDP, its rapid and unchecked growth in many parts of the country over recent years has triggered protests and a furious backlash. Overtourism, not least the proliferation of tourist flats, has changed the face of entire neighbourhoods and cities, priced locals out of the housing market and increased pressure on public services and natural resources.
Asked if the current rates of tourism were sustainable, Hereu said: “Yes, if we do our homework, and no if we don’t do anything.” The minister, a former mayor of Barcelona, praised his successor in that role, Jaume Collboni, a fellow socialist, for pushing ahead with a decision to ban tourist flats in the Catalan capital by 2028, but he said Spain’s highly decentralised nature made it hard for the central government to drive local change. He also contrasted the different approaches of leftwing and rightwing administrations.
“I think there are places in Spain that are now seeing the effects of not regulating anything,” he said. “But I also want to be very clear, because this is also influenced by political stripes. The left is more in favour of regulating tourism than the right, because the right holds the view that we should allow freedom because the market will self-regulate, which isn’t true, and in many places it’s clear that it isn’t self-regulating.”
Hereu said that while he believed anti-tourism feeling was “very much a minority thing” in Spain, it was becoming increasingly clear that a new approach was needed and that local and regional authorities needed to properly limit, regulate and tax their tourist offerings.
“What I do believe is that in some places there’s a demand for better tourism in the sense of a better model,” he said. “But the culture I see throughout Spain is a culture of a country that knows how to welcome people. Our key principle is that we’re in favour of transforming the model to keep ahead and that we’re working humbly to transform that model because the old formulas no longer work.”
Although he defended traditional beach tourism, which still makes up 37% of all visits, and said Spain had to be open to “all sectors” of the market, he noted that people were now seeking experiences beyond their sun loungers.
“It’s very interesting to see in the qualitative surveys that people who come basically because ‘hey, I’m here to relax, sun and beach, etc,’ also start asking for add-ons – like ‘beach plus’,” Hereu said. “I think this is also a good trend, because what we need is to add value.”
The minister said Spain’s socialist-led coalition government was committed to the socially, economically and environmentally sustainable principles set out in its 2030 tourism strategy.
“One is decentralising destinations over time and we’re also working towards deseasonalisation,” he said. “The third, very clear principle is the diversification of our offering away from all those decades of sun and sand and coast, which is where the [Spanish tourist industry] was born, and which is still the dominant offering.”
Although Spain has been pushing the summery charms of its eastern and southern coasts for decades, Hereu argues that the key to sustainable tourism lies in making it less seasonal, less beach-fixated and more geographically and culturally diverse.
The country’s current advertising campaign, called Think You Know Spain? Think Again, swerves sun-kissed costas to focus instead on images of churches, paradores, orange groves, folk festivals, food, wine, lakes, green spaces, handicrafts and brown bears. It even features rain.
“You don’t see any coastal beaches; instead, it’s inland Spain and the green Spain of the north,” he said. “So, it’s about decentralising and discovering other realities. And what’s happening? Low and mid season are growing much more than high season, and the inland, green Spain is growing much more than the majority segment.”
Spain’s reliance on tourism was laid bare during the Covid pandemic. In 2020, international visitor numbers dropped by 77% to just 18.9 million. That led the government to invest €3.4bn of EU next generation funds in a plan to modernise and transform the sector.
According to Hereu, that investment has allowed less visited areas of Spain – such as Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country and Navarre – to develop their tourist markets.
“There’s a lot of potential there, and that’s where we need growth to happen,” he said. “Because, for example, on the Mediterranean coast, especially now, in the high season, there are limits.”
The minister believes that diversifying and decentralising the tourist industry can help Spain tackle depopulation by ensuring that young people don’t have to leave their home towns in search of work elsewhere. Lengthening the season would also help to provide more stable employment, he added.
“Before it was June, July, August and, at most, September,” he said. “But now people open in April, May or June, and we have more stability. October is also very important now, and the truth is, in some cases chains tell me they’re open almost all year round. This also gives us more job stability, and it’s obvious that salaries also have to increase, right? You have to attract people to the sector and retain them. And that’s good news because it also brings social stability and a redistribution of profits.”
Hereu said the government was also seeking to help the industry adapt to the effects of the climate emergency, which are becoming ever more evident in Spain in the form of droughts, heatwaves, forest fires, floods and rising sea levels. He said renewable energy, efficient water use and good waste management could all help mitigate the consequences of the crisis.
It was now abundantly clear, he added, that sticking to the old model would be a mistake. “We’d have the opposite of what we have now – we’d be growing the number of tourists rather than the spending value,” he said. “And 1781961576 we are growing more in value than in number.”
