A 24-year-old man died in Valencia last night after getting trapped in a clothes recycling bin provided by charities to help people in poorer nations.

It appears that the man tried to reach the clothes inside the recycling bin at the junction between calle Dolores Marqués and calle Vicente Zaragozá in Valencia. The container's opening and closing mechanism prevented him from getting out again once inside with the donated clothes.

The emergency services were called at eight o'clock this morning and although an ambulance was sent to the scene, the medical team was only able to certify the young man's death.

In fact, they accounted for just over half of last year’s ticket sales in box offices in Spain.

People in Teruel and Melilla – an outpost of Spain on the northern Moroccan coast – were the ones who spent the least time glued to the silver screen.

Nearly 574 million euros were spent in Spain’s 4,000 cinemas in 2009, in spite of the recession.

Around 1,243 full-length films – as opposed to shorts – were screened across the country between January and November, of which 944 were of foreign origin, mostly from the USA.

Madrid’s film theatres saw 20.5 million spectators last year, and cinemas in Barcelona attracted 14.7 million viewers.

Cinemas in the province of Valencia brought in 6.2 million customers, who spent an amazing 36.9 million euros in entry tickets.

In Alicante, four million cinema-goers spent a whopping 22.5 million euros on tickets.

The Alicante province figures would include expatriates, due to a number of cinemas – notably those in Jávea, Benidorm, Pilar de la Horadada and the El Portal de la Marina shopping centre in Ondara – showing films in English, rather than dubbed into Spanish.