I do not use the -A or -a, I just don't like my EPG populated with an * when no program is available, just a preference really.
I know the "&" is a special character I tried escaping it using & but it didn't work suspect I missed the ; after now just reviewing. You will have to find the escape characters for the Spanish letters. In my case I just changed the EPG channel name to A and E from A&E, works fine.
Found this.
Code:
http://www.starr.net/is/type/htmlcodes.html
I run the script every night and request data for 48hrs. (Sometimes my Apache server goes down, so at least I have a guide till I get it back up. )