Flash8 AS2-special characters wont load from php

I’m working on a site in which I have actionscript loading a blog from a php file.
It doesnt seem to want to show the ñ or other characters with accents, even though I have embedded those characters in the dynamic text field.

here is the isolated text box:

and here is the php file it is loading from:
http://www.rudiart.com/blogtest.php

Notice the diference? I wrote Espana once and the second time Reino de España, which shows up in php but not in flash.

My php is using “iso-8859-1” characters and I think I need to change it to unicode? When I load the text from a unicode txt file all the special characters show up. But I’m not sure how to do this or even exactly what unicode is.

Appreciate any help or pointers you guys can give me.