Problems with accents and special characters

[eluser]CARP[/eluser]
Hi guys
I've been developing a CI app, and now I'm facing some implementation/testing problems
It is about accents and some special spanish characters like Ñ

- My config/database.php has this value

Code:

$db['default']['dbcollat'] = "utf8_general_ci";

- My database and tables were created as "utf8_general_ci"

When I add a new record to the table, with an accent, The record gets saved, but it looses all the characters after the accent (including the accented char.)

Also, the special characters aren't stored.

What should I change? Both, database.php and my db/tables are using the same coll.

EDIT: Can this be generating some conflict?

Code:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />

Thanks a lot in advance for any help you can give me