Spanish Practices

The famous Okupas of Spain - squatters with more rights than the owner of the property they have illegally entered. But are the days of the Okupas numbered? This is our real life, in real Spain. Ten years of adventures since swapping our glorious Victorian House in leafy Essex for a tiny flat in a wild Andalusian village. I was once a Radio Producer in London, not a great one. Feel free to comment, like and of course follow - it really helps the show.

How a Spanish Mayor and a Bikini kick-started the Package Holiday, we carry on abroad with a look back at the great British Holiday to Spain. This is our real life, in real Spain. Ten years of adventures since swapping our glorious Victorian House in leafy Essex for a tiny flat in a wild Andalusian village. I was once a Radio Producer in London, not a great one. Feel free to comment, like and of course follow - it really helps the show.

This is our real life in real Spain and an invitation for you to join us on the journey. Like, it's free, follow, it's free and subscribe, it's free and really helps us make more of these episodes.

Why do around 25% of adults smoke in Spain? Why is it still socially acceptable to smoke in front of children here in Spain? This episode, Spain a smokers paradise? This is our real life, in real Spain. Ten years of adventures since swapping our glorious Victorian House in leafy Essex for a tiny flat in a wild Andalusian village. I was once a Radio Producer in London, not a great one. Feel free to comment, like and of course follow - it really helps the show.

How do I get to live and work in Spain? Is it better to rent first and buy later? The answers and our experience of buying a property in Spain. This is our real life, in real Spain. Ten years of adventures since swapping our glorious Victorian House in leafy Essex for a tiny flat in a wild Andalusian village. I was once a Radio Producer in London, not a great one. Feel free to comment, like and of course follow - it really helps the show.  

In the one hundreth episode of Spanish Practices we celebrate the rhythm of Spanish life. It’s brash, colourful, very very loud.. yes we are having a Fiesta. This is our real life, in real Spain. Ten years of adventures since swapping our glorious Victorian House in leafy Essex for a tiny flat in a wild Andalusian village. I was once a Radio Producer in London, not a great one. Feel free to comment, like and of course follow - it really helps the show.  

How on earth do you cope with the hot Spanish Summer Sun?  This is our real life, in real Spain. Ten years of adventures since swapping our glorious Victorian House in leafy Essex for a tiny flat in a wild Andalusian village. I was once a Radio Producer in London, not a great one. Feel free to comment, like and of course follow - it really helps the show.

Transcript: Day 98 The End? Sunday and the Alarma is over, Lockdown is unlocked, 99 days, it started on Saturday March 14th, but actually I consider that weekend to be the two phoney days of Lockdown.   Saturday 14th March was a pretty normal day, the supermarket rammed with people taking everything off the shelves, including the toilet paper, something that the Spanish do not a use a lot of, most prefer to wash in the bidet than smear on the pan, as it were.   Sunday was equally as busy as people rushed around to be in the right place before the strict measures and fines started on Monday 16th March.  Our friends Jen and Dave making a run for it to their seaside flat, Jen told me “Well it will only be for fourteen days, so we grabbed a few things from the village flat and drove early to the coast.”   As it turned out it has been 99 days and Jen only had her flip flops to wear which after week three fell to pieces and had to patched up with sticking plaster.   For us that first day felt, well felt like this:

Full transcript: Day 97 Of mousy women and men Saturday the weather is calm, the sun is shining, I have been doing some extreme weeding on the mountainside and managed to not fall down, the one time I did I thought it was best to relax and just let my body slide to a bit where I could cling on.  Our garden in Essex did not have the same extreme challenges, unless you count the incredible numbers of snails that ate their way through most of our English garden.   I have been spending some time reflecting, yesterday about the reasons why we came to Spain, today a reflection of things past.  Sometimes it is not healthy to keep reliving the past, much better to look forward to the future.   But often the future is fashioned by the past, all my mental health problems during the 1990s definitely changed me long-term as a person. I am pleased to say now I am a much more ‘mellow’ individual, although I am still capable of falling off my perch as my dear colleague Richard Dallyn used to say.   Over the years we have wo

Full transcript: Day 96 Tim Tams   Friday and the I made a terrible mistake today, I try very hard now to avoid the TV news from the UK, we have enough to occupy ourselves here with events in Spain.   I caught a picture of Headmaster Boris holding a packet of Tim Tams up, from what I understand following a new trade deal with Australia you will get tuppence off this less than delicious biscuit from Australia and the trade deal will end up adding only a gnats thingy to the UK GDP.   Worse I then wandered into the news that the New Zealand trade deal could well have a negative effect on GDP, as things like delicious but cheap New Zealand lamb will lose its trade tariff that allows British farmers to sell their lamb at competitive prices.   I scooted away as quickly as I could, off to Facebook for some friend’s kittens being naughty in his apartment in Spain. Oh no! the next post concerned the much-heralded UK tracing APP.   The story that unfolded that Apple and Google make a free tracing App but the UK Governm

Transcript: Day 95 Bonfire night   Thursday and now just a few days before everything un locks, the end of the Alarma and the new normal will start on Monday, many Spanish can go back to work and get the working week off to.. er, well er, a two day start, because next Wednesday “we are having a Fiesta”   The Fiesta of San Juan to be precise, the beginning of summer and those long summer holidays, after all we have all been working so hard these last few weeks … erm!   San Juan is when hordes of Spanish all head to the beach for a party, it will last all night and bonfires are lit all along the coast on the beach, there will be a lot of food and drink, all in throwaway plastic containers, barbecues and plenty of booze, that will also come in plastic containers and tin cans.   The idea is that the bonfires of San Juan are said to purify and protect, and ward of evil spirits, also at midnight, Spanish time, you go to the water’s edge and wash your face in the sea water to bring you good luck and hope for the fut

Transcript: Day 94 Assassination  Wednesday and the excitement cannot be contained, I am going shopping with Chris, well to be honest he doesn’t want me in the first shop, - Mercadona, he tells me he has a routine now and that doesn’t include me putting unsuitable items in the shopping trolley.   Never mind I am going to the Post Office instead, to pick up a parcel, the Post Office is only open between 8.30am and 2.30pm, the local office is tiny and usually packed, as many Spanish still come and pay their bills and do very complicated administrative things.   I arrived to discover the entrance was hidden behind some railing and the pavement outside was in a complete mess.  I followed the arrows around to the back entrance, I am guessing the temporary entrance that will take you through the sorting room/office.   Just ahead of me is curly lady, she is our local Postal worker and delivers the mail to the Estate.   But as I reach the door the sign on the door says closed at 2pm.  Madre Mia I said to her waving m

Transcript uncorrected: Day 93 Anyone for tennis?   Tuesday and we are battening down the hatches, the wind is returning again with a vengeance, so far, the summer here has not really happened. Today it is overcast and sticky humid.   Our Gym has opened, and we went last night, OK so it is not the normal evening busy, but there were people and Chris’ class was about half the normal number.  What was encouraging was the queue to join the Gym, at one point ten people deep, well social distanced.   There were a lot of arrows and nowhere to sit, most of the members were totally ignoring the arrows, years of travelling on the tube and I can’t help following arrows on the stairs and corridors.   Alcohol cleaner dispensers were everywhere, the same ones they use in hospitals and we had to clean equipment before and after, but twice a day they have one of those fog cleaning machines you now see on trains and aircraft.   The changing rooms were open, but you are, currently encouraged not to use them.  And more importa

Transcript (uncorrected) Day 92 Dance off   Monday has come, I usually dread Monday as it always brings administration stuff which I really don’t care for.   By the way if you want to catch all 92 episodes with transcripts of Spanish Practices head over to THE secret spain dot com.   Today the administration was our Spanish Tax return, I say our, as we are married it has been done jointly, I get the classification of Woman, the form does not seem to have a code for Partner.    The Spanish Tax year runs from January to December, unlike the UK tax year that runs April to April, it means that, certainly for a Brit you have to get your shite together straight after a major holiday of feasting and excess.   The Spanish celebrate Christmas differently, it outwardly seems a much more serious affair, Midnight Mass at the Church is a rather dreary occasion, I have heard carol singing from the children in the main town. Carols are sung in Latin which makes them sound beautiful if a little inaccessible.   We still haven

Transcript (uncorrected) Day 91   Sunday and Uncle Pedro has been doing his weekly Zoom meeting, he likes to surprise the regional Governments, just to remind them all he is the one in charge.   So he has brought forward the date when Spain will open its borders to everyone except Portugal, so on Monday 22nd June the Lockdown will be over, for now and so will this Podcast, I still have the story to tell about one of the stupidest things I did some years ago. I will keep that for later in the week.   But you can’t have a Podcast about Spain without mentioning the Spanish Royal family and in particular the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos de Borbón.   It must be remembered that Juan Carlos although swore allegiance to Franco as soon as Franco had popped off, Carlos started the transition to democracy back in 1975, which, with one or two hiccups along the way, seems to have served Spain well, although there are some who would wish that Franco was still in charge.   My Aunty Isobel who had a large portrait of Fr

Transcript here: Day 90 holiday from hell Saturday your Sunday and the Spanish Government has started to talk about how they envisage foreign visitors coming to the country, the first lot will turn up on Monday, they are Germans coming to the Balearic Islands.   Interestingly about 35,000 people travelled to Spain in May, whilst not holidaymakers, they were mainly people returning back to Spain for work or back to their residency.   From all those who travelled, 104 people were detected to have Corona Virus.   But in a couple of weeks the onslaught will begin, instead of personnel there will be automatic heat detector cameras, inline health declarations, this will only apply to people arriving by sea and air.  If you drive into the country, there will be no health checks.   But as we know people lie on health declarations, they do it all the time with travel insurance, and how do you track and trace hundreds of thousands of visitors into the country?   I am not sure that will be possible. For us we are probab

Full Transcript: Day 89 Fag End Friday and we are off to the Administrator to sell our old car to Carmen, what could possibly go wrong, find out later in this episode.   If you want to catch up on previous episodes and full transcripts, go to the secret Spain dot com   Today I have been thinking about Satan’s smoke. A great many people in Spain seem to smoke, I remember we had to pick up a parcel from a UPS pick up point that turned out to be a rather sad looking Travel Agents, I guess even sadder now we are in the Covid19 world.   It was a pain to get to, Chris had to negotiate the one-way system of Motril and park the car in a tiny space in an equally tiny square.  We got out the car and looked around, finally seeing the little shop and a sad and very tiny sticker saying UPS pick up.   We went inside, a very disinterested lady was sat, chuffing on a ciggy above her was a large sign “No Fumar” to her right were some rusty carousels with actual travel brochures - Viaje inglés with your usual pictures of a ple

Thursday and the wind is blowing and driving us mad, a new Spanish law on plastic waste might change the way we use single use plastic and three good legs cat gets a scare, oh and something in Spain that has taken longer to build than the pyramids and still isn't finished. Find out more https://www.thesecretspain.com Listen on the radio in London, Surrey and Machester here: https://www.thepodcastradio.co.uk/ Day 88 Plastic not fantastic - uncorrected transcript Thursday and we spent the morning gathering the paperwork for the car sale, a mind-boggling pile of every single transaction and certificate, we are missing the MOT, as the MOT centre has only just re-opened and there is long complicated waiting list to get your car MOT’d.   The Government has given an extension to the end of the year to sort that out, but Covid19 rules currently mean that for a lot of the centres it is you that run through the car, checking the lights and brakes etc,the MOT engineer shouting instructions in Spanish through a walkie ta

Today the embarrassment of explaining Fawlty Towers to my Spanish friends, an internet outage, and the end of central Government control in Spain   Find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 87 Fake Spanish Waiters uncorrected transcript    Wednesday and the Spanish Parliament has approved the Royal Decree for “new normality”. It starts in a very good place with central control being released and the regional Governments can go back to being in charge.   Well I say Wednesday, it is actually Thursday we had an Internet moment last night, every couple of months the internet falls over, we have a peculiar Internet system here, it uses a line of sight dish that sends and receives the internet from a transmitter and receiver site, last night it decided to be naughty and not work.   We found out after returning from our Covid19 shopping experience, now that we can both travel in the car we split the shopping so I get to enjoy the rubber glove, mask, steamed up glasses experience too.   Our client Ryan emaile

Today a story of a TV set and an inconvenient death, and speaking of inconvenience, how dare you ask to transfer money at a Spanish bank without an appointment. find out more at https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 86 Inconvenient Death uncorrected transcript   Tuesday and the wind has dropped for the moment so we spent a jolly hour or so cleaning up the mess.  We have learned to take a completely different approach to cleaning here.   In the UK washing down, spraying paths with the garden hose and brushing with a broom was our normal procedure for a tidy up.  Here it starts with a broom and dustpan and brush, the secret is to keep everything as dry as possible.  Most of the dirt here is like sand, fine and if you wash a terrace down it turns into a brown slurry, the best thing is to remove as much as possible.   After a broom and dustpan, we have a vacuum cleaner that is now used for outside, it is a fairly knackered Dyson held together by Sellotape, but it does a good job of sucking up the remaining dust from