Another Year in Spain comes to an end ...

aspasios offers high-quality furnished apartment rentals for short and long stays (up to 11 months)  in Barcelona and Madrid

A Christmas Tail 

Living in the campesino as we do we share responsibility for picking up post with our neighbour Jackie from the boxes in town. Quite arduous at the moment with four people's mail and Chrissie presents arriving in a number of guises – cardboard boxes bags bin liners, trailing string and /or requiring heavy duty shears to get through the brown tape......

(With apologies to /acknowledgements to a certain Mr W Gates)

I recently gave a speech about 11 things they did not and will not
teach would-be expats. I talked about how feel-good, commission-hungry
estate agents created a generation of expats with no concept of reality
and how this "dream" set them up for failure in the real Spain.

Rule 1: Expat life is not fair - get used to it!

Hi all,

I haven't been on Native Spain because I've been busy doing other things. Namely, working on ideas for my next book, which following 'Going Native in Catalonia'will hopefully also be published by Native Spain.

I had an email from a lady living in Spain who needed help as her husband had received a fine for not wearing his seatbelt but had lost the paper.   She had already been to the police station, who sent her to Algeciras, who told her she had to go to Cadiz to pay it....etc. etc. etc.   The usual runaround when all she wanted to do was pay the fine!

So she asked for my help and I called the Trafico office to ask what she needed to do to pay the fine without the physical piece of paper.  The man I spoke to was very helpful but told me something I did not know before:

Spain seems to be getting more organized as each week goes by.   On
the tails of the DGT reconsidering the need to carry replacement lights
in the car, you will now no longer be obliged to carry a copy of your
car insurance policy.