A living in Spain guide

 

[Image of Catalonia: Shutterstock.com]

I was sent this Spain expat guide recently by their editors. 

It's a mixture of quite useful links, info about relocating, daily life and the bleedin' obvious . 

Worth a quick look if you want some basics and a bit of specific advice.

Video: "Paul McCartney - Córdoba - Spain (1966 ) ( The Beatles en España)" -- A home video:

"Until now, there had ben no evidence that McCartney had been a tourist in Córdoba. Here are the images of some emblematic places of the Andalusian capital, such as the Plaza de la Corredera, exteriors of the Alcazar de los Reyes Católicos, Patio de los Naranjos, Cathedral Mosque.

The recording also includes children and local people in their daily lives.

Paul McCartney visits the Spanish city of Córdoba together with The Beatles' roadmanager Mal Evans. 

In November 1966, McCartney traveled through Spain towards Almería with the intention of visiting John Lennon, who was there working on the movie "How I Won the War " by Richard Lester but filming had already finished and John was no longer in Almería.

Apparently, McCartney and Evans traveled from Bordeaux (France) to the Almeria coast.. Evans and McCartney traveled to Seville, where on November 12 they took a plane to Madrid, and from there they traveled to Nairobi. 

According to Diario de los Beatles and the journalist and writer Jordi Sierra i Fabra, McCartney returned to London on November 19, 1966."

"The lost photos of Barcelona"

[Image: Milagros Caturla, courtesy of Tom Sponheim]

  
An envelope in a Barcelona flea market held the work of an unknown master photographer...

"In the summer of 2001, American Tom Sponheim was vacationing in Barcelona with his wife. On their way to the cathedral of Sagrada Familia, they wandered through the bustling flea market of Els Encants.

Sponheim spotted a stack of photo negatives on a table, and after checking that they were decently exposed, asked the vendor how much. She asked for $2.50 for an envelope of the shots. He paid her $3.50.

Upon returning home, Sponheim scanned the negatives and discovered that he had stumbled upon the work of an unknown but immensely talented photographer."

Read more from source and see more of the remarkable photos here.

(Article first found via Business Over Tapas.)

The trust at the bottom of the garden

People trust each other where I live.

I’m not talking about the kind of confidence where no one needs to lock their doors. I mean that you don’t see that look of suspicion in the eyes of a stranger that you consistently do in England, for example.

I think that in Western Europe most people trust those around them.

There seems to be a basic belief that the men and women next to you are not out to cheat you or somehow do you wrong. And this is despite terrorism, theft and selfish outlooks on daily display, in addition to a media that feeds on reporting crime

Of course this unstated faith is regularly abused. Maybe routinely so. Yet it continues.

I live on the outskirts of a medium sized town of about 25,000 people in Catalonia, northern Spain (or southern Catalonia, depending on your outlook towards the independence movement here.)

Behind my apartment building there are large grapevine plantations and paths running through them. Every day people walk there, jog, or take their dogs for exercise

But there are no fences.

It would be easy and cheap to put fences around these fields but nobody has felt this to be necessary. Thousands of euros of vineyards lie apparently unattended and unguarded.

If this was in Israel or near an English town would it be the same?

My guess is no.