Spanish Practices – Living in Spain: Real Life, Real Spain

Living in Spain: real life, real stories, and real misadventures. After swapping a grand Victorian house in leafy Essex for a tiny flat in a wild Andalusian village, we’ve spent the last ten years navigating the joys, shocks and absurdities of life in Spain. I’m a former London radio producer (not a very good one). I once sacked Richard Hammond for not knowing enough about cars, was spectacularly rude to J.K. Rowling and threw away her early children’s book, and told the man behind Amazon UK that nobody would ever buy books online. Then I ran away to Spain with my other half and our big ginger cat. This podcast explores expat life in Spain, Andalusian culture, Spanish traditions, village life, language mishaps, bureaucracy, food, fiestas, and what really happens when the holiday fantasy wears off. Along the way, there are tales from my radio days, occasional celebrity encounters, and reflections on starting again in midlife. Honest, funny, occasionally surreal — this is real life in Spain, with some events lightly fictionalised to protect the innocent (and the guilty).

Living in Spain - The Grapes of Wrath - ExPat life in Andalusia 12/30/2025

Three Ghosts for Christmas – a true story (mostly). Or what I said to J K Rowling and Jeff Bezos (probably) 12/23/2025

The Pooping Nativity Scene 12/17/2025

The Great V16 Beacon Controversy 12/13/2025

Christmas Spain v Britain 12/10/2025

Where does the smart money get invested in Spain? 12/07/2025

Living in Spain - Should YOU Invest in Spain - the Fastest Growing Country in the EU, Expat Life in Andalusia 11/24/2025

Things that bite and sting and might kill you in Spain, from Snakes to Spiders and beyond 11/18/2025

Mind Your Language: The Story Behind Spanish Swear Words 11/12/2025

Franco was a good guy! - The return of the dark days 11/06/2025

Gitanos, Tramps and Thieves - can you live on a budget, below the wire in Spain? 10/15/2025

The Day The Lights Went Out - The Shocking Truth about the National Spanish Power Cut 10/09/2025

Mind Your Language - Do You Really Need to Speak Spanish in Spain? 10/03/2025

100 not out - Live Long and Prosper in Spain 09/26/2025

Booze, Fags and sacking Grand Tour’s Richard Hamilton 09/17/2025

Don't Drink The Water! - and the true story of a grisly death. 09/14/2025

Puppy Dog Pails - Why has Spain a reputation for animal cruelty? 09/10/2025

Telly Addicts - How do I watch British TV in Spain? 09/07/2025

Strawberry fair? Moving to Spain ..our biggest mistake? 08/12/2025

Real Spanish Men Don't Mop! 08/08/2025

They Stole My Spanish Home - Squatters Rights in Spain 08/04/2025

Carry On Abroad - The Return of the Package Holiday? 07/30/2025

Spanish Practices Trailer 07/29/2025

The Butt of the Joke Ep 102 07/28/2025

How do I get to live and work in Spain? Ep 101 07/25/2025

Boom! Boom! Boom! - Did somebody say we´re having a Fiesta? 07/23/2025

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot, Ep 99, - Survive the Spanish Summer. 07/20/2025

Day 98 - "The End?" 06/22/2020

Day 98 - "The End?" 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: CLIP: So, 99 days, the first thing that happened was our air-conditioning failed due to a power surge that also, we discovered destroyed our faithful ten-year-old iMac computer, then the business laptop decided to join the other two in a suicide pact. That left us with one working laptop and the challenge of buying a new laptop and fixing the air conditioning in full Lockdown. Ricardo came to the rescue for the air conditioning, finding a new unit tucked away in a warehouse, the laptop had to come all the way from China. The iMac now resides in our workshop waiting for a trip to Harry the Russian who fixes computers in town. Chris was out of a job, Spain shut all Gyms on Saturday 14th including the one where he was working, but thanks to our Administration ladies they were able to fill in the complicated online paperwork so that Chris could receive some money from the Government. Then there was the silence, no traffic, no planes, nothing but birdsong and the waves crashing against the shorelines. Weird but after a few weeks, quite relaxing. Our British friends fleeing the country so that they could look after their parents back in the UK. They left so fast that they had to leave their precious dog behind. He hasn’t seen them for months now, poor love, but he is enjoying life with a family who run a local kennels. It took them two days driving pretty much non-stop through Spain and France to grab a ferry back to England. Petra says she never ever wants to go through that again. Being really worried about our family, for a few weeks Britain just ignored the Pandemic and my elderly parents went out to a packed pub lunch on Sunday March 15th – but bless them, after that they stayed at home, I think they picked up the seriousness of the situation. It all seems a long time ago now as we sit outside in the warm sun, the road below noisy and busy, the sounds of the motorcyclists haring round the coast road, great gaggles of cyclists shouting encouragement to each other and on Saturday evening the sea was filled with silly boys on jet skis racing each other, yachts out from Marina de Este, little fishing boats and the odd canoe, far off on the horizon a stream of container ships were heading out to the Atlantic. Parasols decorated the beach in the distance, all perfectly socially distanced thanks to the lifeguards and the new officers of beach protection. Chris turned to me and said, “it is if this never happened, like some kind of dream.” The fact is, it is still happening, it has not gone away and it has not ended, probably not ended for years to come, even if a vaccine was found, it would take years to administer and there would be parts of the world, I am thinking poor parts, that will not be vaccinated. There currently is no proper control of the virus, it looks like a particular steroid might help, but it seems to have many side effects, My LBC colleague Ken Guy took it for cancer he says on Facebook: I see that the steroid Dexamethazone could be useful in the treatment of Covid 19. It was part of my cancer treatment back in 2009 and should still be, but I gave it the flick pass sometime back. I took six pills each Monday. It kept me awake till Wednesday and produced mood swings. Neither Gracie nor I appreciated its effect, so I’ve not taken it since. I should point out he is an Australian. So here in Spain we might be at the end of Lockdown, but we are only at the beginning of the understanding of what this virus is and does, where it actually came from, bat? Wet market? Laboratory Accident? Will it mutate? Will it return in the Autumn and cause another Lockdown? Will the effects of the virus be nothing compared to the economic havoc it has reeked across the world? The virus is like life, full of more questions than answers, and in life you should always dare to take risks. As humankind we took a risk climbing down from the safety of the trees, learning to stand upright, our lives are all about risk. Thank you for listening to Spanish Practices these last few months, our biggest hope is, weirdly, that we do not have to come back for another season, that dear Spain never has to go through Lockdown ever again, stay safe and well, Goodbye. lFd58mibb6I6ULlLi8Ew /episode/index/show/spanishpractices/id/14906021

Day 97 - "Of mousy women and men" 06/21/2020

Day 97 - "Of mousy women and men" 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 worked with hundreds, maybe thousands of people, some like us ordinary, some famous, some politicians’ others who might fall into the celebrity status, whatever that now means. By 1997 I had already become an old lag at LBC and was often pressed into service to train the new young blood coming through the radio station. I remember one such day when I was training a new studio engineer, it was the two Julia’s show, Julia Sommerville the Presenter and Julia the Producer. Julia the Producer decided that it was a bonus having me in the studio as it meant she could go sit out in the office and catch up on the paperwork that we all had to fill in to comply with the Broadcast regulations of the time. I agreed and asked what was on the show, she said “A regular guest and some children’s author.” “Fine,” I replied, I was quite happy that there wasn’t anything complicated about the show. First up I left my charge and went up to collect the regular guest, who was been badged up by the very efficient reception staff at ITN. Down we went to the basement, sorry, lower atrium of the large glass and steel building that is ITN studios. The guy I was training had been good, had engineered a junction into a commercial break and out again with no problems. Then a call from reception, the next guest had arrived. I left my charge once again to travel those sick making glass lifts of ITN and back to reception for the kiddies author, she was a mousy sort of woman and clearly suffering from nerves. ‘Oh God, I thought, this one will be trouble.’ On the way down I checked her title and that she was the right guest,.. yes it does happen that you can put the wrong guest into the wrong studio. A seem to remember an occasion when a guest for Geet Mala our Asian show wound up in a discussion about the future of railway transportation in the other studio, he gallantly discussed the advantages of off peak travel until it was discovered he had actually come to talk about a new Indian Restaurant opening in Brixton. “I want to be called by my initials,” mousy woman piped up. “Oh” I replied. “And what are they dear?” She told me, I thought that is seriously weird, so I put my foot down. “The thing is, that nobody has ever heard of you, this is your first book,” “yes,” she replied. “So, we are going to call you by your proper name, so listeners can relate to you.” Mousy woman agreed, but it made her shake a little bit more. I took her into the studio and Julia warmly greeted her, she said “My daughter read your book last night and loved it.” We both had a copy of the book, whilst Mousy lady was telling us all how she was desperate and wrote the book in some café in Glasgow or Edinburgh or somewhere, I took a look at the book. It was your usual fairly dismal children’s book offering. The cover had a train on it with some spotty gormless urchin in glasses in front of it. I flicked through the pages, it was mostly about magic, not my cup of tea at all. Well the interview was over and the show runner, the poor kid who didn’t get paid but got to enjoy the ‘media experience’, had come back from his break, so I got him to dispatch Mousy Lady upstairs. I thanked her for coming in, “Oh I see you have a copy of my new book,” she said, “would you like me to sign it for you?” I answered “no” but I shall look forward to reading it later, she smiled and as the runner led her away I took the book between thumb and forefinger and threw “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling,” into the bin. So that book became a life-changing book for me. One I realised what a pratt I had been and how rude with it too. This poor woman had come to plug her book that she had worked long and hard to write and I dismissed it, without having the good grace to read the thing. I did years later, and it is a cracking children’s book, every bit as good as the classics, which it has now become. And two I constantly try to be a kinder person, I don’t always succeed, there is something inside of me that wants to be capricious, arch and downright rude, but I work hard to control it. Maybe I was always destined to be the hapless journalist that dissed J.K. Rowling as an author, but it did teach me a lesson .. always try to be kind. /episode/index/show/spanishpractices/id/14899526

Day 96 - "Tim Tams" 06/20/2020

Day 96 - "Tim Tams" 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 Government thought they could do a better job and got one of Dominic Cummings mates to cobble something together which not only didn’t work but drained everyone’s iPhone battery and cost a 120 million British pounds. That leads me to remembering the plans for ‘the word that must never be used,’ the UK government plan to increase the number of ferries crossing the channel by hiring a company that crucially had no ferries or experience of running a ferry company, but was a mate of somebodies. I turned off my social media and retired quickly to the uninterrupted view we have of the Mediterranean and a moment to reflect why we are here. It is a courageous step to leave friends, family and one’s country behind for a new life. Population emigration research by Washington University in 2018 pointed to statistics that show up to 45% of people who leave the UK for a new life in the sun of Spain, return back to Britain. I think we were both guilty of less than complex thinking about coming to live in Spain. We almost created a mantra of “when we are in Spain this won’t happen anymore” Train delays – I remember sitting on an overcrowded hot sweaty train, trapped once more at the, once more, broken signals at Ingatestone near Chelmsford thinking – when I am in Spain this frustrating feeling of being trapped and delayed will be a thing of the past, I can sit and just soak up the sun. How naïve, OK so there are no delayed trains here but waiting for a licence from the Town Hall to paint your bloody house, that takes more than eight weeks, the frustration and feelings are just the same as sitting on that train outside Ingatestone. Rude and unpleasant people. Well working in London for over thirty years you learn to be a survivor, there is no time for friendliness, it is shove or be shoved, get to the front of the queue at all costs. Then witness someone who’s way you got in, turn and call you a see you next Tuesday and wish death by cancer upon you – when I am in Spain that will be a thing of the past, because everyone is so laid back there. Naïve thought number two – it is true that the pace of life is slower here than London but tempers flare in just the same way, the swearing is in a different language and there is a deal more physicality in any dispute. But there is I would guess the same ratio of nice people and nasty people. Some of the nasty people have also been in absolute positions of power and living in a foreign country you feel a lot less empowered than living in your own native country to contradict them. And so the naïve list goes on, the food is not better here, just different, it is a bit fresher, we have just had some delicious Mezula fish for lunch that would give British, well Icelandic, cod a run for its money, but if you fancy a Thai or good Curry, the Catholic tastes of the Spanish mean there are fewer restaurants or availability of ingredients in the supermarket than in the UK. So, this is the long way around of explaining that we live in Spain because we accept that it is a far from perfect country, just like the UK. It has more than its fair share of absolute political twankers, if you are in doubt about what that word means look it up in an urban dictionary. OK so I think the Spanish Prime Minister would stop short at flogging Tim Tams, but he has bloated his parliamentary departments to quite an obscene level in light of the crisis that Spain and the world finds itself in. And his Deputy seems to be channelling Napoleon in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, after a political lifetime decrying the bourgeoise lifestyles of his opponents, the moment he got into power he suffered major amnesia and moved himself into a mansion in an exclusive part of Madrid, every time I see what my friend just calls “ponytail man” I keep hearing “four legs good, two legs bad,” in the back of my mind. So bottom line, if you are fed up of the stupid and downright crazy things the UK Government are up to right now, and you think moving into the sunshine of Spain you are somehow going to avoid the realities of life, then you are mistaken. You will, mostly enjoy better weather and a different pace of life. Or you might find you openly hate the culture, if you listen to some of the Ex-Pat, [hate that word], drunks sitting in English bars along the Costas, you would think that the Spanish are good for nothing and that Blighty is the greatest place to live in the world. I remember a good Spanish friend saying to me, “If they, those Engleesh drunks, think England is so great, why are they living here in Spain?” I know why we are here, because we love the place, warts and all, the good times and the bad, just like we still love the UK, warts and Tim Tams at tuppence off an all. /episode/index/show/spanishpractices/id/14890403

Spanish Practices – Living in Spain: Real Life, Real Spain

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