Hello From Spain

Vanity ^ | 4/17/2017 | Oshkalaboomboom

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Because my wife wanted to be closer to her Grandchildren who live in England and we were looking to retire I decided to leave America and move to Spain in March 2016. Since I didn't know how busy it was going to be I left FR also but now that we are settled in I can afford to spend a bit more time on the site and share my impressions of the country. Spain has a lot of things conservatives would actually appreciate and I wish America would follow their lead.

The most admired thing there is no entitlement mentality here because there are no entitlements. If you work and are a citizen you get health care and a pension when you retire but if you don't work or get laid off you get a limited amount of unemployment then nothing. Immigrants get nothing unless they pay for it. Couple that with a high unemployment rate and the limited number of migrants who sneak in here from Africa keep right on going into France. If you don't speak Spanish or Catalan that's your problem. Because there are a lot of English speaking people here and they want them to understand the traffic laws they do have an English study manual for a driver's license (which you have to pay for) and the written exam is given in English but anything else you either have to know the language or pay for an interpreter. All government documents are in Spanish (or Catalan if you live around Barcelona). Of course you can find stores and services that operate in multiple languages but that is driven by Capitalism, not government.

It is fairly easy to emigrate to Spain if you either have a skill they need or the money to support yourself. People applying for a working visa must have a promise of employment in hand. Folks like myself and my wife must prove they have the funds to be self-sufficient and pay for a year's worth of health insurance in advance to be considered for residency. Deadbeats need not apply. There are some expats who bum their way around the country entertaining on the streets or begging in front of stores but the competition is fierce and it doesn't take long for them to figure out it isn't going to work. There are no jobs Spaniards won't do. Many of them work punishing hours at low wages. 15 hour days 6 days per week is not uncommon and they show pride in having any job at all.

Once you get past those hurdles you have a host of choices on where and how you want to live. They have everything from mountainous regions to the spectacular coastline to Europe's only desert, recognizable to any fan of Spaghetti westerns. We chose an area called the Costa Tropical because it is the only part of Spain where the mountains come right down to the sea. The mountains form a microclimate that keeps the area about 10 degrees cooler than inland in summer and 10 degrees warmer in winter. It averages 320 days of sunshine per year and never gets down to freezing. As an example of how much sun we get the area we moved from, Atlanta, gets 211 days of sunshine per year. For you gardeners it is similar to zones 9-10. The other big advantage is that because it is so hilly it is easy to find a place to live that has a fabulous view. From our terrace we can see the Mediterranean, the Sierra Nevada mountains and the whitewashed town. We even have a castle to look at. With all of that we are 600 meters from the beach but on a quiet street with no traffic. You've heard the expression "million dollar view?" Well you can get that view here for a fraction of the price. If you forsake the view and want to rent a decent 2 bedroom flat can be had for 300 Euros per month, even less if you move inland a few kilometers. The cost of living is low enough that you can easily afford to live well on nothing more than a Social Security check.

With all of those nice features, you still live in a Socialist country. The most obvious sign of that is gas stations. Where we moved from in Georgia there were half a dozen gas stations within a mile in any direction while here we have 2 stations for a town of 27000 people. Gas prices are set twice a day and it's scary expensive. The big workaround for that, ourselves included, is the motor scooter. We have 2 cars but they sit idle while our scooter is the workhorse. It costs 5 euros to fill the tank and we fill it once a week. There is no 2nd Amendment right to own a gun. Shotguns are fairly easy to come by but pistols are strictly regulated. They actually used to have a thriving gun manufacturing industry here but it died years ago, a victim not of regulations but a bad economy. There are still a small number of manufacturers but it is mostly custom shotguns. I had to sell my guns before I left the USA. The main weapon of self defense is pepper spray, which is legal. Tasers and stun guns are illegal. For me it took about an hour, a hacksaw, can of spray paint, a rubber tip and a handle from a broken umbrella to fashion a walking stick made from a piece of half-inch steel pipe I got out of a trash can. It's legal anywhere in the world and can break bones without scratching the paint. Not the best but better than nothing.

I did get to vote in the Presidential election. Registering was easy and I was told that even though I don't live in Georgia anymore if I (nod, wink) intend to come back some day I was also eligible to vote in local elections. Since I did register as a Republican I still have to be alive to vote. Nobody here talks about American politics. It's either local or Brits talking about Brexit. I prefer to stay out of it because it's disheartening to hear so many people willing to sell out their sovereignty in order to keep getting "free stuff."

My main source of news is Fox News, which is shown on our local cable channel. Because of the 6 hour time difference I watch reruns of Tucker Carlson, Hannity and Bret Bair while at noon Fox and Friends comes on live. Other than that I have BBC News and RT. Most days it's hard to tell which channel is more anti-American.

Anyway, now that we're settled in I'll have more time to pay attention. Even though I'm in another country I still want what's best for America.

[grey_whiskers]

From our terrace we can see the Mediterranean, the Sierra Nevada mountains and the whitewashed town.

Did you really mean to say Sierra Nevada?

Sounds like the title of a Clint Eastwood flick...

[onedoug]

Thanks so much for such an enjoyable a educational thread.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

What did I say wrong?

Sierra Nevada

[Cementjungle]

When I was a kid, my family lived in southern France (near Bordeaux) and one of my sisters has lived in England for the past 40 years. Never been to Spain though, but it sounds intriguing!

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Mexicans are nothing like Spaniards.

A Spaniard, Sergio Garcia, won the Masters last week. Rafael Nadal is one of the most successful tennis players in the world. Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar are Hollywood power players. Cervantes wrote what is considered to be the first novel. Picasso and Dali are among the most recognized artists in history. Isabella financed the explorations that discovered the Americas. What is Mexico known for besides drugs and cheap labor?

[Oshkalaboomboom]

I am currently reading “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise” to help get some of the historical facts ans rid myself of the propaganda I have been fed for 80 years, but mainly in the last eight.

Omeya Abd ar-Rahman I of Damascus, the founder of the Emirate of Cordoba, arrived in Almunecar from North Africa 15 August 755 to establish his Moorish kingdom. If you look closely at the first picture I posted you can see a cross on top of the first of 3 rocks sticking out into the sea. That was put up to commemorate the defeat of the Arabs, their surrender at Almuñécar and the beginning of Christian rule in 1489.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

If they had said at some random point they were withdrawing their troops, I could have accepted that. The fact that they completely bent to the will of the terrorists and did exactly what they were aiming for was inexcusable.

The bombings happened 3 days before national elections and the incompetent way the ruling party handled the bombings turned the tide towards the party that had been opposed to having troops from the start. I remember seeing video after video of charred and disfigured bodies, videos that got leaked and infuriated the people who ended up punishing the ruling party. Once they were turned out of office the winners just did what they said they would do before any troops were sent in.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

When traveling to the big cities, beware the pick pockets. They are everywhere.

Barcelona is recognized as the pickpocket capital of Europe and thanks to the relaxed travel standards of the EU thieves come there from all over to make their fortunes.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

On American politics and society...what a mess with his woman. She thinks she knows everything about America (we are inferior in every way) and Trump is the devil. She thinks Europe is Utopia. I am a RACIST I learned because I’m not crazy about Islam and they have muslim friends! I’m stupid because I believe in God. We have too much free thought and speech. My cooking and diet are incorrect. Talk about being buttonholed...It was terrible and rather shocking, too. It was downright disrespectful. I felt like I had been subjected to a re-education camp.

He could have found a girl who thinks all of that and more by visiting any American college campus and saved himself the money for a flight.

[Yardstick]

Wow, I gotta say, that sounds really nice. Did I read right that you can get private health insurance there? Are there plenty of private hospitals and doctors with private practices? Or do the same doctors and hospitals serve both the private and public markets...in other words all that changes is who’s paying? How does quality of care compare between the private and public systems? How does quality of care compare to our system?

I hate to say it but sometimes I think the Europeans may have figured out a pretty decent approach to healthcare. You don’t do a dysfunctional mishmash of public and private where you get the worst aspects of both, as in Obamacare. You also don’t do draconian single payer with no private alternative as in the other Anglophone countries. Instead you have parallel public and private systems that stay in their own lanes and play to their strengths in their different roles.

[cynwoody]

We have our own ‘Spain’ here. Hopefully the wall will come up soon and hold back the invading ‘Spaniards’.

The Spanish did a lot of damage to the New World before TR finally kicked them out in 1898.

Spanish culture is why Latin America is a mess.

[cynwoody]

He likes to play in traffic

She must be really hot!

[grey_whiskers]

Wow. Must’ve been the Nevada part that got me. :-)

[Oshkalaboomboom]

I personally haven’t been to a doctor for anything other than routine visits in many years but my wife, who has experienced the NHS, 10 years of American doctors and now the Spanish system says that her private doctor is paid by our insurance while tests she gets through her S1 get her sent to the local clinic. So far she has been happy. The only glitch was that when we first moved here she wanted a mammogram and they told her she had to be a paying customer for six months first. Since then everything has been fine. She pays less money for her prescriptions here than she did in the States, even counting the cheap stuff you can get from Walmart, Kroger, etc.

[rlmorel]

I know...for me, a difference without a distinction.

[MomwithHope]

How I would have loved to walk the camino!

[Oshkalaboomboom]

A real beach... with sand? Is it really possible to enter the water, swim out a little way, come back, and then sunbath on the delicious sand for a few hours - maybe while enjoying an ice cream purchased from the nearby kiosk?

When we went out shopping this morning I stopped along the road and took a picture of the beach so you could get an idea what it is like.

The large rock in a straight line with the house with the red ductwork on top is the first of those 3 rocks you can see from our terrace. You can see another rocky outcrop directly in front of the house. Just on the other side of those rocks is where we go and the distance from where we lay out to the large rock is 1 kilometer. You can see there are hotels, apartments, shops and restaurants all along the beach area. There are also several more kilometers of beach on the other side of the large rock. None of those beaches are the one we go to when the pictured beach gets crowded. That one is in the other direction.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

It’s good that you stay out of politics, though. In some there is a mixture of jealousy and hatred for America.

Not all of the locals dislike America or DJT

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Wow. Must’ve been the Nevada part that got me. :-)

Sounds like the title of a Clint Eastwood flick...

Sergio Leone shot 5 spaghetti westerns in Spain including Eastwood's Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The town he built for TGTB&TU is still there and they put on reenactments for tourists.

[Comment Not Approved]

You know what you are talking about. I’ve got some stories to tell. Even a wallet in your front pocket is not deterrent enough. I used Travel Smith clothing with hidden pockets and a neck wallet.