I think anywhere that you go in the Mediterranean area you will find a greater sense of family, and more enjoyment of it as well. Older people are not regarded as an encumbrance or children viewed as nuisances and never is this better illustrated than in a restaurant at the weekend when the traditional Spanish family goes out for its traditional Sunday treat.

Ever since we started to spend lengthy periods of time in Spain, I have found myself having to agree with all the old clichés and stereotypes about Spanish timekeeping and I doubt the existence of a timetable.

Tell us your views and share your experiences. We’d like to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope to make the principal discussion forum for issues that interest readers and affect Costa living.

Come on now! What Spanish winter? Temperatures fall from mid-October until mid-April but not much. My husband and I continue to eat outside on our terrace whenever there is sun, which is most days. I venture out in the daytime with only a cardigan (not just a cardigan, of course!), knowing I won’t shiver or be rained upon unexpectedly. I can hear mutterings of ‘gota fria’ but the main thing about the ‘gota fria’ is that it isn’t ‘fria’. We generally experience its flying visits at the end of the summer
or the beginning of autumn and the monsoon-like rains are compensated by the knowledge that they don’t last. The mild winters on the Mediterranean coast are what have drawn so many of us to Spain for our retirement years. You’d have to be pretty argumentative not to agree that we get the best of the bargain and aren’t let down or disappointed. Florrie Mitchelmore It will be interesting to see how many readers bring up the Winter Fuel Allowance. I know we are considered to be living in a privileged climate and no-one could disagree with that, but winter is less warm than might be imagined. I know some taxpayers begrudge payment of the Allowance to expats in Spain, but that extra cash is just as necessary here as it is in the UK. Jeremy Edwards The winter of January 2005 brought some of the coldest weather ever known in this area.  One afternoon the temperature dropped, the sky filled with navy blue clouds and the wind wailed round the eaves and howled down the chimney. If I didn’t know better, I said to myself, I think it looked like snow. I didn’t know better, and snow it did. Just before I retired to a bed heaped with two duvets and four cats, it began to snow. It was still there early next morning. My neighbour, Maite, came knocking excitedly at the door: “Come and look, come and look!” she shrieked. It was the first time she had ever touched or walked on snow so we walked together round our respective gardens as she marvelled at something she had never seen in all her 80 years. Lamentably, Maite didn’t give me time to put on a coat and I was traipsing round in my housecoat. An insignificant sniffle that I already had turned into bronchitis and I was laid low for a week.  So if you want hints on coping with a Spanish winter, remember to wrap up well when you go out to look at the snow. Phyllis Vincent Now that the price of Butane gas has gone down, in our own household we are facing the prospect of the coming winter with less anxiety. We rely on gas to heat our home, for cooking and hot water and, when the Butane was at its most expensive and the pound was not doing so very well against the euro and the thermometer was at its lowest, didn’t we notice it! I know a great many people who have installed air-conditioning units that double as central heating during the winter but I wouldn’t give you a thank-you for something that blows damp cold air over you in the summer and dry hot air in the winter. They use too much electricity and cost much too much to run whatever the time of the year.  So it’s electric fans for the summer and Butane gas heaters (estufas) when winter sets in and I calculate that we get through one ‘bombona’ per estufa per week. We expected summers to be hot, but when we first settled out here it came as a surprise that the winters turned out to be so chilly. But a couple of estufas are all you need. That is how the Spanish cope, and that is how we cope, too. Elizabeth Wright Coastal dwellers cannot imagine what a Spanish winter is really like because the further you go inland from the coast, the colder it gets. We’re lucky because we get more sunny days than we ever saw back home but once the sun goes down you realise that the temperature and weather charts in the newspapers err on the side of caution. Most nights here in December, January and February are colder than in the part of England we left to start new lives in sunny Spain. It’s sunny, alright, and that makes it all the easier to cope with but by heck it’s parky too. David Tremain For Edition 1267 on October 15, Topic of the Week will be ‘Living to a Spanish timetable’.
Please send your views to editorial@euroweeklynews.com – stating the subject Topic of the Week – or fax us on 96 584 5280.
If there’s a topic that you would like to suggest for future discussion, drop us a line at the same email address or on the same fax number. Please note that we may edit your letter and use only relevant sections.

It’s amusing when you consider what people will and won’t eat.  I used to try to buy barley here because it’s a welcome addition to a substantial winter stew or casserole.

I remember my first days visiting Spain, before becoming a resident when a British person was telling me that the health service in Spain was ‘rubbish’. However, I did not accept this, having read that it is the best in Europe! I came here last November. I then had an abscess come up on a Sunday which was very painful.

I am separated and have worked here for some time – legally, I may add, thanks to a conscientious Brit employer who did everything strictly by the book. Accordingly, I was issued with a Spanish health card but I enjoy rude health anyway and never did use it, even when minor problems cropped up.

Tell us your views and share your experiences. We’d like to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope to make the principal discussion forum for issues that interest readers and affect Costa living. My children left school many years ago but I look forward to the end of the holidays. I live near a junior school and enjoy the peace during holidays, but I love the start of the school year when I hear the children squawking and chirping and shrieking away during their break times. They remind me of a flock of sparrows.

Interesting question, that: ‘What has changed in Spain from the old days?’ Guess it depends on how old you are and what the old days actually signify.
For me, I would go back to 1975 here in Torrevieja. It was a sleepy town, with very few foreigners. Lovely little bars with shrimp shells tossed carelessly onto the floor, to be swept up later along with the sawdust. No buses. No garbage collection.

Anyone who reads the Euro Weekly News from cover to cover (and I do not because sport bores the pants off me) can make a guess that the editorial staff are a cheery crew but what decided them to make this week’s topic a practical joke? Sorry! I don’t mean to sound waspish but this topic is beyond my comprehension.

Crime is less prevalent than in the UK, I grant you, and I’ve seen statistics proving it but petty thieving and break-ins do take place although fortunately neither I nor my wife have been subjected to them. Nevertheless, I get the impression that these are of little lasting interest to the local sheriff and his deputies!
When our son’s parents-in-law came out here a couple of summers back, staying at our only decent-sized hotel, Pam left her handbag under the table while breakfasting.  

MY advice for beating the heat may sound contradictory, but it works for me. Avoid icy cold drinks or anything fizzy which, although inviting, only makes you thirstier. Cava is an exception to this rule but the drawback here is that by the time a cava-drinker’s thirst is quenched, he or she will be tipsy. A cup of hot tea or a café americano works wonders and you also remain sober.

The following really happened and it happened to me. I needed to pay my car insurance and parked outside my insurer’s office, occupying part of a bus stop’s reserved space. I’ve parked like that before and I assume other readers have too.

Tell us your views and share your experiences. We’d like to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope to make the principal discussion forum for issues that interest readers and affect Costa living. As someone who has lived in Spain for decades and on more than one occasion been parcelled up in enough paperwork and red tape to keep bureaucrats occupied into their dotage, I’d like to tell newcomers that they don’t know when they are well off.
It was a nightmare, even during the last days of the Franco regime, because by then Spain in no way resembled a police state but there was often an element of uncertainty when dealing with officials.
In fact, depending on their political sympathies, the Spanish were more wary of officialdom at that time than foreigners. And how formal officialdom was! I recall a recent Euro Weekly News article telling it was usual to end a letter along the lines of ‘a faithful servant kisses your hands and may Our Lord protect Your Excellency for many years’.
This is no exaggeration and my first residency application ended in this vein. Officialdom was slow, pettifogging and there was no guarantee that you would get what you were applying for. Despite queuing since dawn to obtain an EU Citizen’s Certificate 18 months ago, the requirements were few and the process simplicity itself; even the queues have now been reduced, I am told, since our area introduced an appointments system. Bernadette Nash   Let’s be honest: it’s less a question of red tape than the small-mindedness of the bureaucrats wielding it. At least in tourist areas ‘los funcionarios’ know how to deal with issues involving foreigners, but go inland and you are on another planet. Sorting out my SIP card took visit after visit and each time the woman assigned to sorting it out asked for another document. I don’t know if she did it to relieve the boredom or to p—s me off but I had the last laugh because when she was on holiday, her dishy male colleague sorted it in two seconds flat. Of course too much red tape exists, but it exists to make it
look as though state employees are doing their jobs. Joanne Pemberton   Don’t assume that red tape only enmeshes civil and legal matters. When Laura, our daughter, married, we had the devil’s own job finding a priest willing to marry her and no matter that her mother is Spanish and that she was christened and made her First Communion here.
Laura was living and working in London at the time but she and her English fiancé wanted to wed in Spain, so my wife and I went to see the local priest a year beforehand, warned by neighbours that the picturesque parish church would be booked up months ahead.
He was hostile, perhaps with justification, since we are not churchgoers and had moved into the area not long before. Because our daughter lived in England he said it was out of the question in his parish and suggested we applied for her to be married at the area’s Archpriestal Church since she no longer resided in the parish where she was born.
My wife then had the brainwave of going back to the parish where we were married and Laura was christened and made her First Communion. Although not as pretty as our local church, it came a good second and I will pre-empt critics by agreeing that choosing a book by its cover and a church by its location is shallow and unreliable, but try telling that to a starry-eyed 24-year-old.
We struck lucky but only because the parish priest, who was about to say no, was overridden by an older priest whom we knew socially in the past and happened to be visiting. He told him to stop nitpicking and think himself lucky there were still young people wanting to get married in church. Curiously, our now son-in-law, an Anglican, had no problems at all after undergoing instruction in London.
Don Julio saved the day for us, I am
glad to say, but the marriage saga demonstrates that red tape silences wedding bells as well as bewildered citizens. James Conway   Red tape exists here but it exists everywhere in some form or other and in my experience is less formidable than many make it out to be. If it all gets too much, though, go to an asesor or gestor and pay them take the strain. That’s what the Spanish do. Alf Birdsall For Edition 1258 on August 13, Topic of the Week will be ‘Beat the heat – tell us your tips’ Please send your views to editorial@euroweeklynews.com - stating the subject ‘Topic of the Week’ – or fax us on 96 584 5280.  If there’s a topic that you would like to suggest for future discussion, drop us a line at the same email address or on the same fax number. Please note that we may edit your letter and use only relevant sections.

Tell us your views and share your experiences. We’d like to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope to make the principal discussion forum for issues that interest readers and affect Costa living.

I’ll tell you my grumble with tourists: all year round I can park outside my apartment building, no problem, but from July to September, I have to spend an extra half-hour going round and round looking for a space because they are all taken up by the Madrileños’ Mercedes and Rovers. When I do find a space, it’s miles away.  

It is plain to observe from the topics chosen each week that it is editorial policy to stir things up as much as possible amongst your readership and I’ve no quarrel with that if it also stirs us from our midsummer lethargy. This policy has indeed stirred me to add my own portion of grist to the media mill.

Tell us your views and share your experiences! We want to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope will become the Cos

Obtaining an EU resident’s certificate was as easy as falling off a log, as they say. Why anyone would want to fall off a log

Tell us your views and share your experiences! We want to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope will become the Cos

Tell us your views and share your experiences! We want to hear them in 'Topic of the Week', which we hope will become the Cos

Tell us your views and share your experiences! We want to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope will become the

Tell us your views and share your experiences! We want to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope will become the Cos

Tell us your views and share your experiences! We want to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope will become the Cos

Tell us your views and share your experiences! We want to hear them in ‘Topic of the Week’, which we hope will become the Cos