Justin's Life

On the 31st May this year, nine men from Paddle4Heroes are going to paddle from Gibraltar to Marbella in Spain by kayak to raise funds for Help for Heroes and a new charity called Families of The Fallen. Both of these charities should touch the heart of anyone British, as they are at the forefront of helping servicemen and women recover from the trauma of war.

Find out more information on Nick Snelling's blog

My good friend Chris Marshall recently wrote an article for the Telegraph website title "Doing something you love is the secret to expat happiness" which those looking to move to Spain and setting up a business here should read.

It's tough enough setting yourself up in business but it's so much easier to do it when it's about something you love or a topic which you are passionate about.

I also get mentioned in the article so it's worth reading just for that really

And if you're wondering who this Chris Marshall guy is, well, in addition to his Telegraph Expat column Chris runs a couple of expat blogs (www.almerimarlife.com and www.expatlifespain.com), is heavily involved in his wires cat re-homing and transport project (www.alstrays.com), and pays the bills contributing to a number of sites including www.campaya.co.uk the Word Wide holiday rental specialists and www.spain-holiday.com the holiday lettings in Spain specialists.

I was reading this article on the BBC news website today and wondering how Spain can possibly sustain an ever increasing number of unemployed people in the country.

The figure now stands at 5.3 million unemployed, representing a difficult-to-believe, 22.8% of the population.

And it gets worse if you're young.  If you're fortunate to be between 16 - 24 then you'll be unfortunate in being 48.6% likely to be unemployed.

These are shocking statistics. 

If nearly a quarter of the population aren't working and half the young people aren't either, and the jobless rate keeps increasing, I can't see this getting any better for years to come.  The problem appears to be too big with no obvious or immediate solution.

With so many people out of work it means they have less money to spend, which means more businesses will start to struggle, which means that more people will be heading towards the (un)employment office.

It also means that the government will be earning less money in taxes and shelling out even more money to cover the spiraling jobless rate.

I'd love to be more positive about things but realistically it does seem that things have to get worse still before they get better.

And anyone reading this hoping to move to Spain and get a job here....I don't think I need to say anything further.

Manilva is a small village.  There's only a handful of shops, a chemist, an opticians and more importantly, a few bars.

But being small it also only has one bank and therefore one cash machine.  If you're in Manilva and you've no cash on you to buy a beer, you need to use the local cash machine to withdraw some crispy new notes.

That was me today.

The bank in Manilva is Unicaja and it belongs to a network of cash machines which display the "Euro 6000" logo.

My bank doesn't belong to this network, instead it's part of the Servired network of cash machines.

But, I needed a beer this evening and proceeded to squeeze my card into the cash machine.  I requested €30 and was then shocked to see that they were going to charge me €2.40 for the privilege!  That's just extortionate.  That's the price of two and half small beers.

But the draw of the beer was too great so I begrudingly accepted it and trotted off down to the bar to recover from the ordeal.

Surely they cannot justify such a ridiculous fee?

Next time I go into Manilva I'll be much better prepared...cash in pocket or no beer.

Graham Hunt has done it again.  Every time he does something new he just seems to nail it so well.

His latest endeavour is a new weekly PDF magazine called Spain Is Different, and I really like it!  He highlights some great stuff in it, all very honest and real.  None of this fluffed-up crap you get so often.

He's just published his third issue and I would recommend you subscribe to it so that you get it in your inbox every week.

Have a read of the latest issue here (best to right-click that link and save it to your PC as it's a PDF).

And you can subscribe to it yourself here.

I'm really keen to see how Graham develops this magazine going forward.  It's the best I've seen in ages...I just don't know how he finds the time to do so much these days!

Hope you enjoy the mag.

We were in Malaga city on Saturday night to absorb some of the Christmas spirit (which seems rather absent in Manilva area) and to take in the amazing lights they've set up this year.

You'll have to excuse the poor quality of the photos I took on my phone...it's just not up to the task and doesn't do the lights any justice!

It's definitely worth going to Malaga in the evening, it feels really Christmasey there and the lights everywhere are amazing.  It was buzzing too, certainly didn't feel like there was a crisis on!

Calle Larios (The main streeet)

The main square at the end of Calle Larios

Huge number of Christmas stalls, next to the main road

Lovely huge belen (nativity scene) on roundabout at bottom of Calle Larios

Gorki restaurant where we ate...very good and very popular! www.gorki.es

Around this time two years ago I recommend Eye on Spain contributor Victoria Twead’s book “Chicken’s, Mules and Two Old Fools” as the top gift to buy for Christmas.

I loved Vicky’s first book. So funny and well written and ever since then I’ve been really looking forward to the sequel. I needed to read more!

Well, I was lucky recently to have been given an advanced copy of the new sequel, “Two Old Fools – Ole” and what a blinder Vicky’s pulled again.

I think this new book, which is now available for sale on Amazon, is even better than the original.

Do you love Spain? You’ll love this book!  It's all about Vicky and Jo's life in a tiny village in Southern Spain and you would never think there would be so much to write about considering the village is practically empty apart from at weekends.  This is a proper laugh-out-loud book, you can't help but really enjoy it.

But don’t just take my word for it, read the other reviews on Amazon.

Grab yourself a copy, or buy it as a present for someone for Christmas, it’s brilliant.

This is a subtitled version of "La burbuja inmobiliaria" by Aleix Saló expaining the recent economic crisis in Spain.  It's quite funny but sadly true!

Our friends over at the holiday rentals website, Campaya.co.uk, have put together quite a lengthy and detailed report on their blog about the holiday rentals market trends for 2011.

It makes for quite interesting reading.  Read the report here:

Rental Property Market Trends 2011

They have also put together a cool infographic of trends here:

Holiday Rentals Trends - Fall 2011

Hope you find them of tinterest.

Hopefully you've had a chance to watch the video that I recorded with my good friend Mike Knivett or Artemis Homes, and I hope you will have found it of interest.

Mike has also recently put together his online Costa del Sol Property Magazine and I thought it would be a good idea to share it with you.

Click the image below to "flick" through it: