10 Aug 2013 11:44 AM:

Rincón de la Victoria, just 30 minutes by bus from Málaga, is still a very Spanish town, with not a single British bar, a clean, fairly modern town, with fantastic views to Málaga and Torremolinos and the mountains beyond.

Thread: The Costas' Best Towns and Cities

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19 Nov 2012 10:30 PM:

Language isn't a problem for me, as it shouldn't be after 21 years in Spain, on and off - and six of the off years spent in Miami, where you have to speak Spanish too.

The bureaucracy in Spain is no worse than in the UK or the USA. Smile and speak Spanish and most bureaucrats fall over backwards to help a guiri. It took me just two months to get my Andalusian Social Security card and register with a doctor at my local clinic, but my European Health Insurance Card has to come from Britain, and when I phoned an office in Newcastle they told me it could take up to six months to send the card. When I renewed my residencia after returning from the USA it took me just 30 minutes, including going to the bank to pay the fee.

Two things bother me:

• I'm receiving pensions in pounds but spending euros. £1 = €1.25 I can live with, but in September last year the rate was £1 = €1.13 and I remember a low of £1 = €1.03.
• Inflation. This could destroy the lives of people like me with pensions only going up a few percent every year and a little bit of money put by for a rainy day. The good point is that I bought my apartment for cash (a bit over 7 million pesetas, or about €43,000) in 1998.

These are the only issues that bother me. I'm incredibly lucky to live in a city like Málaga, with an apartment paid for and enough money to live modestly but comfortably. I can go out at 11 pm to a bar where there's live music till 3 am (flamenco, jazz or rock), no cover charge, and a beer only costs €3, even after midnight. In my local bar a beer or un tinto is just €1.50, and it's not a cheap bar.

Despite my divorce last year (after 15 years married to a Spanish woman) I've no intention of returning to the UK. My ex and I are very good friends, we go out together now and then, and I can find plenty of other Spanish women to go out with, and even the occasional foreigner. I still haven't found that someone special for a lasting relationship, but I'm working on it, even though I'm in my late 60s.

Sometimes I think I live in a different Spain from expats. I don't think of myself as an expat. This is my home now.

 

 

This message was last edited by mdavidfrost on 19/11/2012.

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Thread: POLL : Biggest concerns for expats living abroad - Results

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27 Oct 2012 12:19 PM:

You know you've become a local when you haven't been out all day because it's raining (and anyway there won't be anyone in your favourite bar for the same reason).

Thread: How do you know you've become a local?

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15 Oct 2012 7:29 PM:

I think I really knew I'd become a local when I was elected president of my community, the only foreigner and English-speaker in a building near the centre of Málaga with 78 apartments - plus council offices, a supermarket, a greengrocer's, a baker's, a café, a bar, a hamburger joint, two social clubs and a legionnaires' club.

Just after buying my apartment I went to a meeting of the community and a woman was elected president. A neighbour whispered to me asking if I'd like to be vice-president, and I thought, why not? After all, there'd be a Spanish president, so there wouldn't be a lot of work, but it would be an interesting experience. So I was elected vice-president.

 

Then the president started bringing all the correspondence to me asking what we should do. I wondered why she was asking me so often, until one day a neighbour took me aside and told me that our new president couldn't read or write. So I was president except in name.

 

There were problems. We needed new lifts, but a vocal minority was against raising the community payments to pay for them, even though there was a possibility that the lifts would fail a safety inspection so we wouldn't be able to use them. Also, there was a problem of non-payment of monthly community dues.

 

So after six months I got together a group of neighbours and agreed to stand as president provided I had a vice-president and committee members prepared to get involved and help me. We were all elected, because we went round collecting written authorisations to vote for us from people who didn't want to attend the meetings. The woman president was delighted to be relieved of the responsibility.

 

Now we have new lifts and the entrance lobby has been renovated, with new tiles on the floor and walls and new letter boxes. We took the non-payers to court and there is only one person owing a few months' payments.

 

As president I sometimes was asked to sort out disputes. For example, two women couldn't agree which clothes lines on their floor in the interior patio belonged to who. There were five lines, so I suggested that each used two at either side, and the one in the middle they shared on a first-come, first-served basis. They both accepted this, although why they couldn't work it out for themselves I don't know.

 

It was certainly an interesting experience, and I was elected twice, but I'll never do it again. Nor would I criticise the president of my community unless he did something really outrageous. Once you've given up being president you become part of an exclusive group of kindred spirits made up of ex-presidents.

 

This message was last edited by mdavidfrost on 15/10/2012.

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Thread: How do you know you've become a local?

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13 Oct 2012 2:32 PM:

A lot of my Facebook posts are in Spanish.

Thread: How do you know you've become a local?

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