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oadbyman wrote on Fri May 14, 2021 2:57pm:
Thanks Anne really appreciate the comment.
I assume from your statement regarding Driving Licence, that you have both mastered Spanish to a degree, or you could have simply exchanged you licence, not you have both UK and Spanish.
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Peter
They are problems in all these situations, it is both bureaucracy and discrimination ( and maybe a bit of laziness thrown in) and I will give an example I think it happens everywhere but this is Spanish story.
There was a problem with a water course that flooded the house, so off to the council, my cousin (male and house owner) started dealing with the official with a splattering of Spanish. From what I was told the officials told him that it was not the councils responsibility.
At the same time there was a conversation in Spanish going on between the council staff, to the effect that they were silly English and just put them off they know no better. Things changed once my cousin his wife started having heard the conversation, my cousin came to Spain and met and married an English woman who had come to Spain with the family in the 60's, she had married a Spanish lad and was by the 1990's of course fluent.
You state you wonder how bad lives in the UK are, Life goes on and you refer to live being bad, life is what you make of it, you could have address the question positively.
Contray to the views I have heard by English immigrants to Spain from the UK, who often bring down the country of their wealth, and a lot of people are dissatisfied with their lives. I think the austerity of the 2010's with the extra trillion of debt while reducing the economic output of the country really made life for a lot of people worse than before and (as it is relevant as you mentioned Brexit before) created the dissatisfaction that allowed the UK (IMHO) to vote to leave the EU. And in Anne post she lists things that effected voters, the cost of membership was great but the combined costs of trading with the EU now will not be far different, paid for by British business. So now (covid) the UK has an extra trillion of debt in round terms, increased from approximately 1/5 a trillion on 2009 after the credit crunch to 2.5 now in round terms, but other countries also have their problems.
I do not see a thriving UK like Anne says the full effects of leaving are still a long way off, we have not even started checking imports properly.
We now want to trade with the Pacific region, an area as far away from the UK as you can get. We were told a lot of untruths, I see trying to enter all these international market where the UK can now trade on their terms (ie not EU) like Aldi and Lidl entering the UK market you have to displace the other players, and you have to offer more be it, price quality or what ever, and even then the existing players are not going to let you have their market easily, it took the 2008 credit crunch to move these continental supermarket into the main stream after 20 years of being in the UK.
I live in a small market town, it has not more problems than most places in this day and age, less than most. I have pleasant Summers, not so hot I cannot do anything during Sunshine hours. This winter has been OK, but we are a lot further North so when I would have normally been in Spain I have been here, definitely not as good as normal Spain, but this year Spain was not normal.
I am retired as you are aware and I am pleased that I am, life is harder than in the days I worked, little job security luckily all of my family have jobs, some doing extremely well other doing ok.
Had both vaccines before I would have got them in Spain and with the decision to do 11 weeks apart was well protected much sooner.
Not sure how to answer your miriad of opinions. I will only say that I have no wish to enter into a Brexit war of words. Brexit was one of the most complex; multi-faceted; complicated and emotive elections ever held. I'm glad it's all over. For better or worse!
As for your story of the visit to the council. I can see how that would happen. We lived in France and everyone was so helpful and friendly. Broke my heart when we left. Here, officials and professionals, in our experience, are curt - rude - and the natives are not all friendly either!
Even when you don't completely understand - their facial expressions and body language say it all!
We hope that as time goes by we build on our language skills and, with the easing of lockdown, our integration with the local spanish families. We are both optimistic that the future holds lots to look forward too.
