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Pain in Spain Print
Written by Damian Elwes   

A while back I wrote under that title a brief item pointing out why I wouldn’t want to join the 250,000 Brits who’ve opted for year-round residence in the South of Spain. Now I’ve noticed in the newsletter of the British Association in Cannes an account – again headed by those three words – by Tony Baccanello of his unhappy experiences with the Spanish property market. In brief, his dealings with a couple of Costa developers (Dutch, in fact) ended with his getting badly beaten up and his BMW being sprayed with acid and he lost a lot of money. Frankly, we’re talking of a part of Europe that just doesn’t seem a nice place to be. As a Telegraph report put it recently, it’s “awash with feuding criminal gangs, laundered dirty money and corrupt local officials”.

But it’s not just the number of bad hats hanging up there that’s a dissuasive. A recent report from a Madrid research institute drew attention to the problems implicit in the region’s frantic building boom. Currently, 35 per cent of Spain’s Mediterranean coast is built up, rising to over 50 per cent on the Costa del Sol and the Costa Blanca and with extensive development inland. The report concluded, grimly: “It seems unlikely that the increasing demand for power and water can be satisfied.” No, it’s not the place to be ...

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written by JustMeAndMyDog , 21 January 2008
It's getting even worse for expats in Spain. There is a frightening piece at www.timesonline.co.uk about this.
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written by Karen , 17 September 2008
I lived in Spain for 4 years. It was a seedy, criminal environment. Tried as much as I did, I could never change my impression that it was floating on little else but crime, prostitution, drugs and the newly popular gay weddings. The people are depressed and see no future, and the young often occupy their spare time (even during siesta breaks from work) by doing dope. Crime was immense; biggest I have ever seen. I have no clue what people see in Spain, really.
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written by Mike P , 18 September 2008
I think Karen's views are based on a limited vision of Spain. I'd say her comments are 100% fair in respect of those dreadful coastal resorts where so many Brits and other Northern Europeans go on holiday, and just as true as the places they choose to live, built on laundered money and the proceeds of various types of crime.

Spain's cities are festering and decaying concrete jungles, monuments to overpopulation and poor governance, just like the cities of most other countries, full of feckless unemployed youths who turn to drugs and crime at the one extreme, and the new Spanish yuppies, equally unbearable but for totally different reasons, at the other.

It is in the open lands of La Mancha and Extremedura, in the small inland villages of Andalusia, in the 'Rias' of Galicia, and in the mountains of Asturias, the parts of the Spain that the average person has barely heard of, let alone been to, that you find the real Spain and the real Spaniards. Those are the places people should visit to experience the reality of this diverse and wonderful country. I'm so glad they don't!
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written by Mike Meade , 18 September 2008
Is this not further evidence that one man's heaven is another man's hell?

And also evidence that both good and bad can be found everywhere. Generalisations abound, and are almost always misleading.
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written by Shortia , 18 September 2008
hehe...Karen - that sounds like Scotland without the gay weddings!
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