I’m not really into nostalgia wallowing or grumpy-old-woman rants. True, in my first years here, the Rambla wasn’t overrun by stag and hen parties in ‘Quiero Cerveza’ T-shirts—and there was no Starbucks! Huge trucks roared straight through the city along Aragón and the Avenida del Generalísimo (aka Diagonal). There was no ring road, much of [...]

In view of the mega debacle at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 last week, and the chaos last summer at Barcelona’s Aeroport del Prat, we can only wait in trepidation to see what happens when the new Terminal Sur opens in 2009. It’s already behind schedule. According to Aena, the Spanish airport authority, (I translate) “The new [...]

Back to the frenzy that is Barcelona in its normal state. I wake to the roar of engines and machines in our patio de manzana and go to the balcony to check. Oh great! They’ve come to clean off the obscene graffiti that appeared over the holidays in the playground below. Later, mid morning, I [...]

Problems with the neighbours – with the comunidad de propietarios, or in more colloquial terms, the escalera de vecinos. The owners’ association or ‘staircase of neighbours’ never fails to elicit groans and horror stories from everyone who has ever lived in a block of flats in Spain here (and not only in Spain). The escalera [...]