If  you think that December is an ordinary working month with a bit of extra shopping and a few days off for Christmas, think again. Here, December is about as productive as August, when the whole of Spain grinds to a halt. You simply cannot expect to buy a house, get a new kitchen put [...]

Here’s a direct link to Valerie’s story WITH A ROSE BETWEEN HER TEETH, a hilarious take on the expat experience in Spain. Please leave your comments and let Valerie know what you think of the story.

And now for something completely different. We are delighted to announce that one of Valerie’s funniest stories, With A Rose Between Her Teeth, was selected for inclusion in the Writers Abroad Short Story Anthology 2010. This is a fictional take on the British in Spain, most definitely in the Garlic spirit, written with Valerie’s hallmark humour [...]

Christa Mundin of Gandía reports on her trip home from Barcelona last week. Arrived home safely but very late after a fun-packed journey. I arrived at the station in Barcelona to find the train was delayed by an hour and a half due to a fire at Montpellier station, its point of departure.  No probs, [...]

A lot of people from the UK react with shock horror when I say that I am still Valerie Collins. They expect me to have a Spanish married name: some sort of aristocratic double or triple barreled mouthful: at the very least an exotic and probably unpronounceable surname. But many of them don’t realise that [...]